204 THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



the sows would be kept at any cost, but the stock for which 

 there was no keep would be killed before the winter began. 

 Beef, however, would be so expensive an article of diet, that 

 its use must have been restricted to the tables of the rich ; 

 but of salted mutton and bacon the villagers probably had good 

 store ; bacon would appear to have been the standard dish for 

 all classes except the magnates. In later years it certainly 

 formed the staple diet for soldiers. When Henry II. was 

 waging war in Wales in 1157, he paid 52 for 500 bacon- 

 pigs and their carriage from London into Wales. 1 And when 

 Richard I., in the first year of his reign, provisioned Car- 

 marthen Castle, he bought 180 bacon-pigs for i8. z 



The peasants must also have been engaged in la petite 

 culture. The later manorial extents mention frequent pay- 

 ments of hens and eggs to the lords of the manors. The 

 rents of the shrievalty of Wiltshire included 480 hens, 1600 

 eggs, and 16 sextars of honey ; 3 and the Rectitudines Singu- 

 larum Personarum shows the gebur rendering two hens 

 at Martinmas to his lord. 4 Hives of bees are frequently 

 mentioned in the statistics for the eastern counties, and the 

 products of the hives were most valuable. In the absence of 

 sugar, honey was the only available source of sweetness. The 

 wax was used for candles both in the churches and in the 

 houses of the great, and mead was made from the droppings 

 of the comb. We have spoken of the cheeses produced from 

 the dairies and sheepfolds. In the thirteenth century Walter 

 of Henley calculated that a gallon of butter and a wey of 

 cheese should be produced every week between April and 

 October by two cows or twenty ewes in salt-marshes, or 

 by three cows or thirty ewes fed on ordinary pasture or 

 fallow. 5 



If now we pass to the cultivation of the land, we find 

 that Domesday Book speaks of wheat ("frumentum," or 



1 Pipe Roll, 4 Hen. II., p. 112. 2 Id., i Rich. I., p. 163. 



3 D. B., I. 69 a I. 4 L. 446. 5 Walter of Henley, 27. 



