EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY. 47 f 



expenditure of this article was a matter of serious consideration 

 to the medieval farmer. No direct information about the 

 seasons, scanty as it is, is so frequent as that found in the 

 notices which the bailiff gives of the great cost of iron, due to 

 the dryness of the summer and the consequent wear in summer 

 ploughing. Steel, though its use is very seldom specified, must 

 have been employed to tip the shares and ploughshoes, and to 

 strengthen the more exposed parts of the horse and ox shoes. 



Iron and steel were bought, as well as implements and 

 materials manufactured from them, at fairs and markets. 

 Hence, as the reader will find, the place at which the purchase 

 is effected is sometimes named. Thus the Kenet bailiff 

 purchases iron at Leche and Ely. The Cuxham bailiff, in a 

 very dear year, 1315, effects a purchase at a moderate rate 

 in Southampton, from which place there were probably at this 

 time common carriers to Oxford, as there certainly were from 

 Winchester. The Clare bailiff" buys at Stourbridge fair, as 

 does also the same official at Woodhall, and even the bailiff 

 at Whaddon in Bucks. It seems that iron was cheaper in 

 and about the neighbourhood of London than it was elsewhere, 

 and that it was also procured at low rates in Norfolk and the 

 adjacent counties. The comparative cheapness in the former 

 case might have been due to the fact that even at that time 

 London was a market of considerable consequence, in the 

 latter to the great export trade from Norfolk and the con- 

 tiguous region. 



Iron is bought in several shapes. The commonest form is 

 the piece, twenty-five of which, we are informed by Fleta and 

 similar authorities, constitute a hundred-weight. I have taken 

 for granted that so positive a statement is to be relied on, and 

 have constructed a table, though not without some misgivings, 

 in which a series of annual averages is derived from this 

 computation. 



Purchases by the piece are always effected at higher prices 

 than those in any other form. The fact is, the iron was 

 partially manufactured, being forged into bars, which were 



