[45] Thorold Rogers, _Agriculture and Prices_, i. 17: Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 55: Neckham, _De Natura Rerum_, Rolls Series, ch. clxvi. Rogers says there were no plums, but Neckham mentions them. See also Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 64. Matthew Paris says the severe winter in 1257 destroyed cherries, plums and figs. _Chron. Maj._, Rolls Series, v. 660. [46] Woods were used as much for pasture as for cutting timber and underwood. Not only did the pigs feed there on the mast of oak, beech, and chestnut, but goats and horned cattle grazed on the grassy portions. [47] The illustrations of contemporary MSS. usually show teams in the plough of 2 or 4 oxen, and 4 was probably the team generally used, according to Vinogradoff, _op. cit._ p. 253. It must, of course, have varied according to the soil. Birch, in his _Domesday_, p. 219, says he has never found a team of 8 in contemporary illustrations. To-day oxen can be still seen ploughing in teams of two only. However, about a hundred years ago, when oxen were in common use, we find teams of 8, as in Shropshire, for a single-furrow plough, 'so as to work them easily.' Six hours a day was the usual day's work, and when more was required one team was worked in the morning, another in the afternoon.--_Victoria County History: Shropshire, Agriculture_. Walter of Henley says the team stopped work at three. [48] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, i. 570. [49] See the excellent reproductions of the Calendar of the Cott. MSS. in Green's _Short History of the English People_, illustrated edition, i. 155. [50] _De Natura Rerum_, Rolls Series, p, 280. [51] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 307. [52] Ibid. p. 312. Perhaps one of the most interesting features of the smaller manors is that they were constantly being swallowed up by the larger. [53] As some of the common pasture was held in severalty, this may perhaps have been mown in scarce years. Walter of Henley mentions mowing the waste, see below, p. 34. [54] Maitland, _Domesday Book_, 436; _Board of Agriculture Returns_, 1907. [55] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 310; Birch, _Domesday_, p. 183. [56] Maitland, _Domesday Book_. 44; Cunningham, _Growth of Industry and Commerce_, i. 171; _Domesday of S. Paul_, pp. xliii. and xci. [57] Cullum, _History of Hawsted_, p. 181. [58] Rolls Series, ii. 220. According to this, the price of a bushel of wheat reckoned in modern money was L3 in that year [59] Ibid. iii. 220. [60] Holinshed, who is supported by William of Malmesbury in the assertion that in time of scarcity England imported corn. Matthew Paris, _Chron. Maj._, v. 673. [61] Jusserand, _English Wayfaring Life_, p. 79. [62] Jusserand, _English Wayfaring Life_, p. 89. [63] Gilbert Slater, _The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields_, p. 8. CHAPTER II