478 ON THE PRICE OF METALS. 



the destruction of the monasteries, the general rise in prices 

 was naturally arrested, as far as lead was concerned, a large 

 quantity of old lead getting into the market. Thus in 1548-9 

 it was sold in Oxford, other prices being high, at from 4 to 

 4 izs. 6d. the fother. In the next year, however, it was 

 bought by York Minster at j 13,$-. 7^., and in 1550 at Durham 

 at 6. But the price in Oxford in the latter year was $ is. 

 Oxford swarmed with monasteries, and the spoil must have 

 been abundant and cheap. 



In 1559 the rise in the price has been finally effected. 

 Lead, though the place of the purchase has been lost from the 

 account, is from .11 to 12 the fother in pigs. In 1561 it is 

 14 ids. 6d. in sheets, a price at which it generally remains to 

 the close of the period, though, as the table at the conclusion 

 of this chapter will show, with some variations. 



PEWTER OR GARNISH. The accounts of collegiate and 

 monastic institutions give abundant entries of the price of 

 pewter vessels, called also garnish. There seem to have been 

 two or three kinds of pewter ware, plain or gross, and finer or 

 counterfeit. The article is also called electrum and latten, 

 and is frequently bought in large quantities by the pound, at 

 from 3</., 3!^., and ^d. in the earlier period, at $d. when the 

 price began to rise, and at yd. to qd. towards the close of the 

 whole period. The old metal is regularly taken in exchange 

 and allowed for by the dealer in new goods. It appears that 

 counterfeit pewter ware was modelled on a regular pattern, 

 all the parts and pieces of which were on a set. Sometimes 

 the garnish, as in 1509, was said to be of the 'silver fashion/ 

 a form of entry which implies that silver vessels, dishes, and 

 plates were used by opulent persons. Two of such garnishes, 

 weighing together 138 Ibs., were bought by Magdalen College, 

 Oxford, in the year referred to above. Similar purchases were 

 made at Oxford in 1513, and at Durham in 1531. In the 

 latter case we read of dishes, salts, plates, and doublcrs. But 

 probably the pewter ware of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 

 turies did not commonly include plates, the use of plain or 



