The Consumption of Field Crops in Late Medieval England

Abstract

Abstract It is hard to avoid platitudes when describing the place of grain in medieval diet, for in both absolute and relative terms it towered over any other foodstuff. This may not have been the case in every part of medieval Britain, as Gerald of Wales informs us in his Description of Wales of c.1200, but for the vast majority of people in England grain provided the bulk of their calorific intake. It has been estimated that at the start of the fourteenth century grain accounted for up to 80 per cent of a harvest worker’s calories and 78 per cent of a soldier’s; even among the lay nobility of medieval England, grain provided 65–70 per cent of their energy intake. Medieval people consumed grain in three main ways: as bread, as ale, and— among the poorer sections of society—in pottage, a thick soup. On balance, bread was the most important—the monks of Westminster Abbey, for instance, gained 35–46 per cent of their calories in this way at the turn of the sixteenth century—but, for many, ale was not far behind. The basic allowance for these monks was a gallon per monk per day, and great households consumed ale in vast quantities: Henry de Lacy bought an average of 85 gallons of ale a day for his household in 1299, while at Framlingham Castle 78 gallons were consumed per day in 1385–6. A sharper picture of consumption per person emerges from the allowances of food and drink given to lay folk who retired to monastic houses. At Selby Abbey in 1272, for example, Adam of Fleyburghr and his wife Emma received two white loaves, one brown loaf, and two gallons of ale every day.