© Copyright Bryan Phillips Aug 2023

This extensive passage details the significant role of wool and sheep in the economy of Milton Abbey and its tenants in the early 14th century, mirroring the importance of wool for major monasteries across England. It covers various aspects, from the economic context to sheep management, disease, and the life of a shepherd.

Key points:

• Wool as a Major Economic Driver: Like other large monasteries, Milton Abbey’s economy was intertwined with wool production, facilitated by its markets and fairs.
• Cash Economy: The early 14th century was a cash economy based on silver pennies, used for rent, market transactions, and paying servants.
• Peak of Sheep Farming: This period saw a peak in investment in sheep farming and a high population, relying on effective land and livestock management.
• Sheep Numbers: While Domesday records are limited, later estimates suggest a significant number of sheep on Milton Abbey’s demesne, supported by extensive downland pasture. Sheep numbers increased nationally over the following centuries.
• Value of Wool over Meat: Sheep were primarily valued for their fleeces, milk (processed into butter and cheese), and dung. Their meat was not a primary food source for peasants and rarely recorded as a sale item in manorial accounts.
• Wool’s Contribution to Income: While crucial nationally, wool provided a smaller portion of individual estate income compared to arable production (around 10% vs. over 30% on the Bishop of Winchester’s estates). Sheep flock sizes were variable.
• High Wool Prices and Demand: Wool prices peaked in the early 14th century, with English wool being highly sought after by cloth-making centers in Italy and Flanders for its fine quality. Italian merchant families played a key role in financing wool trade with monasteries.
• Limited Fiber Options: Wool was one of only three main fibers available in Europe (along with linen and expensive silk).
• Monastic Involvement in Wool Trade: Large monasteries like Canterbury Priory (with 14,000 sheep) were major wool producers. Merchants likely visited Milton Abbey to contract for future wool supplies.
• Long Tradition of Wool at Milton Abbas: Evidence like the later will of a Milton Abbas woolstapler suggests a long-standing wool trade in the area.
• Quality and Price Variation: Wool quality varied, with some monasteries fetching higher prices than others, and poor-quality wool not being exported.
• National Economic Significance of Wool: The wool trade was vital to the English economy, even funding royal ransoms and wars through taxation and loans.
• Sheep Management on Milton Abbey Estates: The custumal frequently mentions peasants’ rights to pasture sheep (with specific numbers and times). Milton Abbey likely pooled and sold its own and possibly tenants’ wool.
• Importance of Hay: Overwintering sheep required hay for fodder, making hay production and haywards (responsible for haymaking) significant on Milton Abbey estates.
• Close Management of Sheep: Sheep were managed by separating ewes, wethers, and hoggets, with shepherds moving flocks between manors for optimal resources. Drovers were also important.
• Lambing and Flock Growth: Ewes typically produced one lamb per year and could reproduce for several years, allowing for flock growth.
• Smaller Medieval Sheep: Archaeological evidence shows medieval sheep were smaller than modern breeds, originating from various introductions over centuries. Monasteries began selective breeding.
• Limited Archaeological Evidence of Sheep Management at Milton Abbas: Only post-medieval crotal bells have been found, despite the likely prevalence of sheep.
• Value of Ewes’ Milk: Ewes’ milk was highly valued for cheesemaking, worth almost double cow’s milk.
• Sheepcotes (Bergaria): Manorial investments in sheepcotes improved overwinter survival and reduced hay carting costs. These were timber-framed structures with regular maintenance.
• Sheep Manure for Soil Fertility: Sheep were folded (kept in temporary pens made of hurdles) on arable land to provide manure, a crucial method of maintaining soil fertility.
• Shearing: Sheep were washed before shearing, likely along the Milborne Brook. Shearing was often done by customary tenants.
• Lanolin and Wool Sacks: Lanolin protected wool. Stones were traditionally tied to wool sacks for better grip.
• Wool Symbolism: The woolsack became a symbol of wool merchants and is still used in the House of Lords.
• Sheep Disease (Murrain/Scab): Disease outbreaks, particularly scab (caused by a mite), were a major problem, causing significant sheep mortality and reduced wool quality and production. Various treatments were attempted.
• Impact of Scab on National Economy: Scab outbreaks significantly reduced wool exports and caused economic disruption.
• Shepherds: Shepherds were often villeins compensated with reduced rent and other perquisites. Their role was one of trust and often isolation. Wolves were no longer a threat in England by this time.
• Shepherds’ Compensation on Milton Abbey Estates: Shepherds on Milton Abbey manors received quittances of rent and sometimes other benefits, but specific stipends were not mentioned in the custumal. Their duties and compensation were determined by manorial custom.

