ere, no doubt, his chief recreations; so fond was he of
hunting, indeed, that his own broad lands were not enough, and he was
a frequent trespasser on those of others; the records of the time are
full of cases which show that poaching was quite a fashionable
amusement among the upper classes. But among the barons were many men
who, like their successors to-day, did their duty as landlords. Of one
of the Lords of Berkeley in the fourteenth century, it was said he was
'sometyme in husbandry at home, sometyme at sport in the field,
sometyme in the campe, sometyme in the Court and Council of State,
with that promptness and celerity that his body might have bene
believed to be ubiquitary'. Many of them were farmers on a very large
scale, though they might not have so much time to devote to it as
those excellent landlords the monks.

Thomas Lord Berkeley, who held the Berkeley estates from 1326 to 1361,
farmed the demesnes of a quantity of manors, as was the custom, and
kept thereon great flocks of sheep, ranging from 300 to 1,500 on each
manor.[127] The stock of the Bishop of Winchester, by an inquisition
taken at his death in 1367, amounted to 127 draught horses, 1,556 head
of black cattle, and 12,104 sheep and lambs. Almost every manor had
one or two pigeon houses, and the number of pigeons reared is
astonishing; from one manor Lord Berkeley obtained 2,151 pigeons in a
single year. No one but the lord was allowed to keep them, and they
were one of the chief grievances of the villeins, who saw their seed
devoured by these pests without redress. Their dung, too, was one of
the most valued manures. Lord Berkeley, like other landlords, went
often in progress from one of his manors and farmhouses to another,
making his stay at each of them for one or two nights, overseeing and
directing the husbandry. The castle of the great noble consumed an
enormous amount of food in the course of the year; from two manors on
the Berkeley estate came to the 'standinghouse' of the lord in twelve
months, 17,000 eggs, 1,008 pigeons, 91 capons, 192 hens, 288 ducks,
388 chickens, 194 pigs, 45 calves, 315 quarters of wheat, 304 quarters
of oats; and from several other manors came the like or greater store,
besides goats, sheep, oxen, butter, cheese, nuts, honey, &c.[128] Even
the lavish hospitality of the lords, and the great number of their
retainers, must have had some difficulty in disposing of these huge
supplies.

The examining of their bail