Rogers suggests, it is quite
possible that the hoofs of our horses have become weaker by reason of
the continual paring and protection which modern shoeing involves.[94]
They weighed usually less than half a pound, and cost about 4s. a
hundred.

The most striking fact about agricultural prices at this date is the
low price of land compared with that of its products. The annual rent
of land was from 4d. to 6d.[95] an acre, and it was worth about ten
years' purchase. Consequently, a quarter of wheat was often worth more
than an acre of land, a good ox three times as much, a good cart-horse
four times, while a good war-horse was worth the fee-simple of a small
farm. A greater breadth of wheat was sown than of any other crop; but
it seems that none was ever stored except in the castles and
monasteries, for in spite of successive abundant harvests a bad season
would send the price up at once. Barley was, as now, chiefly used for
making beer, which was also made from oats and wheat, of course
without hops, which were not used till the fifteenth century; and
sometimes it was made of oats, barley, and wheat, a concoction worth
3/4d. a gallon in 1283.[96] Cider was also drunk, and was sold at
Exminster in Devonshire in 1286 at 1/2d. a gallon, and apples fetched
2d. a bushel. Thorold Rogers[97] says that wheat was the chief food of
the English labourer from the earliest times until perhaps the
seventeenth century, when the enormous prices were prohibitive; but
this statement must be taken with reserve, as must that of Mr.
Prothero[98] that rye was the bread-stuff of the peasantry. Where the
labourer's food is mentioned as part of his wages, wheat, barley, and
rye all occur, wheat and rye being often mixed together as 'mixtil';
and it is most probable that in one district wheat, in another one of
the other cereals, formed his chief bread-stuff, according to the crop
best adapted to the soil of the locality.

Walter of Henley mentions wheat as if it was the chief crop, for he
selects it as best illustrating the cost of corn-growing[99]; and from
the enormous number of entries enumerated by Thorold Rogers in his
mediaeval statistics it was apparently more grown than other cereals.
The chief meat of the lower classes then, as to-day, was bacon from
the innumerable herds of swine who roamed in the woods and wastes, but
in bad years, when food was scarce, the poor ate nuts, acorns, fern
roots, bark, and vetches.[100]

As the cattle