EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY. 459 



necessity, but of a use which could not be in excess, as it 

 could hardly be lessened. Dear or cheap, an almost equal 

 quantity would be needed every year, was purchased, and con- 

 sumed. The supply must have been procurable at the nearest 

 market, or town, or fair, and was probably brought back by the 

 bailiff when he took his corn for sale. 



To some extent perhaps the price of salt, as given in the 

 second volume and in the averages subjoined to the present 

 chapter, was affected in the earlier years of the period by the 

 fact that so many entries come from Norfolk, in which salt, 

 from the short distance it was carried, would be somewhat 

 cheaper. Making, then, some little allowance for the low 

 rates which prevail generally up to the close of the thirteenth 

 century, there is no great variation till the great rise which 

 occurred in the years 1315, 1316. For some years after this 

 date the price is still high, when it sinks again j for between 

 1324 and 1348 it is above 6d. the bushel in four years only, 

 three of which, 1337-9, are continuous. In the first of these 

 years the Staundon account informs us that there was very 

 great rain, and the price at which the article is sold on this 

 manor is quite in accordance with such a fact, being higher 

 than at any other place, with the exception of a small quantity 

 bought at Farley, at which place the price is not generally 

 excessive. 



But a total change ensues after the Plague, and the price 

 is, between 1351 and 1380, at least doubled. Such a result, 

 to which we shall see corresponding phenomena in other 

 articles on which labour is expended, but on which no legis- 

 lative enactment could produce a depression, could only have 

 proceeded from a great rise in the price of labour. The 

 manufacture of salt was, I make no doubt, excessively simple, 

 and the occupation was, we may conclude, carried on by the 

 cheapest kind of labour. But, as we have been enabled to 

 notice over and over again, it is precisely upon low-priced 

 kinds of labour that a scarcity in supply induces the greatest 

 and most permanent rise. 



