CHARGES OF THE STABLE. 53! 



labour, but because he had become possessed of capital, was 

 able to lay by a portion of his gains, and could therefore work 

 for a future market. Any person, I repeat, who studies, even 

 superficially, a farm account of the beginning, and another of 

 the end of the fourteenth century, must obtain indications 

 of the change which has taken place in the habits and in the 

 condition of the labouring classes. So, out of the gains which 

 were thus amassed, temptations to spend coming but little in 

 the way of the medieval labourer, those estates were purchased 

 on which the yeomanry of the fifteenth century lived in 

 comfort. 



Equally characteristic is the history of the price of horseshoe- 

 nails. These articles were purchased at the same times and 

 places with shoes. Knowing what horseshoe-nails must have 

 been, we can readily judge, from the price at which they were 

 purchased, what was the sifce of other nails. These nails, 

 bought by the thousand, were made, it is probable, with broad 

 heads, the grooved shoe being, considering the price of iron and 

 the lightness of the plate, an invention of later times. But the 

 nail must have been of length sufficient to pass through so 

 much of the hoof as would serve to keep it tightly on, and it 

 must have been of such temper as to ensure its toughness and 

 endurance. 



To judge by the price, the horseshoe-nail must have con- 

 tained two-thirds more iron than the lath-nail, and about half 

 as much as the board-nail. 



The price of these nails rises and falls evenly with that of 

 horseshoes. During the first ninety years they are dearest in 

 the years 1311-1320, and though the price declines slightly 

 after this time, it does not revert to the cheap rates of the 

 thirteenth century. After the Plague the rise is instant and 

 permanent, the rate being doubled, and remaining high, the 

 dearest time being, as before, the decade 1371-1380. Evidence 

 for the last ten years is wanting, but judging by the exactness 

 with which the price of these articles follows that of horseshoes, 

 we might certainly affirm that if the latter stood at from Sf. ^d. 



M m 2 



