7

Peasant farming: Livestock and pasture

Peasant livestock, taken together, greatly outnumbered those kept by their lords, even in the thirteenth century when demesnes were being managed directly to take advantage of a buoyant market. In the period after c.1380 many lords withdrew from managing the land directly, often leasing their demesnes to peasants, so the peasants’ share increased to an even higher level. At the same time the income deriving from livestock was increasing as the balance shifted away from arable. A calculation of Gross Domestic Product for England as a whole suggests that the pastoral sector’s share rose from about a third of agricultural output around 1300 to almost a half in the 1450s. ¹ As peasants were responsible for much of that production, collectively they can be regarded as major contributors to the national economy.

This chapter is concerned with the balance on one hand between the use of animals to feed peasant households and to service holdings with traction and manure, and on the other to maximize earnings from the sale of animals and their produce. Each type of animal, from horses to bees will be considered, assessing their number, age, gender, and management. The central concerns are to assess the importance of the pastoral dimension of peasant farming to the household and as a source of income, and to examine the effectiveness of pastoral activities, including such matters as labour, animal welfare, and the marketing of animals and their products.

Horses

Lists of possessions or inventories show widespread ownership of at least one horse, and a number of individuals owned two or three. A relatively wealthy peasant, Elyas atte Brugge of Abbots Salford (Warwickshire) owned in 1389 a horse, three mares, and two foals. He also had eight cattle. ² When communities decided to fix stints, which limited the numbers of animals that could be kept on the common, they often specified two, three, or four horses, much the same as in lists of individuals’ livestock. They normally expected that each holding would have more cattle than horses. Horse ownership was rising in the later Middle Ages: when a newcomer to Willoughby (Warwickshire) in 1230 was given livestock at the beginning of his tenancy he received ten cattle and two horses, so a rather lower proportion than prevailed later. ³

Horses formed a substantial proportion of animals accused of invading sown fields, the lord’s demesne, or other prohibited places. At Badminton (Gloucestershire) between 1340 and 1354 thirty-nine horses were listed as causing offence, compared with twenty-five cattle and eighteen pigs. At Kempsford, in the same county, over a longer period in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a total of 163 horses were reported in the wrong places compared with 108 cattle. At Eldersfield (Worcestershire) between 1315 and 1336 fifty-nine horses were causing problems, but there were ninety-seven cattle. In 1365–99 in the same village strays were found wandering in the fields and roads without known owners: forty-three sheep, five cattle, and thirty-nine horses. At a much later date, 1466–1518, strays from Brandon (Warwickshire) consisted of thirty-two sheep, eleven cattle, and fourteen horses. ⁴ Evidently a sizeable horse population was wandering and trespassing around villages throughout the period, and in varied landscapes.

The management of horses led to many complaints, especially when they left their stables or paddocks near the peasant house and were sent to graze on the common pastures. Horses could cause much damage to crops, and one remedy was to tether them, but this was sometimes regarded as ineffective and a complete ban on horses in the common fields was imposed. An alternative control measure was to put the horses into the safekeeping of the common herdsman. At Sedgeberrow in 1336 a keeper of oxen and horses was employed, but Overbury (also in Worcestershire) in 1315 had a ‘keeper of the horses’. ⁵ Younger animals tended to be unruly, and some concern was expressed about the behaviour of geldings.

The varied quality of horses is reflected in the values put on them, from high grade riding horses worth 20s, through middling work horses priced at 6s 8d to 10s down to miserable nags valued at 2s or less. The middle-ranking animals that did useful farm work feature as heriots (death duties), especially when more than one beast was taken, when the horse usually came second to a more highly prized ox. This hierarchy of animals of variable quality resulted from differences in breeding practices. Much unselective breeding resulted from mares and stallions grazing on to the common. The undesirable presence of stallions is acknowledged by the 1533 by-law at Earls Croome (Worcestershire) forbidding ‘stoned’ horses from the commons, but other villages did not attempt to prohibit these animals. ⁶ More careful small-scale horse breeding was apparently being conducted at Honeybourne and Sherborne (both Gloucestershire) where mares and foals figure among the heriots in 1341–62, with the foals being valued at 10–16s. ⁷

Some assessment of the animals can be made from their size. At Bishop’s Cleeve (Gloucestershire) two complete horse skeletons have been excavated, from which the height of the living animals at the withers, that is the shoulders, could be estimated at 126cm and 138cm (50–55in), resembling modern Dartmoor and New Forest ponies. ⁸ Another indication of size comes from surviving horse shoes, which from west midland village sites varied between 9.9cm and 11.9cm in width, whereas the hooves of modern riding horses (not specialized race horses or cart horses) are 12–14cm wide. On the basis of the hoof sizes, the withers height of medieval peasant horses would have been below 156cm. ⁹ They came in a variety of colours, as they are described as white, grey, black, brown, and red. Their small size must have limited the work that they could undertake, and damage to the bones of the spine of one of the Bishop’s Cleeve horses suggests that it struggled to accomplish the tasks required.

Peasant horses had a number of roles. Some were ridden, like a mare from Romsley (Worcestershire) which in 1326 Reginald ate Shawe hired from a substantial tenant, Richard de Honeford, to enable him to go to Alcester, a distance of 16 miles. Reginald overworked his mount, and it died after completing the journey. Honeford valued the animal at 6s 8d, no doubt overstated. ¹⁰ Perhaps few horses were intended for riding only, and the unfortunate Romsley mare probably resembled other work animals in being expected to perform a variety of tasks. Specialist riding horses were most likely to be owned by the relatively wealthy, such as the tenant with 3 ½ yardlands at Chaddesley Corbett, who died in 1420 in possession of four horses and a foal, all taken as heriots and valued at 30s, 20s, 16s, and 13s 4d; even the foal was worth 10s. ¹¹ They clearly resembled in price and quality horses that could be found in the stables of the gentry. Horses of middling quality gave their owner not just a serviceable mount but also a marker of status. This is made clear in the case of eight sokemen (free tenants) at Stoneleigh (Warwickshire), mostly with yardland or half-yardland holdings, who were obliged according to the 1279 survey ‘to come riding to the great bedrip’ (harvest service) ‘with staves in their hands’ to supervise the harvest workers. ¹² The tenant associated with the thirteenth-century house excavated at Pinbury (Gloucestershire) may well have been a woodward who needed to ride round nearby Overley Wood: a spur and harness pendant were found. ¹³ The ornamental copper alloy harness pendants found on other peasant sites, some of them gilded or enamelled, or even with heraldic decoration, convey the prestige of horse riding, as the attention of onlookers would have been drawn to these trinkets flashing and jingling with the animal’s motion. ¹⁴

Most peasants rode horses for mundane tasks around their own villages, to visit fields or to work in them. Rather longer distances would be covered when they called on neighbouring villages or went to towns. Smallholders were included among the horse owners. A cottager at Cleeve Prior in 1416 had an affer (working horse) worth 2s that was taken as a heriot; a black mare valued at 16d was the heriot for the tenant of a cottage and curtilage with 2 acres at Stoke Gifford (Gloucestershire) in 1453. ¹⁵ As such tenants with limited landholding also earned wages, a horse would be an asset in finding employment, or carrying tools or materials. Better-off tenants owned horses mainly to haul carts, as the cart was increasingly used by peasants rather than the ox-drawn wain from the thirteenth century onwards. ¹⁶ Horses also tended to take over from oxen in pulling harrows. A few horses also powered mills: John Taylour operated a horse mill between 1502 and 1516 at Hanbury (Worcestershire) which lacked a water mill, and where the lord’s windmill had long ceased to function. ¹⁷ Millers in charge of water and windmills often kept a horse to carry sacks of corn or flour, reminding us of the convenience of packhorses for smaller loads. Packhorses must have been a common sight as so many of the carrying jobs around a peasant holding involved limited quantities of hay, straw, fencing materials, and firewood. Both packhorses and carthorses carrying loads for some distance on roads with hard surfaces needed to be shod, and iron horseshoes are among the most frequently encountered metal finds on excavated village sites. The main use for carts was in the fields and along the lanes and tracks of the village, with a single animal between the shafts, either a gelding (castrated male) or mare. Mares were expected to breed as well as work, and a commonplace scene was a mare pulling a cart while accompanied by a foal, which met with some disapproval because of the potentially skittish behaviour of young horses. ¹⁸

Horses were kept on the peasant holding because of their contribution to agricultural tasks and transport, especially for harrowing, carrying, and riding. Peasant horses in southern and eastern England were adopted as plough beasts to the point that they replaced oxen in a significant technological advance during the later Middle Ages. In the west midlands horses made considerable progress in haulage, so that when jurors were reporting on livestock pastured in Feckenham Forest in 1244–6 they found sixty-eight horses compared with 146 of the larger male cattle. ¹⁹ By c.1500, using heriots and strays in a sample district on and below the Cotswold edge, horses and oxen were equal in numbers, and many of the horses were high in quality. ²⁰ They may have been beginning to be used in ploughing, perhaps as part of mixed teams, but oxen were still playing a major role in cultivation.

Peasants’ horses did not form part of the household’s diet, as horse meat was not eaten. A few horse bones found on village sites show signs of butchery, so perhaps the custom changed in famine conditions, or in normal times their flesh was fed to dogs. ²¹ The only profit from a dead horse normally came from its hide, hence the burial of horse carcasses. Old cattle, sheep, and pigs would not die of old age, but were slaughtered for meat.

Horses made a contribution to the commercial profits of the peasant holding, judging from the number of foals that were reared. Among the animals invading fields at Thornbury (Gloucestershire) between 1328 and 1337 were eighteen mares and sixteen foals. The Eldersfield strays included eleven mares and twenty-five foals. At Longdon (Worcestershire) in the years 1373–83, four mares and twenty foals were counted as strays. These places were all in the Severn valley but a similar picture emerges in the Cotswolds, such as the forty-eight foals among the 163 horses over many years grazing against the rules in fields at Kempsford, and five mares and eleven foals at Hawkesbury. ²² Mares were producing more foals than were needed to replace the village’s old stock, so they must have been intended for external sale. Specialist horse breeders can be recognized among the owners of animals found grazing illicitly. For example, at Radbourne in Warwickshire in 1359, two people from the neighbouring villages of Priors Hardwick and Napton-on-the-Hill, allowed in each case five of their foals to cross the boundary. At Middleton (Warwickshire), John atte Hyde had six foals. ²³ These animals were being kept in preparation for sale, and evidently the chance of making money, even when the foal was only worth a shilling or two, could not be overlooked. Really high returns could be gained by those with high-quality foals to sell, some of which were bought by lords to replenish demesne stock. ²⁴ Older horses could also be sold. The animals were long-lived, up to 12 years according to the bones excavated from west midland village sites, and in that time an animal could have had a number of successive owners. ²⁵

In addition to selling horses and foals, peasants could earn money from hiring them, either the animal on its own (as in the case of the Romsley mare) or by making a horse and cart available in a haulage contract, which might attract clients within the village, or from nearby towns. At Blackwell, the rural manor containing the small town of New Shipston, horse ownership was generally high, judging from the high proportion of horses taken as heriots, partly because townspeople needed horses for their businesses and would hire them from their rural neighbours.

Cattle

The number of cattle that could be kept by each yardland on the commons was supposedly limited by stints which allowed the tenant between four and nine. The largest number recorded was twelve. A cottager might have been able to keep a cow. Figures for the cattle owned by individuals are based on inventories or lists of possessions of felons or tenants who had gone absent. They show that more substantial tenants owned between four and twelve cattle. Poorer people, even occasionally someone without a tenancy of land, could own a cow. A village’s cattle, gathered together to graze in the care of the common herdsman, could reach a formidable total, so that sixty assembled on Lower Swell’s fields in 1401. In 1419 two herdsmen were required to supervise the 140 beasts at Charlton (Worcestershire). ²⁶

Oxen, castrated males that had reached the age of three years, were the essential beasts of burden hauling ploughs, heavy wains, and harrows in the early thirteenth century, but mainly ploughs in subsequent centuries. The oxen were yoked in pairs, and a holding often owned only two or four of them. A remarkably generous stint at Moor (Worcestershire) in 1436 suggests that a yardland holding might have between six and eight oxen (and some ‘beasts’ as well). ²⁷ Normally a plough needed a six- or eight-ox team, and they would be assembled by bringing together animals from at least two or three holdings. Most yardland and half-yardland holdings owned a plough (the wooden implement with iron fittings) and one, two or three oxen, and smaller holdings might also have one ox. In the late fourteenth-century a tenant with ‘a messuage and a croft’ and another having ‘two messuages and two crofts’ on the Winchcomb Abbey estate, and a quarter-yardlander and a holding with 6 acres at Cleeve Prior, each owned an ox. ²⁸ Such holdings lacked a plough, so the smallholder’s ox became part of a composite team made up of animals from other tenants. The contributors would also share the labour, so the smallholder could act on a number of days as one of the two ploughmen. As part of the collective effort, he or she would be entitled to enough days’ ploughing to cultivate the few acres of the smallholding, though of course the plough team would spend the most time working on the larger holdings. Such arrangements are implied by the Brimpsfield survey of 1299 with which Chapter 3 began. It assumed (with optimism) that a half-yardland would own four oxen and a quarter-yardland two. It does not state that two, three, or four such tenants should pool their assets to create eight-ox teams, but this would have been the intention. The Brimpsfield document, reflecting the lord’s perspective, is only concerned with teams ploughing the lord’s demesne, but the same combination of plough beasts could have been applied to the cultivation of the tenants’ holdings (see ‘Farming and methods and techniques’ in Chapter 6). ²⁹

The values put on peasant oxen suggests their quality. They were regularly said to be worth between 8s to 12s, and in south-west Gloucestershire, presumably under the influence of the Bristol market, they rose to 16s or 20s around 1500, and even to 30s in the 1530s. ³⁰ In the period when lords’ demesnes were being managed by the lords’ officials, peasant oxen taken as heriots would be added to the demesne livestock, because they were judged not to be inferior to the lords’ animals.

