sign in sign up
<<
Home , Bread, Medieval household

Changes in Diet in the Late : the Case of Harvest Workers*

By CHRISTOPHER DYER

Abstract The custom of feeding workers during the autumn on various manors in eastern and southern provides an opportunity to quantify changes in diet over two centuries. In the thirteentla century harvest workers were given much bread and some cheese, with relatively small quantities of , fish and . Two centuries later the importance of bread had much diminished, and a high proportion of the diet consisted of meat and ale. and bread was rcplaccd by whcat, bacon by beef, and cidcr by ale. These workers ate bcttcr than most wagc-carncrs and pcasants, but the trends in caring patterns were general. The chronology of the changcs, which wcrc over much of the fourtccnth century, and the gcncral relationship bctwccn diet, production, the market and demography, have,implications for our interpretations of the late medieval period.

F Oa generations knowledge of medi- should provide new insights into the aims eval has advanced, yet still and methods of agricultural production. 3 we have hazy notions of the consump- The search for information about diet tion of foodstuffs, especially by the lower leads us to employ a great deal of indirect ranks of society. A greater awareness of evidence, by analysing the grain allow- eating patterns can help our understanding ances made to retired peasants for example, of the social structure, so that such categor- or by examining the grain liveries given ies as 'wage-earners', 'peasants', and 'gen- to full-time servants on manors (famuli), or try' can be visualized in terms of their by sifting through bones and plant remains different material standards of life.' If we found as accmnulated rubbish on archaeo- can learn more about diet we will be better logical sites. These and other areas of study be able to test the hypothesis that the low are valuable sources of data, but they all nutritional status of large sections of the tend to throw light on sections of the population in the early fourteenth century diet only, and often their use must be ended a century or more of increasing surrounded with uncertainties of interpret- numbers and began a long period of demo- ation. graphic stagnation.-" Finally, information The records contained in manorial about the use of crops and animal products accounts of the and drink given to harvest workers provide a sample of lower- class diet over a long span of time, from *Parts of this paper were presented to a seminar on Food and the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fifteenth cen- History organized by Professor T C Smout of the University of St Andrews in November 1984, and to a session on Nutrition and tury. For this reason harvest-workers' diets Standards of Living convened by Professor R W Fogel at the Ninth are worth investigating, and the first part Economic History Congress at Berne in August 1986. As well as benefiting front discussions with participants on those occasions, I of this essay will contain a survey of their owe specific debts for help from B M S Campbell, B Carpenter- food consumption. However, the harvest Turner, E J T Collins, E Crawford, R A Holt, J L Langdon, M Mate, D J Oddy, S A C Penn, J Z Titow, J Williamson. workers were not typical of the whole t For a continental example see L Stouff, Ravitaillemem et Alimen. labour force, and the later part will attempt tation en Provence aux XIVe et XVe si?ch's, Paris, :97o. J 2 M M Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society, 197"-, p 34; J Z Titow, En¢lish Rural Societ),, teoo-.-135o, 1969, pp 64-96; G 3 Eg I Blanchard, 'The Continental European Cattle Trades, Bois, The Crisis of Feudalisnl, Cambridge, 1984, pp 268-9. x4oo-16oo', Econ Hist Rev, 2nd ser, XXX1X, t986, pp 427-6o.

2I Ag His, Rev, 36, I, pp zi-37 22 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW to define their position within the social the grotesque, has captured in the bent hierarchy of living standards, and to backs and strained faces of his figures some explore the wider implications. of the harsh toil involved. 5 Most manors paid their harvest workers The harvest was a time of high labour a cash wage. On the minority of manors productivity, when workers could keep up which are the subject of this enquiry, the pace better if they ate plenty of food, mostly in southern and eastern England, and employers gained from generous treat- the labour force was given both cash and ment of the workers. It was also a period food. The group of workers who brought "of intense competition for labour, when in the harvest included thefamuli, the per- the lords of manors, demesne farmers, manent staff of the manor, who for the rectors, and better-off peasants all needed 'autumn' (a period of four to seven weeks) hired hands. Labour mobility reached a were given an enhanced cash wage and peak in August, as people left their homes meals instead of the usual combination and normal occupations in search of good of cash and grain. They were joined by pay in the harvest fields. Even in the years workers hired specially for the harvest around 13oo, when labour was relatively (both for the duration, and for shorter abundant before the epidemics of 1348-9, times), and by administrators. For village by-laws were requiring the able- example, at Sedgeford (Norfolk) in 1273 bodied to accept employment in the har- thirty-four people were said to be 'resident vest at 'a penny a day with food', instead at table', including the supervisors, that of running off to other villages, or making is, a sergeant, reeve, hayward, and tithe a living by gleaning, c' After 1349 the strug- collector, and the famuli, including tile gle for labour intensified, and many har- herdsmen and two dairymaids. Eleven vest workers came before the justices for extra hands were hired for the full 'autumn' offences under the Statute of Labourers, of thirty-nine days, and four for ten days accused of demanding and receiving only. 4 A dairymaid (deye) did some of the excessive rates of pay, and of breaking food preparation, but usually a cook was contracts in order to take the opportunities employed full-time. of the season. The cases show that daily Before analysing the food issued on these wages doubled at harvest time, and that occasions, we must consider tile nature of workers were also offered high lump sums this important part of the farming year. (such as 6s 8d) and inducements in kind to The participants worked hard over long work for the whole season. 7 hours, scything and raking barley, cutting Because harvest workers were a special other types of corn with sickles and bind- case, their diet, which formed an important ing the sheaves, tossing the sheaves into element of their total pay, was superior to carts for carriage back to the manorial that of wage-earners in other occupations. curia, and there 'pitching' the corn onto The employers had the resources to pro- stacks. The work sometimes had to be vide ample supplies, in return for which hurried, 'for fear of rain' as the accounts they were able to recruit a large, willing, say in justifying an extra tip given in and efficient work-force, who they might encouragement. The intensity of pre- hope would return in subsequent years. mechanized harvest work has been re- 5 B Bushaway, By Rite, 1982, pp '07-38; G Ewart Evans, Ask, corded by nineteenth-century observers, die Fellows who Cut the Ha),, 1965, pp 85-93; E G Millar (ed), and the illustrator of the early fourteenth- Luttrell Psalter, 1932, pp 97-9. 6 W O Ault, Open-Field Farming in Medieval England, 1972, pp century Luttrell Psalter, with his eye for 29-34. 7 S A C Penn, 'Wage-Earners and Wage-Earning in Late Four- teenth Century England', P,esearch Report for the ESRC, 4 Norfolk RO, DCN 6013314. Birrnir~gham, 1986, p 51. [ CHANGES IN DIET IN THE : THE CASE OF HARVEST WORKERS 23 Although the peculiar characteristics of Pekkeres' (presumably from Picardy) were the season and its workers should be borne hired." All sources agree that both sexes in mind, they should not undermine joined in the harvest, for example at Apple- entirely the value of studying the harves- dram in Sussex in I45O wages were paid ters as a group of medieval wage-earners. to 'various men and women harvesting, at We are not dealing with a single and excep- the lord's table'. '2A few better-offpeasants tional day, like the reaping boon when all (who would generally have been busy tenants turned out to do a day's labour bringing in their own crops) would have service and were rewarded with a special been present at the demesne harvest by meal. The autumn normally lasted for virtue of their tenure of such offices as about five weeks, or a tenth of the year, reeve and hayward. By an unusual arrange- more than an insignificantly transient epi- ment at Lullington (Sussex) the supervisors sode in people's lives. only were fed at the manor and the And the harvest workers formed a wide workers fended for themselves. '3 The ser- cross-section of the lower ranks of medi- geant or bailiff, often recruited from the eval society. Among the famuli some were lesser gentry, was the highest ranking of no doubt youths labouring in the early the residents, though monks or senior years of their life-cycles, and others administrators sometimes stayed on the included married small-holders like Henry manor for a few days to keep an eye on le Driver, the ploughman at Cuxham the work. These fleeting visits did not (Oxon) who was still working on the usually have much influence on the types demesne at the age of about fifty in 1348, or quantities of food consumed. ,4 In short, and widowed cottagers like Chaucer's deye, the main body of the harvest workers with her two daughters, three pigs, and ranged from the upper peasantry to land- three cows, who is of course fictional, but less servants, with the great majority at was recognizable as a type to an audience the bottom end of the social spectrum. of the I39OS. 8 The temporary employees They included young and old, men and would also have included small-holders women, townsmen and villagers, house- without the ties (or the security) of full- holders and itinerants, English and foreign- time work on a demesne, and members of ers, people working normally in both their families. Workers in such industries industry and agriculture, and those in both as building and textiles abandoned their continuous and intermittent employment; jobs for higher pay in August. 9 Temporary they represent a varied sample of the whole migrants came from towns, like the forty- medieval labour force. six 'cokeres' from King's Lynn, who Wealthy monasteries figure prominently worked at Sedgeford in I378. '° Itinerants among those known to have been travelled from further afield, notably the employers of harvest workers who ate at bands of Welshmen who worked in the the lord's table; they include Norwich midlands in the autumn. At Brancaster Cathedral Priory, Battle Abbey, and St (Norfolk) in I368 three 'flemynges called

