PART II
HAVING HERDS

4 —
The Demesne Cattle Herds on the Peterborough Abbey Estate

The Demography of the Estate Cattle Herd

For the years 1300-01, 1307-08, and 1309-10 there are account rolls preserved for each of the twenty-three manors of the Peterborough Abbey estate, excepting Cottingham and Great Easton in 1300-01. The first decade of the fourteenth century registered a high point of seigneurial high farming.^[1] The English medieval population was at its peak. The Great Famine of 1315-17 lay in the future. Inflation and demand for wool exports exerted their most acute influences on agrarian lords.

Over the first decade of the fourteenth century Peterborough Abbey herded over twelve hundred cattle. This chapter explores the economic aspects of husbanding such a cattle herd.^[2] It examines the demography of the estate herd and then links its developmental cycle to the Abbey's strategies for producing, consuming, and exchanging traction, meat, milk, hides, and tallow.^[3]

The accountants of the Abbey used seven categories to describe the subgroups of the estate cattle-herd: bull, oxen, cows, older bullocks and heifers (called 3-4-year-olds in the tables), younger bullocks and heifers (called 2-3-year-olds in the tables), yearlings, and calves. Table 21 (see appendix 4 for detailed statistics) summarizes the statistics for the estate cattle-herd in the early fourteenth century. Figure 9 illustrates the proportions of each subgroup in the estate herd. Oxen constituted about one-third and cows one fifth of the estate herd. Each of the four manorial groupings on the estate herded cattle-herds identical in proportional representation of bulls, oxen, cows, and juvenile and immature cattle described in figure 9. The

herd described by figure 9 thus typifies a seigneurial cattle herd of the high-farming period.

The coefficients of variation in table 21 show, however, that different subgroups varied in their presence on individual manors. Not all manorial cattle herds contained the typical proportion of subgroups already identified. The Abbey's manors specialized in husbanding different subgroups of the herd to ensure the smooth reproduction of the estate herd. One type of manorial cattle herd, a microcosm of the estate herd, did husband subgroups according to the typical proportions of the estate herd. The home manor of Boroughbury managed such a herd. The Abbey maintained the same mix of subgroups in the

Fig. 9.
The composition of the cattle herd on the estate of Peterborough Abbey
in the early fourteenth century.

Boroughbury cattle herd for over a century.^[4] Only in the later fourteenth century, after the Black Death, did the composition of the herd begin to change. Such a typical herd, with few cows and younger cattle, guaranteed only minimal replacement of that manorial herd. To ensure reproduction of the estate herd, the Abbey had to rely on breeding manors, namely the home manor of Eye and the western manor of Kettering, to husband herds with proportionately fewer oxen and higher numbers of cows and young animals. A third type of manorial herd found on the estate kept no cows at all or so few that the manor had to rely on breeding manors or purchase to stock its oxen. Such manorial herds were essentially nonreproductive, or "zero-growth" herds.

The annual cycle of herd management in 1307-08 (figs. 10 and 11) on the manors of Eye and Castor illustrates the different breeding and equilibrium strategies found in manorial herds. The circles show the number of the different subgroups. Arrows within the boxes show the dynamic stocking cycle of the manorial herd. Over the annual manorial cycle, young calves would stock yearlings, yearlings would stock 2-3-year-olds, and the 3-4-year-olds would join the mature cohorts of oxen, cows, or bulls. The arrows pointing into the box illustrate the "external inputs," especially the transfer of cattle from other manors into a subgroup of the manor herd. Eighteen oxen from another manor were added to the twenty-eight oxen of the Castor herd. Arrows pointing out of the box illustrate "output" from the manorial herd. For instance, Castor butchered three of its oxen in 1307-08. Eye and Kettering were the only manors on the estate that year where cows outnumbered oxen, and, therefore, younger animals were more prominent on the two manors. At Castor only two 3-4-year-olds stocked its oxen and cows. Not surprisingly, then, eighteen oxen from another manor were transferred to stock Castor's oxen. Eye, which kept a much larger herd of young stock, supplied oxen to other manors. In figure 9 the arrows show that it sent six oxen to Werrington, whence, according to the accounts, they were sent to Walton, a manor that kept only oxen. As a breeding manor, Eye also kept a much higher proportion of young females. Of its forty-one 3-4-year-olds ready for stocking into mature cohorts, eighteen were heifers and only twelve were bullocks. The sex of the ten 3-4-year-olds butchered is not known. Given the proportions of males to females in the herd, one suspects that the cattlemen at Eye had butchered young bullocks,

Figs. 10 and 11.
Annual cycle of cattle breeding at the manor of Castor (10), where only minimal breeding of
oxen occurred, in contrast with the annual cycle at Eye, a breeding manor (11). The number
in the circles show the different numbers of subgroups of the cattle herd present on each of
the manors. The arrows show how the number of subgroups increased or declined through
butchery, mortality, intermanorial transfer, stocking, sale, or purchase over the annual cycle
of 1307-08.

superfluous to stocking levels of oxen. At Castor, where few cows produced hardly enough stock to maintan the manorial plough oxen, young animals were rarely butchered. The annual butchery rate for young cattle at Eye was much higher; presumably young male calves were also butchered to maintain the high female-sex ratio desired for this breeding manor.

The differences in the composition of the cattle herds and the

annual cycle of reproduction, stocking, and butchery at Castor and Eye are striking; yet each manor cultivated demesnes of the same size in the early fourteenth century, and each planted wheat, dredge, and oats in similar proportions.^[5] The similarities of their cereal husbandry camouflage real differences in their respective pastoral economies.

Breeding manors, such as Eye, ensured against the reproductive failure on manors with few cows, such as Castor. They also made manorial herds without cows possible elsewhere on the estate. The Abbey used intermanorial transfers to and from breeding manors to correct shortages and surplus of cattle on the estate. The Abbey could also buy cattle on the market. It chose between intermanorial transfers and market purchases depending on the distance of manors from the Abbey. Each strategy produced its own demographic rates for mortality, butchery, and stocking from within the herd.

Figure 12 illustrates how the annual rates of intermanorial transfers, stocking, buying, selling, butchery, and mortality of cattle varied across zones of the estate. The core manors include those within eight miles of the Abbey; the semiperipheral, those between eight and twenty-five miles; and the peripheral manors, those located more than twenty-five miles from the Abbey.^[6] The details of intermanorial transfer of cattle from manor to manor are set out in tables 22 and 23. Of all the groups of the cattle herd, the Abbey moved its oxen around the manors most frequently and in the greatest numbers. The greatest number of intermanorial transfers occurred on the home manors of the estate. On the manors of western Northamptonshire fewer transfers of cattle occurred, and Kettering served as the conduit for many of the transfers. Transfers of cattle on the manors of the northern grouping accounted for less than 3 percent of all exchanges.

