6/4 ON THE PROFITS OF AGRICULTURE 



in the next year no tenant at all can be found for it. The 

 exits of the manor are little more than a fourth of the amount 

 recorded in 1332, and the profit of the court has dwindled to 

 an utterly insignificant sum. 



The year was no doubt excessively ungenial c , for, despite 

 the great loss of population, the price of corn was very high, 

 and the crop at Cuxham appears to have been almost a failure. 

 Very little stock is sold, and the profits of the dairy are con- 

 siderably reduced. Had it not been for the great reduction in 

 the numbers of the people there would have been famine prices 

 in this and the next year. 



On the other hand, the expenses are very heavy. Little or 

 nothing, so to speak, is spent in repairs, and very little is 

 bought, except what appears to be absolutely necessary, in 

 order that operations should be carried on at all. But labour 

 costs three times as much in harvest and in the manor-house. 

 On the whole, though the actual charges are not in the aggre- 

 gate quite so great as in the year 1332, it will be seen, on 

 inspecting the balance-sheet printed at the end of this chapter, 

 that there is a vast increase in the cost of all services, and of 

 such articles as depend largely on labour for their value. 



The expenses exceed the receipts. The bailiff, however, 

 possesses a quantity of wool, the growth of two years, which 

 had been no doubt retained in the hope of more remunerative 

 prices, with good reason, for wool had been sold at little more 

 than three-fifths of the money-value which it possessed in 1332. 

 But even if this item be added to the debtor side of the bailiff's 

 account it would give a miserable rate of profit, less indeed 

 than four per cent, on the capital invested in the estate. 



This capital has been calculated according to current prices, 

 the rates, as before, being taken from Cuxham and its vicinity ; 

 the seed-corn valued at the autumn, the lent-corn at the spring 



c If one can venture on a conjecture from such indirect evidence of high prices 

 of corn, it would seem that the progress of the Plague was somewhat arrested by 

 cold and wet summers in 1350 and 1351. It will be seen (supra, p. 481) that the 

 price of salt was exceptionally high. 