Oxen spent many days each year yoked together and pulling either a plough or wain, and as was the case with horses their bones carry signs of the stress related to hard work. ³¹ When they were not working they grazed with other cattle under the supervision of the herdsman, who was sometimes called ‘the keeper of the avers’ and there was concern about the damage they could do to the cultivated fields. At night the ‘avers’ (a generic term for adult male cattle) would be brought to closes and yards adjoining the peasant house where they might receive some supplementary feed (mostly hay and straw). Cattle housing was limited: some holdings had purpose-built byres, and rarely accommodation was provided at one end of the dwelling house (see ‘Animal welfare’ in this chapter). Otherwise the yard, which was often sunken and fenced, afforded them some shelter. ³² Their manure could add substantially to the peasant’s dung hill.

Individual better-off peasant households usually owned two or three cows, and smallholders often had one. Their primary function was to provide the household with dairy produce. A lord’s cow yielded between 54lbs and 93lbs of butter and cheese each year on the Berkeley estate in the late thirteenth century. ³³ A peasant cow producing 74lbs annually would allow each member of the household an ounce of cheese or butter for each of the days when cheese-eating was permitted. In an agreement of 1483 to maintain Helena Ludlow of Shirehampton (near Bristol) she was promised a cheese, presumably of a standard size, each week. ³⁴ A peasant holding that was keeping two or three cows would be able to provide for the household and have a surplus for sale, bringing in a useful few shillings each year.

Cows were accompanied by their offspring: calves, yearlings, heifers, and bullocks. As they matured the young animals either replaced old oxen or cows, or were sold. Young cattle, especially calves and bullocks, could be sent to market for their meat, and old oxen and cows could end their lives in the same way, sometimes after being prepared by fattening. Old animals (or parts of them), which were less marketable, would be more likely to be consumed in the household.

At Burton Dassett Southend a large sample of bones reveals the importance of cattle as a source of meat, because although sheep outnumbered cattle (based on counting the minimum number of individuals) a cattle carcass weighed ten times more than a sheep carcass, so the villagers ate more beef than mutton. The cattle that were killed and consumed in Burton Dassett Southend were aged between 4 and 9 years, while the younger animals, especially bullocks, are scarce because they were sold in local towns where they fetched a good price. Some Burton Dassett Southend bullocks may have ended their lives in the butchers’ shambles of Coventry or even in London (having been sold at Banbury or other local markets). Finds of cattle on west-midland urban sites include animals of all ages, with some younger animals suggesting the preferences of relatively wealthy consumers. Specialist butchers are recorded living and working in some villages, and at Burton and other excavated villages the presence of all parts of the animal, including fragments of skull, suggests that the animals were killed in the village. The urban methods of carcass preparation, for example, by splitting down the spine, were not practised in the country. ³⁵ Bones at Pinbury suggested that after killing the animals in the village, the peasants ate the less desirable parts, such as the head, and the better cuts were taken away for sale. ³⁶

The quantity of meat that could be obtained from each animal was limited by their relatively small size. An adult bovine at Dassett Southend measured 112–115cm (45–46in) at the shoulder, and similar figures of 108 and 112cm have been calculated for cattle in medieval Droitwich, which are likely to have been brought into the country from peasant holdings. These are significantly smaller than their modern successors which stand at 137–150cm. The edible meat on a medieval cattle carcass is believed to have weighed 240lbs (109kg). ³⁷ The household which slaughtered a beast no doubt ate well for a few days, but much of the animal would have been salted, like that annual quarter of beef allowed to a retired peasant of Blackwell (Warwickshire). ³⁸

How do we strike the balance between the contribution that cattle made to household subsistence and the profits they yielded in the market? Cattle gave the household haulage, milk, meat, and manure. A modest income would have been generated by dairy produce, and more from the occasional sale of animals, both young and old. By-products of animals slaughtered in the village included hides, and also horns, which at Burton Dassett Southend were removed after slaughter, and probably sold to tanners and horners in towns. As was the case with horses, oxen were profitably hired, and cows could also be rented out for as much as 4s to 5s per annum.

Most peasants’ sales of cattle and dairy produce would have yielded less than 20s per annum for even a large holding. Only specialists in the right environment could expect to make large financial gains from keeping cattle. In the Warwickshire Arden the rising demand for beef from the towns from the late fourteenth century stimulated individuals to keep herds as large as sixty animals (at Middleton in 1407). ³⁹ The profitability of the specialism continued and even increased in the fifteenth century when families such as the Deys and the Baillys achieved an impressive rise in their social standing (see ‘Social mobility’ in Chapter 4). Worcestershire peasants in the thirteenth century can already be seen as cattle herders in Feckenham Forest, and in the fifteenth century in the woodlands in the north of the county there were individuals with as many as the twenty bullocks said to be in the keeping of John Whatecroft at Northfield in 1439. ⁴⁰ Dairying on a commercial scale was being practised by John Thatcher of Mitton (in Hartlebury parish) in 1476 when he was accused of failing to pay tithes on the output of eleven cows. Thomas Charlecote kept seven cows at Kempsey in 1447. These individuals lived in the Severn Valley and tithe payments suggest specialized dairying in the river valley villages of Deerhurst and Driffield (Gloucestershire) in the early sixteenth century. ⁴¹

The day-to-day management of cattle was divided along gender lines. Male members of the household looked after the beasts that pulled the plough and wains, while the cows and calves were the responsibility of women. According to a church court, a woman living in the house of Peter Aprice of Hartlebury in 1491 was accustomed to walk from Aprice’s house to a pasture called Mytham to milk cows. Such journeys would be followed by the processing of the milk, attested by occasional finds of ceramic bowls used to separate cream. ⁴²

Peasants must have practised some selective breeding of cattle, judging from the high quality of the oxen that we have noted. West-midland peasant cattle seem often to have been red in colour, and their horns tended to be short, though a medium horned variety is found at Bristol. They rarely owned a bull, and must have relied on the lord’s bull when cattle were kept on the demesne. When the demesne was leased out, as at Norton Subedge (Gloucestershire) in 1448, the farmer was expected to provide a common bull, but failed to do so. At Hartlebury the rector usually kept a bull and boar for the benefit of the parishioners, but again was criticized for their absence. ⁴³ When in normal times these animals were being made available to the peasants, the service would presumably have carried a fee, but no trace of these payments has survived.

Sheep

Peasant sheep flocks, added together, exceeded 7,000 at Blockley at the end of the fifteenth century, and 3,000 at Bishop’s Cleeve in the late fourteenth. ⁴⁴ Demesne flocks on a single manor for comparison usually varied between 200 and 600. To us medieval sheep seem small, with a height at the withers (shoulder) for an adult estimated at 55cm (22in) at Burton Dassett, and at Bishop’s Cleeve between 49cm (19in) and 56cm (22in). In towns (relevant because of the rural source of their sheep) figures varied between 53 and 61cm, for example with 56 and 57cm on a Bristol site. ⁴⁵ A comparable measurement for modern animals would be 91cm (36in). The ‘traditional’ breed of Cotswold sheep now kept by ‘rare breed’ specialists are bulky animals, quite unlike their medieval predecessors, and the popular name of ‘Cotswold lions’ used in the Middle Ages refers to the mane of wool about the sheep’s head, not to their physique or temperament.

Wealthy individuals might have sixty-eight sheep, like Elyas atte Brugge of Abbots Salford (Warwickshire) in 1389. Less prosperous tenants making wills around 1500 bequeathed thirty-four sheep in one case, and thirty in another. John Jeffes’ inventory, taken at Ailstone (Warwickshire) in 1538, noted thirty sheep. ⁴⁶ However, a number of lists of possessions and inventories make no mention of sheep, so clearly some individuals chose not to keep them. Stints, of which we have thirty from villages dispersed across the region, allowed a yardland tenant in one village to keep 100 on the common, two set the limit at eighty, and eleven at sixty, and the remainder mainly at thirty or forty. ⁴⁷ This rationing of grazing might have followed calculations of the pastures’ capacity, but one suspects also special pleading by those with large flocks, ever anxious to expand their number.

Those villagers who observed the limits on flocks kept on common pastures had to face up to those grazing very large flocks. This was not just in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds, though two flocks of 300 were reported at Snowshill in 1466, 400 and 200 at Rendcomb in 1435, and perhaps the largest number, in 1442 at Kingscote, when a total of 1,330 tenant sheep included two flocks of 300 and three of 200. ⁴⁸ Tenants with large numbers occupied the pastures of champion villages, with three having 300 each on the pastures of Long Marston (Warwickshire) in 1453, and at nearby Alveston in 1428 a flock of 200 and three of 100 were reported. Tenants in the woodlands tended to keep smaller numbers, but we still find individuals with 100 at Eldersfield, Longdon, and Stoke Prior. ⁴⁹

These figures impress modern historians and at the time must have disturbed the ordinary villagers, but they give a false impression because most tenants kept sheep on a modest scale or did not keep them at all. The villagers of Teddington (Gloucestershire) in 1427 informed the manor court of sheep destroying the lord’s meadow (presumably by consuming and trampling the grass intended for hay) which led them to compile a list resembling a census of the village’s sheep. This consisted of two tenants with 200 animals, three with eighty, and another five with between eighteen and thirty. The main five offenders were also said to have ‘unjustly occupied the common’ at another time with between forty and 160 sheep. ⁵⁰ The large flocks are impressive, but a half of the flocks were of moderate size. Another snapshot of the distribution of sheep can be obtained by analysing the wool purchases of John Heritage, the Moreton-in-Marsh woolmonger of 1497–1520, whose business catered for both large and small producers. A significant number of his suppliers owned 200–400 animals, and he bought a good proportion of fleeces from those keeping a hundred sheep, but more than a half of those selling him wool were pasturing less than eighty (Table 7.1). Cottagers owned sheep as can be seen from their heriots, for example, at Hawkesbury in the Cotswolds from forty-six payments of heriot between 1394 and 1500, six were cottage holdings where the ‘best beast’ was a ewe and lamb, or a young sheep, a hoggaster. Another eight cottagers were better off, in that they had a cow to be taken as a heriot, but they may have owned sheep as well. ⁵¹

Table 7.1 Estimates of the size of the flocks of those selling wool to John Heritage, 1503

In the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, a comprehensive survey of church property, tithe records often exclude details, but the clerks working on parts of the west midlands did not consistently abbreviate the entries. One group of thirty parishes in eastern Gloucestershire, many in the Cotswolds, were the benefices of rectors (they had not been taken over by monasteries), and the main products, corn, hay, mills, personal tithes, and so on were valued separately. The wool and lamb totals are a guide to the importance of sheep in each parish. They come in round sums such as 30s, 48s, and 60s, which were estimates but not fictions. Wool and lambs together made 48 per cent of the total of tithes for Colesbourne parish, a high point on the western edge of the Cotswolds, and only 3 per cent of the tithes at Corse in the woodlands on the west bank of the Severn. Such a low figure was exceptional, and in 15 of the 30 parishes wool and lambs accounted for 33 per cent of the value of the tithes, or a higher figure, and these sheep products were worth at least 25 per cent in another seven parishes. ⁵² As a check on the reliability of the tithe assessments in the Valor, they can be compared with tithe accounts compiled for rectories operating their own administration. The rectory of Bishop’s Cleeve, a village mainly in the lowlands though with some upland pasture, in 1389–90 derived 12 per cent of its tithe income from wool, and 7 per cent from lambs, so at 19 per cent was not too far below Gloucestershire parishes in the Valor. ⁵³

The tithes demonstrate the importance of arable for peasant farming, with 60 per cent or 70 per cent of the tithe values deriving from corn in some parishes, but in eleven parishes the grain tithe fell below 50 per cent of the total, and in thirteen others lay between 51 and 59 per cent. The wool and lamb totals made up a good part of the tithe values, but milk, calves, and piglets helped to push up the proportion of tithes derived from pastoral farming. The tithe record did not accurately reflect the balance between the income from arable and pasture, because although wool and lambs accounted for the main revenues from sheep keeping, ‘milk and calves’ were not the only outputs from cattle. The main point is that in a significant number of villages pastoral revenues exceeded those from corn-growing, and this re-orientation had come in the late medieval period, and especially after 1400 when the use of land changed (see ‘Arable and pasture: managing change’ in Chapter 6). Peasant sheep keeping had played a major role in moving the rural economy’s centre of gravity.