11 PRO, SC6 931/8. 8 M M Postan, The Falnlthts, Economic History P,eview Sup- 12 Millar, op oil, p 97; S A C Penn, 'Female Wage-Earners in Late plcmcnt, 2, 1954; A Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Fourteenth-Century England', Ag Hist Rev, XXXV, 1987, pp Modern England, Cambridge, 1981; P 13 A Harvey (ed), Manorial 1-14; PRO, SC6 tol8/24. See also M Roberts, 'Sickles and Records of Cuxham, Ox~,rdshire, c.12oo-1359, Historical Manu- Scythes: Women's Work and Men's Work at Harvest Time', scripts Commission, JP 23, 1976, p 763; idem, A Medieval Hislory l~Vorkshop, 7, 1979, pp 3-28. O.x[[ordshire Villal,,e: Cuxhanl, 124o-14oo, Oxford, 1965, pp 77, I3 PRO, SC6 1o"4/I-2, 4-5, 8, '5; ,o,6/1. 125; F N Robit,son (ed), The Works of Geq(fl"ey Chaucer, 2nd 14 At Mildenhall (Suffolk), in ,32-.3-4, the visitors included the edn, London, 1957, p 199 (Canterbury Tales, VII, II 2821-46 ). Cellarer of Bury St Edmunds, his entourage, and the estate 9 l~e,u,, op tit, pp ,7-31. , so appears among the harvest expenses: Bodleian ,o Norfolk RO, Le Strange MSS IB 3/5. Library, Suffolk Rolls no. -,.,.

/iit 2 4 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW Swithun's Priory Winchester. Also thehar- manors inevitably cheated the lord, by vest is associated with paternalistic cus- claiming more than the real expenditure. toms, like the many perquisites granted The harvest costs seem to havebeen subject to customary tenants performing labour to frequent disputes between officials and services in the autumn.'S Is it therefore auditors, judging from the number ofalter- possible that the accounts which contain ations on the documents. The vigilance harvest diets are very unrepresentative, of the auditors is our guarantee that the recording the generosity of 'good' lords, amounts are not ludicrously over-stated, well in excess of normal provisions? This and our trust in their professionalism is unlikely, first because documents from receives some reassurance from the mar- the manors of minor landowners- gentry ginal notes in which they checked the and very small monastic houses - show a figures by calculating the number of people similar autumn dietary regime; and sec- receiving bread from a bushel of grain, ondly because great lords were very cost- or the daily cost of food issued to one conscious, and employed auditors to make employee.~7 The quantities are likely to sure that workers did not receive pay be somewhat exaggerated, but were not greatly in excess of the going rate. Peasant fictitious. An administrative complication and seigneurial employers were competing at Sedgeford arises from the existence of in the same labour market, and both gave two manors, Easthall and Westhall; the workers in the late thirteenth century a former may have provided goods for the daily wage of'Id with food', and presum- Westhall employees without any reference ably there was some comparability be- appearing in the accounts, but this is tween employers in the payments in kind unlikely. Some items are absent from the as well as in cash. accounts because they involved no expen- diture of money, notably the from the naanor's garden. Also the docu- I ments are silent about the distribution of Sedgeford has been chosen as an example foodstuffs anaong the workforce. For because of the manor's remarkably long example, the meat included such delicacies series of accounts, and the detailed infor- as doves and poultry, which were likely mation that they contain. They were corn- to have been reserved for the supervisors piled for Norwich Cathedral Priory, a and not shared equally among the workers. house famous for its thorough accounting The main problem in using the accounts, methods. '(' The form of the paragraph in however, is that they do not record the each document headed 'Costs of the actual recipients of the . Judging from Autumn' is ideal for this analysis because the vast quantities, the workers must have the use of cash is given in detail. Many of been handing over much of the food either the foodstuffs came from the manor's own to assistants or to their families. We know I resources, and are recorded twice, under that in later periods harvest workers some- the autunm costs, and on the dorse of the times worked as teams with wives and I account. The information is imperfect in children. 'S It is also possible that some food i ways that are common to all medieval was sent out of the temporary harvest accounts. The officials in charge of the 17 This type of checking calculation was recommended in auditors' :ext-books; eg D Oschinsky (ed). l1411ter of Hellh'),, Oxford, 15 A Jones, 'Harvest Customs and Labourers' Perquisites in Sou- 1971, pp 417-45. thern England, 115o--135o: the Corn Harvcst', A,I! Hist Rcl,, 18 I)H Morgan, 'The Place of Harvesters in Ninctccnth-Ccntury XXV, 1977, pp 14-22; Bushaway op cit for a general discussion. Village Life', in P, Samuels (cd), Village L!~, and Lahore'. t975, 16 E Stone, 'Profit-and-loss Accountancy at Norwich Cathedral pp 29-72; idem, Harl,esters and Harf,estin~, 1982, pp 23-5, 59. Priory', Transactiolls of the Ro),al Historical Socict),, 5th ser, Xll, Cf K 1) M Snell. Annals of the Labol~rin.l? Poor, Cambridge, 1962, pp 25-48. 1985, pp 52-3. CHANGES IN DIET IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES: THE CASE OF HARVEST WORKERS 25 to dependants. Certainly the TABLE I diets that we are investigating must have Analysis (by Value, in Percentages) of Food- been consumed by a much wider circle of stuffs Consumed by Harvest Workers at Sedge- ford, Norfolk, 1256-1424" people than the accounts reveal. Sedgeford lay in the 'good sand' district Year Ia56 Ia64 1274 ie86 1294 13~o 13a6 1341 of north-west Norfolk. 1')The sown acreage Bread 4I 48 49 47 48 43 39 34 of the demesne sometimes exceeded 4oo Pottage corn I I 2 2 1 I I I acres before the Black Death, and shrank Ale I3 7 ii i2 i6 14 I7 21 to 268 acres by 1424. The land was used Meat 4 4 7 ~4 8 8 II 9 to grow barley with some , rye, Fish I3 i6 i2 i2 9 IO i0 I7 Dairy produce 28 24 19 I3 18 24 22 I8 peas, and . Stock kept on the manor included a dairy herd of about two dozen Year 1353 1368 1378 1387 14o7 1413 J4a4 cows in the late thirteenth century, Bread 3I x9 t5 I4 x7 20 I5 together with pigs and poultry, and a large Pottage corn I I I I I I I flock of sheep. Ale 26 28 22 20 33 29 4I Every year between twenty and fifty Meat x5 25 24 30 28 ~ 28 full-time workers appear on the harvest Fish 14 I3 15 23 IO /5° 6 pay-roll of Sedgeford. -'° The content of the Dairy produce t3 I4 23 I2 xI 9 diet issued to them is indicated by Table * All columns total Ioo% I, which gives the percentage of each type of food calculated by value. In the thir- vals, so far as the uneven survival of the teenth century the bulk of the supplies was documents allows. The figures usually produced on the demesne, so the values derive directly from the documents. Esti- have been calculated fi'om current prices, mation has been been used only in the case mostly given in the Sedgeford accounts or of the oatmeal for the pottage, for which from accounts of manors as near as possible the accounts usually give the quantity only to Sedgeford. In the fourteenth and fig for the whole year, and for which is teenth centuries more food was purchased, often Stated to be the product of the cows and the accounts themselves provide valu- during the autumn, which has to be calcu- ations for the products of the manor. lated from the yield before and after the Long-term and short-term variations in harvest period. prices have influenced the figures, but they Table 2, which attempts to quantify the reflect changes in quantity rather than diet in two sample years by giving the prices. Violent short-terln fluctuations did items provided, and the share of each per- not occur in the years chosen for analysis, son per day, is much more speculative than and the long-term decline in grain prices Table 1. Meat and fish have been put was to some extent offset by the substi- together, though in reality they would tution of wheat for cheaper grains in the have been eaten on separate days according later part of the period. Therefore the main to the church's rules. The figures for shares reason for the trends shown in Table 1 is rest on questionable assumptions about the the change in the actual quantity and qual- weight of foods, the translation of medi- ity of different foods issued, not move- eval into modern measures, the amount of ments in prices. The information is waste in preparation, and the calorific provided in approximate ten-year inter- values of medieval foods (the assumptions behind the calculations are given in Appen- 19 J Williamson, 'Norfolk', in P 13 A Harvey (cd), The Peasam dix I). As noted above, the very large Land Market in Medieval En.l!land, Oxford, 1984, pp 84-1o2. 20 Norfolk RO, DCN 6o/33/1,2,4,5,7,1o, 14,19,25,3o,31; Le quantity of food allowed for each person, Strange MSS. tB 114, 3/5. much in excess of the 2000-3600 calories 26 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW TABLE 2 Food Allowances at Sedgeford (Norfolk) xz56 (I44~ man-days) Food Amount per man-da}, Amount per man-day Kcal (imperial) (metric) (%)

