426 AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS AND TOOLS. 



the same amount for carriage, at 7 6s. $d. each. In the third, 

 one is bought for 9 izs. 6d.> including carriage, or, with a 

 proportionate reduction, .8 $s. 2^.; and in the last for 6 ios., 

 the cost of carriage and other charges in this last case amounting 



to 3 IIS - 4d. 



The cost to which the Cuxham bailiff was put in purchasing 

 and conveying five foreign stones from London to Cuxham in 

 1330, vol. i., p. 505, was^i i4s. 10^. But between 1567 and 

 1581 the city of Oxford buys six stones which appear to cost 

 44 5y. 8</., i.e. about j Js. *]d. each, the cost of carriage 

 being estimated or declared to be .11 13^. 



The price of the stones does not disagree, the rise in values 

 being taken into account, with what might be expected from a 

 contrast with a purchase made two hundred and forty years 

 before; for the general ratio of prices at the two epochs does 

 not materially differ from that found in the difference between 

 3 35-. ^d. and j Js. *]d. Unfortunately the city account 

 does not give the particulars of the charges incurred with the 

 same distinctness which is found in the record of the good 

 bailiff of Cuxham, whose diligence and fidelity, an inheritance 

 of two generations at least in his family, made me feel so 

 much interest in his labours and so alive to the loss which his 

 masters felt, for he was a Merton College serf, when he and all 

 his perished in the terrible plague of 1349. 



The city account is silent as to the place in which its 

 millstones were purchased, but I conclude it was London. 

 Now the increase in the cost of carriage since the earlier part 

 of these accounts commented on in these volumes is at least 

 three times. But if one multiplies by three the cost of 

 Oldman's charges for buying and carrying five stones, the 

 amount will be only 5 4^. 6|^., whereas the city charges are 

 y i4s. for five. But in Oldman's bargain two stones only go 

 to Cuxham, at a cost of 3^. 9^., by road. If we suppose that 

 the whole of the Oxford five were carried by road from 

 Maidenhead to Oxford, and making a large margin, reckon 

 the road carriage to Oxford double that to Cuxham, and then 



