Agricultural History Review, Volume 49 Part 2 (2001), pp. 123–139

This article assesses the impact of grain commercialization on the diet and wages of stipendiary famuli on a number of manors held by the abbot of Glastonbury in southern and south-western England at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Using correlation and regression analyses, it shows that grain commercialization had a negative impact on workers' living standards. Specifically, high grain commercialization seems to have caused, or at least contributed to, the distribution of low-value, and thus low-quality, grains to stipendiaryfamuli. Such actions seem to have been an important aspect of an estate policy that emphasized the exploitation of the market and the labourer in search of profit. 

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