If the wool and lamb tithes are considered separately, they reveal differences in sheep management across Gloucestershire. At Colesbourne, wool tithes were valued at 48s (implying wool production worth £24) and lamb tithes at 5s. The likely explanation of the relatively low figure for lambs was that the village’s extensive hill pasture was occupied by wethers, which were hardy adult animals able to cope with cold winds. Wethers are recorded on uplands elsewhere in the region, such as Hawkesbury. ⁵⁴ Ewes through the winter and spring were kept in sheltered valleys, and lambs were more plentiful at lowland villages such as Driffield and Hatherop, with lamb tithes valued at 20s and 18s 4d, respectively. These were in south Gloucestershire, but high lamb tithes are also found in the Vale to the north, at Swindon and Badgeworth. Again the pattern found in the tithes is confirmed by other sources, as at Twyning also in the Vale in 1443 where a stint in 1443 limited to forty-five the number of ewes ‘and their issue’, with no mention of wethers. ⁵⁵

The parishes which produced the wool and lambs were not dependent entirely on the resources within their boundaries. A problem for those keeping livestock on the hill pastures was gaining access to hay for winter fodder. Duntisbourne Rouse had plenty of hill pasture, and its wool tithes were worth 60s but its hay was worth only 6s. In the adjoining parish of Daglingworth the manor had a link with Latton in Wiltshire, and other similar connections with the extensive meadows of the Thames valley helped to feed hill sheep in the Cotswolds. But these arrangements benefited the demesne sheep, and peasants may have had to purchase hay, and depended a good deal on peas, oats, and even drage as fodder crops.

The big estates practised transhumance, which meant that large flocks of ewes and lambs, or young sheep, belonging to Westminster Abbey or the bishops of Worcester, would be driven on to summer pasture on the Cotswold hills in May, to return to the valleys in October. Peasant sheep could follow the same pattern, sometimes without leaving their own village territory, at Hanley Castle (Worcestershire) for example, the sheep could be kept in the Severn valley in the winter, and occupy pasture on the Malvern Hills in summer. The same advantage was enjoyed by villages lying in the lowlands around Bredon Hill, such as Kemerton (Worcestershire). Many peasants did not have rights to customary grazing on high ground, but individuals could negotiate access to seasonal pasture. The tithe customs for Beckford (Worcestershire) gave details on how tithe should be levied on those who ‘take in sheep for summering’, referring to Beckford people selling their common rights on the slopes of Bredon Hill to outsiders from lowland villages. ⁵⁶ Another device was for a sheep owner in a nearby village to acquire land in a place with hill pasture and gain access to its commons. This may explain why tenants of Teddington held land in neighbouring Beckford. ⁵⁷ The predominant method for gaining seasonal pasture was to pay cash for ‘summering’ and ‘wintering’, which caused much controversy in the villages which received the flocks, leading to accusations that ‘he receives the sheep of strangers’, or that tenants ‘sold agistment’, or they granted haverage or harfold without licence. Those who offended by selling access to common pasture are named, but the strangers remain unidentified, suggesting a network of contacts over some distance. The villagers who caused complaint by selling summer pasture rights in the uplands, might themselves have sought lowland winter pasture for their sheep.

In addition to the thirty Gloucestershire parishes, the Valor gives enough details for seventeen parishes scattered over Worcestershire to inform us about sheep and other animals in both champion and woodland landscapes. The information is less detailed, as each item was not listed separately. Instead, corn and hay were valued together, as were wool and lambs. And the other tithes, including piglets, calves, geese, and flax, were combined under the heading ‘lesser tithes’. ⁵⁸ Taken together corn and hay were assessed at 78 per cent of the total, with 16 per cent for wool and lambs, and 6 per cent for ‘lesser tithes’. So the peasants of Worcestershire, though deriving a higher proportion of their agricultural output from arable and meadow than their counterparts in Gloucestershire, obtained income from sheep that was far from negligible. The parish with the highest tithe assessment deriving from wool and lambs was Broadway, with 23 per cent. This was a large parish straddling the Cotswold edge and it attracted a large number of flocks belonging to strangers, revealing a persistent minority ready to make a profit from the sale of common rights. ⁵⁹ The smallest share of tithe revenue deriving from sheep among the Worcestershire parishes was 3 per cent for Mamble in the wooded north of the county, where the peasants gave priority to pigs, as did those at Eastham and Clifton-on-Teme.

The tithe assessments show that sheep were a widespread presence, especially important in the high Cotswolds but also in champion and woodland communities. The value of the corn in the 1535 calculations was based on the price the tithes fetched in the market, but only part of the peasant crop was sold, and the rest was consumed in the household. Wool on the other hand was almost entirely for sale, except some held back for spinning. This was still contributing cash to the household budget, as the yarn would be sold. The wool of thirty adult sheep would be sold for 14s to 24s, and 100 fleeces would be worth between 47s and 83s (depending on the location of the pasture and the fluctuations of price). ⁶⁰ For many peasants the proceeds from wool paid their rent and taxes, and helped to fund capital investment and consumer spending.

Other sources of income included the sale of old wethers and ewes, animals showing signs of disease, sterile ewes, and sometimes surplus lambs. Sheep skins (woolfells) were sold perhaps to be processed in the village, or more often went to a fellmonger in a town. At times sheeps’ cheese was available for sale. It was produced by the lord’s officials on the manor of Minchinhampton (Gloucestershire) and is likely also to have been made by peasants. ⁶¹ Fees gathered for haverage enabled tenants with common rights but no sheep of their own to draw income from other people’s animals.

In view of the income that sheep could generate, why did some peasants have only a modest number or did not keep them at all? Perhaps in particular places and times the price of wool was a deterrent: for example, it was lower in Worcestershire than on the Cotswolds, and dipped everywhere in the mid-fifteenth century. Sheep were liable to disease, such as liver fluke, and needed care to prevent and treat scab and foot rot with expensive remedies such as tar. They were also vulnerable to theft, attacks from dogs, and a tendency to wander. Shepherds were employed to look after peasant flocks full-time, and some peasants built expensive sheepcotes. In short, sheep were troublesome and potentially costly.

What did sheep contribute to the peasant household, as distinct from their earnings in the market? They trod their droppings into the surface of the fields when folded, and if they were housed in a sheepcote, or penned in an enclosure, they left useful deposits of dung. We do not know if their milk and cheese contributed regularly to the diet of the household, though peasant sheep might have been milked by smallholders who lacked a cow. Sheep were an important source of meat for household consumption. At Dassett Southend about 40 per cent of the bones recovered, and more than a half of the minimum number of individual animals represented by the bones, came from sheep. The figure was rather higher on Cotswold sites, and much higher (based on the number of bones) at Upton. ⁶² However, even in a village with an abundance of sheep, mutton consumption was exceeded by beef. Those who owned sheep valued them primarily as wool producers, and did not kill them until they reached their fourth or fifth year. Most surplus and superannuated animals would have been sold alive, to be killed in towns, so only a minority were consumed in the household. The presence of skull bones suggests that some were slaughtered in the village, and shows that all parts of the animal were consumed. A by-product of processing the carcass was tallow, from which candles were made for lighting the household or for sale.

On balance, dead or alive, sheep were of more value to the peasants as a source of cash than as contributors to household subsistence. Wool, and the other saleable products from sheep, yielded more income than any other source, often including the sale of corn.

Goats

Goats had a negative reputation in the Middle Ages, partly because of their destructive effect on vegetation. ⁶³ Among modern historians they are assumed to have lived on marginal, low quality land, and to have been kept by the poor; they epitomized the self-sufficiency of the disadvantaged. Peasant goats are mentioned in documents because of the damage that they caused. For example, in 1315 a man and woman of Knighton-on-Teme (Worcestershire) in the manor of Newnham, were said to have allowed goats to enter the lord’s wood of Cornwood. ⁶⁴ This report was connecting the goats to an area of assarting on the edge of a very large wood.

In Feckenham Forest in 1242–6 seventeen people were said to own goats in the manor of Feckenham, with between one and fifteen of the animals each. Most flocks were small, with twelve of them containing four animals or a lesser number. In another list compiled in 1244–6 ten people were said to have fifty-three goats. These goat owners were not very poor. They owned other animals, and their names linked them to well-established local families. The goats grazed in a royal forest, but the many oxen and horses listed alongside the goats, and other evidence in the period for fields and pastures, suggests that Feckenham resembled many other productive and well-cultivated woodland landscapes. So the goats did not represent some primitive survival, but belonged to a normal cross-section of peasant society living in a developed though still evolving landscape. Nor did they disappear in the new world that emerged after the Black Death, as in 1362 seventeen people owned goats, mostly in small numbers though one had six, and the largest flock contained twelve. ⁶⁵

The peasants of Feckenham kept goats primarily as a source of dairy produce for their own households. Most of the animals were females, and their owners were evidently prepared to devote time to milking, or rather were content that their wives and daughters would take on the task. The animals saved their owners’ labour by finding their own food in the rough pastures and areas covered in bushes and trees. These were low-cost animals, enhancing the variety of the household’s diet, and accorded well with households aiming at self-sufficiency. However, they could also be a source of cash, as those who chose to keep a dozen of the animals must have been aiming at a saleable surplus of cheese. Other sources of commercial profit were the kids much in demand in aristocratic households: for example, three meals with kids were served to the bishop of Hereford when his household stayed at Prestbury (Gloucestershire) in February 1290, no doubt supplied by peasant goat keepers from the Cheltenham area. Another pocket of goat keeping was revealed when the Duke of York’s household spent Christmas in Malvern Chase in 1409. Kids were also available to the household in Bristol Castle in 1226, probably being reared in the royal forest of Kingswood. ⁶⁶ A limited market for the meat of adult goats is suggested by the few goat bones found on urban domestic sites at Droitwich and Warwick. ⁶⁷ Droitwich was of course located on the edge of Feckenham Forest. Goats, though small in number, illuminate a niche species in a specialist landscape, and show peasants as opportunists seeking supplies of dairy produce for their households and sometimes commercial profit.

Pigs

Pigs are often regarded as peasant animals, but large numbers were kept in towns, and pork was prominent in aristocratic diet. ⁶⁸ Pigs were quite thinly spread through peasant society, in the sense that many individuals owned one or two adults, from which offspring were bred. Lords levied pannage on pigs at a rate of ½ d or 1d on each animal, depending on age. This payment was for access to the acorns and beechmast in the lords’ woods in October in preparation for slaughter in November. Typically between ten and thirty households in a village paid pannage, and most of them owned between one and four animals each. They were especially numerous at Leigh, at the northern end of the Malvern Hills in north-west Worcestershire, where pannage was paid in 1381 for 236 animals, with individual herds as large as ten, fourteen, and eighteen. ⁶⁹ The probability of evasion makes us regard these as minimum figures. In inventories and lists of individuals’ possessions numbers can be quite large, like the Broadwas tenant in 1388 who owned a sow, six pigs, and eight piglets, and John Jeffe of Ailstone in 1538 had twelve swine (alongside nine cattle and thirty sheep). ⁷⁰ Pigs were often not included among the livestock subject to stints, though at Ombersley no cottager was to have more than four pigs ‘in the fields or at large’. Other places allowed much larger numbers: in the thirteenth century a stint as high as twenty was quoted at Willoughby (Warwickshire). ⁷¹

By-laws show that pigs were spread over every part of the region; in champion villages such as Alveston or Sedgeberrow as well as in the woodlands, those keeping pigs were ordered to keep the animals under control, and to ring them or yoke them to limit the amount of damage they would cause by rooting. Such complaints and large pannage payments allow ‘pig villages’ to be identified. They are most often encountered in the woodlands and the Vale of Gloucester, though Hawkesbury, a Cotswold village with extensive woodlands is included, and the champion village of Cleeve Prior (Worcestershire). Pig bones recovered in excavations of village sites could amount to 10 per cent of the total, but at Upton and Goldicote fell as low as 4 per cent and 6 per cent. ⁷² They are under-represented because of the relative fragility of the bones of younger animals.

Unlike cattle and sheep, pigs were not always concentrated in the hands of the wealthy; less affluent pig owners include John Passe of Kempsey (Worcestershire) who held 6 acres, but in 1394–5 paid pannage on thirteen pigs, which made him one of the leading pig-keepers in his village. ⁷³ Pigs were relatively low in cost; they were kept in small and cheaply built sties, and their food came partly from foraging and rooting on waste land. Poorer tenants may have fed a share of their gleanings in the harvest field to a pig.

