496 ON THE PRICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS. 



corporations are the chief landlords, and where they have 

 been till lately restrained, by the pernicious statute of 13 Eliz. 

 cap. 10, from granting long leases for building purposes. 

 Besides, even if walls of lath-and-plaster work should be 

 abandoned, the use of these materials will still continue for 

 ceilings. 



Up to the close of the thirteenth century the price of lath- 

 nails exhibits no remarkable fluctuation, except in the last 

 year but one ; but, as we have had occasion to observe several 

 times before, prices in the year 1299 were seriously affected 

 by the legalised circulation of pollards. Now only one sale is 

 recorded during this year, and this is at that excessive rate 

 which might have occurred before the base money, permitted 

 for a time, was ordered by proclamation to be demonetized at 

 half its nominal value. If however, as is very likely, the sprigs 

 quoted at Elham at if. id. are really lath-nails, it is possible 

 that the true price of the year (it being remembered that 

 Elham, like the rest of Kent, is a dear locality) is contained 

 in this entry. Were the year 1299 omitted altogether from 

 the calculation, the average of the ten years 1291-1300 would 

 not vary appreciably from the decade which precedes it. 



Taking, then, 8f</. as the average price of lath-nails up to 

 the close of the thirteenth century, we may discern an eleva- 

 tion of price in the first twenty years of the fourteenth, similar 

 to that which is so frequently discoverable in the market rate 

 of other commodities, and which, as is manifest, affected 

 articles which come under very different conditions of pro- 

 duction. The rise, if the reader consults the annual averages, 

 will be seen most fully in the years 1315-17 and 1319, and 

 in my opinion suggests that the consequence of the great 

 famines was an increase in the price of labour, due to the 

 dearth of hands. 



Of course, however, this rise is trivial when compared with 

 that which ensued on the great mortality of 1348-9. In 1352 

 and 1354 the ordinary price is nearly trebled, and for twenty 

 years after the Plague the rate is, on the average, double that 



