Queen Eleanor, a cultivated, intelligent, and educated lady from the continent, fostered culture and rewarded individual literary efforts, such as translations from Latin, with grants of her own money. She patronized Oxford and Cambridge Universities and left bequests to poor scholars there. She herself had read Aristotle and commentaries thereon, and she especially patronized literature which would give cross-cultural perspectives on subjects. She was kind and thoughtful towards those about her and was also sympathetic to the afflicted and generous to the poor. She shared Edward's career to a remarkable extent, even accompanying him on a crusade. She had an intimate knowledge of the people in Edward's official circle and relied on the advice of two of them in managing her lands. She mediated disputes between earls and other nobility, as well as softened her husband's temper towards people. Edward granted her many wardships and marriages and she arranged marriages with political advantages. She dealt with envoys coming to the court. Her intellectual vitality and organized mentality allowed her to deal with arising situations well. Edward held her in great esteem. She introduced to England the merino sheep, which, when bred with the English sheep, gave them a better quality of wool. She and Edward often played games of chess and backgammon. Farm efficiency was increased by the use of windmills in the fields to pump water and by allowing villeins their freedom and hiring them as laborers only when needed. Customary service was virtually extinct. A man could earn 5d. for reaping, binding, and shocking into a pile, an acre of wheat. A strong man with a wife to do the binding could do this in a long harvest day. Harvests were usually plentiful, with the exception of two periods of famine over the country due to weather conditions. Then the price of wheat went way up and drove up the prices of all other goods correspondingly. The story of outlaw Robin Hood, who made a living by robbing, was passed around. This Robin Hood did not give to the poor. But generally, there was enough grain to store so that the population was no longer periodically devastated by famine. The population grew and all arable land in the nation came under the plough. The acre was standardized. About 1300, the price of an ox was 9s., a heifer or cow 7s., a hide 2s.6d., a cart horse 2 or 3 pounds. Farm women went to nearby towns to sell eggs and dairy products, usually to town women. Although manors needed the ploughmen, the carters and drivers, the herdsmen, and the dairymaid on a full-time basis, other tenants spent increasing time in crafts and became village carpenters, smiths, weavers or millers' assistants. Trade and the towns grew. Smiths used coal in their furnaces.