CARTS AND WAGONS. 543 



also whenever light articles were carried in it, by fastening 

 hurdles on either side of the carriage ; these hurdles being 

 generally stronger and more expensive than those used for 

 penning sheep. Such hurdles will be found quoted from 

 Wolford in the year 1345. (Vol. ii. p. 572. iii.) It will be 

 seen that the price is nearly three times as high as that 

 generally given for hurdles used in a sheepfold. 



The most important and costly parts of the cart were the 

 wheels and other such appurtenances. The evidence on this 

 subject is copious, but it is by no means of easy interpretation. 

 The words used to express the parts are, as a rule, absent from 

 the Glossaries, and the entries, even when they are precise, 

 represent such very different prices, as to imply either that the 

 quality and value of the article was various, or that the 

 distinctions occasionally made are not rigidly maintained. It 

 will not be however, I hope, impossible to arrive at some 

 conclusions as to the cost of these articles, as to their 

 aggregate value in the finished cart, and as to the change 

 which took place in the market rate at which they could be 

 purchased. 



The accounts distinguish two kinds of wheels with tolerable 

 uniformity. These are plain or naked wheels (flan* and nud#\ 

 and wheels prepared (f errands or rot* ad ligandujri). It is pro- 

 bable that, in the comparative dearness of iron, our ancestors 

 made use of solid wheels, i. e. made in one piece from the 

 section of some large tree, and bored for a rude axle, and that 

 such were the plain wheels. At any rate, plain or naked 

 wheels are, as a rule, considerably cheaper than wheels pre- 

 pared for an iron frame. 



The latter were, as in modern times, a circumference of 

 timber firmly mortised together, with spokes radiating to an 

 axle, the spoke springing from the middle of the several pieces 

 of which the circumference was composed. Such unfinished 

 articles appear to be purchased from the wheelwright, the rest 

 of their furniture being obtained from some other craftsman. 

 It is clear too, unless the village or town contained a regular 