Bread I qr 7 bu wheat / 6.99 lb 3171 g 9,602 (74%) 27 qr 2 bu barleyJ Pottage qr 2 bu oats 2.49 oz 71 g 285 (2%) Ale 8 qr 4 bu malt 2.83 pt 1.6I 1 513 (4%) Meat i pig ~ 3.68 oz lO4 g 243 (2%) 2o fowls and 6s 8V4d spent Fish 17o mulwcll ] I5,52 OZ 44 ° g 694 (5%) Io5o herrings J Dairy produce I2o eggs 0. i20Z 3 g 6o2 Ib chccsc 6.67 oz I89 g 1,63o (i3%) 518 gall milk 2.87 pt 1.63 1 I2,967 (ioo%)

I424 (906 man-days)

Bread 3 qr 4 bu wheat 1.97 lb 894 g 1,994 (40%) Pottage 4 bu oats 1.59 oz 45 g 18o (4%) Ale 12 qr malt 6.36 pt 3.61 1 1,154 (23%) Meat 3 pigs 16.87 oz 478 g i,I69 (23%) i bullock 8 sheep 8 geese and ms od spent Fish 30 cod 3.46 oz 98 g 135 (3%) Dairy produce Cheese, milk, , 3.96 oz 112 g 336 (7%) eggs - calculated as 224 lb cheese 4,968 000%) now regarded as a normal adult's daily the cash wage for the season had risen to intake, must be explained by assuming that about 7s each and food allowances were helpers and families were being fed out of valued by the auditors of the accounts at the harvest allowances, and consequently around 11/2dper person per day. So workers no certain judgements can be made of the after the Black Death were receiving a actual quantity eaten by individuals each higher proportion of cash, and food allow- day. Nor should the reduction in the size ance of lower quantity and value, but of of the shares between the late thirteenth generally higher quality. The valuations of and early fifteenth century be taken as the individuals' allowances in both cash evidence of a decline in food intake. Over and calories suggest that in the thirteenth the period the method of payment shifted; century (when skilled workers were paid at the beginning the average pay of individ- about 3d per day) the harvest workers were ual workers for the harvest period was a getting enough to feed a whole family, little over 2s in cash, with food allowances while after the Black Death they received worth about 2d per day, while in the I420s a good proportion of a household's needs CHANGES IN DIET IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES: THE CASE OF HARVEST WORKERS 27 and the rest would have come from any malt rose from about an eighth to ., land held by them or from purchases. a quarter of the budget. By the early fif- 4 The mechanics of food distribution among teenth century the quantity of malt would i assistants or families are not known. The have been sufficient to give shares of six I accounts insist that the grain was milled pints (3.4 litres) of the best ale, or a gallon and baked and the malt brewed, so the of thinner stuff (4.5 litres), though each workers were receiving prepared food and person, allowing for undocumented help- drink, not sacks of grain. Medieval bread ers, may have received a smaller amount. was often kept, even in aristocratic house- Perhaps Hillman's advice to farmers brew- holds, for days, even a week, before con- ing for the harvest, written in 171o, indi- sumption, so it could have been sent out cates earlier practice: 'make three sorts of occasionally to dependants. Liquids, like , the.., strongest for your own use, pottage and ale, were more difficult to the second is what is called best beer, transport in quantity, so it seenls likely whereof each man ought to have a pint in that they were consumed by the harvest the morning before he goes to work, and workers themselves. as much at night as soon as he comes in The diet of the thirteenth century • . . Small beer they must also have in the revealed by these accounts is characterized field. ':~ Meat increased greatly in import- by a high proportion of bread, with a great ance in the late fourteenth century, from deal of dairy produce in the form of cheese a tenth or less of the food budget to a made from the manorial cows earlier in quarter or a third of the total, while dairy tile summer, and milk from tile cows dur- produce, and at a later stage, fish, declined• ing the harvest season. Together these two In terms of nutritional values, the allow- elements totalled about four-fifths of tile ances of the fifteenth century contained calorific value of tile food issues. TILe malt much fewer calories deriving from could have provided a share of two or consumed in the form of bread• Meat, three pints (I. 3-1.7 litres) of strong ale, in which contributed a negligible proportion which case, in view of the heat and sweat of calories two hundred years earlier, was of the harvest field the workers must have now a source of a fifth or more of the drunk much milk and . A more likely total. way of using the malt would have been to Another way of expressing the changes brew a larger quantity of thinner ale (four in the balance of the diet would be to set or five pints ?), though even then some the ale aside and concentrate on solid other drink would have been needed to foods. In that case, bread in the third quench the thirsts of these active workers, quarter of the thirteenth century accounted especially in view of tile unrecorded num- for about a half of the total cost, and meat bers of assistants or relatives receiving between 4 and 8 per cent, while in the some of the ale. early fifteenth century a quarter of the Changes in the diet are apparent in the expenditure went on bread, and 42-47 per early fourteenth century (see Table 1), cent on meat. For every 2 lb of bread when the percentage spent on bread that they ate in the thirteenth century, the i declined, and the value of the ale increased. workers received an ounce or two of meat i By 1341 enough malt was provided to give and about 5 oz of fish. A century and a i as much as five pints (2.8 litres) of strong half later, for every 2 lb of bread workers ', ale for each worker on the pay roll. After were allowed a pound of meat and 3-4 oz ] I349 these trends were emphasized, with of fish. ! the value of bread corn, once a hahc of the 21 T Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, Oxford, 1984, total spent, falling to only a fifth, while the p 305. 28 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW The quality of the foods also changed. meat and non-meat ('fast') days as did Bread was baked mainly from barley in aristocratic , observing fast days the thirteenth and early fourteenth century. on Fridays and Saturdays, on the vigils of Wheat accounted for less than 8 per cent feasts, and perhaps also on Wednesdays, (by volume) of the bread corn, and prob- in which case it might be expected that the ably the sergeant and the other supervisors average quantity of meat would be equal ate the wheat bread, along with other to, or rather greater than, the weights 'luxuries' such as poultry. An increase in of fish. Before 1349 fish exceeded meat, the proportion of wheat and rye at the suggesting that cheese was eaten, either expense of barley is apparent in z34I, and with the meat, or instead of meat on non- continued rapidly until the wheat and rye fast days. After the mid-fourteenth century amounted to almost a half by 1353, and the situation was reversed, and as the meat by I387 barley bread had disappeared com- increased and the fish dwindled the cheese pletely from the harvest food allowances. would have supplemented the fish. How- Then the proportion of wheat increased ever, the quantities of dairy produce until it replaced rye entirely in I4o 7. In declined in the long term, being displaced this year, the bread which was purchased by meat and perhaps (for liquid milk) for holidays when the Sedgeford by ale. No change in the types of milk- took a rest was described as 'white', sug- products is known, though butter is gesting the use of with a high extrac- specifically mentioned for the first time in tion of . When wheat replaced barley I3O9 and regularly thereafter. as the main bread corn the daily quantity The physical arrangements for the har- dropped sharply to about 2 Ib per head, so vest workers' meals can be glimpsed fi'onl presumably the workers were exchanging hints in the accounts. At least one meal quality for quantity, and gave a much each day was eaten ad me~lsam, at the lord's smaller proportion to assistants. table, set out in the hall of the manor The meat provided in the thirteenth cen- house. A canvas table cloth five ells long tury consisted mainly of bacon. Fresh beef was bought in I378, but a longer table was included from as early as 1286, and would have been needed to seat all of the after the mid-fourteenth century the pro- workers of that year, and perhaps only portion of beef rose until three cattle were the supervisors enjoyed the privilege of being slaughtered in some years; also in a covered board. Expenditure on candles the fourteenth century fresh mutton was suggests that either some eating or food being added to meat supplies. Towards the preparation took place in the dark, leaving year I4oo the allowance of meat for each the daylight hours for work in the field - officially listed worker had reached a level unless such work as carting or stacking near to a pound per day, counting only sometimes continued after dusk.-'-" The the carcass meat, and a chance statement morning meal, pralldium, was eaten out- in the account for I387 makes it clear that of-doors, judging from the enaployment the offal was also consumed. Fish supplies of a servant to carry food and drink vers,s consisted mainly of cod and preserved campum (to the field). The food was eaten herring throughout the period, though its from dishes, plates, and bowls of wood unpopularity is suggested by the diminish- bought for the purpose, together with ing quantities issued in the late fourteenth wooden spoons; the brewing required the century, and fresh fish (that is, fresh sea purchase and maintenance of large vessels. fish) is mentioned for the first time in The custom of feeding harvest workers the early fifteenth century. Presumably the 22 Nigh~ harvesting in Norfolk is attested in cl7m: ibid, p 3o5: harvest workers kept the same pattern of see also Auk, op tit, pp 3(~7. 4 /

_J .... CHANGES IN DIET IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES: THE CASE OF HARVEST WORKERS 29 helps to explain why estates maintained cent in I266 to i6 per cent in I389 .24 At manor houses which were used only rarely both of these places the amount of meat as residences for the lords. increased markedly over the same period, To sum up, the Sedgeford records give from a tenth to more than a quarter of the a picture of harvest workers and their food budget. On a different estate (that dependants of the thirteenth century sitting of Merton College, Oxford), at Cuxham down to heavy meals of barley bread and (Oxon) the value of the -based foods cheese, accompanied by a little salt meat amounted to 69 per cent of the total in or preserved fish, with ale, milk, and water I297, and by I357 had fallen to 58 per to drink. Their successors of the fifteenth cent, with a corresponding increase in the century were issued with ample quantities proportion of companagium. ~5 The import- of wheat bread, nearly a gallon of ale ance of the change in the mid-fourteenth per day, and (except on fast days), large century is indicated by the figures from portions of fresh meat. Thurlby (Lincs) where the proportion of meat m the harvesters' food budget increased from 8 per cent in 1341 to 26 per II cent in i362, and the ratio between cereal- The custom of feeding harvest workers at based foods and companagium changed from the lord's table was especially common in 77:23 to 56:44 .-'6 Norfolk, but is found sporadically in the Secondly, as at Sedgeford, there was a records of manors in other counties. Infor- tendency for a greater proportion of cereals mation for comparison with Sedgeford has to be used for brewing rather than , been obtained from seventeen manors, five with ale accounting for I6 per cent of the in Norfolk, four in Hampshire, two each value of the supplies in I287 at Apple&am in Suffolk and Sussex, and single manors (Sussex), but 30 per cent and above in in Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Oxford- many years between I34I and I45o.'7A shire, and Warwickshire. There are broad more modest increase is found at Cuxham, similarities between the general trends at from 3o per cent in I297 to 37 per cent in Sedgeford and these other manors, and I357. some important variations. Thirdly, the content of the companagium First a general tendency can be recog- changed, the proportion of meat rising nized for the balance of the diet to shift while that of dairy produce decreased. This from cereal-based foods (bread, -meal was especially marked at Hindolveston and pottage, and ale), towards meat, fish, and Martham. At Appledram in 1375 an expla- dairy produce, which the accounts some- nation to the auditor shows that fresh meat times call companagium (literally, 'that was being deliberately substituted for dairy which goes with bread'). At Hindolveston, produce: 'and no more [cheese and butter] another Norfolk manor on the same estate because six wethers and ewes were as Sedgeford, the bread element amounted expended in the autumn, and three geese'. :8 to about a half (by value) in the mid- Variations from the Sedgeford example thirteenth century, and was reduced to 28 are mainly apparent in the types of food per cent in 1362 and I5 per cent by 1412. 23 eaten. In Norfolk in the thirteenth century At Martham in north-east Norfolk, in a much more fertile, intensively cultivated district, the proportion of expenditure on 24 Norfolk RO, DCN 60/23/3,23; NNAS, 5899/2o l)l. 25 Harvey (ed), op tit, pp 28x-588. bread fell in a similar way from 48 per 26 PRO, SC6 914/6,7. ! 27 PRO, SC6 io16/5,7,9, i2, H,14, i5,18; io17/1,4,5,6,8,1o, ii,14, 16,18,20,24,25; I018/22,24. 4 23 Norfolk RO, DCN, 6o/18/I,t4,3o,38,59. 28 PRO, SC6 1o17/8. /i i!i: !