Wool and sheep figured prominently in the affairs of Milton Abbey and its tenants in the early fourteenth century as it did in the lands of all major monasteries, including the Benedictines in England, as it had done since their individual foundation. The early fourteenth century was not an era of subsistence economy: Milton Abbey had been granted two weekly markets and two three-day annual fairs in the thirteenth century, and was a small town, with all the services to supply the needs of the abbey, provide a surplus to the market and bring in livestock and grain from its outlying manors. We can assume that bread, cheese, butter, ale, cider, meat and vegetables was available to purchase at the weekly markets. Milk from cows and ewes was not normally drunk since it did not keep but could be readily turned to butter and cheese. This was a cash economy with coinage being the silver penny, denarius in the Latin accounts, the half-pennies and farthings being the silver penny coin cut into two and four respectively. The villeins paid their rent in pennies, bought and sold goods at the market in pennies and the famuli (abbey servants) were paid in pennies. Silver pennies have been found by metal detectorists in Milton Abbas.

A silver penny of Edward II dating to 1309 – 1310. A Class 10cf 5 a2 with closed C and E, Mayfield hair and crown 5.. Mint of London. Found in Milton Abbas, reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme DOR-0F6AA7.

The beginning of the fourteenth century saw the peak in the investment in sheep farming and a peak in the population of England at possibly six million.people (Page, 2003, 137) The feeding and clothing of this population, possibly up to twenty percent of them in the towns, relied on effective arable, pasture and transport management.

The Exchequer Domesday book generally does not record the presence of sheep, even where they were probably the mainstay of the manor,(Deveson, p29) but fortunately the smaller Exon Domesday does give the number of sheep on the demesne. For example it gives 22 000 sheep for Dorset and 450 ewes and 50 goats on Milton Abbas demesne.(VCH 3, p78) Cerne Abbey, which also held similar chalk downland at Cerne at the same time had 500 sheep (VCH 3, p75) It has been estimated that about 2200 acres of pasture, mostly downland chalk for sheep grazing were available at Milton Abbas and this remained quite stable from Domesday to the nineteenth century.(Traskey p188) Over the next two centuries the number of sheep increased enormously all over England.

It is difficult now to imagine just how important the wool trade was to England’s economy by the mid-thirteenth century. Sheep were kept mainly for the value of their fleeces, and for their milk and dung, their meat was not usually eaten by the peasants, and certainly not roasted, although at the end of a sheep’s life, or if it was diseased, it would have been butchered and added to the pottage. The value of their meat is not recorded in manor court rolls or accounts as in for example, the Pipe Rolls of the Bishop of Winchester, although their numbers and fleeces occupy a good deal of the accounting. This must mean that sheep meat was not sold, or it would appear in accounts of the time as income, and the accounts of the Bishop of Winchester’s sixty or so estates are extremely detailed, comprehensive and cover a long period of time from 1205 to 1455.(Page, 1996). The meat may however have been eaten by monks and the abbot of Milton Abbey.