The Abbey's buying and selling of cattle reversed the pattern just described for intermanorial transfers of cattle. The Abbey bought and sold the most stock at the periphery of the estate where it adjusted manorial herds most infrequently through intermanorial transfer (fig. 12). The Abbey thus used the market differently depending on manorial location. By combining complementary strategies of intermanorial transfer of stock and market sales and purchases, the Abbey conserved the capacity of its estate herd to reproduce itself biologically.

The biological reproduction of the herd also depended on the annual rates at which the Abbey stocked 3-4-year-olds to mature

Fig. 12.
Vital rates of the estate cattle herd. The concentric rings of the circle represent the home
manors (innermost circle), the semi-peripheral manors (middle circle), and the peripheral
manors (outermost circle) of the estate. The conventions indicate whether or not the rates
of butchery, purchases, intermanorial transfer, stocking of younger cattle into mature
cohorts (oxen, cows, bulls), mortality, and sales were similar or different across the different
zones of the estate. The arrows indicate the direction of difference; for instance, the rate of
butchery, which differed across the three zones of the estate, increased among manorial
cattle herds with proximity to the Abbey.

groups of bulls, oxen, and cows. Butchery and sale of young animals obviously influenced stocking rates too. Everywhere on its estate the Abbey stocked adult groups with young cattle at the same annual rate (fig. 12). When it culled cattle for meat, its choices varied according to manorial location. It butchered the most cattle on its home manors. As distance from the Abbey increased, the Abbey preferred to sell old stock rather than butcher it. Butchery proved to be a highly efficient way for the Abbey to remove older and infertile animals from its herd.

On the peripheral manors, where the Abbey butchered its cattle comparatively infrequently, the mortality rate for cattle was highest. Presumably manorial reeves culled cattle less rigorously on the peripheral manors, where stock often died before market sale.

Patterns of intermanorial transfer and butchery sales illustrate that the Peterborough cattle herd formed one large reproducing herd constituted by a network of manorial herds. The Abbey practiced its different strategies of herd management depending on the geographical location of its manor. The Abbey thus produced its own economic geography for cattle husbandry. Annual fertility and mortality, vital rates not fully controllable by the Abbey, dictated constraints within which the Abbey had to manage its herding strategies.

Annual mortality rates varied for subgroups in the estate herd.^[7] The rates lowered with increasing age. For the three accounting years the overall mean mortality rate for oxen was 4.3 percent. Cows died at only a slightly higher rate of 5.2 percent. Only calves died at an average rate (10.4 percent) significantly higher than any of the other subgroups. The mortality rates of the Abbey's cattle herd have interesting economic implications. A 10 percent mortality rate is common with intensive cattle husbandry.^[8] Annual death rates of over 15 percent begin to affect the viability of herd management. The Abbey thus enjoyed comparatively low mortality rates for its cattle herd in the first decade of the fourteenth century. Annual mortality rates necessarily influence selection of cattle for butchery. The similar mortality rates among the subgroups, with the exception of calves, meant that the Abbey could cull at will among the subgroups, if it so chose. It is therefore instructive to examine what economic decisions the Abbey made in selecting subgroups for butchery.

Over the first decade of the fourteenth century the Abbey butchered the subgroups of its herds at the following rates: oxen, 8 percent; cows, 12 percent; immatures, 14 percent; calves, 15 percent. To judge from the three accounting years, the overall butchery rates for oxen, cows, and immatures did not differ significantly.^[9] The Abbey did, however, butcher its calves at a significantly higher rate than its oxen. Between mortality and butchery the Peterborough cattle herd lost more calves than it did mature animals.

The annual rates at which cows reproduced calves help to determine herd growth and are therefore crucial to herd management. The overall infertility rate for the estate herd, to judge from the three

accounting years, was 28.6 percent.^[10] A little more than a quarter of the cows mated did not produce calves. The infertility rate is inflated, however, since it includes young heifers which the Abbey had just stocked among cows, usually without mating them. The mean stocking rate for heifers at this time was 14.3 percent. Without the heifers, the infertility rate for cows was a respectable 14.4 percent. Medieval farmers had high expectations for breeding. In his treatise on estate management, Walter of Henley expected that cows should bear calves at yearly intervals.^[11] With a forty-week gestation period for calves and an interval of at least three to four weeks from calving to first heat, cows had only three mating opportunities per year to maintain yearly production of a calf. The high reproductive rate indicates the Abbey's successful and intensive management of cattle breeding.

The Abbey of Peterborough managed its cattle herd as a reproductive unit. It maintained its adult beasts through stocking from its immature animals bred by estate cows. Some of the Abbey's manors specialized in breeding cattle, others maintained zero-growth herds by simply replacing their oxen, the critical members of the estate herd. Depending on the geographical position of the manor in the estate, the Abbey relied on different economic strategies for the maintenance of its cattle herd. The Abbey's practice of buying and selling cattle more actively on the manors of the northern grouping distinguished the cattle herd of the peripheral manors from those of the core of the estate. On the more distant northern manors it made more sense to sell stock than to herd them into the Abbey for slaughter and consumption. In contrast, the Abbey involved itself least in buying and selling cattle on its core manors. It relied on the technique of intermanorial transfer of stock to adjust the composition of the manorial herds of the core. It also butchered and consumed the cattle of its core manors at a much higher rate than at the semiperiphery or periphery of the estate. It can be said that the demography of the cattle herd at the periphery was more market-involved and monetized and at the core more consumption-oriented.

By using the market selectively and relying on breeding manors that ensured reproduction of the estate herd, the Abbey resisted the full market penetration of its cattle herding. Its selective use of the market becomes more evident when one considers the Abbey's production and consumption of the products of its cattle herd.

The Consumption and Production of the Products of the Cattle Herd

The cattle herd of the estate provided the Abbey with traction, meat, milk, hides, and tallow. The demography of the estate herd indicates that the production of oxen to draw ploughs shaped the basic contours of its demography. The number of oxen continued to correlate with the acreage sown on the estate, even though cows had increased relative to the number of oxen between the twelfth and the fourteenth century.^[12] To what extent did the Abbey also rely on its cattle herd for the production of dairy products and meat?

