308 WOOL AND HIDES. 



May fells, the last-named being by far the most valuable, and 

 the price rising in the same year, according to the quality and 

 fleece of the sheepskin, from zs. to 6s. the dozen. As might 

 be expected, the best quality of the sheep is found in the May 

 purchases. A wether or mutton in Easter or May, apart from 

 the value of his fell, was worth twice as much as the same 

 animal in November. The cause of this variation is to be 

 found in the scantiness and cost of good winter provender. 

 During winter time the animal was half-starved, or maintained 

 in condition at disproportionate cost. 



These difficulties arising from variations in the value of the 

 best local produce, from the comparative scantiness of informa- 

 tion, from the different way in which the produce, when grown 

 designedly for sale, is estimated, either by weight or by tale, 

 and that which is derived from the doubt as to whether the 

 article was a first or a bye product, are enhanced by a further 

 difficulty, which is not indeed so serious and perpetual as it 

 was in the earlier volumes, but still remains as a hindrance 

 to satisfactory results, the variety of weight in a unit which 

 goes by the same name, the petra or stone. The legislature 

 over and over again defined that the sack should be the unit, 

 that it should consist of 13 tod, 2,6 stone and 53 clove, and 

 that no other weight should be employed. But local custom 

 and tradition was, as it has remained even up to our own day, 

 too strong for the will of the legislature ; and puzzling local 

 measures, the key to which must be sought after, but may 

 generally be found, render the estimate of prices laborious and 

 sometimes doubtful. 



In the early part of the fifteenth century, the principal 

 information as to the price of wool is derived from three 

 New College estates, two of which are in Wilts, the third in 

 Bucks. At the first two of these, Alton Barnes and Stert, 

 the weight taken is the pond, or pondus, which we learn 

 indirectly to have been three-fourths of the tod, or 21 Ibs. 

 At the third estate, the tod is used. The College appears to 

 have abandoned sheep-farming, at least through the hands of 