3 ° THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW barley and rye were the main bread corns, figured prominently in the diets of the though in the early fourteenth century the I29os, and fresh mutton was added during Hunstanton harvest workers were given the fourteenth century. Mutton appeared maslin bread (wheat and rye). ~9 Elsewhere for the first time xn the Apple&am the move towards wheat as the main or accounts in I354 and then became a normal sole bread corn was a marked development feature of the harvest workers' diet for of the fourteenth century, and the change at least the next century. At Manydown had often been completed by the I38os. (Hants) mutton already figured promi- The workers at Mildenhall, a Suffolk nently among the types of meat in I338, manor of Bury St Edmunds Abbey, and the innovation of the late fourteenth advanced slowly and the proportion of and fifteenth century was the introduction wheat issued to them rose from a third in of quantities of fresh beef." Poultry, 1324 tO below a half in 1382, when maslin especially geese, formed a fairly consistent and still accounted for much of minor element in harvest food supplies the total. 3° In other counties, notably in throughout the later middle ages. Tra- Hampshire, Oxfordshire, and Sussex, har- ditionally geese were fattened on the grain vest workers were given wheat bread even that lay among the autumn stubble, and in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth then slaughtered for a celebratory feast, century. An exception is Combe (Hants) called the ripgoos; they may also have been where 39 per cent of the harvest bread in served on the 'high table' of the bailiff and I3o7 was baked from beremancorn and the supervisors throughout the whole season..,4 rest from wheat, and the harvesters at While recognizing the improvement in another Hampshire manor, Chilbolton, ate the meat allowance, some reservations mainly wheat bread but a quarter or a third should be made about the quality of the of the bread was baked from barley in the provisions. While medieval taste did not decades around I3oo, and the barley was entirely share our preference for young replaced by wheat in the course of the animals, some appreciation of such meat fourteenth century.3' in aristocratic households is indicated by On southern manors before 1349 cider the calves, piglets, and lambs served in often provided a major part of the drink addition to predominantly mature animals. supplied to harvest workers, even exceed- The harvest workers were generally given ing the quantity of ale supplies. On such animals too old or too inadequate to per- manors as Appledram, Lullington, and form their normal functions on the manor; Chilbolton in the late fourteenth century the accounting officials were anxious to cider was replaced by ale, though at the impress this on the auditors who might former manor it continued to make an have questioned the use of high quality intermittent appearance after 137o.3" stock for this purpose. Hence the pro- In Norfolk the meat mainly eaten by cession of ancient bulls, enfeebled oxen, harvest workers changed from bacon to sterile cows, and kebb (culled) wethers and fresh beef. Similarly at Cuxham bacon ewes slaughtered for harvest workers. When those at Mildenhall (Suffolk) were 29 Norfolk RO, Le Strange MSS BG 4; NH 4a; G H Holley, 'The Earliest Roll of Household Accounts in the Muniment Room supplied with two heifers, the auditors at Hunstanton for the 2nd year of Edward 111', Nor~lk Archae- were informed that the beasts were olq~y, 21, 192o-2, p 95. 3o Bodleian Library, Suffolk P,olls No 2,; British Library, Add thought to be diseased - perhaps the har- Roll 53,116. 31 M Chibnall (ed), Select Documents of the English LaMs qf the Abbey qfBec, Camden Society, 3rd ser, LXXIII, 195', pp 149- 33 G W Kitchin, The Manor ofMan),down, lqampshire, Hampshire 52; J S Drew, The Manor of Chilbolton (Hams), Typescript in Record Society, 1895, pp 15o-8; Wiucbcster Cathedral Library, the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Box 29/nos 47, 49. 32 See notes 13, 23, and 31 above. 34 Tusser, op cit, p x78. CHANGES IN DIET IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES: THE CASE OF HARVEST WORKERS 3 I vest workers were not told of this. 35 As at in I357. 3'~ Salt is mentioned as a separate Sedgeford, on other manors they con- item in some accounts, but more often it sumed the offal of animals killed for the came from the manors' general supply. harvest. The domestic arrangements of the other The fish purchased for the autumn meals manors resembled those of Sedgeford. At usually included some type of salted white Catton, because the harvest workers col- fish and either red or white herrings. At lected rectorial tithes as well as bringing Appledram after I37o and in I384 at Boar- in the demesne crops, in I274 they were hunt (Hants) the harvesters ate fresh fish 'at table' both in the hall of the manor, as well as the preserved kinds.36 and in the 'church house'. Treen utensils Harvest workers were provided with were in use everywhere, and the purchase pottage, which was also given to the full- of a linen table cloth at Wibtoft (War) in time famuli all year round, when they I377 shows that Sedgeford was not unique received no other food apart from their in providing such a refinement. 4° liveries of grain. Oatmeal, and sometimes The detailed chronology of dietary peas and beans, provided the basis of this change deserves closer investigation. dish. The other ingredients to some extent Clearly the pattern of consumption remain a mystery, except that at Catton changed most rapidly when the size of the (Norfolk) in I274 5d was spent on olera whole labour force fell precipitously in (vegetables) for pottage. 37 Normally such I348-9, but the diets cannot be simply crops as and leeks were grown in resolved into those prevailing before and the garden of the manor, and because they after the plague. The Sedgeford figures involved little expenditure, were not men- show a definite downward movement in tioned in the accounts. There is direct the proportion of the budget devoted to evidence at Lakenheath (Suffolk) where in bread in I34I, ,and the beginning of the r329-3o the garden of the manor was substitution of wheat and rye for barley. leased out on condition that vegetables Another Norfolk manor, Carton, has more were still supplied for the pottage of the plentiful documents for the early four- famuli. 3~ In view of the relatively small teenth century, and they confirm a decline effort that went in general into manorial in expenditure on bread and an increase on gardening, certainly in terms of payments meat long before the Black Death, even of cash, the production of vegetables must beginning as early as the I29os. 4' Rye gen- have been severely limited in quantity. erally replaced barley on this manor in Their virtual omission from the documents the early fourteenth century, and by r339 was not just accidental - it is a measure of wheat and rye together accounted for more their small importance in the eyes of lords than half of the corn for baking bread. and their officials. The vegetables contrib- Similarly the introduction of fresh meat uted flavour to the meals, like the garlic appears generally in the early fourteenth supplied to the Cuxham harvest workers century, in I3I 7 in the case of mutton at Cuxham. So in diet, as with other indices 35 Feeding old animals to the harvest workers was advised by of economic change, the Black Death Hillman in the early eighteenth century: 'a cow or two, some appears as intensifying and accelerating fiztted crones (old ewes) may be timely provided .... and if you have but plenty, and , provided it bc sw:'ct, your guests will ask no forthcr questions: for at this time they do expect a full diet'. Tusser. op eit, p 30,o. 36 Hampshire RO, 5 M5o/72. 37 Norfolk RO, I)CN 60/4/5. 39 Harvey (ed), op cit, p 577. Saffron and pepper were provided, 38 Cambridge University Library, EI)C 7/15/IUt/8 M5, Mx3. probably because a fellow of Merton College was visiting. (Transcript by Miss J Cripps in the School of History, Univer- 40 British Library, Add Roll 49,748. sity of Birmingham.) 41 Norfolk RO, DCN 6o/4/I,5,6, I x, x5,22,25,36. ii:i