Profits accrued from sale of stock show to what extent the Abbey relied on the production of meat and tallow for income. Figures for selling cattle on the estate in the early fourteenth century are set out in table 24. When comparing income from sales to outlay for purchases of stock, we find that the Abbey actually spent more money on the net purchase of cattle stock in 1300-01 and 1307-08 than it made on sales.

The Abbey exercised caution in marketing certain subgroups of its cattle herd. It never bought bullocks, heifers, or yearlings. Such an economic strategy emphasized the expectation that the estate herd should function as a self-contained reproductive unit. The Abbey separated subgroups most essential to stocking the Abbey's herd from market exchange. Nor did the Abbey sell off cows with calves. Depending on its strategies to maintain reproduction and its equilibrium of oxen and cereal acreage, it selectively sold off cows and calves separately.

The household of the Abbey also consumed beef. No analysis of its cattle marketing can fail to consider the consumption needs of the Abbey. The statistics for beef sent into the Abbey larder are presented in table 25 along with comparative figures for beef consumption available from other ecclesiastical estates. The Peterborough manors sent in sixty-four beasts to the Abbey in 1300-01, 129 in 1307-08, and 147 in 1309-10. The Abbey culled its beef evenly across all the subgroups of its herd excepting calves, which it butchered in slightly greater numbers than it did oxen. Such even culling stresses how the Abbey balanced consumption with a reproductive equilibrium in its demesne herd. The Abbey produced meat as a by-product of its estate herd.

Hides contributed comparatively little to the Abbey's income from secondary animal products (table 24). The Abbey sold hides skinned from cattle that had died on its manors. Most of the cattle sent into the Abbey household went in on the hoof. The Abbey undoubtedly marketed the hides from the cattle it slaughtered; however, it is not possible to track these sales without central householding accounts.^[13] If it did sell all the hides of its slaughtered cattle, it would have disposed of more hides than all its manors, which marketed only a few hides of dead cattle annually.

The Abbey devoted itself to the production of dairy products. It had increased the proportion of its cows to oxen over the thirteenth century. The bulk of dairy production on the estate occurred on the Abbey's breeding manors, where the ratio of cows to oxen was higher than average. A breakdown of dairy yields on each manor in the year 1307-08 appears in appendix 4. For the manor of Eve and the grange at Northolm near Eve nine accounts are available for the period 1300-1483. Those yields are presented in appendix 5. The study of yields is complicated by the fact that the Abbey occasionally milked its ewes on some manors.^[14] With only one exception, however, the yield of sheep milk was not separated from cow milk in the accounts. The table of yields thus indicates the manors for which there is evidence of sheep milking and calculates yields first for dairy cows and then for both cows and milking ewes on the manor.

The adjusted dairy yields ranged from thirty pounds (13.6 kg) to one hundred pounds (45.5 kg) per cow for the milking season of 1307-08. The mean for the estate was ninety-five pounds (43.2 kg) per cow. Surprisingly, dairying on a large scale at Eye, a manor set in the rich summer pasture of the fen, did not produce better dairy yields. The Abbey's largest dairy herd at Eye produced only average dairy yields of ninety-three pounds (42.3 kg) per cow.

The average dairy yields of the estate, equivalent to two-thirds of a gallon a day, or 100-130 gallons of milk during the summer milking season, met the expectations of the husbandry manuals of the thirteenth century:

And be it known that the dairy woman ought to make cheese from the first day of May until Michaelmas for twenty-two weeks; and each cow ought by right to yield during this time five and one half stone of cheese [69 lb. or 31.3 kg], and of butter in proportion— that is to say that for seven stone [87.5 lb. or 39.7 kg] of cheese one ought to have one stone [12.5 lb. or 5.7 kg] of butter.^[15]

At the turn of the nineteenth century, four hundred gallons of milk was considered an average yield.^[16] The medieval yields are similar to those produced among African pastoralists such as the Nuer, Dinka, and Boran.^[17]

The Abbey's cows yielded a total of 19,000 to 23,000 pounds of dairy produce annually during the first decade of the fourteenth century (table 26). The Abbey sold approximately one-half of the yield of its dairy herds. The manors sent in a third of the total yield of cheese and one quarter of the yield of butter into the Abbey for its consumption. Over half of the milk reserved from cheese production nourished lambs and calves. Dairy sales provided small change for the Abbey's purse compared to grain sales. In 1307-08 the proceeds of the Abbey's grain sales (2,580s .) were just short of five times greater than those of its dairy sales (535s .).

It cost the Abbey to maintain its cattle herd and dairies. The Abbey fattened its oxen before butchery with oats reaped from its demesnes. It employed dairymaids who received wages in a combination of cash

and grain. The salt, presses, and churns of the dairy were also an expense. The dairy house required maintenance and repair. The wages of the ploughmen on the estate can be considered an expense of cattle husbandry too, since the production of traction necessary to produce grain for consumption was a primary aim of its cattle herding. The Abbey also spent money on cattle stalls. These expenses can be added to upkeep as building costs.

Any effort to quantify costs of upkeep must stumble, since the market did not form the prices for all costs involved.^[18] The Abbey drew directly from its own resources, demesne grain, demesne labor, and so on, to meet expenses incurred in its cattle husbandry. The figures in table 27, which do cost all expenses and assign a market value to the meat and dairy produce directly consumed by the Abbey, must be treated with caution. When all items are costed with market prices, the expenses of maintaining the cattle herd matched the annual income in dairy sales and consumption. The Abbey would have realized no profit from its herd if it had not succeeded in limiting its involvement in the market as a consumer. Since it did succeed in containing much of the expense in its consumption sector, it gained some much-needed cash flow from the sale of dairy and other secondary animal products. The "break-even" economics of cattle management underlines again the Abbey's primary interest as a cattle herder in reproducing oxen to work the demesne arable. The Abbey above all conserved its expectation to consume from its estate and ate its own grain and dairy products. It selectively marketed secondary animal products to maintain some cash flow.

As a seigneurial lord the Abbey controlled the pastoral resources of its demesne. It could graze these resources with its own herds or sell them to its peasants. The choice involved decisions about the size of its own cattle herd and the trade-off in money it would receive from sales of pasture. The Abbey's income from sales of pastoral resources in the first decade of the fourteenth century is set out in table 28. The Abbey's sales of pastoral resources produced two to four times more income than its sales of cattle products. The Abbey's capacity to put so much pasture on the market indicates that it enjoyed some slack in matching its cattle herd to its pastoral resources. It chose to sell pastoral resources rather than expand the size of its herd to match its supply of pasture.

