

ON THE PRICE OF FARM PRODUCE. 367 



Oxford, a barrel of 13 gallons at Sion, two others of i6j gal- 

 lons, and a hogshead of lamp oil, the quantity of which is not 

 noted. The barrel of rape oil costs z'js. id. in 1496, 26s. %d. 

 in 1499, $6s. 8d. in 1504, 32^. in 1519, 30^. in 1520, 33^. 4^. 

 in 1521, 32^-. in 1522, 28.5-. 4^. in 1526, 40^. in 1530, 325. %d. 

 in 1537. The average of the last ten entries is $is. io\d. 



Oil, called 'meat oil,' is purchased at Hickling in 1509 and 

 1511. This seems to mean the same as salad oil. 



CANDLES. The information obtained as to the price of 

 candles is much more copious in the later period than it was 

 in the former, evidence being deficient for only eleven years 

 out of the 182 contained in this period. The price of candles 

 therefore supplies what is wanting in the record of the price of 

 hard fats, the more because the annual record is almost 

 unbroken during the sixteenth century, and entirely so during 

 that part of the period in which the rise in prices was effected. 



The entries have been reckoned by the dozen pounds. 

 Candles are frequently bought at this rate, and occasionally, as 

 at Hornchurch in 1407, and Cambridge in 1414, thirteen 

 pounds are reckoned to the dozen. Candles are much cheaper 

 in the fifteenth century than they were in the fourteenth, and 

 the price, lower in the last decade of the fifteenth century, 

 keeps falling from the commencement of this period. The 

 general average in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was 

 is. ii\d. From 1401 to 1530 the general average is only 

 is. $\d., and in the decade 1491-1500 it is as low as is. o|<^., 

 the article being frequently purchased at is. the dozen, and 

 even less. 



The price of candles is, of course, the price of manufactured 

 mutton fat ; and the low range of these prices is a proof that 

 sheepfarming was profitable, that meat was cheap, that a 

 generous diet was within the reach of most people, including the 

 labouring classes, and that artificial light was also more within 

 the means of the many than it had been a century before. 

 During that period it seemed that the use of candles must have 

 been rare among the poorer and farming classes, and that, as a 



