For keeping plough in repair, and the wages of a
blacksmith, one year by agreement 6 8
Making a new plough from the lord’s timber 6
Mowing 2 acres of meadow 1 0
Making and carrying hay of ditto, with
help of lord’s servants 4
Threshing wheat, peas, and tares, per quarter 4
" oats, per quarter 1-1/2
Winnowing 3 quarters of corn 1
Cutting and binding wheat and oats, per acre 6

On the Manor of Dorking the harvest lasted five weeks as a rule; the fore feet only of oxen used for ploughing, and of heifers used for harrowing, were shod.  For washing and shearing sheep 10d. a hundred was the price; ploughing for winter corn cost 6d. an acre, and harrowing 1/2d. 30-1/2 acres of barley produced 41-1/2 quarters; 28 acres of oats produced 38-1/2 quarters; 13 cows were let for the season at 5s. each.  In the same reign, at Merstham, the demesne lands of 166-1/2 acres were let on lease with all the live and dead stock, which was valued at L22 9s. 3d., and the rent was L36 or about 4s. 4d. an acre, an enormous price even including the stock.

FOOTNOTES: 

[149] Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, ii. 5.  There is no doubt the lease system was growing in the thirteenth century.  About 1240 the writ Quare ejecit infra terminum protected the person of a tenant for a term of years, who formerly had been regarded as having no more than a personal right enforceable by an action of covenant.  Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, p. 330; but leases for lives and not for years seem the rule at that date.

[150] Cullum, Hawsted, p. 175.

[151] See Domesday of S. Paul, Introduction.

[152] Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, i. 25.

[153] Cullum, Hawsted, p. 195.

[154] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 586.

[155] Banyd, afflicted with sheep rot.

[156] Eden, State of the Poor, i. 55.

[157] Cullum, Hawsted, p. 182.  Another instance of the difference in value between arable and tillage.  At the inquisition of the Manor of Great Tey in Essex, 1326, the jury found that 500 acres of arable land was worth 6d. an acre rent, 20 acres of meadow 3s. an acre, and 10 acres of pasture 1s. an acre. Archaeologia, xii. 30.

[158] Medley, Constitutional History, p. 52.

[159] Cunningham, op. cit. i. 328, and 335-6.

[160] Domesday of S. Paul, p. lvii.

[161] Hist.  Angl., Rolls Series, i. 455.  The other political and social causes of the revolt do not concern us here.  The attempt to minimize its agrarian importance is strange in the light of the words and acts above mentioned.