h kind of corn, and where each takes 2d. a day then you must give
5d. an acre.'[88] 'One ought to thresh a quarter of wheat or rye for
2d. and a quarter of oats for 1d. A sow ought to farrow twice a year,
having each time at least 7 pigs; and each goose 5 goslings a year and
each hen 115 eggs and 7 chicks, 3 of which ought to be made capons;
and for 5 geese you must have one gander, and for 5 hens one cock.'
The laying qualities of the hen, in spite of the talk of the 200-egg
bird, were evidently as good then as to-day. In those days of
self-supporting farms it was the custom to put together the farm
implements at home, and the farmer is advised that it will be well if
he can have carters and ploughmen who should know how to work all
their own wood, though it should be necessary to pay them more.[89]
The village smith, however, seems, as we should expect, to have done
most of the iron work that was needed.[90]

These extracts have given the reader some insight into
thirteenth-century prices, prices which in the case of grain altered
very little for nearly 300 years: for instance, the average price of
wheat from 1259 to 1400 was 5s. 10-3/4d. a quarter, and from 1401 to
1540 5s. 11-3/4d.; of barley, 4s. 3-3/4d. from 1259 to 1400, 3s.
8-3/4d. from 1401 to 1540; of oats, 2s. 5-3/4d. and 2s. 2-1/4d. in the
same two periods respectively; of rye, 4s. 5d. and 4s. 7-3/4d.; and of
beans, 4s. 3-1/2d. and 3s. 9-1/4d.[91] Wheat fluctuated considerably,
being as we have seen 2s. a quarter at Hawsted in 1243 and in 1290
14s. 10d., a most exceptional price. Oxen, which were chiefly valued
as working animals, were about 13s. apiece[92]; cows, 9s. 5d. Farm
horses were of two varieties: the 'affer' or 'stott', a rough small
animal, generally worth about 13s. 5d., and the cart-horse, probably
the ancestor of our shire horses, whose average price was 19s. 4d. A
good saddle-horse fetched as much as L5. Sheep were from 1s. 2d. to
1s. 5d. each. In Hampshire in 1248 shoeing ten farm horses for the
plough for a year cost 5s.; making a gate cost 12d. As Walter of
Henley said, it cost a penny a week to shoe a horse on all four feet;
these horses must have been very roughly shod.[93] It is evident, from
what Walter of Henley says, that horses were not always shod on all
four feet, and their shoes were generally very light. The roads were
mere tracks without any metalling, so that there was little necessity
for heavy shoes; and as Professor Thorold