Pig keeping involved an annual routine of taking the animals to pannage in the lord’s wood. For most animals the woods were local and the journey short, but in addition long-distance, large-scale expeditions were mounted to very extensive woods with substantial feeding opportunities. The annual pannage reported to be normally paid to the lord of Malvern Chase in the late fifteenth century, £21 8s 1½d would suggest that hundreds of animals converged on the woods around Welland. ⁷⁴ In the early thirteenth century, pigs from the demesnes of Cotswold and Severn Valley manors were driven to feast on the acorns of Malvern, and presumably if peasants were willing to pay the fee their pigs could join them. ⁷⁵ Robert Fippus of Castle Morton (in the Chase) in 1373 was said to be occupying the common with forty pigs belonging to ‘strangers’. ⁷⁶ Similar arrangements were made in the Forest of Dean, where pannage generated an annual income for the crown in the thirteenth century that varied between £20 and £26. ⁷⁷ The forest administration welcomed the ‘pigs of strangers’ for the profits they generated for the crown, and the unofficial pickings of forest officials.

After their encounter with the woodland acorns, many pigs were killed, traditionally around 11 November, and certainly towards the end of the year. The animal bones from rural settlements show that their lives ended at around 15 months, when they had reached a good size. ⁷⁸ The pannage records show that some survived into a second year. The meat and offal that could not be preserved would have been eaten soon after slaughter, by the household and dispersed among neighbours. The main contribution to long-term meat supplies were the two sides of bacon (flitches) obtained from each carcass, which after salting and smoking could be preserved for months. The bacon was displayed in the smokey atmosphere of the roof of the house, available for consumption. At Mathon in 1383 a flitch was too easily accessible, as a neighbour’s dog entered the house, seized the bacon, and ate it. ⁷⁹ Fresh pork in November, preserved bacon and probably sausages (or puddings as they were called) provided the household with a source of meat through much of the year. The fresh meat and salted joints of beef and mutton would have been available more irregularly, and were more likely to feature in the diet of the better-off.

Keeping pigs belonged to a part of the village economy in which money had a limited role. The pigs fended for themselves and their owners did not need to make fields or crofts available to them. The cost of employing the village swineherd was shared among the pig owners. Boars seem to have run about the village, so their owners did not apparently have to be paid for their services. The whole village faced low-level disruption from the misbehaviour of wandering animals, which was perhaps tolerable because most households derived some gain from small-scale pig keeping.

Pigs contributed to the subsistence of peasant households but they also brought in cash. Flitches of bacon were sold, as when Richard Golafre in 1384 bought one from Richard Bele of Chaceley. ⁸⁰ Bacon also figured among the peasants’ sales to towns, but live animals were sent to market by the large-scale pig owners, like Denise Holdwyn of Longdon whose twenty animals in 1387 were said to have damaged crops worth 10s. ⁸¹

Poultry

Poultry, meaning cocks and hens, pullets, capons, ducks, geese, and doves, were not very profitable, and consequently receive limited attention from contemporary documents and modern historians. Although a hen in the thirteenth century was worth only 1d and a goose 2d, peasants devoted time and energy to rearing them.

Poultry, especially hens, could be found in every landscape, settlement, and household. The lords of manors assumed that all tenants would have at least one hen or pullet, sometimes more, that could be paid in an annual rent. The payments were partly symbolic and marked the ritual of the calendar, with eggs owed at Easter and hens at Christmas. More valuable birds might be demanded in special payments, such as a capon paid to the lord for permission to live away from the manor.

Rent demands sometimes grew into burdensome obligations, like the expectation (recorded in 1279) that six tenants of Whatcote (Warwickshire) should each bring to a compulsory Christmas meal in the manor house a cock and three hens and a loaf of bread. ⁸² The lord was supposedly hosting a celebration, but the peasants were emptying their henhouses. The Christmas dinner custom was widespread, though it was normally on a smaller scale than at Whatcote. An expansion of lords’ demands for poultry came in the late fourteenth century when tenants were required to pay six capons, rather than cash, on taking on new land.

The numbers of poultry owned by most peasants are consistently recorded as a cock with three, four, or five hens. Pullets, the product of breeding within the small flock are less consistently mentioned; as is also the case with capons, which were larger and fatter birds resulting from the castration of young males. Geese were much more unevenly distributed, and a minority of peasants owned a gander and two or three females. Modest poultry-keeping by individuals amounted to formidable quantities for whole communities. The hens of Bishop’s Cleeve in 1390 produced 10,800 eggs, surely an under-assessment by the tithe collectors. The numbers of new geese being reared, 300, should again be regarded as a minimum. ⁸³

The rents and tithes are a guide to the poultry produced and consumed by peasant households. Enough eggs could have been laid in the spring and summer months to provide each member of the household with an egg on most days. They would also have had occasional opportunities to eat poultry meat judging from the bones recovered from excavations. At Burton Dassett more than 200 chicken bones and a hundred goose bones were found, but this does not reflect accurately the scale of poultry consumption as most bones were too fragile to survive. ⁸⁴ Most hens after a period of useful egg production, ended their days on a meal table, but as the Whatcote Christmas dinner suggests, poultry were reserved for special occasions.

The cock and hens spent their days in or near to the plot occupied by the peasant house and outbuildings, and obtained part of their diet from plants, invertebrates, and grain scattered from ricks and barns. They could be fed small quantities of ‘hen corn’, which was inferior grain. The birds could have occupied a purpose-built hen house, like the structure excavated at Bishop’s Cleeve based on six vertical posts set in the ground, measuring 1m by 1.5m. ⁸⁵ Alternatively they may have roosted in the roof of a barn or other building. Poultry were in the care of peasant women, who combined feeding and egg collecting with their many other tasks: when the theft of a hen was reported to the manor court, the owner or the accused, or both, were often women. Hens were easily stolen, or taken by mistake, because they wandered around the village. Geese were not as closely associated with houses and settlements, as they grazed the commons and fields, and tended to go on to land where they were unwelcome. They were associated with both men and women. Ducks were kept in smaller numbers, and gravitated towards ponds and streams, where they attracted complaints by polluting the water.

The homely images of poultry scratching in gardens and yards and ducks swimming in the common stream, with eggs and the occasional festive bird being consumed in the household, suggests a model of self-sufficiency. Poultry keeping also had a significant commercial dimension. An internal village market is implied by the lord’s demands for six capons for an entry fine, as few individuals would own so many, and they would need to be purchased. Sales of poultry and eggs beyond the village would explain the twelve hens belonging to John Momeford of Hampton Lucy in 1538; similarly in 1373 John Thoury of Elmley Castle claimed to own a cock and fourteen hens. ⁸⁶ An incident at Halesowen in 1358 offers a glimpse of the marketing of eggs, when Roger atte Lowe’s dog bit Robert atte Brok’s pack horse which was carrying a basket of eggs to market. Atte Lowe valued the 300 eggs that were broken at 18d. ⁸⁷ Geese were more often produced on a scale far beyond the consumption of even a prosperous household. At Cleeve Prior, ninety-five birds were offending in their grazing in 1357, including flocks belonging to individuals of twelve, sixteen, and forty. A cart load of geese was taken from Cleeve to market in 1390, presumably part of a routine trade, but made visible to us by litigation over the canvas cover. ⁸⁸ Both geese and hens were in demand for meat in towns, and could be sold directly in the street by huxters (female traders). They were also gathered together on a larger scale by poulterers (see ‘Marketing animals’ in this chapter).

Peasants may have been stimulated to produce more poultry by rising prices as demand increased after 1350 and especially in the fifteenth century. The market encouraged peasants to own dovecots. Lords had no monopoly on dove keeping, and the monastic lord of the manor of Hawkesbury (Gloucestershire) far from discouraging dovecots, valued the rent that they produced and pressured tenants at Kilcott and Hillesley in 1408 and 1409 to keep them in good repair. ⁸⁹ A number of peasant dovecots were located near towns, for example, around Worcester, because few doves were consumed by peasants’ households, and the birds, regarded as a luxury, were sold in towns. Possession of a dovecot, though not an exclusive privilege of lordship, still brought some prestige as well as economic benefits. ⁹⁰

Bees

Bees could be found on lords’ demesnes, such as the manor of Oldington near Kidderminster (Worcestershire) in 1281–2 which kept seven beehives, and 5 gallons of honey were sold for 2s 11d (in the subsequent two centuries honey prices rose to 12d per gallon). ⁹¹ However these manorial hives were unusual, and peasants were the main keepers of bees in the late medieval west midlands. Halesowen Abbey was entitled to multiple heriots, which meant that on the death of a tenant the Abbey’s officials could take a number of animals, sometimes a cart, and occasionally a beehive. In 1393 Henry Wiliames died and his heriot (and an additional payment called ‘custom’) consisted of an ox, a cow, a heifer, a calf, a horse and a young sheep, worth in total 21s 6d, and in addition a hive (ymbe) of bees worth 18d. ⁹² Other examples scattered over the region indicate the wide dispersal of beekeeping. A debtor in Elmley Castle in 1373 owed honey and wax worth 2s, almost certainly the produce of a single hive. When Richard Sainter of Longdon was drowned in the Severn in 1470 his possessions included six cattle and two pigs, along with a hive of bees. ⁹³ On the Gloucester Abbey estate at Upleadon and Churcham in 1266–7 honilond holdings, often between 3 acres and 8 acres, paid a rather high rent in honey (or the money equivalent) of a gallon or two for an acre. ⁹⁴ The impression we gain from such instances is that the ownership of bees was commonplace among peasants, rich and poor, and that individuals might own four or more hives.

Stray swarms, recorded alongside stray animals, show that beekeeping was spread over the whole region, but was especially common in woodland landscapes. At Ombersley five were reported in one year, 1380, and in the long run of Chaddesley Corbett records between 1375 and 1442 seventeen swarms were reported. ⁹⁵ Flowers were presumably plentiful in hedges, pastures, and woods, in contrast with the champion’s limited lengths of hedgerow and extensive cultivation. The swarms were regarded as significant assets, to be pursued, captured, and put in the care of a reliable and skilled local person. The bees were rarely claimed and their owners, and their temporary keeper would add them to his or her hives. The swarms were valued, and probably undervalued, in the courts at between 4d and 2s, though most were judged to be worth 12d or less. An important variable was the time of year when the swarm appeared. A complete hive with bees, wax, and honey could be said to be worth 3s 4d, and we have seen already that a hive’s wax and honey together were valued at 2s. A hive is said to have been capable of yielding at least a pound of wax and a gallon of honey. If a peasant had four hives, their output would have exceeded in cash terms 7s per annum, more than the income that came from a cow or 10 sheep. The apparently trivial and small-scale pursuit of beekeeping, which involved little work by the owner, could yield some impressive results.

Beekeeping was sufficiently profitable to attract investment and complexities of management. Fractions of hives were a feature of Halesowen; where a victim of the Black Death in 1349, Richard de Chirlet, had available to be taken for his heriot a horse, three cows, a cart, and a quarter of a hive. When John Hichecoks from the hamlet of Illey died in 1362, holding a half-yardland, the lord’s officials took three animals and half of a hive, valued at 12d. ⁹⁶ The fractions show that the hives could be shared assets, in which partners invested and took their portion of the proceeds. This was set out in detail at Alveston (Warwickshire) in 1353 when John Symonds leased to Richard Vicar four beehives worth 8s, with lessor and lessee each agreeing to take half of the profits. Three tiers of tenancy were arranged at Hartlebury in the early fifteenth century, involving the churchwardens, the owners of the hives, who leased them to two brothers, who in turn rented them to others who tended the bees and collected the honey. ⁹⁷

Those who kept bees were venturing into the trade in luxuries. Honey and wax could only be afforded by the wealthier consumers. Perhaps the beekeeper’s family was allowed a taste of honey, but he or she had to take advantage of the price of 8d to 12d per gallon (more than Gascon wine) and sell as much as possible. Similarly the wax was much in demand for lighting the houses of the aristocracy, and for the candles essential for church liturgy. Peasants could light their halls, but only with cheap tallow candles. All of the outputs of the peasant beehives were sold in a market with European dimensions, satisfying the sweet tooth of the aristocracy with honey, though Mediterranean sugar was offering growing competition, and the wax from English peasant hives helped to fill the gap left because imports from the Baltic did not satisfy the demand from the English church. ⁹⁸

Animal husbandry on the peasant holding

To gain an overview of peasant pastoralism we can attempt to assess the role of livestock in the household and holding, in comparison with the contribution of animals and their products to a saleable surplus. Much of the meat and dairy produce consumed by the household came from the holding’s own animals and birds. The livestock of the holding also provided traction for ploughs, means for riding, and transport. Manure made the arable more fertile. The old mares, horses, oxen, cows, ewes, and wethers were often replaced from among the young animals bred on the holding.

