ELEVENTH-CENTURY FARMING 203 



demesne ; the second table shows an average of thirteen pigs 

 and forty-six sheep ; and both tables show that even in the 

 eleventh century England was pre-eminently a sheep-farming 

 country. To these should be added one horse, four oxen 

 that did not plough, and four goats, for every team. 



But we must remember that the animals of the eleventh 

 century were much inferior in quality to those of the present 

 day. Professor Thorold Rogers tells us that in the fourteenth 

 century an ox weighed about 400 Ibs. 1 The weight of a 

 fleece was then about i-J- lb., while the unimproved fleece 

 of an eighteenth-century sheep weighed about 5 Ibs., and 

 he argues that the fourteenth-century wether weighed under 

 40 Ibs. 2 His averages show that about 5 Ibs. of lard were 

 derived from an ordinary pig ; 3 to-day a pig of 200 Ibs. will 

 produce 10 Ibs. of lard, so that a fourteenth-century pig 

 would weigh about 100 Ibs. In all probability there had 

 been some improvement in the breeds of stock in the interval 

 between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, and some 

 deduction must therefore be made from these figures if we 

 wish to know the quantity of meat on the animals of the 

 eleventh century. For the purpose of comparison, it may be 

 useful to add the average weights of stock sold in Woodstock 

 market to-day. The ordinary bullock weighs about 680 Ibs. ; 

 the Oxford Down teg, about 80 Ibs. ; and the ordinary bacon 

 pig, about 200 Ibs. 



Stock-keeping in the eleventh century was a very different 

 business from present-day practice. Then there were no root 

 crops and no artificial grasses, and therefore, in view of the 

 absence of all kinds of winter keep, except the hay that was 

 grown on a very restricted area of meadow, and the great 

 value of the latter article, a proportion of the stock on any 

 farm would be killed about Martinmas and salted down for 

 winter use. The horses, the oxen and cows, the ewes and 



1 Six Centuries of Work and Wages ', 77. 

 2 Id., 80. 3 Id., 83. 



