6OO ON THE PRICE OF METALS. 



and that it is to this cause that we must ascribe the 

 creation of so large a number of parliamentary boroughs in this 

 county. 



I have represented such prices of tin or solder as occur in 

 the accounts in the hundred-weight of 113 Ibs., giving, as 

 before, decennial averages only. It is true that the purchases 

 of these articles are generally in small quantities, the largest 

 which I have found being a single hundred-weight purchased 

 at Maldon for the purpose, it seems, of melting with copper in 

 order to make a bell or bells, the proportion being five of 

 copper to one of tin. 



Ordinarily, however, tin was used as solder, its value for 

 such a purpose having been known from very early times. 



The price of tin exhibits some considerable variations 

 through the decennial averages, but no great rise in con- 

 sequence of the Plague. I do not pretend to assert that 

 these variations suggest any such fluctuations in the market 

 price of the article as might form the basis for a calculation 

 as to the rise or fall, the demand or supply, of this product. 

 But I think that the evidence is sufficient for a general average, 

 and that before the era to which we have had so frequent 

 occasion to refer, tin was worth about i\s. 4^. the hundred- 

 weight, and that after the Plague it rose, on the whole period 

 preceding that visitation, by about 45 per cent., though not by 

 nearly so large a proportion when compared with the first fifty 

 years of the fourteenth century. 



We must remember, in interpreting medieval prices of 

 articles like those which are before us, that the exceptional 

 causes which now affect markets were wholly absent. Specu- 

 lative purchases, operating by demand at least on the price 

 of the article, were unknown, and no person had yet attempted 

 to forestall the market by getting possession of all, or nearly all 

 the supply. Again, in our day a war at the antipodes may 

 temporarily raise the money value of some raw material to a 

 height which, were it reached by the ordinary course of events, 

 would indicate a serious depreciation in the comparative value 