A high proportion of the money made by peasants derived from their pastoral activities. The cash from wool sales covered rents and other expenses. A steady income came from the dairy produce of cows but also occasionally from ewes and goats. Hens’ eggs gave a small but useful return. The by-products of the death or killing of animals included hides and woolfells, tallow, and horn. Bees’ products, wax and honey, were all sold. An irregular source of income came from disposing of animals, either young cattle or horses not needed for replacement purposes, or old stock. Most of the animals being sold for butchery left the village alive, but some meat went to market, especially bacon. In hard times, after a bad harvest or some unexpected expense, an animal could be sold. In good times as well as bad, livestock were hired, not just the larger draught animals or cows, but also poultry and beehives. ⁹⁹

The distinction between self-sufficiency and exchange depicts peasant life in excessively simple terms. Documents, such as inventories, are concerned with ownership, not agricultural reality. When a well-off peasant, probably a yardlander, Elyas atte Brugge of Abbots Salford, died shortly before 1389, his animals were listed as six horses, eight cattle, and sixty-eight sheep. ¹⁰⁰ The numbers of animals resemble the limits on a yardland declared as stints in a number of villages, and we would expect that they would bring prosperity to their owners in straightforward rewards. The complicated management of animals practised by people like atte Brugge can be investigated in litigation around his time. At Harvington (Worcestershire), an Avon valley manor near to Salford, in 1379 John Colyns leased to Richard May twelve ewes to keep for four years. Perhaps he did not have access to enough pasture or hay to keep them through the winter, or his shepherd could not cope with all of them, especially at lambing. After two years the ewes had produced eighteen lambs, beside tithe payments of two lambs, which would be quite near to one lamb each year for each ewe, suggesting that May had looked after them quite well. Colyns at this point took them back, with the lambs, because he said that May was not feeding them properly. ¹⁰¹

John Stappe, who belonged to a well-established family at Blackwell (Warwickshire), sought grazing because his village had limited amounts of permanent pasture. He planned to fatten two oxen in preparation for selling them on 11 November 1379, when butchers bought cattle for slaughter. Stappe put the animals in the care of Walter Sclatter of Longdon, adjacent to Blackwell, which was not a lease but a grazing contract. Sclatter intended apparently to keep the oxen with his own cattle, partly on the common and partly in his own several (enclosed) land. In practice he fed his own cattle in the several, and sent the oxen on to poor land, so that (according to Stappe) they almost starved. Stappe took the animals back and paid Sclatter no money. ¹⁰² There were many other small-scale arrangements, such as the renting out of cows, which manorial lords did in the fourteenth century, but was also common among peasants. John Loyte of Hartlebury was said in 1411 to have leased a cow for 3s. In 1359 Walter le Webbe complained that at Cakemor in Halesowen he had rented two oxen from the 3 May to Robert le Berneward and Agnes his wife, but they failed to return them. A speculation, in view of the date, is that the animals were being used (with others) for the ploughing of fallow land, which would have begun in May. ¹⁰³

These examples reveal a world in which grazing was unevenly distributed between villages, and among households. Some peasants were unable to profit from animals because they could not afford to buy them, or they lacked plough beasts. Wealthy peasants had more animals than they could conveniently feed or supervise. Leasing, or forming partnerships, or matching the animals to the pasture, all show peasants making the most efficient use of resources, ideally to the mutual advantage of the parties. These complicated arrangements mean that Elyas atte Brugge’s well-stocked holding could have included sheep which were rented out, or were ‘summering’ on a distant hillside. An ox might have been sent for fattening in the next village, and a horse could have been hired by a neighbour. He might also have been receiving other peasants’ animals because Salford villagers had access to large meadows. The income from atte Brugge’s animals could have been divided between a number of households, thanks to leasing and pasturing arrangements.

The pastoral sector was often drawn into complex financial arrangements which meant that owning a flock of sheep or a few cows did not simply result in a regular flow of cash. Peasants were often in debt, and would make arrangements to sell future production. Wool was commonly sold before the sheep were sheared. Sales in general were based on credit, so after an initial small sum of earnest money, the full payment on an ox or a stone of wool would be delayed for months. No part of the pastoral economy was exempt from these complications, so that even beehives were held in shares.

Intricate financial arrangements are appropriate to production connected to the international trading network. The price that a peasant received for wool depended on the fortunes of the Flemish cloth industry, and the profit of a beehive was linked to imports of Mediterranean sugar and Baltic wax. The marketing of animals and animal products must have impacted on peasant activities, and raised their confidence. From the early thirteenth century when demand increased for pastoral products, they could pay their rents in cash, and adopt new approaches to rotations and land management. It was not an accident that the moves to enclose parcels of land on the commons coincided with growing profits from dairying and wool production, or that inhoks were designed to provide more fodder crops. Pastoral farming was changing in line with wider developments, such as technical innovation leading to the rising use of horses, or the entrepreneurial spirit shown by fifteenth-century cattle farmers who took advantage of the upsurge in beef consumption. Status came from association with some animals, as a well-off peasant knew as he rode into town on a good horse with ornaments hanging from its harness.

Pastoral farming incurred lower commitments of labour than cultivation. Even the intensive demands of milking and sheep shearing could not compare with the routine of ploughing through the year and the surge of work for many hands in the harvest. Labour could be saved by co-operation in the village community to employ a herdsman, sometimes called the ‘common servant’. Some peasants employed their own shepherds but they could put their animals into the custody of the common herd, and in some villages specialist herdsmen were responsible separately for horses, cattle, and swine. The surname Gateherd (goatherd) suggests another specialized herding task.

The common herds came to the attention of the authorities when an appointment was disputed, or, much more frequently, problems arose in collecting money to pay their wages. At Harvington in 1420 litigation about a breach of contract showed that the tenants made a collective agreement with a herd, John Robertes, to serve them from Michaelmas to Michaelmas (29 September), the standard employment period for servants. ¹⁰⁴ This was not a typical arrangement, however, as Robertes was also appointed to serve as hayward (messor), and it was agreed that he could keep his own cattle with those of the village. He was ranked higher in status than most herds, who tended to be young and landless. There are examples of villages employing a tenant’s son, or a tenant’s servant might be delegated or loaned to the village. The herd’s job may not have been a very attractive one, leading the villagers at Broadwell (Gloucestershire) in the early sixteenth century to build collectively a cottage for the herd. ¹⁰⁵ At Sutton-under-Brailes (Warwickshire) in 1379–80, the lord of the manor paid the common herd 15d to look after ten beasts over the harvest season of two months. ¹⁰⁶ If that was the standard rate of pay, and the herd looked after sixty villagers’ animals for the whole year, he would have received about £2, which was not a high wage.

Herds were criticized for allowing animals to stray into planted fields or other protected areas, or even to cross the boundary into the next village. As such errors were reported only occasionally, perhaps they did their work effectively? More likely the mistakes were so commonplace that they were not worth mentioning in court, and the herd was too poor to pay financial penalties. At Overbury in 1497 when the tenants of Overbury and adjoining Conderton were told not to pasture sheep on Bredon Hill in the winter at night without a keeper, it suggests a serious dereliction of responsibility. On the other hand, the community reacted with a by-law to restore a better standard of care. ¹⁰⁷

The more intensive labour required in managing animals and their produce tended to be undertaken by women. The tasks were often located near the house, notably the daily routines of feeding pigs and poultry, as well as dairying. Cheese-making, like brewing, involved a practical knowledge of chemistry. Women acquired these skills from training at home followed by accumulated experience, and just as families sought to persuade sons to maintain their interest in the holding, so young women would have been assets to be encouraged. The connection between dairying and a female labour force can be detected in individual villages, such as Weston Mauduit (Warwickshire), a small village in the Avon valley. Its meadows suggest a dairying economy, and in 1381 five of its ten households contained a resident daughter. ¹⁰⁸

Men looked after oxen and horses, as a natural extension of working with the animals in ploughing and carting. Shepherding was mainly done by men, who applied remedies for disease and supervised lambing, when they were expected to sleep alongside the flock. Women would wash demesne sheep before shearing, so they probably carried out the same task with peasant flocks. If sheep were milked, and goats certainly were, women did the work, and made the butter and cheese afterwards.

Animal welfare

The concept of animal welfare was not one that featured in the range of priorities of medieval peasants who owned and managed livestock. They knew that ill-treatment reduced the value of the animal, so the owner of a dog that attacked a cow, for example, was expected to pay for the financial loss. Perhaps there was a perception that animals had some mental capacity. Clerks writing court rolls referred to a pig running into the road ‘voluntarily’ and a dog biting a pig ‘maliciously’. Dogs were kept in many peasant households, as is shown by the discarded bones of domestic animals which often carry evidence of gnawing. Aggressive attacks on domestic animals were occasionally reported. They had their uses, for guarding houses and domestic animals, and controlling vermin, especially rats, but we do not know the extent to which they were regarded as pets and companions. Fables and folklore often used the device of intelligent animals to transmit moral messages, and they figure symbolically in wood carvings, portraying doctors as monkeys, foxes as priests, and rabbits hunting men. However, these portrayals do not seem to have influenced the daily routine of contacts between people and their livestock. ¹⁰⁹

An important goal was to keep animals adequately fed, though in the constant struggle to separate livestock from arable crops the welfare of the owners of the corn took priority. The pinch point which troubled many villages around early August came when the fallow field had been given its summer ploughing and could not be grazed. The corn field that was being harvested contained sheaves waiting to be carried, and some corn was still uncut, so animals should have been excluded.

Animals faced fodder shortages at other times. In mid-winter the grass had stopped growing, and animals were kept away from rain-soaked grassland that was liable to be damaged by being ‘poached’ from trampling hooves. Ample quantities of hay provided part of the answer, but peasants rarely had access to enough meadow. A calculation made by a lord’s managers, at Stoke Bishop (Gloucestershire) in 1380–1 assigned to the demesne’s eight oxen hay from 10 acres of meadow, which was worth 14s if sold. Each ox was receiving hay worth 1s 9d. ¹¹⁰ Most peasants did not have the option of feeding on that scale. A yardland rarely had as much as 4 acres of meadow, from which at least eight cattle and horses were fed, and sheep also needed hay. The importance of fodder crops such as peas and beans is apparent.

The by-laws fixing stints were focussed on the problem of sharing grazing fairly. The quotas allowed for each unit of arable, such as forty sheep for each yardland, suggest careful calculation, but other considerations may have been village politics dominated by self-interested better-off villagers. Some villages in the mid-to-late fifteenth century give the impression that they were moving towards realistic restraints on stocking levels. A by-law at Roel (Gloucestershire) in 1452 reiterated the levant et couchant principle which should have been etched on the mind of every sheep owner, that no-one should keep over the winter any sheep outside the ‘close, fold or house’, which refers to the enclosure and building at the rear of the dwelling house. ¹¹¹ Another way of expressing this was to limit the number of animals that could be pastured in the summer to those kept in the winter. In theory this could be the basis of a precise calculation of the quantity of animals that tenants could keep, but the real world, for example, one which allowed strangers to buy access to the common pasture, made figures very hard to judge accurately. A fresh start seems to have been attempted at Long Marston (Warwickshire) in 1453, when ‘it was ordered by common assent that [four named men] should supervise and extend [meaning assess] each yardland’, and they should recommend ‘how many sheep each tenant ought to hold both in summer and winter so that no-one of them should overburden the common pasture’. ¹¹² This reform, based on evidence, measurement, and fair judgements, seemed to be motivated by an aim to match resources to demand, which in modern language would be called sustainability. A similar idea and even the key word was expressed in an order at Willoughby (Warwickshire) in 1498 that ‘tenants should enquire how many more sheep the common can sustain’. ¹¹³ These ventures seemed to be moving away from blaming individuals towards allocating pasture on a rational basis. The examples come from villages in wold and champion landscapes which had limited amounts of permanent common pasture.

Villages sometimes had safety valves which allowed access to pastures beyond their boundaries. A number of these were survivals from a remote past, such as the connection between Wellesbourne (Warwickshire) and Kingswood, part of the woodland village of Lapworth at a distance of 12 miles. The peasants of Wellesbourne, according to customs recorded in 1279, could feed their pigs, graze animals, and collect firewood in this area of pasture and trees, very different from their mainly arable Avon valley settlement with a ‘grove’ of limited extent. ¹¹⁴ Such connections between south-east and north-west Warwickshire had been commonplace in the early middle ages. Later sources also show that in the north and west of the county woods were intercommoned, allowing the livestock of two or more settlements to graze in the same wood, a practice no doubt dating back many centuries. Fifteen examples have been recognized, involving the inhabitants of large settlements in the case of Stoneleigh and Kenilworth. An area of heath pasture to the east of Coventry was grazed by people from Binley, Brandon, and Brinklow, and further south pasture was shared between Salford Priors in Warwickshire and the Worcestershire villages of Atch Lench and Abbots Morton. ¹¹⁵ Much of the land subject to these joint grazing arrangements belonged in the category of wood pasture, referring to grazing under widely spaced trees. Communities in other woodland landscapes also shared common land, such as on the high ground between Alvington and Aylburton on the southern edge of the Forest of Dean. Upland pastures that were available to villages on the slopes of the Malverns and Bredon Hill (see ‘Peasants and the making of the landscape’ in Chapter 2) to which can be added the heaths of Dunsmore in north Warwickshire, and the heath that was shared by a dozen villages in four shires to the east of Moreton-in-Marsh. It could be argued that these facilities which allowed peasants to graze animals beyond their village boundaries were ancient arrangements dating back from before the Conquest, and not reflecting the resourcefulness of the late medieval peasants. This is not entirely the case, as these intercommoned pastures were liable to dispute, and encroachment, requiring the peasants to be vigilant and ready to defend their rights (Figure 7.1).