Having said how important sheep farming was to the nation it was not the greatest portion of an estate’s income in southern and eastern England, which was from arable production, the fleeces providing at most ten percent compared with grain at over thirty percent of income on the Bishop of Winchester’s estates.(Page, 2003, 138) On some estates where the numbers of sheep were recorded annually it is clear how variable the numbers kept were, for example on the Bishop of Winchester’s estate at Crawley, Hants in 1310 there were over 1600 which fell gradually to none in 1327 and rose again to over 1200 in 1330.(Page, 2003 Fig 1) The price of wool peaked in the early fourteenth century and at this time the Bishop of Winchester had around 20 000 sheep on his estates and were giving the maximum weight per fleece.(Page, 2003, p251) Also St Swithun’s Priory, Winchester, had a similar number with some estates having a flock of over one thousand sheep.(Hare, 2006, p196) In 1322 Canterbury priory had 14 000 sheep on 40 manors with an average flock of 340 whilst in Yorkshire it is estimated that in the early fourteenth century there were 150 000 sheep at least half of which were on monastic estates.(Ryder, 1983) and the total number of sheep in England and Wales has been  estimated at twelve million.(Power)

In the early middle ages cloths had been made locally throughout Europe but with the rising wealth of merchants and burgesses the requirements for fine clothes increased. These fine clothes required the finest, that is thinnest wool fibres and English sheep met this demand with their fine fleeces.(Power, p2) This was by good fortune of climate and soil as selective breeding does not seem to have taken place. The cloth making districts of north Italy and Flanders were importing fleeces from England, Burgundy and Iberia by the thirteenth century, and the largest number were from England, and later obtaining the best prices. Flemish merchants were the first to trade in imported fleeces,(Traskey, 85) they demanded consistent supplies and quantities. The northern Italian merchants.had the advantage in buying future supplies because of their banking expertise – the great families of the Riccardi of Lucca, the Frescobaldi of Florence, and the Bardi and Peruzzi of Florence played a leading part in the trading of fleeces.(Power, 54). Some of the contracts have survived and show that they were contracting for up to twenty year future supplies of good quality fleeces. In effect, a loan of capital to the monastery, which the latter could then use for building work, but could also run them into debt or even bankruptcy. Such trading avoided the church’s disapproval of usury, but calculations show that the average annual interest rate was around twenty percent.(Bell et al 2021 p5)  Also trade in England at this time was mostly in fleeces, not yarn or cloth, although later the cloth industry developed in the Cotswolds and East Anglia as the the great ‘wool churches’ of the fifteenth century of these districts testify, but this was after the Black Death.

At this time there were only three fibres available in Europe for cloth: wool, linen and silk. The latter only available from imports from China along the Silk Road, and so expensive that it was only available to the greater nobility. Linen had a special place because it was preferred for undergarments, being much more comfortable than wool next to the skin.

As one example of a Benedictine monastery, Canterbury Priory by 1322 had 14 000 sheep on forty of its manors accounting for twenty percent of its income.(Martin, p1) There must have been merchants visiting Milton Abbey at this time making contracts for certain numbers of fleeces to be bought at fixed prices for future supplies. 465 years after the Custumal we have the will of Henry Abbot, woolstapler of Milton Abbas who was a tenant of Lord Milton thus wool trading had a long tradition at Milton Abbas. All large English monasteries would have had wool merchants visiting, one of the Italian merchants compiled a list of monasteries with the prices they obtained in the first half of the fourteenth century which gives an indication of the quality of wool they were producing, for example Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire and Abbey Dore, Herefordshire sold at 28 marks (£18 13s 4d) per sack, whereas the lowest rated wool sold at 7 marks (£4 13s 4d) per sack. The poor quality from Devon and Cornwall was not exported.(Power, p23)

The English trade had been so important that the ransom of the king of England, Richard I, the Lionheart, of 150 000 marks or 100 000 pounds of silver on his capture in 1193 on the way back from the third crusade was paid for by taxation, much of it from the wool trade, and loans. This vast amount of money was equivalent to three times the annual revenue of the crown.in the late twelfth century. During the reigns of the three first Edwards taxation and loans, again based on the wealth of the wool trade financed their never ending wars against France, Wales and Scotland.(Power, 17) It was estimated by the barons of England in 1297 that the wool trade was around half the wealth of the country.(Power, p18) Perhaps the royal taxation was the reason that the church did not benefit from the trade as much as it did in the fifteenth century.

