9o THE PEASANT'S YEAR
could not afford to have an unlimited number of beasts to feed
throughout the winter. For the average peasant, however, some
stock was vital, but when we come to enquire as to the numbers
of these kept by the peasantry we have no body of reliable in-
formation to help us. There are a few local Assessment Rolls for
taxes on moveables between 1290 and 1334 which give the stock
on which the villagers were assessed, but they are very few in
number and their evidence is difficult to interpret.1 It seems
probable that the number of sheep, for example, kept by any one
peasant depended on the nature of the country. Thus in pastoral
districts such as Holderness, or the South Downs, or Wiltshire,
peasants are found owning considerable numbers of sheep,
while in agricultural districts they own comparatively few.2
Oxen and cows demand attention first, for they came into the
peasant's everyday life in innumerable ways. The oxen, of
course, were invaluable for all kinds of farm work and were
widely used all over England. Horses, it is true, were more and
more used from the Conquest onwards, but, nevertheless, conser-
vative landowners, like Walter of Henley, still believed in oxen,
and thought them more useful and more economical than horses.
More than that, as he says, "When the horse is old and worn out
then there is nothing but the skin; and when the ox is old, with
ten pennyworth of grass he shall be fit for the larder. "3 Similarly
the cow played a coiteiderable part in all but the humblest house-
holds. It provided milk for most of the year, although the
quantity fell off considerably after Michaelmas, owing to the lack
of good feeding, and it was not till the following May that the
cow came into full milk once again. The difference is estimated
by the author of Hosebonderie to be such that the yield was worth
3$. 6d. during the summer months, but only lod. for the rest of
the year. After Christmas, indeed, the yield was so small that
milk fetched three times its summer price.4 At the worst, how-
ever, even two or three cows were a real asset to a struggling
1 The best monograph is that of Willard, Parliamentary Taxes and Personal
Property.
2 By the kindness of Prof. Eileen Power I have had an opportunity of
studying her transcripts of a number of the existing assessment rolls which
show quite clearly the variations in stock in different parts of the country. It
is to be hoped that she will be able to publish an account of her researches in
this side of the pastoral economy before long,
* Op. cit. 13. « Op. cit. 77,