Figure 7.1 Remote pastures, transhumance, and droving. This impressionistic map shows movements of livestock, some seasonal use of high and low ground, some droving to markets, thirteenth to sixteenth century.

Peasants could buy pasture, like John Stappe fattening his oxen, or many others paying for common rights in villages where they did not belong. The most abundant source of pasture could be on the lord’s demesne, or a park that was not being reserved solely for deer, and some lords gained a considerable revenue from the sale of agistment. ¹¹⁶

The controversies around pasture arose from the need to feed animals, yet we have little direct evidence for their nutritional status. A stray sometimes died before it could be claimed by its owner, but strays were likely to have been in poor condition. An occasional accusation was made that an animal or animals that had been impounded had died because they had been deprived of food and water. These were specific circumstances, and if there was a general problem one might expect that animals being valued as heriots would be described as weak or sickly, but this was rare.

Animal bones show signs of stress, such as the indication that horses and oxen had suffered from hauling heavy loads. A depression on a sheep’s horn core from Bristol has been suggested, along with examples from other regions, as a possible indicator of poor nutrition, but such evidence is not abundant. ¹¹⁷ Animal size could be seen as a result of poor feeding conditions. The heights of cattle, horses, and sheep of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries which can be calculated from bones, all point to their small size by modern standards. A reduction in size has been detected in the early middle ages, and has been linked to the introduction of open fields and consequent restrictions on pasture in the tenth and eleventh centuries. ¹¹⁸ Animal bones excavated at Dudley Castle on the Worcestershire/Staffordshire border show an increase in size from the late fourteenth century, and similar changes have been detected in other parts of England, though with variations in dating, so in some cases the change came after 1500. In the case of Dudley improved nutrition could be related to landscape changes in north Worcestershire and south Staffordshire where the animals might have fed. ¹¹⁹ A high proportion of land at Halesowen and Northfield within a few miles of Dudley was being managed by peasant tenants in enclosed pastures, and this was a feature of the whole district. No size increase is apparent at Burton Dassett, in a district where cattle and sheep tended to be grazed on fallows in open fields and on common pastures. However, we cannot leap easily to a causal connection between body size and the management of pastures.

Peasants could have contributed to the welfare of livestock by housing them. It was once thought that peasant houses, especially in the thirteenth century, would have a byre reserved for cattle at one end of the dwelling, but actual cases in the west midlands are scarce. An excavated complex of buildings at Upton (Gloucestershire) included a thirteenth-century house with an end room which had no residential purpose, but its fittings, including a wide trough, suggested an industrial use. Separate from the two dwelling houses at Upton was a building for animals, either cattle or sheep. ¹²⁰ A peasant house might be described as combining a dwelling and byre but it is rare, with only three clear examples out of hundreds of documentary references to buildings (see ‘Living space’ in Chapter 5). Among a sample of 375 buildings with identified functions tenants were ordered to repair, mainly after 1350, many were dwellings, and of the remainder 152 were barns, 24 sheepcotes, 11 byres, 7 dovecotes, 6 pig sties, and 5 stables. Although these figures demonstrate a variety of specialist buildings, they cannot support the notion that peasant farms were commonly provided with a full range of accommodation for livestock. A wealthy tenant of Sutton-under-Brailes (Warwickshire) in 1507 was said to have a dwelling house, barn, stable, sheepcote, and dovecot, but so much livestock accommodation on a single holding was unusual. ¹²¹ Many tenants provided themselves with a house and a barn, and animals would have been sheltered by means of temporary and ad hoc arrangements. Pig sties and hen houses need not have been elaborate structures (see ‘Poultry’ in this chapter). Buildings could have been sublet from neighbours, and within the holding flexibility in use helped to find room when necessary. A widow at Elmley Castle (Worcestershire) in 1474 was to keep twenty sheep ‘in a building of the said cottage’, which was clearly not a dedicated sheepcote. At Overbury (Worcestershire) in 1496 tenants were told that calves should not accompany cows into the fields, but rather should be kept in a building. ¹²² Not every holding would have a byre, so perhaps the unfortunate animals were put in a barn? Barns were for crop storage, but they were only full of corn for a few months, leaving space for other functions. A more formal division is suggested by the ‘barn and stable under one roof’ at Adlestrop (Gloucestershire) in 1498, and the ‘barn with sheepcote’ at Wichenford (Worcestershire) in 1473. ¹²³ Livestock that were not allocated space in a barn, or could not be squeezed into temporary accommodation could have been given some protection in yards or huddled in ‘shelter sheds’ or under other forms of temporary roofing. Peasant animals must be thought of as hardy creatures with shaggy coats. Although contemporary opinion among lords’ managers thought it desirable that animals be kept in buildings, peasants could not afford to build and maintain substantial housing for the variety of animals that they kept. ¹²⁴

Deaths from disease among demesne animals were recorded from year to year in manorial accounts, and also in reports to the manor courts by the cadavatores who gave details of which animals had died, and apportioned blame, if appropriate, among the lord’s employees. The two worst episodes of epidemics were the sheep scab outbreaks of the 1270s and 1280s, and the cattle plague (probably rinderpest) after 1318. ¹²⁵ Peasant animals suffered from endemic diseases and the exceptional epidemics, and this is signalled in a chronicle entry for 1277 recording the deaths of ‘almost all of the sheep’. ¹²⁶

The lords’ shepherds combatted disease by applying tar and grease, and the same treatment was used by some peasants, such as John Persons, a tenant of Sutton-under-Brailes (Warwickshire), who acquired a barrel of tar worth 6s in 1504. ¹²⁷ The practice of veterinary medicine is rarely documented. On the Pershore demesne in 1344 an ox was treated with ‘mixed blood’, and the Worcester Priory sheep reeve in 1445–6 arranged for hoggasters (two-year-old sheep) to be castrated and ‘treated’ for a payment of 16d. ¹²⁸ These procedures seem to have been carried out by an outsider, as also at Chilvers Coton (Warwickshire) in 1310–11 when ‘bark wos’ (medicine from tanning bark) was given with ‘other medicines’ to an ox ‘with the work of the curator’. ¹²⁹ The last word means the person who cures, which presumably refers to a veterinary practitioner. The experts on animal disease who were brought in to deal with specific problems, were not apparently regular employees of the lord, but members of the local community. They could have gained their knowledge from oral tradition transmitted through families and based ultimately on trial and error. Individuals were likely to have acquired a reputation for having special skills and access to remedies. Smiths combined fitting horseshoes with treating equine ailments, again drawing on practice and experience. Such an individual was Richard le Marshal who treated a horse belonging to the abbot of Halesowen in 1366. ¹³⁰ Demand for veterinary treatment must also have come from peasant owners of animals.

Peasants brought litigation to the manor court when they suffered losses from the ill-treatment of their livestock. Typical circumstances arose when a neighbour’s beast found its way into a close and trampled or ate grass or crops. The tenant who suffered damage could react strongly, and violently expel the offending animal with kicks and blows from a stick. Dogs might be encouraged to join the fray. The assaults could have resulted in cuts, loss of a tooth or eye, or lameness; the animal’s ability to work could be impaired, or it might even be killed. In addition to these encounters on enclosed land, animals grazing in the wrong place in the open fields or common pasture might be impounded, and left in the small enclosure provided as a pound. Animals were also liable to be maltreated when they were loaned or hired, and in particular horses could be overworked. Animals were injured by carts on the roads, and they sometimes hurt one another, most often when dogs attacked. In 1397 at Chaddesley Corbett (Worcestershire) thirty sheep were said to have been killed by dogs in a single incident, and while this was one of the worst cases, it was one of many. ¹³¹ The main consequence of an act of cruelty was the payment of damages by the perpetrator, though owners of dangerous dogs could be amerced and ordered to keep the animal under control.

Modern observers with humane attitudes towards animals are repelled by their treatment in the Middle Ages. We can offer the rational explanation that animals suffered as a by-product of the shortage of pasture and inadequacy of fencing, and we know that the church taught that animals lacked souls. Sadistic practices such as bull-baiting tended to take place in towns, but in the country the Shrovetide custom at Badsey (Worcestershire) (and many other parishes) in the early sixteenth century involved throwing sticks at a tethered cock. ¹³² To focus on farming practices, despite their limited resources peasants’ best interest was served by keeping well-fed, contented, and productive animals, and many of their actions were intended to achieve that goal.

Marketing animals and animal products

Given that the ultimate purpose of much pastoral farming was commercial gain: where and how were animals and their products sold? Lords presumed that peasants would attend local markets; for example according to a survey made in 1299, it was expected that the sale of draught animals by tenants of the Worcestershire manor of Bredon would take place at Evesham and Pershore, nearby market towns. ¹³³ Westminster Abbey’s officials at Bourton-on-the-Hill in 1326–7 proclaimed strays at the markets held at Chipping Campden and Stow-on-the-Wold in the belief that crowds of local people might include the owners of the animals. ¹³⁴ The purchase of cattle in 1378 by William Cocks of Alspath near Coventry shows that peasants had wide horizons, as he ignored the markets near to his home, and bought three cows at Nuneaton (Warwickshire), presumably following the reputation of the market or of the cattle reared in its surroundings. ¹³⁵

Peasants with livestock and produce to sell would expect to find buyers in towns, either in the marketplace, or through some other means of meeting, in an inn for example. The sale of dairy products and poultry might have been in breach of the regulations, because the producers would sell outside the market to dealers who would profit from resale. The town authorities were attempting to control prices, but in fining the traders they gained some revenue. The important point for our enquiry into peasant pastoral production is that the number of offenders and frequency of offences, in towns such as Coventry, Droitwich, and Nuneaton shows the substantial flow of cheese, butter, eggs, and poultry coming from the country, and this was a trade that is otherwise rarely recorded. It must have made a significant contribution to the earnings of many peasant households. Sales of livestock in towns resulted in court cases if the animal was not delivered, or was of poor quality, or if the money was not paid. A problem arose when William Brid of Pinvin (Worcestershire) sold a horse to a Worcester man at Pershore in 1334, and was owed 2s 6d of the purchase price. A debt of 6s 8d resulted when John Botull of Studley (Warwickshire) sold an ox to John Harvy of Stratford-upon-Avon in 1500. ¹³⁶ These were transactions that went wrong, and the majority proceeded successfully and left no evidence.

The peasants travelled to the town on horses or on foot with baskets of produce, but there were occasions when townspeople went to the country to buy, especially when they were intending to obtain high-quality goods in bulk. The Fraternity of the Holy Cross at Stratford-upon-Avon held gatherings with food and drink through the year, but the annual feast was on a lavish scale. The officials of the Fraternity would ride into the countryside before the great event, collecting in 1426–7 some 167 geese and 168 pullets from many suppliers. In 1431–2, the expedition lasted for four days in order to buy geese, pullets, pigs, and sheep. ¹³⁷ This proactive approach to food purchase was also adopted by large aristocratic households, which were facing the problem of meeting a large scale of demand from many small-scale and scattered producers.

