ON THE PRICE OF GRAIN. 237 



was probably abundant and of high quality, an inference which is 

 supported by the price of malt, particularly at Cambridge, where the 

 average is 4^. a quarter to barley at %s. 8%d. Drage malt is about 

 the price of barley. Oats are not particularly cheap on an average, 

 the price being elevated by the Hornchurch entries, where oats are 

 always dear, and even by those of Heyford and Oxford, where they 

 are generally cheap. Rye is dear; for some unexplained reason 

 the entries, chiefly from Hornchurch, giving higher prices than for 

 wheat. There is only one small purchase of beans, at a very low 

 rate ; but peas, the entries of which are numerous, and vetches, and 

 pulse, for each of which only one entry has been found, are equally 

 cheap. 



1418-9. The evidence, which is fairly plentiful, shows a consider- 

 able rise in the price of wheat generally, the average reaching 6s. \\\d. 

 The highest rates are reached in Wilts and Sussex, and probably, as 

 such facts generally suggest, the summer was wet in the southern 

 counties. In Cambridge the average is not nearly so high, nor again 

 at Hornchurch, a place always affected by London prices. Barley 

 and malt however are cheap, and the crop must have been abundant 

 except, as above, in the south. Lower still is the price of oats, large 

 sales being effected at Hornchurch at is. 4^. the quarter. Oats are 

 not dear even in the south, and the average would have shown a 

 lighter rate, had it not been for two entries from Norwich and Brom- 

 ham, both probably of an exceptional character. Rye again is cheap, 

 even at Hornchurch, though as before it is dear in the south. Beans 

 and peas are cheap, but there is no entry of either vetches or pulse. 

 The harvest must have been below the average for wheat, and above 

 it for all other kinds of grain, and the barley crops must have been 

 very heavy in the eastern counties. 



1419-20. . There is a considerable fall in the price of wheat, the 

 information being more copious than that for the preceding year. But 

 barley, drage, and oats are higher, the price of malt being depressed 

 by the low Cambridge average. Oats are not very dear at Horn- 

 church, but at a place named Porlok, they are distinguished as great 

 and small, the marked contrast between the prices of these two quali- 

 ties bringing out what I have frequently referred to, the difficulty of 

 arriving at any standard for the quality of oats, which seem to have 

 varied from an almost worthless grain to one of great weight and 

 high quality. Perhaps the best test of the oat crop is the price of 

 oatmeal, of which plentiful but not ^continuous prices will be found in 

 the tables : the price of this varies from 1 2 s. to 8 j. ? the average being 