Although Milton Abbey’s economy relied mostly on arable rather than pasture, its chalk downs provided a large acreage for sheep, as did its outlying manors. The Custumal frequently mentions how many sheep the peasants could pasture, for example, at Osmington “Walter atte Lane holds one messuage & one virgate of land of 24 acres…and 305 sheep in the commons at Easter.” and often the period he can pasture his sheep is also specified: “rights of common there with their sheep until Candlemas and then remain until the feast of the invention of the Holy Cross”. Similarly at Milton Abbey, William Coleman, a customary tenant, holds one virgate “..and he will have his sheep in the middle pasture just as the other Virgaters, that is 100. However, generally the number of sheep kept by the Bishop of Winchester is difficult to determine, because in these accounts the stock levels are not always recorded, although in 1301 on the estate of Twyford there were 3 cart horses, 16 plough horses, 78 oxen with 5 in murrain, 41 milch cows 13 of them in calf, 633 wethers, 834 ewes, 14 rams, 385 hoggs and 432 lambs (Page, 1996, p275) on about two thousand acres of grassland pasture on the downs, probably similar to Milton Abbas. The estates of Milton Abbey would have sent either there sheep or their fleeces to be pooled, packed and sold at Milton Abbey itself. It is likely that tenants sheep would have been included in the sale of demesne flocks or fleeces. At the end of every episcopacy and abbacy it seems that assets of manorial estates were sold off, and this certainly applied to the Bishop of Winchester’s estate at Crawley, Hants.(Page 2003, p143)

Because their fleece was their most valuable asset, sheep were kept over winter, and thus had to be provided with fodder which was the meadow hay which had been gathered, dried, stored in a hayrick. Hay was very important in Milton Abbey’s estates and hay is mentioned 168 times as well as customary services frequently mentioning being appointed hayward. The hayward was appointed to be in charge of the whole process of hay making, they are mentioned thirteen times in the custumal. For example, Thomas Belisaunt, who held a virgate at Broad Sydling (now Sydling St Nicholas) would be quit of 2s rent if he were to be hayward, if he was not hayward he had many customary services to perform including that of shearing twenty sheep and tossing hay  Hay may have been supplemented by peas and vetches which were grown on some Milton Abbey estates, although they may have been used for cattle fodder or added to the pottage. Sheep are known to prefer hay.(Stone, 2003, p9) Any decline in winter feeding especially during the colder winters of the Little Ice Age inevitably led to loss of sheep, poorer wool quality and fewer lambs surviving. There is some evidence that an increase in provision of hay improved wool yields.(Page, 2003, p152)

Clearly the sheep were closely managed and they would have been kept separate with ewes, wethers and hoggets on separate manors, leading to shepherds moving the sheep frequently between manors to optimise resources such as water for sheep dips, pasture, manure for arable land, shearers.(Power, p7). The drovers are mentioned in the custumal seven times, being quit of rent in the same way as a shepherd. In a good lambing season ewes would each produce on average one lamb, and since the ewes could reproduce for six or more years, flock numbers could be enhanced over a period of years or recover from bad years. On average and despite all the management improvements and investments in sheep husbandry the ewes’ fertility remained stable at around 0.9 lambs per season from 1208 to 1349.(Page, 2003, Table 2) and was not affected by the ration of rams to ewes varying from 1 to 20 to 1 to 40.

Archaeological excavation has shown that the sheep were much smaller than present day breeds. The stock of sheep in England seem to have originated from three main sources: indigenous sheep since the Iron Age, similar to the modern Soay; white fleeced hornless introduced by the Romans, evolved into Ryeland and Romney types; and black faced horned sheep from Viking introductions. It was the monastic institutions who began selective breeding.

We know that many sheep were kept by the monastery of Milton Abbas and its tenants, but metal detecting on a field likely to have been used for sheep grazing has revealed two crotal bells only of post medieval date.(UKDFD 57500, 57506, add image, see Crotal bells – ukdfd) The earliest dateable crotal bells found in England are around the beginning of the thirteenth century.