Each year the Abbey sold one-fifth of its total pastoral sales in the

"processed" form of hay and forage. The Abbey could afford to market hay, since it still collected mowing services from its peasants. The costs of producing hay would have doubled for the Abbey without the labor services of its peasants. The fact that the Abbey still consumed these labor services rendered the sale of its resources even more attractive.

The expectation of consumption shaped the management of the Abbey's cattle herd in the fourteenth century. The Abbey sought to protect its consumption of grain first. It maintained its herd of oxen to produce traction in the cereal sector. By expanding its dairy herd and marketing half of its dairy surplus, the Abbey made some cash to put toward meeting royal demands and other feudal costs. The Abbey's endowment of pastoral resources could have sustained a much larger herd on the estate, but the Abbey chose instead to sell its pastoral resources to the peasant sector for cash. Such strategies remind us of the difficulties of categorizing an estate as primarly arable or pastoral. The Abbey's endowment of pastoral resources did not automatically translate into bigger herds. With its emphasis on oxen, the Abbey behaved like a "typical" arable lord. It viewed much of its pastoral endowment as a source of cash sales rather than a resource calling for "maximization" of its own pastoral output.

The Abbey's strategies to ensure herd reproduction without the market and its selective use of medieval markets for sales and not for consumption have implications for the study of institutional changes and the emergence of agrarian capitalism in England. Such impli-

cations are worthy of broad outline in these concluding remarks. The Abbey carefully marked off its sphere of consumption and reproduction from the market, although it capably used the market to enhance such strategies when it chose. Such institutional behavior helps us to understand better the asymmetrical linkage of consumption and production in medieval regional economies and to appreciate more fully the undoing of such asymmetrical links over the fifteenth century. Recent research suggests that the market increasingly coordinated regional specialization of northern European livestock husbandry over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Different regions, such as Ireland and parts of Scandinavia, specialized in different stages of the herding cycle. By the early modern period in England, the market organized reproduction of livestock and different regions assumed specialized roles in the breeding, finishing, and marketing of livestock and livestock products.^[19] Changes in pastoral resource-use accompanied the reorganization of livestock husbandry in the early modern period. New relations of consumption to production unlinked rigid boundaries between permanent pasture and arable through the widespread practice of convertible husbandry or more extensive and regular fodder rotations interspersed with cereal rotations.^[20] The dissolution of the boundaries between pasture and arable together with the forging of new links between buying and selling in the late fifteenth century emerges as a locus of transformation in the medieval pastoral economy. This locus requires further study in future work.

5 —
The Desmesne Sheep Flocks

The Demography of the Estate Sheep Flock

English exports of raw wool reached their medieval peak in the first decade of the fourteenth century. In the year 1304-05 England exported 46,382 sacks, or just under seventeen million pounds of wool.^[1] Approximately twelve million sheep were shorn to yield such a harvest. The number of sheep in early-fourteenth-century England most certainly belies the claim made for declining numbers of livestock in the high-farming era. Flock numbers increased over the late thirteenth century as many estates adopted centralized organization of the sheep flock under the direction of a head shepherd.^[2] The fen abbey of Crowland had centralized its sheep flock by 1276. Peterborough Abbey did so in 1307. With centralized flock management, accounting of sheep shifted from manorial to centralized accounts. Caution must therefore be exercised in handling manorial accounts of this period. Other estates, such as Canterbury Cathedral Priory and Ramsey Abbey, continued to account for their sheep flocks by manor or by manorial grouping. Such large flocks, whether managed centrally or not, required the coordination of lambing and shearing with seasonal availability of pasture. A study of flock management on the estate of Peterborough Abbey illumines the complexities posed by seigneurial sheepherding on a large scale.

The estate of Peterborough Abbey herded flocks numbering between four thousand and nine thousand sheep in the first decade of the fourteenth century. Accountants divided the flock into four subgroups: wethers, ewes, yearlings, and lambs. Table 29 contains the summary statistics for the flock in the first decade of the fourteenth century.^[3] The numbers of each subgroup varied significantly from year to year and by manorial grouping. The Abbey doubled flock size in six years. Such growth undoubtedly contributed to the volatility of the figures.

The coefficients of variation in table 29 show that the numbers of each subgroup varied much from manor to manor. The Abbey managed each subgroup of its sheep flock in a specialized way, and a discussion of sheep demography must account for such specialization. During the annual pastoral cycle the Abbey moved the subgroups of its flock frequently, bought and sold mature stock, and carefully husbanded its younger stock to ensure reproduction of the herds.

The Abbey managed two types of sheep flocks: an intermanorial flock on its home and western Northamptonshire manors, and self-contained manorial flocks on its manors in the northern grouping. It based its management of the intermanorial flock on its capacity to shift subgroups to different manors depending on seasonal require-

Fig. 13

Figs. 13-16 The movement of different subgroups of the sheep flock around the
estate. The figures illustrate the frequency and direction of transfers of subgroups
of the sheep flock around the estate in the first decade of the fourteenth century.
For the number of animals involved in the transfers see table 30. Fig. 13 shows
the movement of ewes; fig. 14 shows the movements of wethers; fig. 15 shows
the movement of yearlings; fig. 16 shows the movement of lambs.

ments of each subgroup for pasture and other care.^[4] The home manors served as the nursery for the intermanorial flock. They received ewes from the West and Scarp manors in the early spring. The movement of ewes around the manors is illustrated in figure 13. Pregnant ewes in need of good nutrition grazed on the abundant fen pastures attached to the home manors and lambed there. After lambing, the home manors sent out lambs and yearlings to stock the West and Scarp manors (fig. 16).

Fig. 14

The Abbey moved yearlings or hoggs according to its strategy for stocking its intermanorial flock. The Abbey herded yearlings less often than ewes but in much larger flocks when it did transfer them among manors (table 30). The Abbey herded the majority of its hoggs to the Scarp manors to increase their stocking levels in the early fourteenth century. The Abbey also pastured a good number of hoggs on the poor pastures of the manor of Irthlingborough (fig. 15). When the yearlings were ready to stock the wethers and ewes, the Abbey moved them to manors specializing in the care of these respective subgroups.

The Abbey moved its wethers, producers of the heaviest and largest fleeces and the greatest amount of manure, most frequently and in the largest numbers (table 30). Manors such as Irthlingborough and Longthorpe served as transfer points for their respective manorial groupings. The wether flock passed through these manors to be dispersed elsewhere in the intermanorial grouping (fig. 14).

