WINE. 621 



instance, forty-five gallons are purchased by Merton College in 

 1310 (a year which was in many particulars affected by the 

 high prices of 1309) at the excessive sum of is. the gallon, 

 a rate which is not found till after the Plague (except in the 

 case of the Greek wine bought in 1337), and very rarely after- 

 wards, even when the joint effects of this great calamity and 

 the severance of Guienne from England had been fully induced 

 upon the money value of French produce. Up to the year 

 1337 the price varied between 4^. and 6d. the gallon, though 

 it is found in one year (1332) as low as id. 



I have been unable to follow the early or immediate effect of 

 Edward the Third's French wars in the price of wine, for 

 unfortunately I have been unable to discover any information 

 derived from sale or purchase between the years 1337 and 

 1350. But it is not likely that any considerable effect was 

 induced upon the trade or the supply, seeing that the earlier 

 campaigns of Edward were carried on in the north and north- 

 east provinces of the kingdom. It was only after the abrupt 

 termination of the negotiations commenced in 1355 that the 

 plans of Edward and the Black Prince embraced the southern 

 and wine-growing districts of France. 



As a consequence of this lack of information, the price given 

 under the decennial period 13411350 is illusory, being, in 

 fact, an average derived from the sales of one year (1350), 

 when several purchases are recorded from Boxley, and one at 

 a very high rate from Gamlingay. In these prices we must 

 therefore trace the influence of the Plague only. But in the 

 subsequent prices, those which prevail up to the last twenty 

 years of the fourteenth century, we must recognize the joint 

 influence of three causes : one of which is the calamity which 

 befell France in common with other countries; another the 

 special circumstances of the war which was carried on from 

 1355 till the conclusion of Edward the Third's reign, which 

 must have seriously affected the wine-growing districts of 

 western France; and a third the ultimate severance of 

 Guienne from the English monarchy, and with this the 