These bells were made of tin, cast as open bells with an integral suspension loop and four “petals” forming the lower body, inside, a tiny pellet, also of cast tin.

In the early fourteenth century ewes milk was highly valued for making cheese and was worth nearly double that of cow’s milk: 1¾d per gallon versus 1d per gallon.(Stone, 2003, p9) 

Indeed it is known on some of the Bishop of Winchester’s estates that cow’s milk was purchased to feed the lambs and the ewes’ milk kept.(Stone, 2003, p9) Milking ewes led to reduced fertility, it was known that milking into the autumn caused the ewes not to accept the ram because their ovulation was delayed. The income from ewes cheese has been calculated to be from ⅔ to equal to that of the wool.(Campbell, 200, p154)

The building and maintenance of sheepcotes (bercaria in the Latin of the accounts) was a manorial investment in the management of sheep. The advantage being improved overwinter survival, especially of first winter sheep, and reduction of the cost of carting hay to the upland pastures. The sheepcotes could be of considerable size as we know from the accounts where the cleaning of ditches and laying of hedges around the sheepcote were paid for and noted in the accounts as pence per rood. For example as early as 1208/9 one sheepcote was noted at Crawley, Hants, where a ditch was dug 60 perches in length (approximately 300m) and a hedge built. Later there were separate sheepcotes for wethers, ewes and hoggs. These sheepcotes required regular re-roofing and maintenance costs averaged 5s per year. In 1307/8 one sheepcote was enlarged by eight bays (over 30m length).(Page, 2003, p147) The sheepcote would be timber framed as is evidenced from the purchase of crucks. At Michelmersh, Hants, an estate of St Swithun’s Priory, Winchester, in 1280 a new eight bay cote was built at a cost of £2 2s 6d,(Drew 1943, p32) in 1307 one was built on their estate of Chilbolton, and in 1314 an existing four bay cote was extended with three new bays. The sheepcotes probably held separate flocks for ewes, wethers and hogasters, there were two at Michelmersh, Crawley and Chilbolton three, and Overton four.(Hare, 2006, 197) In 1311 Chilbolton had 511 wethers, 649 ewes, 18 rams, and 314 lambs, a total of 1329 sheep.(Hare, 2006, Table 3) At Michelmersh one of the sheepcotes was for ewes and the other for hogasters. It was usual for the walls to be studded, with timber sills, the roofs thatched and the doors fitted with hinges and locks. At Chilbolton the three sheepcotes were separately housed the wethers, the ewes and the hogasters and there were frequent repairs to the thatched roof and they were surrounded by ditches and hedges.(Drew, 1945, p40)

In the centuries before the nineteenth, when guano was first exploited and later artificial fertilisers were developed, the only available methods of maintaining soil fertility were to grow legumes, leave the ground fallow for a year or more, or use sheep manure. The latter was done by a shepherd moving the sheep off the downs every night and putting them in a pen, known as a ‘fold’ onto land to be used for arable crops. This was made of hurdles using split hazel from coppiced woods and has been common in rural districts for many centuries, the skill of making such a hurdle can still be seen today at country fairs and hurdles can be bought today.

In the Milton Abbey custumal hurdle is mentioned twenty times, for example at La Lee six virgaters have to each make two hurdles for the fold, or repair four hurdles and collect withies and each carry four hurdles from one field to another and they get nothing. At Chilbolton, Hants around 1300 to buy hurdles cost 1½d each and up to one hundred were bought in a single year. Up until 1384 the folds were moved by customary tenants, thereafter Winchester Priory of St Swithuns paid one shilling a year for their movement.

There is a map of Milton Abbas dated 1652 which shows considerable areas to the east of Delcombe Valley devoted to ‘coppice woodland’,(Byles) again showing the long tradition of sheep management in Milton Abbas. When sheep were kept in a sheepcote over winter their manure was collected for spreading on the arable fields.