Fig. 15

The Abbey centralized its sale of older mature sheep. The Northamptonshire manors sent in their old and debilitated ewes to the home manors, where the culls could grow fat on the abundant fen pastures before sale. Although the Abbey centralized stock sales on its home manors, it dispersed its purchases of stock. Individual manors maintained contacts with local breeders and purchased fresh stock from them. The Abbey's purchase and sale of sheep thus linked into different market networks, a centralized one for sales and a dispersed one for purchases.

The Abbey probably used the old Roman road system for droving such flocks around its home and western manors. The majority of its Northamptonshire manors were situated along the old Roman road system that bounded the perimeter of Rockingham Forest. The old Roman iron road that cut through the forest connected the Scarp

Fig. 16

manors with Northamptonshire manors located along the river Nene.^[5]

The flock management of the Abbey on its northern manors contrasted sharply with management of the intermanorial flock just discussed. Each northern manor managed a self-contained flock and engaged in no division of labor in the management of different subgroups of sheep.

The home manors of Longthorpe and Glinton illustrate the different wool and breeding specializations practiced on different manors. Their annual flock cycles are illustrated in figures 17 and 18. Longthorpe, a manor some two miles northwest of the town of Peterborough, specialized in herding wethers. In 1300-01 it kept a herd of ninty-nine wethers. Twenty-five wethers died and four were butchered. Before shearing time, it received sixty wethers from the Scarp

manor of Tinwell. Longthorpe typically received wethers culled from the herds of the West and Scarp manors and administered their last shearing before sale. After shearing, Longthorpe sold off all of its surviving wethers, which numbered 133. Longthorpe served as a transfer point for moving wethers from upland clay and limestone pastures to lower-lying fen pasture. For a brief period each year, Longthorpe shepherded a small herd of fifty-five pregnant ewes. Eye, a fen manor, received the Longthorpe ewes in time for lambing and shearing. Thus, from early spring through the summer, Longthorpe herded only wethers. In the winter it tended ewes in their early pregnancy.

The manor of Glinton overlooked fen pastures from its location on the gravel terrace of the river Nene and enjoyed access to rich fen pasture. Breeding ewes were herded at the fen-edge manors of Glinton and Eye. Glinton specialized in young female sheep and in lambing (fig. 18). In 1300-01 it kept only nine wethers and received seven wethers as customary payments from its villagers. Its two yearlings were added to the wethers and ewes respectively. Glinton received ewes for lambing and shearing from the western manors of Irthlingborough and Warmington in 1300-01. These ewes bore 301 lambs, which Glinton kept until they were yearlings. Glinton was the only home manor to keep its lambs instead of sending them into the West and Scarp manors. The Abbey used the lambs of Glinton to stock the herds of the home manors.

Figs. 17 and 18.
Annual cycle of sheep husbandry at the manor of Longthorpe (17), which specialized in
caring for wethers, and at the manor of Glinton (18), a breeding manor for the sheep flock.
The numbers in the circles show the different numbers of subgroups of the sheep flock
present on each of the manors. The arrows show how the number of subgroups increased
or declined through butchery, mortality, intermanorial transfer, stocking, sale, or purchase
over the annual cycle of 1300-01.

The analysis so far makes it clear that the Abbey managed its flock according to the requirements of each subgroup. Mortality and fertility rates for the flock also varied by age and sex. The accounts of 1300-01, 1307-08, and 1309-10 indicate that ewes and wethers had an overall death rate of 4.9 percent and 6.1 percent respectively.^[6]

Ewes were particularly vulnerable in late spring; on average, 4.7 percent of the ewes died before shearing and fewer (2.1 percent) died after shearing. Lambs, with an overall mortality rate of 16.4 percent, and yearlings, with a rate of 14.2 percent, were much more vulnerable to mortality than ewes and wethers. The overall mortality rates of the Peterborough flock compare well with a much larger sample of annual mortality rates for the Crowland sheep flock.^[7] Over the years 1267-1327, excluding the unusually high mortality rates of 1281 and 1322, the overall annual mortality rate for Crowland wethers and ewes was 5.8 percent. The Peterborough rate for wethers, at 4.9 percent, was slightly lower, while the mortality rate for ewes at 6.1 percent was slightly higher. At Crowland over the half-century, lambs died at a mean annual rate of 26 percent compared with the overall Peterborough rate of 16.4 percent for the first decade of the fourteenth century. The annual mortality rates among lambs for both Crowland and Peterborough abbeys were respectable by modern standards.^[8] Death rates between 30 and 70 percent annually are common for sedentary and migratory herds in Africa in the Near East today.^[9] Even in modern British sheep flocks, annual mortality rates vary between 12 and 24 percent.

The mortality rates for sheep do not include those beasts butchered for food. In the early fourteenth century the Abbey did not consume much mutton. It butchered a total of 7 lambs, 8 ewes, and 176 wethers in the first decade of the fourteenth century. Its annual butchery rate of 2.7 percent for wethers in 1309-10 was the highest recorded among the subgroups.

The Abbot of Peterborough and his colleague at Crowland achieved some success as sheep breeders. Over the first decade of the fourteenth century, approximately three-quarters of Peterborough ewes mated annually produced lambs.^[10] Crowland Abbey achieved a overall annual fertility rate of 73.8 percent for its ewes in the same decade. Such a success rate shows that both abbeys succeeded in providing ewes with adequate nutrition in early pregnancy, a period of great risk.^[11] Inadequate food during that time is a major cause of miscarriage.

The Abbey used the market more frequently in adjusting the demography of its sheep flock than it did for its cattle herd; yet it still husbanded its sheep flock as a reproductive unit. The Abbey conserved its lambs and yearlings, so vital to future herd reproduction. The

Abbey relied on its lambs to stock its flock and sold only thirty-five lambs in the first decade of the fourteenth century. Likewise, the Abbey rarely sold its yearlings or hoggs. It stocked the mature groups of its sheep flock at twice the stocking rate of its cattle herd. The high stocking rate is a measure of the Abbey's reliance on biological reproduction for maintaining its flocks over time.

The Consumption and Production of the Products of the Sheep Flock

The Abbey used the market primarily to adjust the numbers of the mature members of its flock, wethers and ewes. The Abbey purchased and sold mature sheep to suit its productive goals. Sheep offer the farmer the products of wool, meat, skins, milk, and manure. To set goals the Abbey had to make complex decisions about the production of such products. The Abbey's productive record for each product will be examined in turn.

