Changes in Diet in the Late Middle Ages: the Case of Harvest Workers* By CHRISTOPHER DYER Abstract The custom of feeding workers during the autumn on various manors in eastern and southern England 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 ale, fish and meat. Two centuries later the importance of bread had much diminished, and a high proportion of the diet consisted of meat and ale. Barley and rye 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 spread 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 agriculture 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 food 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 LATE MIDDLE AGES: 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.