Modern bow shears available on Amazon. The same design as used for centuries

Spring-bow shears had appeared in the Iron Age made from wrought iron. Medieval smiths introduced carbon steel for a better cutting edge due to its ability to be flame hardened then tempered. They were quite small at 135mm in length, 20mm wide, and 5mm deep and similar models can be bought today, although no longer used for commercial shearing where mechanisation has long been practised. On the manor of Chilbolton, Hants the shearing was done by customary tenants(Drew, 1945, p41) and the same is likely to have occurred on all Milton Abbey estates. At Milton Abbas Thomas le Forst, a half virgater has to be at the shearing, but he gets a meal for it as part of his customary services, whilst a La Lee all the half virgaters have to wash and shear twenty sheep and are paid 1d each.

Sheep were always washed before shearing, in Milton Abbas this would have taken place somewhere along  the Milborne Brook, possibly in the same place that it has been done for centuries – now just to the south of the present lake.[insert photo] A sheep wash can still be seen at Lyscombe, Dorset, another of Milton Abbey’s estates.

Lanolin is the natural protectant of the wool fibres keeping them free from waterlogging and bacterial and fungal infections. It is not a wax or fat, but contains a mix of many sterol esters and is secreted by the skin of the sheep. Since raw wool was packed in sacks, they became greasy and difficult to grip and so it has long been the custom to tie a stone in each corner of the sack to provide a suitable ‘ear’ to grab hold of.

The Lords Chamber on 12 April 2021: Lord Fowler sits on the speaker’s woolsack, with two other peers on the judges’ woolsack in front. copyright ukhouseoflords, CC BY 2.0 

Since the trade was so important to England the woolsack became a symbol of wool merchants and was adopted as a symbol of the House of Lords and its speaker still sits on one today.(Martin, p6)

In all manorial records of the time disease of cattle and sheep was referred to as ‘murrain’ although this might have been scab in the case of sheep. A number of treatments were applied beginning in 1282 such as verdigris, copperas, butter, mercury and grease as evidenced with frequent occurrence in the very detailed accounts in the Pipe Rolls of the Bishop of Winchester in 1301. Oddly, the expense of these items occurs under the dairy section of the accounts.(Page, 1996, 331) On the manor of Michelmersh, one of the Priory of St Swithun’s, Winchester, manors, the expenditure on “unctum coperase et vivum argentum” in 1307 was £1 7s 11d, in 1309 17s 4d, in 1311 £1 19s 10d and so on, and in 1318 154 pounds of unctum (grease) at 2½ d per pound plus vivum argentum plus fourteen pounds of copperas and four gallons of tar were bought for a total of £3 5s 10d.(Drew, 1943, p32)

By the mid-1320s increasing quantities of tar were bought to treat scab, a method used until modern times.(Page, 2003, 149) Whether these treatments were successful or not at combating disease we do not know, although fleeces, hides and meat from diseased animals were certainly sold. Applying these is a time consuming process: it is reckoned that only seven sheep could be treated by a shepherd in one day.(Page, 2003, 18)The first appearance of scab in sheep flocks began in England around 1275 and had a devastating impact on sheep and their wool, such that within four years half the sheep had died. Scab is caused by the ectoparasite mite Psoroptes ovis which lives on the skin and which causes an allergic reaction of the sheep, resulting in intense irritation with exudation and breakdown of the skin. The mite deposits excretory and secretory products containing homologues of known house dust mite allergens and enzymes onto the sheeps skin which sets up the allergic reaction within twenty four hours. Today scab is a highly contagious disease and of major economic and welfare importance to the UK sheep industry.(Stoeckli, p1)