Wool production clearly dominated the Abbey's concerns. The Abbey centrally marketed every fleece shorn from its wethers, ewes, and hoggs in the early fourteenth century, and therefore the prices for fleeces do not appear in the accounts. It is possible to estimate the Abbey's income from its fleece sales by multiplying the number of fleeces by an average weight and then by the yearly average price. Table 31 lists the estimated income from the Abbey's fleeces. At its peak in the first decade of the fourteenth century the Abbey produced just under five tons of wool.

The economic value of wool production on the estate takes on fuller meaning when it is compared with the Abbey's grain consumption. Table 32 compares the estimated income from wool with the estimated value of the grain sent in from the Abbey's manors for its consumption. The Abbey consumed four to eight times more in the value of grain than it earned from its sale of wool. Even in the highly monetized, market-oriented economy of the early fourteenth century, much of the worth of the estate still rested in consumption and did not flow through the market.

As a sheep breeder the Abbey had to make decisions about the production and consumption of mutton and hides. The Abbey's purchase and sale of stock, which are used as indicators of its involvement in the mutton trade, are set out in table 33. Over the first decade of the fourteenth century, the Abbey either lost money or just managed to break even on buying and selling sheep stock. The exchange of sheep on the market did not bring money into the Abbey.

The Abbey did not expose all the subgroups of its sheep flock to the market. Lambs were the subgroup least open to market sales. The one sale of lambs in 1307-08 involved less than 1 percent of the herd. The Abbey purchased lambs only to compensate, and to compensate only partially, for losses of lambs to disease. The Abbey bought lambs when high mortality among that subgroup threatened the reproductive future of the herd. The purchase of hoggs also compensated for mortality. The Abbey sold weakened hoggs or female stock in excess of the requirements for herd reproduction. The Abbey kept more mature wethers in its flock than it did ewes; wethers yielded

heavier fleeces than ewes and were therefore more productive to maintain in a wool-producing economy.

The Abbey exchanged its mature livestock, wethers and ewes, most frequently on the market. The Abbey always lost on the exchange of wethers. It sold more wethers than it purchased and went into the red over purchases. The rough equilibrium between the number of wethers purchased and sold suggests that the Abbey removed at a steady rate animals of declining productivity to replace them with fresh stock. The Abbey bought and sold ewes more erratically. When the Abbey engaged in a strategy to increase herd size in 1300-01, it purchased ewes. In 1309-10 it reversed this strategy, selling proportionately more ewes. Related to this sale was the purchase of more wethers than usual. The trade-off between ewes and wethers that year suggests that the Abbey thought it could make faster gains on wool production by selling off ewes and purchasing wethers, the bearers of heavier fleeces, than by waiting for ewes to increase wool production through biological herd growth. Wool prices were on the rise that year, and the decision made sense. The high figures for stock sales in 1309-10 in fact involve a strategy of financing increased wool production.

The lack of profit on stock exchange with the exception of the unusually high sales of ewes in 1309-10 indicates that the Abbey did not organize its sheep husbandry around mutton production in the early fourteenth century. It directed its sheepherding economy toward the production of a single product, wool. Meat was the by-product rather than the joint product of sheep husbandry on the estate. The Abbey's single-minded pursuit of wool production marks its sheep management as a single-product economy. Its devotion to a single product enabled it to manage its flock on a considerable scale.

The Abbey might not have produced mutton for the market because it consumed mutton in the household. It has already been noted, however, that the Abbey did not butcher more than 3 percent of its wethers in any of the accounting years of the first decade of the fourteenth century. The Abbey never butchered ewes and yearlings and consumed only six of its lambs in 1307-08. The figures for mutton consumption at Peterborough Abbey are surprisingly low in comparison with those for other contemporary households. Comparative figures for mutton consumption selected from cellarer and household accounts are set out in table 34. Assuming that Peterborough shared contemporary ecclesiastical tastes, the figures for mutton consump-

tion are absurdly low for 1300-01 and 1307-08 and approach contemporaries in 1309-10. Either the Abbey purchased a considerable amount of mutton for household consumption on the market, a transaction that would not register in the manorial accounts, or some of the "sales" of stock on the manors camouflage actual transfers of sheep to the Abbey larder, an accounting practice not unknown during the period. Without central household accounts for the Abbey, the question of the Abbey's alternative procurement of mutton cannot be determined.

The sale of sheepskins was more incidental to the sheep economy of the Abbey than meat production. Stock sold by the Abbey moved on the hoof, and so the Abbey did not sell large numbers of skins. The Abbey marketed only the skins of its dead sheep. In 1300-01 the skins were sold off local manors. In 1307-08 the Abbey sold the woolier skins (pellis grossa ) of sheep that died before shearing to the merchants purchasing Peterborough Abbey's wool clip. The shorn skins (peletta ) of the dead sheep of that year were sold locally off manors.

Sheep also produce milk and manure. The Abbey sometimes milked ewes at the nursery manors of the Abbey, Eye and Glinton, where most of the lambing occurred. The reeves on these manors entered on their accounts the expense of hiring dairymaids for milking ewes (and sporadically on several others: 1300-01: Collingham, Scotter; 1307-08: Fiskerton, Warmington, Collingham, Scotter, Great Easton; 1309-10: Fiskerton, Warmington, Kettering, Cottingham, Collingham, Scotter). The accountants did not separate ewe yields from cow yields in their dairy report; therefore, it is impossible to gauge productivity or profit of sheep dairying. The substantial costs the Abbey incurred in purchasing extra milk to sustain newborn lambs, which contributed between one-quarter and one-third of the expenses for maintaining the sheep flock, would have easily offset profits of sheep dairying. The lambs also consumed more than half of the cow milk reserved from cheese making in the Abbey's dairies. The Abbey's large number of lambs thus had considerable impact on its dairying.

The last product of the sheep flock to consider is manure. Accountants did not value manure on the Peterborough account rolls. The Abbey's practice of moving the subgroups of its flock around the core and semiperipheral manors over the year would have ensured at least a fairly even distribution of the product.

The Abbey did manage to make a profit from its sheep flock. The costs of maintaining the sheep herd, which included the construction and maintenance of sheep houses (bercaria ), the wages in cash and kind paid to shepherds, washers, and shearers, and the costs of unguents, folds, grain, and milk for feed, matched the expenses of keeping the estate cattle herd. Profits from wool sales, however, far exceeded the income earned from the sale of the dairy product of the cattle herd. The Abbey consumed much less of the product of its sheep herd. Sheep were herded by the Abbey first and foremost to cash-crop wool.

