ool-growers, and the Hospitallers at Hampton in Middlesex had a flock
of 2,000 sheep whose annual produce was six sacks of wool of 364 lb.
each, worth L4 a sack, which would make the fleeces weigh a little
more than 1 lb. each. The profit of cows on one of their manors was
reckoned at 2s. per head, on another at 3s.; and the profit of 100
sheep at 20s.[110] The wages paid to the labourers for day work were
2d. a day, and we must remember that when he was paid by the day his
wages were rightly higher than when regularly employed, for day labour
was irregular and casual. The tenants about the same date obtained the
following prices[111] for some of their stock:--

L s. d.

A good ox, alive, fatted on corn 1 4 0
" " " not on corn 16 0
A fatted cow 12 0
A two-year-old hog 3 4
A sheep and its fleece 1 8
A fatted sheep, shorn 1 2
" goose 0 3
Hens, each[112] 0 2
20 eggs 0 1

In the middle of the fourteenth century occurred the famous Black
Death, the worst infliction that has ever visited England. Its story
is too well known for repetition, and it suffices to say that it was
like the bubonic plague in the East of to-day: it raged in 1348-9, and
killed from one-third to one-half of the people.[113] It is said to
have effected more important economic results than any other event in
English history. It is probable that the prices of labour were rising
before this terrible calamity; the dreadful famine of 1315-6,[114]
followed by pestilence, when wheat went up to 26s. a quarter, and
according to the contemporary chroniclers, in some cases much higher,
destroyed a large number of the population, and other plagues had done
their share to make labour scarce, but after the Black Death the
advance was strongly marked. It also accelerated the break-up of the
manorial system. A large number of the free labourers were swept away,
and their labour lost to the lord of the manor; the services of the
villeins were largely diminished from the same cause; many of the
tenants, both free and unfree, were dead, and the land thrown on the
lord's hands. Flocks and herds were wandering about over the country
because the