WOOL AND HIDES. 305 



Next in the scale of low prices come Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, 

 and Yorkshire wools (one district of Kent and one in York- 

 shire are excepted, the produce of which is of a greater value), 

 the tod of which is worth rather more than 4$-. *jd. The other 

 varieties rise in value thus, 5^. i\d., $s. 4^., 6s., 6s. if<^., 

 6s. 8d., Js. zd., the tod. I have reduced the rate per sack of 

 thirteen tod to that of the latter quantity, because I have taken 

 the tod in my estimates and averages. The schedule gives 

 no value for the produce of the northern counties of Durham, 

 Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland, nor for that of 

 Lancashire and Cheshire, Devon and Cornwall. Some of my 

 entries, and three series in particular of considerable extent, are 

 derived from Durham, and not a few from counties not scheduled. 

 Sheep-breeding is not carried on extensively in Norfolk, and I 

 have no doubt that the Suffolk price is intended to apply to 

 such parts of the northern county as produced wool. But it is 

 not easy to arrive at average values of a commodity which varied 

 in value between the highest or lowest by nearly six times. 



The interpretation of the entries which I have been able to 

 secure, unfortunately very much fewer than those I had the 

 fortune to light on for my earlier period, is made more difficult 

 by many special circumstances. It is true that sheep-farming 

 was continued by the wealthier landowners long after they 

 had abandoned ordinary agriculture to tenant-farmers, either 

 on a stock and land lease or on an ordinary tenancy for a 

 short time, and that in the sixteenth century sheep-breeding 

 became so profitable a calling that the legislature strove to 

 repress it by putting a limit on the number of the flocks 

 possessed by such breeders. But these great proprietors seldom 

 allowed their bailiffs and head shepherds to deal in the 

 produce, but either contracted or bargained immediately with 

 the merchant exporter, or traded in their produce at some 

 convenient market. 1 Thus I have examined in the Record 



1 In an interesting paper on Amy Robsart's life and death, published by Canon Jackson 

 in the Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine, a letter of Amy's is seen in facsimile, in which 

 she bids her bailiff get 55. the stone for the wool on her Norfolk es'.ate. 



VOL. IV. X 