The Abbey produced wool for cash. Its need for cash and the level of wool prices determined flock size. It is not possible to trace the paths that linked the Abbey to the long-distance market for wool, since the household accounts that recorded the centralized sales of its wool clip are not preserved. The Abbey did appear as a buyer of stock, but it bought and sold stock not to make money but to expand wool production. Only with the production of wool did the Abbey fully enter the market as a seller. It did not both consume and sell this product as it did the other products of its herds. Wool production was a full-blown economy of scale on the estate.

6 —
Demesne Horses, Pigs, and Poultry

Horses

The number of horses tripled on the estate of Peterborough Abbey between the survey of 1125 and the accounts of the early fourteenth century. In 1125 the Abbey kept one horse for every forty demesne oxen. By the fourteenth century the proportion of workhorses rose to 40 to 45 percent of the estate's oxen (table 35). This figure for working horses on the estate easily outstrips the mean proportion of 26.7 percent calculated by John Langdon for a sample of 625 English demesnes during the period 1250-1320.^[1] The high proportion of working horses on the Peterborough demesnes comes close to the highest regional representation of working horses found by Langdon for East Anglian demesnes, which employed a mean of 49.4 percent of working horses for the period 1250-1320. The estate of Peterborough Abbey employed far more working horses than demesnes in its own region of the East Midlands, which, according to Langdon, employed working horses at a rate of 27.2 percent.

The growing reliance on horses for speedy haulage had added a new subgroup, cart horses (equi carectarii ), to the horse population of the estate, since the twelfth century. The Abbey kept horses for transport, traction, and special work in the fields such as harrowing and marling. It also managed a stud farm, which produced riding horses for the Abbey's stable. Summary statistics for horses on the estate in the first decade of the fourteenth century are set out in table 35.^[2]

Horses provided the Abbey with no secondary products for consumption other than very cheap horsehide. Freed of its links to the consumption of secondary products, the Abbey departed from its customs of reproduction with its herd of horses. It bought cart horses

on the market and did not breed them. It did, however, replace its plough horses (affri [auri, averi ]) largely through its own stock. Different marketing and reproductive strategies shaped the demography of the horse herd depending on the use (transport, ploughing, riding) to which the Abbey put a subgroup.

The accountants distinguished the following types of horses in the livestock accounts of the early fourteenth century. They defined cart horses (equi carectarii ) by their specialized work of hauling. The cate-

gory was flexible. Cart horses could be moved into the affer category; likewise, affers could be moved into the category of cart horses. On rare occasions three-year-old horses were graduated directly into the category of equi carectarii . Only females appeared in the subgroup iumenta . The entry appears on manors where mares were bred to stock the horse population. To further distinguish their breeding status, accounts sometimes labeled this group iumenta affra . Accountants called the mature subgroup of workhorses of the estate affers (avers ). In the early fourteenth century, accountants used this word to apply to horses only. Accountants distinguished immature horses (pullani ) by their age. The accounts also mention runcini , riding horses, bred in the horse park at the manor of Eye.

In the early fourteenth century, cart horses comprised over one-third of workhorses and one-quarter of all horses, younger horses included, on the estate. The Abbey graduated no more than 3 percent of its young horses into the subgroup of cart horses. The mean stocking rate for the decade, 2.3 percent, indicates that the Abbey did not try to reproduce cart horses on the estate. It bought them on the market as it needed to replace old or dead stock. Cart horses were available in the regional markets at an average price of 25s . 1d . The Abbey paid up to 46s . 8d . for its most expensive cart horse in the early fourteenth century. The average price for a cart horse was twice that of a workhorse. Presumably cart horses cost more because they were larger, heavier, and more trained than workhorses. The accounts do not inform us about who reared and trained cart horses in the regional economy.

Workhorses, or affers, were more numerous than cart horses on the estate. On several manors the accounts refer to caruce equine , or horse ploughs; nevertheless, oxen outnumbered workhorses four and three to one in the first decade of the fourteenth century and remained the chief plough animal on the estate.^[3]

The Abbey did replace its workhorses at a slow rate. Female affers were mated to ensure a replacement rate of 8 to 10 percent. The Abbey kept as few young horses as possible. In contrast with herds of cattle and sheep, where young animals (newborns to three-year-olds) composed between 40 and 60 percent of the respective herds, young horses never composed more than 30 percent of the horses on the estate. The Abbey sold the young horses that it did not graduate into the subgroup of workhorses.

The demography of the herd of riding horses at the horse park at Eye contrasted sharply with the strategies for keeping cart horses and workhorses on the estate. The Abbey bred its own riding horses (runcini ) at Eye Park. Young horses composed between 60 and 70 percent of the herd. Three-year-old horses stocked the subgroup of breeding mares and riding horses at the rate of 100 percent. The Abbey stocked its riding stable with riding horses from Eye and offered runcini as gifts to friends and officials. The Abbey sold no riding horses in the early fourteenth century.

The Abbey always spent more on the purchase of horses than it made on sales (table 36). Cart horses cost the Abbey the most in purchase and upkeep. The Abbey expended between 15 and 25 percent of its annual oat harvest as fodder for its cart horses (table 37). The horses of the Abbey's stable consumed another 25 percent of the yield of oats. In toto the Abbey expended over 50 percent of its annual harvest of oats on transport animals on the estate. Workhorses, even though more numerous than cart or riding horses, ate only a small portion (6-12 percent) of the oat harvest. So much of the oat harvest went to horses that oats sown on the demesne should be regarded as a fodder rather than a food crop. The Abbey actually bought oats to supplement its supply of fodder on the estate. It sold less oats than it purchased in the first decade of the fourteenth century.

Costs of transport on the estate involved more than the consumption of oats (table 37). The Abbey had to maintain its carts; a new iron-bound cart cost between 16 and 19.5 shillings on the estate in the fourteenth century. It had to shoe cart horses and employ carters for

wages in cash and kind. The Abbey's investment in transport is quantified in table 38 and compared with the costs of maintaining its plough horses. The transport costs exceeded the ploughing costs between five and nine times over. The Abbey could defray much of these costs, since it fed its horses with fodder produced on its own demesnes. If all the expenses incurred in transport on the estate had passed through the market, then the Abbey would have actually invested more in cart horses and transport than it made on its wool

sales in the early fourteenth century. Transport, therefore, emerges as a costly investment on the feudal estate. Only the Abbey's non-market ties with consumption made it possible to reduce such costs.

