According to the returns, in many counties more acres were ploughed in 1086 than to-day; in some twice as much.  In Somerset in 1086 there were 577,000 acres of arable; in 1907, 178,967.  In Gloucestershire, in 1086, 589,000 acres; in 1907, 238,456.[54] These are extreme instances; but the preponderance of arable is startling, even if we allow for the recent conversion of arable to pasture on account of the low price of corn.  Between the eleventh century and the sixteenth, the laying down of land to grass must have proceeded on a gigantic scale, for Harrison tells us that in his day England was mainly a grazing country.  No wonder Harrison’s contemporaries complained of the decay of tillage.

Mediaeval prices and statistics are, it is well known, to be taken with great caution; but we may assume that the normal annual value of land under cultivation in 1086 was about 2d. an acre.[55] Land indeed, apart from the stock upon it, was worth very little:  in the tenth and eleventh centuries it appears that the hide, normally of 120 acres, was only worth L5 to buy, apparently with the stock upon it.  In the time of Athelstan a horse was worth 120d., an ox 30d., a cow 20d., a sheep 5d., a hog 8d., a slave L1—­so that a slave was worth 8 oxen[56]; and these prices do not seem to have advanced by the Domesday period.

According to the Pipe Roll of 1156, wheat was 1s. 6d. a quarter; but prices then depended entirely on seasons, and we do not know whether that was good or bad.  However, many years later, in 1243 it was only 2s. a quarter at Hawsted.[57] In dear years, nearly always the result of wet seasons, it went up enormously; in 1024 the English Chronicle tells us the acre seed of wheat, that is about 2 bushels, sold for 4s.,[58] 3 bushels of barley for 6s. and 4 bushels of oats for 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]