02V THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 291 



1311-1313 and 1318-13^0. The price of wheat exceeded all 

 previous experience in 1308, was higher still in 1309, and was 

 not much reduced in 1310. In 1314 it again exceeded all ex- 

 perience, was greatly enhanced in 1315, and in 1316 was nearly 

 three times the price at which it stood on an average in 1314. 

 In 1317 it was at about the same price as in 1314. In 1321 it 

 was again excessively high, and the price did not decline to 

 any notable extent in 1322. It was still dear in 1323 and 

 1324, but after this date, although dear years do occur, prices 

 were on the whole low. 



All the chroniclers concur in dwelling on the serious effects 

 of this great scarcity, though, as usual, its magnitude is ex- 

 aggerated. The average price of wheat is trebled, not, as 

 Walsingham and others assert, increased tenfold. In some 

 places the rate is five times the average, but this under the 

 year 1316 is the maximum reached. The nearest parallel to 

 the fifteen years is that found between 1799 and 1814, when 

 wheat frequently reached 6 the quarter for three or four 

 years, and was thereupon three times as high as it had been 

 during the cheaper years of the first half of the eighteenth 

 century. 



Some efforts, erroneous but well meant, were made to meet 

 the emergency by proclamations and parliamentary edicts. It 

 is said that the people were reduced to subsist upon roots, upon 

 horses and dogs ; and stories are told of even more terrible acts 

 by reason of the extreme famine. But we must hesitate before 

 we give credence to the stories found in chroniclers, picked up 

 as they were, no doubt, from rumours current in the country, 

 and amplified before they reached the monastery in which they 

 were recorded. The cause of the dearth was incessant rain and 

 cold stormy summers. It is said that the inclemency of the 

 seasons affected the cattle, and that numbers perished from 

 disease and want. We shall see below, although the price 

 of cattle is not seriously affected, that a real rise in price 

 is discoverable on the decennial averages between 1310 

 and 1 330 j 1 and we shall probably be right in assigning this 



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