CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



IT is my purpose, in the work before me, to attempt at 

 History of Agriculture in England, and to supply a record of 

 prices, especially of corn and labour, from the time at which 

 the earliest consecutive annals begin, down to the close of 

 the eighteenth century. These two volumes will embrace the 

 period of one hundred and forty-two years ; from the summer., 

 that is to say, next after that of the great parliament at 

 Oxford, held under the auspices of Simon de Montfort, to the 

 second year of Henry the Fourth. The date at which the 

 enquiry commences is accidental, being due to the circum- 

 stance that I have found continuous information only from 

 the year 1259. ^ n a ^ cases tne record is contemporaneous 

 with the transactions which it narrates, and, with but one or 

 two exceptions, the facts are hitherto unpublished. It is, in- 

 deed, somewhat remarkable, though antiquarian research has 

 been busy for at least the last two centuries; and apart from 

 the aid which enquiries into the economical history of medi- 

 eval England would throw upon its real history, though the 

 contrast of prices at different epochs has been a subject of 

 considerable interest ; that the records from which I have had 

 the fortune to procure the evidence, which is now laid before 

 the reader, should have been undisturbed, perhaps undetected. 

 It is not too much to say, that all attempts hitherto made to 



B 