3 2 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW :! ) processes that had begun in previous dec- ucts. Independent wage earners and peas- > ades - it was not an initiator of trends. 4' ants presumably changed their consump- Nor did the first major epidemic lead to tion in years of shortage, but in much more an immediate transformation of harvest extreme ways, for example by cutting out workers' dietary standards. The shift in the completely ale and animal products. balances of the diet between cereal-based foodstuffs and companagium, the rise of fresh meat to become the most important non-cereal food, and the emergence of III wheat as the main bread corn, all worked The study of the food given to harvest their way through the system for fifty workers ought to have wider implications. years and more after I349. The peak of Can we simply state that a normal lower- dietary improvement seems not to have class daily diet throughout the middle ages been reached until the fifteenth century. contained thousands of calories with ample In addition to the long-term trends, food quantities of bread and companagium, and consumption was affected by year to year that the balance between cereals and meat fluctuations in grain production. At Catton improved considerably over the period in I322-3, a bad year, the price of barley I25O-I45O?4s The answer must be decis- had risen from the usual 3s or 4s per quarter ively negative. We must attempt to define to 8s, 9s, and Ios, and rye cost Ios per the relationship between harvest workers' quarter. 43 The quantity of grain allocated diets and those consumed by wage-earners to the harvest workers did not change, but of all kinds, especially in the nine-tenths the estate managers stopped providing rye of their lives when they were not working for bread as they had done regularly for in the harvest field, and also to see how more than twenty years, and the bread was the harvest diets may have compared with therefore made entirely from the less-costly those of peasants who consumed their own barley. They economized slightly on ale, produce. meat, and dairy produce, but still provided It is a simple task to show that some foodstuffs worth 64s, compared with a of the people who worked in the special normal 3os to 5os. The extra expenditure circmnstances of the harvest ate less well was perhaps judged to be profitable at other times. Some of those 'at the lord's because of the high value of the harvested table' on Norfolk manors were the grain. In extreme shortages like the great demesnefamuli, and the allowance of grain famine of I315-r7 in Yorkshire, monastic that they normally received was consist- employers did not scruple to lay off ser- ently inferior in both quantity and quality vants to save cash and grain. 44 The man- to the grain consumed in the autumn. agers at Catton did not choose the harsh The fam,li received barley as their livery option of beating their workers down to throughout the period, while the harvest a bare minimum when there must have workers were given a growing proportion been a queue of potential employees. of rye and wheat. The livery outside the Instead they responded predictably by harvest season increased in quantity during switching to cheaper cereals, by using cere- the upheavals of the fourteenth century, als for bread rather than for ale, and by from a quarter every IO weeks (about 4V2 economizing on non-essential animal prod- qrs per annum) to a quarter every 8 weeks (51/2-6 qrs per annum). This was marginally 42 M J Hatcher and E Miller, Mediel,al En,qland: Rllral Society and Ecotwmic Change, 1o86-1348, 1978, pp 240- 5 i. inferior to the allowance in the harvest 43 Cf H E Hallam, 'The Climate of Eastern England, 125o-135o', Ag Hist Rev, XXXII, 1984, pp 124-32. 45 H E Hallam, Rm'al Etl¢land 1o66-.1348, 198z, p 15, apparently 44 1 Kershaw, Bolton Priori,, Oxford, 1973, pp 52-8. supports this view. CHANGES IN DIET IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES: THE CASE OF HARVEST WORKERS 33 season which often exceeded a bushel per resemblance ends, because only an extreme week. For most of the year the famuli optimist would expect peasants to eat as cannot have consumed much drink and much dairy produce, fish, or meat as did companagium, as the 4s per ammm cash the harvest workers. At Sedgeford in the wage of a famulus in the early fourteenth late thirteenth century forty or so harvest century, rising to 1.3s 4d per annum a workers had the use of the products of century later, would not have bought ale, twenty or more cows, whereas the better- meat, fish, and cheese on the same scale as off peasants who had a cow or two would in the autumn. The same inequality only have drunk a little milk and would between harvest provisions and daily fare have made as much cheese as possible in is found throughout the country: the Cux- the summer and autumn for consumption hamfamuli were given a mixture of'currall' during the winter. 4X The wealthiest peas- (low grade wheat), dredge (barley and ants may have consumed more food than oats), and peas, while the harvest workers usual in the harvest time, and offered ate wheat bread; and at Manydown (Hants) workers a share that was comparable with in the r44os, where the harvesters were that provided by their rival employers in similarly well-fed, the famuli received bar- order to obtain labour, but they would ley and berecorn (winter barley). Thefamuli have eaten more frugally at other times. did not necessarily live entirely off their Peasants were better off than harvest wages and liveries, as some of them had workers overall because of the relative smallholdings, but it seems likely that their security of their source of income, while liveries reflect the types of grain eaten by the harvesters taken on in August would agricultural wage-workers generally. not all have had a guaranteed job from Nor is it likely that the householding October to July. To quote a fourteenth- peasantry would have eaten as well as the century poem, in words attributed to a harvest workers. There is some similarity herdsman, 'Better were meles many than between the types of grain issued to harvest a mery nyghte'. 4') The smallholding peasan- workers and the allowances of grain made try were especially disadvantaged in the to retired peasants (including better-off bad harvest years, because they would not peasants) under the terms of maintenance have produced enough from the land to agreements. So, for example, in the early feed themselves, and their meagre earnings fourteenth century retirement allowances would not have bought much extra food. in Hampshire contained wheat as a third The ratio between cereal-based foods or a half of the total, not unlike the bread- (bread, oatmeal, ale) and companagium, corn consumed by the harvest workers measured in terms of value, provides a of Chilbolton, Combe, and Manydown. 4'~ means of comparing diets. After the Sedgeford peasants in the I26os agreed to advance of the fourteenth century the har- accept for their maintenance combinations vest workers achieved a ratio of about of rye and barley, similar but rather 50:50. This places them well above the superior to the mainly barley bread eaten paupers of Sherborne hospital, Dorset, in by the harvest workers. 47 Also the emphasis I439-4o (78:22) and somewhat superior to on dairy produce and bacon in the pre- the carters employed by the same insti- ~349 harvest diet would have been typical tution (6a:38), or building workers at of the peasantry. There, however, the Bridgwater, Somerset, in I4ZO (63:37), or

46 I am grateful to DrJ Z Titow for letting me see his transcriptions 48 M M Postan, 'Village Livestock in the Thirteenth Century', in from the pipe rolls of the bishopric of Winchester (in Hampshire Medieval Agriculture atnl General Problems of the Medieval Economy, RO) of maintenance agreemems. Cambridge, 1973, pp 214-48; R H Hilton, A Medieval Society, 47 Norfolk RO, DCN 5282; I am grateful to l)rJ Williamson for 2nd edn, Cambridge, 1983, pp 1o9-qo. this information. 49 I Gollancz (ed), Wimwr and Waster, Oxford, 1921, 1 365. 34 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW building workers at Wyre Piddle (Worcs) as the period developed, closing part of in 1377-8 (58:42).S°Before the Black Death the gap between themselves and the lower the harvest workers' provisions were ranks of the or gentry. markedly inferior to those of minor aristo- Although the quantity and quality of crats. The accounts of Thurlby (Lincs) of their diet put the harvest workers into a 1341 (see Table 3) record both the harvest special category, the changes in their food costs and the household expenses of the allowances reflect more widespread devel- prioress of the poor nunnery of Stamford. opments throughout the lower ranks of society. The famuli, especially those who TABLE 3 did not receive the bonus of meals at the Expenditure on Food at Thurlby (Lincs), lord's table in the autumn, were given a 13 4 O-1 "sx higher proportion of wheat in their liveries Harvest workers Prioress and in the late fourteenth and fifteenth century, companions though they rarely achieved the privilege Bread 7s Id (22%) 3s 4d (2I%) of an entirely wheat diet. Famuli and ser-

