THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE APPLE AND PEAR. 
15 
in old Norman French, “ Content hom doit mettre le issue de sun estor a formed that ten quarters 
of apples or pears ought to yield a ton (tonel) of cyder as rent.” [Add. M.S. 6159, p. 220). 
Most of the early notices of cider refer chiefly to its mode of manufacture, but that it was 
made very widely, there can be no doubt. 
The mention of cider occurs in the “ Roll of the Manners and household expenses of the 
Countess of Leicester ' (thirteenth Century)—but in the “ Roll of the household expenses of Bishop 
Swinfield',' so carefully edited by the Rev. John Webb, there is no mention whatever of cider. The 
apple itself is only once named, and then as being purchased with a lemon. In this minute detail 
of the expenses of the Bishop in his progress through the Diocese of Hereford from village to 
village, commencing at Michaelmas, 1289, and continued until nearly the same time in 1290, if 
apples had been abundant, if orchards had existed—and certainly if cider had been made at that time 
there must have been some mention of it. The Bishop visited, again and again, the districts of 
the county now most celebrated for their orchards, but the Roll is silent on the subject On the 
“ endorsement” of the Roll, the proceedings of the visit of the steward Kemseye to an estate, held 
by the Bishop in his native county of Kent, at Womenswould, near Wingham, are recorded. Here 
“ other particulars” says the Editor, “ proclaim the forming of a homestead : a virgate of land was 
was bought, and some apple trees were planted— -plantis pomiferis , grafted stocks ; and it may 
seem strange that while throughout the Roll no mention is made of orchards in Herefordshire 
one should be forming in Kent.” [Editor s note, p. 121). 
The “ Roll” mentions white wine from Ledbury several times, but this was a grape wine, 
and not the Perry it is so celebrated for now. “ Vined de Ledebur." This vintage had yielded during 
the preceding Autumn (1288) seven pipes [dolia) of white wine and nearly one of verjuice. It 
was valued at eight pounds the pipe, or about half the price of the foreign wine got from Bristol, 
and brought up the Severn to Hawe (p. 59). This vineyard was planted, or renewed by the 
preceding Bishop Cantilupe. A farm in the parish of Ledbury, on the Gloucester-road, still bears 
the name, and in after times the descendants of Bishop Skipp had a vineyard on their estate of 
Upper Hall, in the parish of Ledbury. Towards the end of the seventeeth Century, George 
Skipp, Esq., made both white and red wine from his plantation. He died in 1690. The Editor 
has often seen the site on which the vines grew.” [Roll of Bishop Swinfield, vol. ii., note by Editor, 
p. cxxvii.) 
There is also a “ Vineyard” estate on the banks of the river Wye, one mile east of Hereford, 
which might well have existed before this time. The property was left to the Trinity Hospital 
Charity, in the city of Llereford, in 1607, by Mr. John Kerry. The vines here grew on terraces, 
supported by stone walls, built at considerable expense, and one or two very aged vinetree stocks 
exist there at this time. 
The Roll of Bishop Swinfield is an authentic and trustworthy document, and since both beer 
and wine are very frequently mentioned in it, it affords the strongest negative testimony against 
the existence of orchards and the making of either cider or Perry in Herefordshire at that time. 
Another Century had scarcely passed, however, before cider must have become a well known 
drink of the people, since it is a curious fact that in the Hereford Wycliffe M.S. Bible, now under 
a glass case in the Cathedral, the passage in the 15th verse of the 1st Chapter of St. Lukes Gospel, 
