or 4s. In
1190 Holinshed says that, owing to a great dearth, the quarter of
wheat was 18s. 8d. The average price, however, in the twelfth century
was probably about 4s. a quarter.

In 1194 Roger of Hoveden[59] says an ox, a cow, and a plough horse
were the same price, 4s.; a sheep with fine wool 10d., with coarse
wool 6d.; a sow 12d., a boar 12d.

Sometimes prices were kept down by imports; 1258 was a bad and dear
year, 'most part of the corn rotted on the ground,' and was not all
got in till after November 1, so excessive was the wet and rain. And
upon the dearth a sore death and mortality followed for want of
necessary food to sustain the pining bodies of the poor people, who
died so thick that there were great pits made in churchyards to lay
the dead bodies in. And corn had been dearer if great store had not
come out of Almaine, but there came fifty great ships with wheat and
barley, meal and bread out of Dutchland, which greatly relieved the
poor.[60]

Were the manors as isolated as some writers have asserted? Generally
speaking, we may say the means of communication were bad and many an
estate cut off almost completely from the outside world, yet the
manors must often have been connected by waterways, and sometimes by
good roads, with other manors and with the towns. Rivers in the Middle
Ages were far more used as means of communication than to-day, and
many streams now silted up and shallow were navigable according to
Domesday. Water carriage was, as always, much cheaper than land
carriage, and corn could be carried from Henley to London for 2d. or
3d. a quarter. The roads left by the Romans, owing to the excellence
of their construction, remained in use during the Middle Ages, and
must have been a great advantage to those living near them; but the
other roads can have been little better than mud tracks, except in the
immediate vicinity of the few large towns. The keeping of the roads in
repair, one part of the _trinoda necessitas_ was imposed on all lands;
but the results often seem to have been very indifferent, and they
appear largely to have depended on chance, or the goodwill or devotion
of neighbouring landowners.[61] Perhaps they would, except in the case
of the Roman roads, have been impassable but for the fact that the
great lords and abbots were constantly visiting their scattered
estates, and therefore were interested in keeping such roads in order.
But in those days people were contented with very