Pottag.e 6d (1%) _ vants generally were criticized by late Ale ~7s 8d (54%) 3s 2d (20%) fourteenth-century clerical and gentry Meat 2s 8d (8%) 8s 2d (53%) writers for their demands for good ale, Fish 3s 6d (II%) 3d (2%) and fresh meat that was well-cooked and Dairy Produce is 2d (4%) 3d (2%) 4d(2%) hot. Evidence after I349 for a shift in agricultural production from arable to pas- TOTAL 32s 7d (Ioo%) ISS 6d (too%) ture suggests a general increase in meat consumption, and the professionalization of brewing may point to a greater volume Not only are the differences indicated by of ale-drinking." the ratios of cereal foods to companagium (77:23 for the harvest workers, 41:59 for the prioress), but the prioress also con- IV sumed such luxuries as spices and piglets. The changes in diet so precisely measurable In the I45OS however, the ratio of 5o:5o is in the case of the harvest workers, and found in the budget of the chantry priests arguably affecting a wide section of of Bridport (Dorset), and is comparable society, seem to be capable of a simple with the harvest workers of the same demographic explanation. The quality of period, s, foodstuffs varied in inverse proportion to So the autumn diets that we have been the size of the population, with cheap examining can be located at the apex of cereals being issued during the period of the wage-earning classes, suggesting that high and growing numbers of people in the harvest workers formed an aristocracy the late thirteenth century, and a switch to of labour, much better offthan agricultural wheat and meat eating after the famines workers in normal seasons, wealthier than and plagues of the fourteenth century. some building workers, having similarities However, closer examination of the with the standards of the peasantry, and, changes suggests that more complex expla- nations are necessary. The early fourteenth 50 Dorset RO, D 2o4/A14; R H Hilton, 'Pain et Cervoise dans century poses a problem, because there is les Villes Anglaises au Moyen Age', in L'Approvisiomlement des Villes de I' Occidentale, 5e Flaran Journdes lnternatiooales d'Histoire, Auch, 1985, p azz; PRO, SC6 m7U5. 53 C Dyer, 'English Diet in the Later Middle Ages', in T H Aston 51 PRO, SC6 914/6. et al (eds), Social Relations and Ideas, Cambridge, t983, pp 21o- 52 K Wood-Legh, A Small Household of the F!fieenth Centmy, 16; P Clark, The Etaglish Ale House: a Social History taoo-t,~3o, Manchester, 1956, passim. t983, pp 2o-38. CHANGES IN DIET IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES" THE CASE OF HARVEST WORKERS 35 clear evidence then, especially in Norfolk, workers were located at the top of a hier- of improvements in the diet of harvesters, archy that included at the bottom wage- very much in line with the general tend- earners and smallholders who would have ency for both cash wages and real wages been much less well fed because of their to creep upwards in the three decades low wages and intermittent employment. between the agrarian crisis of 1315-22 and Above all, the harvest workers' food the first outbreak of plague in I348-9. -~4 allowances were not much affected by the This would be compatible with the contro- crises of subsistence, but the rest of society versial argument that the population had was not so insulated. Even the harvest reached a ceiling by I315, and that decline workers who had lived quite well in was beginning before the Black Death. August might have faced severe hardships However, direct evidences of population at other seasons in such years as 131o and movements are few and contradictory. 1323. Essex figures support the view that popu- The changes in diet after 1349 took some lation declined, while in a Norfolk example time to have their maximum effect, in spite a continued increase up to I349 has been of the suddenness and the severity of the argued." Real wages may have increased demographic catastrophe. This is ~artly in this period because of econolnic factors, because population levels, though reduced notably the growing competition between by 40 per cent or more in I349, did not industrial and agricultural employment, reach their lowest limit until after 14oo. but with such a large agricultural work- And the economy of the period I35O-75 force it seems difficult to believe that indus- had as one of its determining characteristics try (such as cloth-making) could have gen- a succession of poor harvests and conse- erated enough employment to have a quently high grain prices. Also the food general ilnpact on wages. The diet evi- allowances, as an element in wages, were dence - the n:ost direct index of real earn- subject to the complex combination of ings available to us - seems to support the pressure and inertia that lay behind the view that population was declining and increases in cash remuneration. The therefore causing a growing scamty of employees had to bargain for improve- labour, as is proposed by those who argue ments, as at Appledram in 1354, where the that population outstripped resources in provision of ale instead of cider was at the early fourteenth century. The dis- issue. More ale was bought, explained the covery that individuals around i3oo were manorial officials to the auditors, 'because receiving food allowances in excess of the reap-reeve would not drink anything :o, ooo calories per day might seen: to be but ale in the whole of the harvest time'. incompatible with the idea that the same At any period of rapid social change time period suffered from problems of under- is needed to adjust to new circumstances, nourishment. But, as has already been sug- and the resistance of lords and employers gested, the allowances were in fact sup- provided a strong obstacle in the four- porting whole families at perhaps 2000- teenth century. As lords they had a grip 3000 calories each per day, a!ad the harvest on the farnuli who were often also their serfs, and they could discipline them 54 D L Farmer, 'Prices and Wages', in H E Hallam (ed), Agrarian through the manor courts. Behind them History oJ'England and Wales, II, Cambridge, 1988, pp 716-817. lay the legal force of the kingdom, albeit 55 L R Poos, 'The Rural Population of Essex in the Later Middle Ages', Econ Hist Rev, 2nd set, XXXVIII, 1985, pp 52I-3; inefficiently enforced, acting through the B M S Campbell, 'Population Pressure, Inheritalzce and the Statute of Labourers. The sense of shock Land Market in a Fourteenth-Century Peasant Community', in R M Sinith (eft), Land, Kinship aM L(l'e-cych', Cambridge, 1984, felt by aristocratic employers at the new pp 87-134. social climate was expressed in contempor- 36 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW ary literature as well as legislation. For the fifteenth century. 