Pigs

The Abbey of Peterborough kept pigs to supply its household of 140 odd members with meat.^[4] The Abbey was a consumer and not a marketer of pigs. The annual harvest of pigs from the manors of the estate and from the Abbey's piggery at Peterborough satisfied just under 50 percent of the caloric requirements of the large household.

The sty management of pigs had reached an elaborate state of development on the estate by the early fourteenth century. A study of the accounts of the Abbey's piggery and the manorial accounts offers a detailed picture of pig management and the supply of pork to the Abbey.

The Abbey had doubled the size of its pig herd between the survey of 1125 and the early-fourteenth-century accounts. Summary statistics for the estate herd appear in table 39. The account rolls also report on the demographic makeup of the pig herds at the end of the accounting year (late summer-autumn). These data are listed in table 40 for the accounting year 1300-01. The accountants classified hogs and piglets by terms (first, second , and third ) that probably referred to litters born

in different terms of the accounting year. They described a small portion—12.9 percent (130/1002)—of immature pigs as nursing or just weaned. The subadult and mature animals comprising boars, sows, and castrates constituted 54.9 percent (551/1002) of the herd. Mature castrated pigs composed almost half of the population—48.8 percent (489/1002).

The size of a manor's pig herd in the fourteenth century was significantly associated with the expenditure of grain and legumes on their sustenance and fattening.^[5] The benefits of available forage were not ignored, but all manors, even Cottingham in Rockingham Forest, relied on the use of grains and legumes as pig feed in the early fourteenth century. Table 41 lists the amount of grain and legumes used in sustaining and fattening demesne pigs. When the number of pigs on each manor is correlated with the number of bushels of grain and legumes expended, the correlations are significant. The correlations suggest that the Abbey grew legumes as a fodder crop for its pigs. Whatever beneficial effects legumes had on soil fertility appear to have been secondary to the Abbey's use of legumes as fodder for a chief source of meat for the Abbey.^[6]

The Abbey expended a much smaller proportion of its oats, barley,

and dredge as fodder for pigs. Legumes were the crop most commonly fed to pigs. Over the three accounting years of the first decade of the 1300s, approximately one-third of the legume harvest was fed to pigs on the six core manors. The mean percentage of the legume harvest fed to pigs on all the manors over that decade was 28.2 percent. In the accounting year 1309-10, the Abbey planted on average 10 percent of its demesne acres with legumes.

Investment in intensive pig management in the fourteenth century extended beyond the grain expenditures for their sustenance. Every manor employed a swineherd with the exception of Ashton, Irthlingborugh, and Tinwell. The Abbey paid these servants in cash and grain. The ubiquity of manorial swineherds on the Peterborough estate is in sharp contrast with the more conservative economic policy advised in the Seneschaucy , a tract on estate management composed around the year 1276:

A swineherd ought to be on those manors where pigs can support themselves and find their own food, without help from the grange, in forest, wood, marsh, or waste . . . If there are no woods, marsh, or waste where pigs could support themselves without having to be kept entirely with food from the grange, no swineherd ought to be employed, and only as many pigs may be kept on such manors as can be fed in August on stubble and the leavings of the grange when corn for sale is being threshed.^[7]

The size of manorial pig herds did not relate to dairy activity, as might have been expected from early modern practices of "finishing" pigs on whey in dairy areas. For instance, the main dairy center of the Abbey, the manor of Eye, kept no pig herd. The delicate drainage of the low-lying fen pastures surrounding Eye could have been a reason for excluding pigs, since their rooting caused damage to the fen dikes.

The Abbey butchered on average 25 percent of its manorial pig herd annually. Its own piggery at Peterborough was as large as the average manor herd. In the year 1309-10 its piggery housed 221 beasts (table 42). The Abbey butchered 144 pigs in its own piggery and consumed an additional 512 sent in from its manors.

From this amount of pork the Abbey harvested an estimated 42,280 pounds (19,218.2 kg) of dressed meat yielding 54,964,000 calories. From this yield the community of 140 men could feed for 157 days at 2,500 calories per day. This proportion of pig meat in the diet is higher, but not much higher, than estimates for the early twelfth century based on the 1125 survey.^[8]

Medieval expectations for pig reproduction were high. Walter of Henley stipulated that "the sow ought to bear twice a year, and at each farrowing she ought to bear at least seven pigs."^[9] Given a gestation period of sixteen weeks and a probable lactation of four weeks, the sow producing two litters was involved in some aspect of reproduction through the year.^[10]

The actual number of sows available in the breeding pool is

difficult to calculate, although this figure is clearly stated in the accounts for cows, ewes, and mares. In the year 1309-10 the Abbey piggery had at least six mature females in the breeding pool. Some younger females in accounting categories other than sow must have been producing as well, since, at the rate of two litters per year and a high average of eight piglets per litter, the six sows would produce 96 piglets-considerably short of the total of 140 piglets known to have been born in that year.

The production of pork for consumption was an important economic strategy for Peterborough Abbey in the early fourteenth century. By satisfying half of its annual caloric requirements with estate-grown pork, the Abbey could avoid the market as a consumer and avoid heavy culling of its cattle and sheep herds of meat. Meat was the main product of pig husbandry. The Abbey's reliance on pork is not surprising. The Abbey consistently opted for single-product herd economies. It used oxen for traction, sheep for wool, horses for transport and some ploughing, and pigs for meat. During the period of seigneurial high farming the Abbey did not pursue the alternative strategy of using one animal for several products at once. Such a strategy grew more typical in regional economies of the fifteenth century.

Poultry

The accountants enumerated the hens, roosters, capons, chicks, pigeons, geese, ducks, swans, and pheasants on the Abbey's manors. Table 43 lists these poultry along with the renders of poultry and eggs made by the Abbey's peasants for their rents and court fines. The Abbey collected the bulk of its chickens from its peasants. Among the larger poultry the Abbey specialized in keeping geese, herding between 579 and 800 of these birds in the first decade of the fourteenth century. The Abbey had dovecotes on approximately half of its manors and consumed virtually all the offspring of its cotes each year. The number of pigeons consumed annually ranged beetween 1,377 and 2,544. The peasants of the Abbey also contributed enough eggs annually to serve each of the sixty monks of the monastic household three times weekly.

(table continued on next page)

(table continued from previous page)

(table continued on next page)

(table continued from previous page)