EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY. 473 



esperducts or gads. These fagots of steel must have been very 

 small, as we may gather from the fact that, at Cuxham, steel is 

 rarely purchased in this form, but by the piece. Thirty-six 

 entries of such steel occur at this place between the years 1302 

 and 1333, some of the years containing two or three entries. 

 The average price of the piece of steel is nearly is. i^., and 

 if we consider, as we surely may, that the weight of the piece 

 of steel and the piece of iron are identical, the value of steel as 

 compared with that of iron (since the average price of iron by 

 the piece during the thirty years 1301-1330 is almost exactly 

 3^W.) would be about four to one. 



In the year 1300 steel is bought at Cuxham by the cake. 

 The same measure is used nine times at Oxford between the 

 years 1330 and 1345, the average price being io^/. It would 

 seem that this must have been a mass of unwrought steel, a 

 little higher in value and much greater in weight than the 

 garb. Osemond iron, which is reckoned by the garb also, was 

 plainly similar to steel at once in character, form, and price. 



The price of iron presents no very considerable fluctuations 

 up to the close of the thirteenth century, but begins to rise 

 rapidly, in the form of piece iron, at and after the beginning 

 of the fourteenth, the years 1308, 1309, 1310 being, as is usual 

 with all such kinds of produce, exceedingly high. After these 

 prices are reached, from which no decline of any important 

 character is effected, (though some years, such as 1319, 1331, 

 !337 3 i33 8 > J 34i, *343> 1348, are marked by exceptionally 

 high rates,) comes the complete change effected by the pesti- 

 lence. To judge from the prices quoted, the market must have 

 fluctuated violently, for iron reaches, in the form of piece, 

 nearly to the price of the metals brass and tin, and the 

 variation, as for instance in the years 1350, 1353, and again 

 between 1354 and 1363, amounted to as much as 100 per cent. 

 Iron, however, is rarely sold by the piece after the Plague. It 

 was no doubt found more profitable to purchase the metal in 

 mass, and to employ the village smith in completely mani- 

 pulating it, than to purchase the half-manufactured bars, and 