Some trade in livestock did not involve towns at all, but was conducted in village markets, both those established by charter, like that at Monks Kirby (Warwickshire) with its butchers’ shambles, or unofficial venues such as Knowle in the same county where again butchers are known to have traded. ¹³⁸ Often both buyers and sellers lived in the country, sometimes in the same village but also at a distance. Most transactions were conducted by ‘private treaty’ or ‘at the farm gate’. The advantage of the public market was that it brought buyers and sellers together at the same time, whereas the other methods depended on networks, local knowledge, and go-betweens. Beyond the regulation of an official market the manor courts could resolve differences. The buyer might complain that he had been misled, as when William Prescotte of Whitstones assured William Adam in 1392 that an ox was healthy and suited for the plough. The delivery of the animal or the payment might be delayed. A sum of 10s for an ox sold at Moor (Worcestershire) on 2 February 1388 should have been paid by 24 June 1388, but it was still outstanding in the following year. More often the payment was made in instalments and these were not completed, as when a horse was sold at Stoneleigh for 7s 4d but after two years (in 1479) the seller claimed that he was still owed 4s 4d. ¹³⁹

Many sales of animals or their products drew the seller into the business dealings of merchants and middlemen. Some of these were fellow villagers who operated as entrepreneurs on a small scale. John Deye of Ombersley was a dairyman, perhaps leasing cows. He sold cheese to thirteen villagers for a total of 1s 9 ½d, a fraction of a larger business. His near contemporary in the same village was Henry atte Mere, who traded as a butcher. He bought animals including horses and was grazing sheep and feeding pigs in the village. He was also amerced for selling meat at excessive profit, a standard charge against all butchers, and his meat was said to be diseased. ¹⁴⁰ The trade in pigs seems to have attracted specialists, like the ‘merchant’ of Wickhamford (Worcestershire) who bought twenty-one piglets from Pershore Abbey in 1381–2, probably to sell them for rearing. ¹⁴¹ Dealing in horses led villagers to acquire foals with the intention of selling them, and a more specialized and large-scale approach is suggested by the occupational description of a taxpayer as a courser, meaning a horse dealer, at Winchcomb, where the fair had a reputation for its horse trade that stretched as far as Kent. ¹⁴² The staple court of Bristol in 1510–13 was mainly concerned with large-scale credit arrangements between urban merchants. However, six husbandmen and yeomen from villages to the west of the town, including Clifton and Henbury, had dealings with Bristol merchants and butchers involving sums that varied between £7 and £35. The likely background was the sale of cattle, up to twenty at a time, which had been acquired by enterprising peasants in their home villages. ¹⁴³

Poulterers acted as contacts between the many rural small-scale producers and wealthy households or the consumers in towns. The household of the wealthy Warwickshire knight, William Mountford, obtained poultry from the wife of John Baggeslowe who lived at Blyth, a hamlet south of Coleshill near Mountford’s manor house. She sold sixty geese to Mountford in the late summer of 1434 and he acquired forty pullets from another trader, Margery Clerk. Peasant women evidently played a major role in the poultry trade, relying on a network of contacts over neighbouring villages to assemble birds from many suppliers which could be sold on to urban poulterers such as those in fourteenth-century Coventry. ¹⁴⁴ Honey and wax attracted the attention of middlemen, reflected in the occupational personal name Honymonger (at Badminton, Gloucestershire) in 1341; Alexander and Juliana Honemon lived at Earls Croome in Worcestershire in 1275. ¹⁴⁵

The most complex and profitable of entrepreneurial ventures was the trade in wool, with its many branches and layers of commercial activity. In the thirteenth century the Italian companies made contracts with major producers, many of them monasteries, in which they paid for the wool in advance of the shearing of the sheep, sometimes committing the producer for some years ahead. This was relevant to the peasants who kept sheep, because the monasteries would increase the amount of wool that they sold by including the collecta, that is, wool bought in their locality, often from peasant producers. A contract by Llanthony Priory (sited in Gloucester) in 1319 envisaged the purchase of wool by the monastery if their own flocks did not produce the amount promised. ¹⁴⁶

Wool was also sold in markets in such places as Northleach (Gloucestershire) and Stratford-upon-Avon (Warwickshire) in the fourteenth century. A high proportion of peasant wool was bought by woolmongers, also known as woolmen and woolbroggers (brokers) who bought directly from the producer. The procedure is well documented from the account book of John Heritage of Moreton-in-Marsh, who was active in the first two decades of the sixteenth century. ¹⁴⁷ He made a bargain with the sheep owner early in the year, agreeing a price and quantity, and paid a small sum in earnest money. After the sheep were sheared and wool delivered the woolman paid the money due in instalments that could extend over the whole year. Although not many records of the transactions exist (other than in Heritage’s account book) buying wool before shearing was the subject of legislation, so it must have been a general practice. There were many woolmongers, so the peasant producers could change from one to another to obtain the best price or promptest payment. Woolmongers were often based in small towns, of which Northleach was the most celebrated, but they could be found in a rural setting, like John Spencer of Defford (Worcestershire) who bought Pershore Abbey’s tithe wool in 1379–80, and presumably also dealt in the fleeces of his peasant neighbours. ¹⁴⁸

Woolmen often handled sheepskins (wool fells), but there were other specialist dealers, the fellmongers, two of whom were trading in Stow-on-the-Wold in 1381. ¹⁴⁹ They would buy fells brought in by producers, who had skinned animals that had been butchered but more often were the casualties of disease and old age, and sell them on to the white tawyers who processed the skins, usually in towns.

Lords bought peasant livestock as they often did not breed enough replacements from their own animals. On some Worcester Priory manors in the late fourteenth century, new oxen were regularly obtained, but the source is not identified. On the Warwickshire estate of John Brome of Baddesley Clinton in 1444–5 William Colletts, a carpenter who also held land, sold two oxen to Brome. ¹⁵⁰ Peasants also supplied aristocratic households, like that of William Mountford of Coleshill, which was sold butter worth 2s 6d by the wife of William Jeke, a tenant of Gilson, a hamlet of Coleshill. ¹⁵¹

Animals were not always sold or leased, but changed hands through loans, gifts, bequests, and as seigneurial dues. At Cleeve Prior in 1370 Richard Fisher borrowed a mare from John de Alvechurch which died in unknown circumstances. ¹⁵² Livestock often figure in peasant wills, because as cash was scarce, children were left cattle or horses, and sheep were used to reward servants, or bequeathed to more remote relatives and godchildren. Wills recorded the last gifts of those who were about to die, but they may have been continuing earlier transfers of animals to sons setting up their own farms. Peasant animals went to the lord when heriots, the best beasts, were taken by manorial officials. They might be sold back to the widow or heir, or added to the demesne stock, saving the lord the expense of buying oxen or horses from peasants. Mortuary payments allowed the rector or vicar to take the second-best animal. In these respects, as in many others when we consider the continuing importance of self-sufficiency, the market was not exercising a complete dominance over peasants’ pastoral farming.

Conclusion

West-midland peasants did not practise mixed farming out of habit or tradition, but because arable and pasture were interlocked. Corn-growing needed animal traction and manure. The animals benefited from a share of the produce of the harvest for litter and fodder. Peasants kept animals and poultry as contributors to the household’s food consumption as even small-scale allowances of cheese, bacon, and eggs meant that peasant diet was not based exclusively on cereals and vegetables. Combined with the expectation of occasional meat meals (after a pig killing for example), and seasonal feasts like the reap goose in September and chicken at Christmas, the peasants’ livestock were adding greatly to the quality of their lives.

Peasants developed complex arrangements for feeding livestock. The main resource, the pasture on fallows, stubbles, and meadows that became available through the cycle of cultivation, harvest, and hay making, was subject to much regulation. Beyond the grazing linked to the open fields were the enclosures, sometimes subject to common grazing, wood pasture, intercommoning, agistment, the trade in hay, and the use of fodder crops. The regulations and controversies give the impression that the pasture supply was always teetering on the edge of failure, but animals seem not normally to have starved.

Pastoral farming responded to market conditions, and decisions about the numbers of cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry were influenced by demand. Peasants were conscious of costs, and were cautious in providing housing for livestock, or increasing expenditure on wages. Animals were an important source of cash for peasants, and this was obtained in many ingenious ways, through hiring as well as sale, and many credit devices, including advances of cash (in the case of wool). Payments for animals were delayed or made in instalments. Sometimes the producer could engage directly with the purchaser, but very often the animals or their produce were bought by a dealer or monger.

Animal husbandry is often regarded as a more individual activity than cultivation, but pastures were managed in common and the interests of those sharing the facilities were supposed to be observed, leading to the stinting of grazing. The pooling of beasts in plough teams and the employment of the common herd were central to the operations of the village community. Occasionally, however, a better-off peasant could display status as an individual by riding a well-equipped horse, or building a dovecot.

Peasants Making History: Living in an English Region 1200–1540. Christopher Dyer, Oxford University Press. © Christopher Dyer 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198847212.003.0007

¹ S. Broadberry, B.M.S. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton, and B. van Leeuwen, British Economic Growth 1270–1870 (Cambridge, 2015), p. 118.

² WCL, E34.

³ Magdalen College, Oxford, Willoughby B28.

⁴ GA, Badminton muniments D2700 MAI/1; East Raynham library, box 25, 43; WA, ref. 705:134, BA1531/69, 69B; UNMSC, MiM 128/1–128/7.

⁵ WCL, E13, E6.

⁶ WA, ref. 705:53, BA111/1 bundle 3.

⁷ GA, D678/1 M1/1/1, M1/1/2; D678/65; D678/99.

⁸ S. Warman, ‘Animal Bone’, in Prehistoric and Medieval Occupation at Moreton-in-Marsh and Bishop’s Cleeve, Gloucestershire, edited by M. Watts (BGAS Archaeological Report, 5, 2007), pp. 86–8.

⁹ J. Clark, ed., The Medieval Horse and its Equipment (Museum of London, 1995), pp. 29–32, 75–123.

¹⁰ CR Romsley, pp. 80–1.

¹¹ SCLA, DR5/2774.

¹² WHR, p.69.

¹³ J. Hart and others, Living on the Edge. Archaeological Investigations of the Western Cotswolds (Cotswold Archaeology Monograph, 9, 2016), p. 209.

¹⁴ N. Palmer and J. Parkhouse, Burton Dassett Southend, Warwickshire: A Medieval Market Village (Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph, 44, 2022), the report on small finds can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.5284/1083492.

¹⁵ WCL, E47; GA, Badminton muniments D2700, MJ 11/1/2.

¹⁶ J. Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation. The Use of Draught Animals in English Farming 1066–1500 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 212–25.

¹⁷ WA, ref. 705:7, BA 7335/64,65. The lord of Quinton (Warwickshire) also tolerated a peasant’s horse mill, but the lord of Ombersley (Worcestershire) demanded that one should be removed.

¹⁸ E.g. WCL, E58 ‘No-one may have any foal over one year following its mother in a cart’, at Cleeve Prior in 1443.

¹⁹ Rec Feck For, pp. 12–14.

²⁰ C. Dyer, A Country Merchant 1495–1520. Trading and Farming at the End of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2012), pp. 186, 188–90.

²¹ J. Hamilton, ‘Faunal Remains’, in Palmer and Parkhouse, Burton Dassett Southend, at https://doi.org/10.5284/1083492.

²² SRO, D641/1/4C/1; WAM, 21116–21166; East Raynham Library, box 25,43; TNA, SC2 175/41–59.

²³ Cheshire Archives, DCR 35/2; UNMSC, MiM 131/28.

²⁴ J. Claridge, ‘The Role of Demesnes in the Trade of Agricultural Horses in Late Medieval England’, AgHR 65(2017), pp. 1–19, especially p. 19.

²⁵ Warner, ‘Animal Bone’.

²⁶ TNA, SC2 175/76; WCL, E48.

²⁷ WCL, E56.

²⁸ GA, D678/65, 99; WCL, E36, E39.

²⁹ The reality of the eight ox team has been questioned. Perhaps they managed with four.

³⁰ GA, Badminton muniments MJ11/1/2, 3–5 (Stoke Gifford); MJ 9/1–2, 3 (Rockhampton); WA, ref. 009:1, BA 2636/192 92626 1/12, 168/92339, 165/92225 4/8; 165/92226 1/7.

³¹ Hamilton, ‘Faunal Remains’; Warman, ‘Animal Bone’.

³² G. Beresford, The Medieval Clay-land Village. Excavations at Goltho and Barton Blount (Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 6, 1975), pp. 13–18. Sunken yards are clearly visible among the earthworks of west midland village sites, e.g. Norton Subedge (Gloucestershire), Stretton Baskerville, and Wolfhampcote (Warwickshire).

³³ B. Wells-Furby, The Berkeley Estate 1281–1417. Its Economy and Development (BGAS, 2012), p. 183.

³⁴ WA, ref. 009:1, BA 2636/165 92225 4/8.

³⁵ Hamilton, ‘Faunal Remains’; B. Levitan, ‘The Animal Bones’, in A. Saville, ‘Salvage Recording of Romano-British, Saxon, Medieval and Post-Medieval Remains at North Street, Winchcombe, Gloucestershire’, TBGAS 103 (1985), pp. 130–5; M. Holmes, ‘Animal Bones’, in L. Whittingham, ‘Evidence for Medieval Craft Industry and Occupation … Hales Street, Coventry’, TBWAS, 122 (2020), pp. 103–7.

³⁶ M. Holmes, ‘Animal Bones’, in Hart, Living Near the Edge, pp. 186–9.

³⁷ Hamilton, ‘Faunal Remains’; A. Locker, ‘Animal Bone’, in Iron Age and Roman Salt Production and the Medieval Town of Droitwich, edited by S. Woodiwiss (CBA Research Report 81, 1992), pp. 88, 172–8; B. Harvey, Living and Dying in England 1100–1540 (Oxford, 1993), p. 228.

³⁸ WCL, E15.

³⁹ UNMSC, MiM 131/34; A. Watkins, ‘Cattle Grazing in the Forest of Arden in the Later Middle Ages’, AgHR 37 (1989), pp. 12–25.

⁴⁰ Rec Feck For, pp. 1214, 21–6; BAH, 518078.

