A country gentleman at this date could keep up a good establishment on an income which to-day would compel him to live economically in a cottage. From the accounts of Mr. Master, a landowner near Chiselhurst, it appears that a man with an income of L300 or L400 a year could live in some luxury, keep a stud of horses, and a considerable number of servants.[312] Some of them had no scruples about adding to their incomes by turning corn-dealers, even selling such small quantities as pecks of peas, bushels of rye, and half pecks of oatmeal. From the accounts of one of them, Henry Best,[313] of Elmswell, we learn many valuable details concerning farming in Yorkshire about 1641. It was the custom to put the ram to the ewes about October 18, but Best did so about Michaelmas, and generally used one ram to 30 or 40 ewes, and he considered it necessary that the ewes should be two-shear. 'Good handsome ewes', he says, could have been bought at Kilham fair for 3s. 6d. each, a price far below the average of the time. As for wages, mowers of grass had 10d. a day, and found their own food and their scythes, which cost them about 2s. 3d. each. Haymakers got 4d. a day, and had to 'meat themselves' and find their own forks and rakes. Shearers or reapers were paid from 8d. to 10d., and found their own sickles; binders and stackers, 8d.; mowers of 'haver', or oats, 10d., a good mower cutting 4 acres a day. In 1641 he sold oats for 14s. a quarter, best barley for 22s., rye 27s. 6d., wheat 30s.[314] The roads were dreadful, and produce nearly all sent to market on pack-horses. 'Wee seldome send fewer than 8 horse loads to the market at a time, and with them two men, for one man cannot guide the poakes (sacks) of above four horses. When wee sende oats to the market wee sack them up in 3 bushel poakes and lay 6 bushels on a horse; when wee sende wheate, rye, or masseldene (rye and wheat) and barley to market wee put it into mette poakes (2 bushel sacks), sometimes into half quarter sacks, and these we lay on horses that are short coupled and well backed.' When the servants got to market they were charged a halfpenny a horse for stabling and hay, but if they dined at the inn they paid nothing for their horses, and their dinners cost them 4d. a head. Butter was sold by the lb., or the 'cake' of 2 lb., and in the beginning of Lent was 5d. a lb., by April 20, 3d., in the middle of May, 2-1/2d. When William Pinder took 50 acres of land 'of my Lord Haye' he paid a fine of L60 and a rent of L40; but this must have been an extremely choice piece of land, for arable land rented apparently at less than 3s. an acre.[315] The rent of a cottage was usually 10s. a year, 'though they have not so much as a yard or any backe side belonging to them.' There is more evidence, if such were needed, of the beneficial effect of enclosure, which was said to treble the value of pasture. Good meadow land fetched a great price: 'The medow Sykes is about 5 acres of grounde, and was letten in the