57 In England stag- intellectuals to comment on such mundane nation continued well into the sixteenth matters as servants' eating habits is in itself century. Was this because the English were an indication that an upheaval had taken peculiarly vulnerable to epidemics, or place, which seemed to threaten the social because they adopted customs, such as late order. The relationship between lords and marriage, which helped them to maintain famuli was informed by paternalism, sig- their higher living standards? Whether we nalled in the accounts by the many gifts emphasize the influence of mortality or and tips given at various times during the fertility at this period, there can be no farming year. To demand more pay and doubt that this example shows that dietary 1 food, thefamuli had to overcome habits of improvement on its own could not pro- deference, no doubt helped by the more mote population growth. -~8 mercenary attitudes of the temporary hired Changes in diet of the fourteenth and hands who joined them in the autumn. fifteenth centuries have been treated here Custom acted as a brake on innovation, as as improvements partly because they were is shown by the formalized rules under so regarded by contemporaries. Wage- which labour services were performed, earners strongly favoured , whereby boon workers ate barley bread fresh meat, and strong ale. The attractions long after the harvest hands had changed of such a diet were largely social and cul- to wheat. Village custom, enshrined in by- tural: in adopting this pattern of eating, laws, must have influenced the bargaining the lower orders were aping the lesser over the rewards of harvest workers when gentry, s'~ In nutritional terms the harvest they were being employed by the wealthier workers' food of the thirteenth century peasants, s6 contained the main elements of a healthy So in the late fourteenth and early fif- diet, including a combination of carbohy- teenth century demographic factors influ- drates and animal , with vitamins enced diet in the long term, but social A and D being provided by dairy produce, pressures and institutional restraints slowed offal, and herrings. Outside the harvest down the pace of change. Demography season however all of these foodstuffs may and nutrition interacted in very complex not have been consumed regularly by ways. Substantial improvements in food poorer people. As the diet changed in the were achieved by the fifteenth century, fourteenth century the contribution of fish most readily quantified in the case of the and milk products declined, but probably harvest workers, but clearly shown by the not to such a low point that the recipients indirect evidence of plenty in falling grain would suffer vitamin deficiencies. The new prices and the relatively infrequent harvest diet with its growing proportion of fatty failures between I375 and I52o. This might meat would not be regarded as an improve- have promoted earlier marriage, healthier ment by modern nutritionists. But there children, and longer life expectation, so 57 On continental dict, see eg B Bennassar and J Goy, 'Contri- leading to population growth. On the con- bution h l'histoire de la consommation alimentaire du XIVe au tinent, the diet of the lower orders XIXe st&it', Amlah's ESC, XXX, 1975, pp 402-30; I) Mcnjot, 'Notes sur le marcht5 de l'alimentation et la consommation improved in much the same way as in alimentaire ,~ Murcic ?L la fin du moyen Age', in D Menjot (ed), England, and in and Italy the popu- Matu,wr et Boire aft Moyett Age, I, Nice, 1984, pp t99-2to; on poptdation, Bois, op cit, 346--56; I) Herlihy and C Klapisch- lations were growing in the second half of Zuber, Les Toscans et Leurs Families, Paris, t978, pp t81-8. 58 Cf T McKeov,,n, 'Food, Infection, and Population', JOlmlal o.f hlterdisciplillary History, XIV, 1983, pp 227-47. 56 On the general problems of this period, see R H Hiltort, The 59 On diet as a 'system of ', and an dement in Decline of Serfdom it1 Mediel,al Enqland, 1969, pp 32-43; A P, social competition, see M Montanari, L'Alimentazione Conmdina Bridbury, 'The Black Death', Ecoll Hist Rel,, 2nd ser, XXVI, 11ell'alto Medioet,o, Naples, 1979, p 461; S Mennell, All Manners t973, pp 577-92. of FoM, Oxford, 1985, pp 4o-61. CHANGES IN DIET IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES: THE CASE OF HARVEST WORKERS 37 can be no doubt that in terms of palatability tion between consumption and production a variety of eaten with wheat bread in the medieval economy. was a great advance on the stodgy mon- otony of barley bread. Throughout the period the sources of must Appendix I remain a mystery. The supposition must be that the amount of green vegetables, The calculations in Table 2 are based on although so small as to virtually escape the assumption that I quarter (2.9 hl) reference in our documents, reached a wheat made 5Io lb (23I kg) of bread; that minimum level sufficient to prevent seri- I quarter of barley made 336 ib (I52 kg) ous deficiency diseases. The main of bread; that I quarter of oats made I8o nutritional problem in the later middle ages lb (82 kg) of meal (E J T Collins, 'Dietary was not the lack of specific vitamins and Change and Cereal Consumption in Bri- minerals, or the excess of that causes tain in the Nineteenth Century', Ag Hist concern in a modern affluent society, but Rev, XXIII, I975, p Io8; D W Kent-Jones simply that at certain times, and especially and J Price, The Practice and Science of Bread in the late thirteenth and fourteenth cen- Making, 2nd edn, Liverpool, 1951, pp 29o- tury, those sections of the population who I; W Tibbles, Foods. Their Origin, Compo- fell below the harvest workers' privileged sition and Mam~cture, I912, p 425). standard of living survived on cereals with Other assumptions are that I quarter of very little animal protein, and that in some malt made 60 gallons (273 1) of ale (in late years even the inferior cereals were scarce medieval household accounts the figure and expensive. ranges from 60 to Ioo gallons, see Dyer, Finally, too simple a demographic expla- op cit, p 2o3), and that animal carcasses nation of agrarian history would suppose weighed as follows: cattle 25o-45o lb (I 13- that agriculture could adjust itself easily to 204 kg); pigs 70-90 lb (32-41 kg); sheep the new demands by shifting from arable 3I lb (I4 kg); geese 8 lb (4 kg); poultry I- to pasture. This was the trend, but it 2 lb (0.45-0.9 kg). And that fish weighed: involved difficult structural changes for cod 6.6 lb (3 kg); herring V2 lb (0.2 kg) (L those peasant communities whose agrarian Stouff, op cit, pp I86-9, 3oi-19; I Kershaw, system was closely involved with grain op cit, pp I57-8; H Clarke and A Carter, production. The fifteenth century saw in Excavations in King's Lynn, 1963-197o, the midlands the development of special- Society for Medieval Archaeology Mono- ized pastoral farms of a novel kind as graph, 7, I977, pp 403-8). Meat and fish landlords, lessees, and wealthier peasants weights have been reduced for waste, and took advantage of the growing market for calorific values have been calculated, from meat. In particular they were responding figures supplied in A A Paul and D A T to an increased demand for beef. Cheaper Southgate, McCance and Widdowson's The grains and legumes, once grown largely Composition of Foods, 4th edn, I978. For for human consumption, must have been example, it is assumed that 74% of a pork used more often as fodder crops. We are carcass was edible, and that in boiled form only beginning to appreciate the interac- its calorific value was 286 per IOO g. Canadian Papers in Rural History Volume VI

