COARSE CANVAS. 57 1 



Norfolk suffered a permanent depression from the effects of 

 the Plague; perhaps also from the insurrection of 1381. 



COARSE CANVAS. (Vol. ii. pp. 511-516.) The information 

 collected in this table gives prices for canvas employed for the 

 following purposes: mill-sails, fans to winnowing-machines, 

 sacks, woolpacks, dairy uses, harness, chapel windows; for 

 packing fish, and for covering garden seeds. It is generally 

 reckoned by the ell, but sometimes by the yard. I am disposed 

 to think that in the time before us these words are synonymes, 

 and that the ell was not, as in modern times, nine inches 

 longer than the yard. For instance, sacking at Christchurch in 

 Hants is dearer by the yard in 1298 than it is at Cuxham in 

 1397 by the ell. When however, as happened in course of 

 time, the ell was employed for foreign manufactures, and the 

 yard was naturalized as an English measure, the difference 

 always existing between the English and foreign standard was 

 permanently recognized. The Statute of 27 Edw. III. pre- 

 scribes, as many previous enactments and proclamations had, 

 that there should be one yard, measure and weight*. 



The price of coarse canvas has been reckoned, in the table 

 of averages annexed to this chapter, by the dozen ells. In the 

 earlier period it presents the same facts of rise and fall as have 

 been found in the record of other and similar articles. It is 

 cheaper up to the close of the thirteenth century than at any 

 other time. It rises with the beginning of the fourteenth, and 

 is, as usual, dearest in the ten years 1311-1320, from which 

 time it sinks again, _ till the price is much more than doubled 

 after the Plague. But when the losses inflicted by the Plague 

 have been alleviated either by time or by the growth of 

 population and the filling up of the void, the price falls again ; 

 so that at the close of the fourteenth century it is, though still 

 in excess of the ancient rate, much more moderate. 



" We have seen in the preceding chapter that an average taken of a series of five-bushel 

 sacks gives about 6|rf. apiece. If we consider (sewing-string and making excluded) that 

 they were worth about 6d,, and compare this with the price of sacking from twenty-one 

 entries between 1 296 and 1349, we sna1 ^ ^ n/ ^ ^e price of sacking a very little above 2\d. an 

 ell or yard, and that the five-bushel sack contained a little more than two yards and a half. 