Psoroptes ovis  the sheep scab, female, wikimedia commons

It is still a problem in sheep herds today and has be treated. Accounts show that around fifty percent of sheep died in the first outbreak and recurred frequently thereafter resulting in great losses in the wool trade and depression in the 1280s.(Slavin, p886) Examination of nearly 8000 manorial accounts of the years 1273 to 1349 shows just how dramatic the impact of scab was to sheep numbers and wool production. These statistics apply only to demesne flocks, and peasant flocks, although greatly affected, appear to have been better managed. Not only the sheep were affected but their fleeces were reduced in yield and quality, the average fleece in 1275 weighed 2.0 pounds, this dropped to around 0.6 pounds by 1280, clearly a dramatic decline. Normally sheep numbers can be replaced quite quickly due to the life span and fertility of ewes, but scab is particularly detrimental to rams and lambs and it took much longer during outbreaks to recover. Sheep numbers did not recover to 1275 levels until 1333. Normal sheep mortality without scab was less than ten percent per year, in the first outbreak it reached fifty percent and in 1284-6 forty percent, 1293-4 thirty percent, 1305-6 thirty percent, with less severe mortality, around twenty percent in 1313-4, 1319-20 and 1334-5.(Slavin Fig 3, 4 and 5) It should be remembered that in medieval England all agricultural yields were then much more variable than today: losses were due not only to weather, but to mismanagement and untreatable diseases of livestock and arable crops.

Unfortunately the impact on the national economy of the wool trade of the scab outbreaks are difficult to determine because of the lack of figures of exported woolsacks before 1279, but it has been estimated that it declined from over 50 000 woolsacks in 1275 by about fifty percent. We do know that this number further declined from around 30 000 in 1283 to 25 000 in 1284-6 (Slavin Fig 7) Exported woolsacks were taxed at one mark (6s 8d) starting in 1275 and the consequences in the decline and unpredictability of national income caused problems for the war planning of the first three king Edwards.

These disease outbreaks must have caused much hardship for sheep farmers, both seignorial and peasant. Nevertheless the wool producers were still sealing contracts for future supplies which they may not have been able to provide. Such was the demand for cash up front especially with the monasteries who agreed to contract terms which imposed penalties for non-delivery, and that the fleeces must be scab free. The contracts were such that they were guaranteed by the exchequer who could recover debts by seizing land or goods.(Slavin p903) Surprisingly wool prices remained fairly stable through these years of turmoil. The lack of fleeces also had a devastating impact on the domestic cloth trade and the English textile industry was doomed to decline.(Slavin p907) For certain the sheep on Milton Abbey estates, both demesne and peasant, would have been affected by these outbreaks of scab and all the other national market forces, although the custumal does not of course deal with transient phenomenon, only the manor court records deal with these.

The symbolic shepherd was very well recognised across Europe from stories in the Bible and his role of poverty with wisdom at the birth of Jesus as given in the Gospel of Luke was the subject of mystery plays first in Latin and then in the fifteenth century in Middle English and performed at Christmas time.(Young, 1933, Vol 2 p3) Some of these plays which first emerged in the vernacular in the early fourteenth century are now recognised as being of high literary achievement with creative use of metre and rhyming patterns. They emerged from the church and became part of the community where they were instituted, performed and managed by the laity.(Craig, 1955 p10)

A thirteenth century treatise on estate management available to monasteries, now known by its possible author’s name as Walter of Henley, explains the ideal character and behaviour needed by a shepherd.(Oschinsky, p182) Shepherds were away from any supervision of the reeve or steward day and night for months on end, so had to be trustworthy and steady. Shepherds are depicted in misericord carvings and in mystery plays.(Power p27)

The role of the shepherd is well documented in manorial rolls and given in Latin as bercarius, it occurs seventeen times in the custumal of Milton Abbey, whereas sheep occurs 108 times, thus providing us with plenty of information on the lives of sheep and shepherd, but there remains much we do not know about the economy of sheep and wool markets of the time in Milton Abbas due to its lack of contemporary manorial accounts. Usually the shepherd was a villein and received recompense for his work by custom, for example a reduced annual rent, a bowl of whey in the summer and the milk of the ewes on Sunday, a lamb at weaning time and a fleece at shearing, as well as keeping his own sheep with the lord’s flock, going in the best pastures, and he could fold his lord|s flock on his own land to manure it for a fortnight at Christmas.(Power p27) As at all times, the role of the shepherd is one of extreme trust and loneliness, with only a dog for company. At lambing time he would stay overnight with the flock of ewes. At this time in England the shepherd no longer had to deal with the menace of wolves: they had been hunted to extinction in the late thirteenth century.(Mortimer, p26) The shepherd had assistants at critical times such as lambing and shearing, for example at Crawley, Hants in 1310/11 the shepherd of ewes had an assistant at lambing and another for greasing the ewes and hoggs for eight weeks in winter.(Page, 2003, p150)

