The indication that these accounts give us of the farming operations of the Grace Dieu nuns is sufficient to make us wish that Dame Petronilla had been a little more explicit; still we are grateful for what we learn about the crops, and their sowing, and weeding, and gathering, the stacking of the wheat, and oats, and peas, and the threshing out of the grain. Thus the wages of Adam Baxter and his wife, and the wife of Robert Harston for weeding thirty acres of barley are set down. Each of these, by the way, had a pair of gloves given them before they were set to the task, and the entire work cost the convent 10_s._ 3_d._ Three men beyond the usual farm staff were ordinarily employed in cutting the grass, and in making and stacking the hay. In the general harvesting, men and women were employed in the fields; and, be it remarked, their labour was paid for at the same rate. What are called the autumn works--the harvesting and the subsequent cleaning of the ground--seem to have lasted about seven or eight weeks, and were begun soon after the feast of the Assumption of our Blessed Lady. It is curious, and not uninteresting, to find that the Irish came over for the harvesting in Leicestershire in the fifteenth century as they do now; thus we have Mathew Irishman and Isabel Irish named, together with Edward Welshman, as engaged in the fields of Grace Dieu in 1415. Altogether, the cost of the extra labour in the autumn works amounted to nearly £10, a large sum indeed in those days. Besides payments of extra money for the harvesting and regular work, some indication of the kindly way in which the good nuns recognised the services of their dependents on special occasions appears in these accounts. In the lambing season, for instance, Henry, the shepherd, was given 2_d._ “for his good service and care of the sheep,” and John Stapulford received the same sum “for looking after the lambs before their weaning,” whilst John Warren for “fold-hurdling” was rewarded with 1_s._; and to take another instance of a somewhat different kind, the convent bailiff at Kirby, one Richard Marston, was given a purse, as a sign that the nuns appreciated his care of their property. One chance entry shows that when the sheep were being sheared, the labourers were given extra meat for their meals, since Dame Petronilla gives 16_d._ for a calf to feed them specially, on a day when evidently she and her sisters in religion were eating fish in the convent refectory.