⁴¹ R.N. Swanson and D. Guyatt, eds., The Visitation and Court Book of Hartlebury, 1401–1598 (WHS, new series, 24, 2013) p. 216; WA, ref. 705:4, BA54; VE, 2, p. 450.

⁴² Swanson and Guyatt, eds., Court Book, p. 239; R.H. Hilton and P.A. Rahtz, ‘Upton, Gloucestershire, 1959–1964’, TBGAS 85 (1966), pp. 130–1.

⁴³ L. Higbee, ‘Faunal Remains’, in R. Jackson, The Archaeology of the Medieval Suburb of Broadmead, Bristol: Excavations in Union Street, 2000 (Bristol and Region Archaeological Services, 2010), pp. 114–15; Dorset History Centre, D10/M233; Swanson and Guyatt, eds., Court Book, p. 239.

⁴⁴ Dyer, Country Merchant, p. 154; C. Dyer, Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society, 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980), p. 329.

⁴⁵ Hamilton, ‘Faunal Remains’; M. Maltby, ‘The Animal Bone’, in D. Enright and M. Watts, A Romano-British and Medieval Settlement Site at Stoke Road, Bishop’s Cleeve, Gloucestershire (BGAS Archaeological Report, 1, 2002), pp. 44–9; Higbee, ‘Faunal Remains’, p. 110.

⁴⁶ WCL, E34; WA, ref. 008:7, BA3585, 1538/242.

⁴⁷ A sample is given in Dyer, Country Merchant, p. 186; Dyer, Lords and Peasants, p. 325.

⁴⁸ GA, D678/95; SRO, D641/1/4M/1; GA, D471/M2.

⁴⁹ GA, D678/62; WCL, E53; WA, ref. 705:134, BA 1531/69B; WAM, 21125; WCL, E223.

⁵⁰ WCL, E52.

⁵¹ TNA, SC2 175/46–56.

⁵² VE, 2, pp. 436–51.

⁵³ Corpus Christi College, Oxford, B/14/2/3/1.

⁵⁴ TNA, SC2 175/58.

⁵⁵ GA, DA678/94.

⁵⁶ GA, GDR 40/T2.

⁵⁷ WCL, E34.

⁵⁸ VE, 3, pp. 261–79.

⁵⁹ TNA, SC2 210/33.

⁶⁰ T.H. Lloyd, The Movement of Wool Prices in Medieval England (EcHR supplement, 6, 1973).

⁶¹ TNA, SC6 856/23.

⁶² S. Yealland and E.S. Higgs, ‘The Economy’, in Hilton and Rahtz, ‘Upton’, pp. 139–43.

⁶³ C. Dyer, ‘Alternative Agriculture: Goats in Medieval England’, in People, Landscape and Alternative Agriculture, edited by R. Hoyle (AgHR Supplement, 2004), pp. 20–38.

⁶⁴ WCL, E7.

⁶⁵ Rec Feck For, pp.12–14, 21–6, 168, 170.

⁶⁶ J. Webb, ed., Roll of the Household Expenses of Richard de Swinfield Bishop of Hereford (Camden Society, 1854–5), pp. 51, 52; J. Toomey, ed., A Household Account of Edward Duke of York at Hanley Castle, 1409–10 (WHS, new series, 24, 2013), pp. 87, 89, 91–3; C. Woolgar, ed., Household Accounts of Medieval England, part 1 (British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, new series, 17, 1992), pp. 147–50.

⁶⁷ J.D. Hurst, ed., A Multi-Period Salt Production Site at Droitwich. Excavations at Upwich (CBA Research Report, 107, 1997), p. 103.

⁶⁸ U. Albarella, ‘Pig Husbandry and Pork Consumption in Medieval England’, in Food in Medieval England. Diet and Nutrition, edited by C.M. Woolgar, D. Serjeantson, and T. Waldron (Oxford, 2006), pp. 72–87.

⁶⁹ TNA, SC2 210/53.

⁷⁰ WCL, E34; WA, ref. 008:7, BA 3585, 1538/242.

⁷¹ WA, ref. 705:56, BA3910/22(x); Magdalen College, Oxford, Willoughby B28.

⁷² Yealland and Higgs, ‘The Economy’; S. Hamilton Dyer, ‘Animal Bones’, in P. Thompson and S. Palmer, ‘Iron-Age, Romano-British and Medieval Settlements Excavated on the Transco Newbold Pacey to Honeybourne Gas Pipeline in 2000’, TBWAS 116 (2012), pp. 120–8.

⁷³ WA, ref.705:4, BA54.

⁷⁴ Rec Hanley, p. 131.

⁷⁵ WA, ref. 821, BA 3814, fo. 51 (White Book of Worcester).

⁷⁶ WAM 21116.

⁷⁷ M.L. Bazeley, ‘The Forest of Dean and its Relations with the Crown During the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, TBGAS, 33 (1910), pp. 153–286, especially p. 222.

⁷⁸ Hamilton, ‘Faunal Remains’; Holmes, ‘Animal Bones’.

⁷⁹ WAM, 213879.

⁸⁰ WAM, 21124.

⁸¹ WAM, 21125.

⁸² WHR, pp. 271–2.

⁸³ Corpus Christi College, Oxford, B/14/2/3/1.

⁸⁴ Hamilton, ‘Faunal Remains’.

⁸⁵ Enright and Watt, Stoke Road, Bishop’s Cleeve, p. 16.

⁸⁶ WA, ref. 008:7 1538/241; CR Elmley, p. 17.

⁸⁷ BAH, 3279/346342.

⁸⁸ WCL, E18, E35.

⁸⁹ TNA, SC2 175/48.

⁹⁰ C. Dyer, ‘Peasants and Poultry in England, 1250–1540’, Quaternary International 543 (2020), pp. 113–18.

⁹¹ TNA, SC6 1070/5.

⁹² BAH, 3279/346372.

⁹³ CR Elmley, p. 17; WAM, 21165.

⁹⁴ Hist Glouc, 3, pp. 128, 136–7.

⁹⁵ WA, ref. 705:56, BA3910/39; SCLA, DR5/2737–2799.

⁹⁶ BAH, 3279/346321/346343.

⁹⁷ WCL, E17; Swanson and Guyatt, eds., Court Book, pp. 159, 179, 202, 220.

⁹⁸ A Sapoznik, ‘Bees in the Medieval Economy: Religious Observance and the Production, Trade, and Consumption of Wax in England, c.1300–1555’ EcHR, 72 (2019), pp. 1152–74.

⁹⁹ On the renting of geese, P. Slavin, ‘Goose Management and Rearing in Late Medieval Eastern England, c.1250–1400’, AgHR, 58 (2010), pp. 1–29, especially pp. 26–8.

¹⁰⁰ WCL, E34.

¹⁰¹ WCL, E30.

¹⁰² WCL, E30.

¹⁰³ Swanson and Guyatt, eds., Court Book, p. 169; BAH, 3279/346342.

¹⁰⁴ WCL, E48.

¹⁰⁵ TNA, SC6 Henry VIII/4047.

¹⁰⁶ GA, D1099 M31/46.

¹⁰⁷ WCL, E85.

¹⁰⁸ PT, part 1, p. 277.

¹⁰⁹ J. Aberth, An Environmental History of the Middle Ages. The Crucible of Nature (Abingdon, 2013), pp. 169–76.

¹¹⁰ WA, ref. 009:1, BA2636/171/92416.

¹¹¹ GA, D678/62.

¹¹² GA, D678/62.

¹¹³ Magdalen College, Oxford, Willoughby EP 68/1.

¹¹⁴ WHR, pp. 165–6.

¹¹⁵ S. Wager, Woods, Wolds and Groves: The Woodland of Medieval Warwickshire (British Archaeological Reports, British series, 269, 1998), pp. 27–136.

¹¹⁶ Agistment in Estmedow, the lord’s several close, at Quinton, Gloucestershire in 1473 enabled twenty tenants to pasture 32 cows, 7 calves, 6 bullocks, 9 oxen, and 9 ‘animals’ for a total of £3 11s 11d: Magdalen College, Oxford, Quinton EP 35/5.

¹¹⁷ L. Strid, ‘Animal Bone Reports on Bristol Finzel’s Reach’, BRSMG 2007.28 (unpublished report, Oxford Archaeology); U. Albarella, ‘Depressions on Sheep Horncores’, Journal of Archaeological Science 22 (1995), pp. 699–704.

¹¹⁸ M. Holmes, ‘Does Size Matter? Changes in the Size of Animals Throughout the English Saxon Period (AD 450–1066)’, Journal of Archaeological Science 43 (2014), pp. 77–90.

¹¹⁹ R. Thomas, Animals, Economy and Status: Integrating Zooarchaeological and Historical Data in the Study of Dudley Castle, West Midlands (c.1100–1750) (British Archaeological Reports, British series, 392, 2005), pp. 39, 47; R. Thomas, M. Holmes, and J. Mams, ‘ “So bigge or bigge may be”: Tracking Size and Shape Changes in Domestic Livestock in London (ad 1320–1900)’, Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (2013), pp. 3309–25.

¹²⁰ P.A. Rahtz, ‘Upton, Gloucestershire, 1964–1968. Second Report’, TBGAS 88 (1969), pp. 74–126.

¹²¹ WAM, 8362.

¹²² CR Elmley, p. 176; WCL, E82.

¹²³ TNA, SC2 175/77; R.K. Field, ‘Worcestershire Peasant Buildings, Household Goods and Farming Equipment in the Later Middle Ages’, Med. Arch 9 (1965), p. 136.

¹²⁴ C. Dyer, ‘The Housing of Peasant Livestock in England, 1200–1520’, AgHR 67 (2019), pp. 29–50.

¹²⁵ P. Slavin, ‘Mites and Merchants: The Crisis of English Wool and Textile Trade Revisited, c.1275–1330’, EcHR 73 (2020), pp. 885–913; P. Slavin, ‘The Great Bovine Pestilence and its Economic and Environmental Consequences in England and Wales, 1318–50’, EcHR 65 (2012), pp. 1239–66.

¹²⁶ H.R. Luard, ed., Annales Monastici, vol. 4, Annales Prioratus de Wigornia (Rolls Series, 1869), p. 473.

¹²⁷ WAM, 12258, fo. 17r.

¹²⁸ WAM, 22121; WCL, C3.

¹²⁹ TNA, SC6 1038/20.

¹³⁰ Society of Antiquaries, MS 535.

¹³¹ SCLA, DR5 2742.

¹³² E.A.B. Barnard, Churchwardens’ Accounts of the Parish of Badsey with Aldington (Hampstead, 1913), pp. 9–22; R. Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994), p. 19.

¹³³ RBW, p. 95.

¹³⁴ WAM, 8272.

¹³⁵ A. Watkins, Small Towns in the Forest of Arden in the Fifteenth Century (DS Occasional Paper, 38, 1998), p. 13.

¹³⁶ WAM, 21939; SCLA, DR75/4.

¹³⁷ [W.J. Hardy] ed., Stratford-on-Avon Corporation Records: The Guild Accounts (Stratford-upon-Avon Corporation, 1880), pp. 17, 23.

¹³⁸ WCRO, CR 2026/3; C. Dyer, ‘The Hidden Trade of the Middle Ages: Evidence from the West Midlands’, in C. Dyer, Everyday Life in Medieval England (London, 2000), pp. 294–5.

¹³⁹ WA, ref. 009:1, BA2636/173 92448; WCL, E34; SCLA, DR18/30/24/15.

¹⁴⁰ WA, ref. 705:56, BA 3910/39.

¹⁴¹ F.B. Andrews, ‘The Compotus Rolls of the Monastery of Pershore’, TBAS 57 (1933), p. 32.

¹⁴² PT, part 1, p. 273; D.L. Farmer, ‘Marketing the Produce of the Countryside 1200–1500’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 3, 1348–1500 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 381–2.

¹⁴³ E.E. Rich, ed., The Staple Court Book of Bristol (Bristol Record Soc., 5, 1934), pp. 107, 133, 135, 145, 165–6.

¹⁴⁴ Woolgar, ed., Household Accounts, part 2, pp. 440, 442.

¹⁴⁵ GA, Badminton muniments, D2700 MA1/1; J.W. Willis Bund and J. Amphlett, eds., Lay Subsidy Roll for the County of Worcester ca. 1280 (WHS, 1893), p. 26.

¹⁴⁶ R.H. Hilton, A Medieval Society. The West Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1983), p. 180.

¹⁴⁷ Dyer, Country Merchant, pp. 100–31.

¹⁴⁸ Andrews, ‘Compotus Rolls’, p. 22.

¹⁴⁹ PT, part 1, p. 264.

¹⁵⁰ SCLA, Ferrers MSS, 800. Throughout the country demesnes bought horses from peasants: Claridge, ‘Agricultural Horses’, p. 19.

¹⁵¹ Woolgar, ed., Household Accounts, p. 443.

¹⁵² WCL, E24.