On the Milton Abbey estates the shepherd’s customary terms were not so generous. Alice Cutches, a half-virgater at Osmington, if she be a shepherd she will be quit of her rent of 2s 6d.and some of the services she owed by custom. Walter Godele of Knowle, a tenant of eight acres will be quit of 2s rent and all his other customary services except Churchscot. John le Raa, a virgator at Blackmore, Sydling St Nicholas, if he be shepherd he is quit of 1s 4d of his 8s rent, whilst his other customary services and perquisites remain the same. These latter can take many lines of text to describe and sometimes specify to whom they belong and which type of sheep are meant such as wethers or lambs, the word hoggett being used only for yearling pigs in the Milton Abbey custumal, although on other manors hoggett could also refer to one year old sheep. Henry Mese on the manor of Lyscombe, “If he shall be shepherd, will be quit of 2s and of all his works, except tossing & reaping and he will receive 12d for harvest sheaves & from having any 20 sheep in his custody 3d, 4 loaves & 5 eggs of the value as above. And if it be the fold of the lord’s sheep, he will have one wool fleece. And if for all the ewes he will have one lamb, and he will have the ploughing of one acre at winter crop & one acre at summer sowing & 10 sheep with the lord’s sheep beyond his number aforesaid…”, again showing just how complex these customs could be, indeed they can be quite difficult to make sense of. There is one instance on the Milton Abbas manor: Thomas le Forst holds one messuage and half a virgate of land, paying yearly 10s rent, if he be shepherd receives one quarter of wheat and is quit of 2s of rent and receives one fleece as a perquisite  Appearing on the accounts of 1301/2 of the Bishop of Winchester’s estate of Farnham the shepherd also gets a quittance of 2s of his rent.(Page, 1996, p206) In this source it usually specified which type of sheep the shepherd is managing whether lambs, ewes, hoggs or wethers. The shepherd often had his own house, perhaps close to the flocks of sheep which required repairs and therefore appears in some monastic accounts.(Page 1996, p227) Being a shepherd could be precarious as one on the Bishop of Winchester’s estate of Farnham, Surrey had no quittance of his rent this year because there were no ewes, the same result could occur if the reeve decided that the sheep were kept badly.(Page, 1996, p223) Quittances could be large, up to 10s of the rent, but we do not know this individual’s annual rent or how much land he held.(Page, 1996, p249) but it must have been over 10s. On some Winchester manors payment was in grain, for example at Cheriton, Hampshire the keeper of ewes and the keeper of lambs both received six bushels of barley for their year’s work. On the Winchester manor of Alresford, Hampshire the shepherd received one fleece where 173 fleeces of coarse wool were sold in 1301/2 at 4d each, (Page, 1996, p321) this shepherd must have received other remuneration in cash or kind because he certainly could not live off 4d a year! A lamb could be purchased for 4d to 6d and lived for up to twelve years yielding say nine fleeces at 4d each. Shepherds on some manors might receive payment for their services, for example on the manor of Kingston St Mary and Nailsbourne, one of the Bishop of Winchester’s estates, the stipend for one shepherd and one dairymaid came to 5s for the year, on the manor of Rimpton the shepherd received a stipend of 4s. In the custumal of Milton Abbey’s manors the shepherd is mentioned seventeen times, but no stipend or payment is given only to be quit of some rent and services, to serve as a shepherd was part of the customs of the manor and determined by the steward. As far as is known there was no appeal to his decision.

References

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