Feudal Society and Colonization: A Critique and Reinterpretation of the Historiography of New France. Hardcover only Roberta Hamilton. This is a major book-length study. It is a full re-evaluation of the historical literature on early 420 pages Quebec.

"Do You Want Your Daughter to Marry a Farmer?": Women's Work on the Farm, 1922. Mary Kinnear.

Corporate Structures and Local Economies: The Case of Pre-paid orders: the Williams Lake District Lumber Industry. $22.50 post free Mary McRoberts.

The North American Wheat Futures Market During World War I. Robert E. Ankli.

"A Little Province Like This": The Economy of Nova Institutional and bill- Scotia Under Stress, 1812-1853. Julian Gwyn. later orders must be accompanied by an Moving Goods and People in Mid-Nineteenth Century invoice: $35.00 post free New Brunswick.. Graeme Wynn.

What Ontario Wants, Canada Gets: The 1886 Margarine Debate. Welf H. Heick.

"The Site of Paradise": A Settler's Guide to Becoming a Farmer in Early Upper Canada. Terence A. Crowley. Langdale Press Did Farm Size Matter? An 1871 Case Study. R.R. #1 William L. Mart. Gananoque Ontario A Statutory Chronology of Southwestern Ontario, Canada 1792-1981. Thomas A. Hillman. K7G 2V3