ON THE PRICE OF PETALS. 479 



hollowed wooden trenchers, and even coarse pottery, having 

 been common. 



It is almost superfluous to add that there is hardly any 

 object in which the improvements of mining, smelting, and 

 manufacture have produced such marked results as they have 

 on the production of the commoner metals. The cheapness 

 and ease with which food is procured, exhibited in the com- 

 paratively small increase in the price of corn, as contrasted 

 with divers other values, and the consequently prodigious 

 increase in the rent of land, are due to one set of facts, the 

 still smaller rise in the modern prices of the commoner metals 

 is due to other facts, which will be obvious to the reader. 



SOLDER. The very common use of lead for roofing and 

 for conducting water necessitated the frequent use of this 

 article for jointing and repairing leaden articles. Solder or 

 tin, stannum and stagnum, are found in most of the years 

 comprised in this enquiry. In the earlier part of the period 

 the article is about $d. a pound. In the later period it rises 

 to >]d. or 8^., the change being markedly conspicuous in 

 1549-50, though there is some increase previously. In the 

 later part of the period it is frequently bought by the hundred- 

 weight. It seems that the difference in the price of solder and 

 pewter is due to the fact that the latter was fashioned. It 

 also appears that the solder of the middle ages contained far 

 more tin than that of modern usage, not only from the price 

 at which tin and solder are respectively sold, but from the fact 

 that the two names are frequently applied indifferently to the 

 same material. 



TIN. There are several entries of this metal under this 

 name. Thus, at York in 1402 and 1404, and at Windsor in 

 1405, it is bought at $d. a pound, or at 2,8s. the hundredweight. 

 In 1407 it is purchased for Denbigh Castle at 28^. and 32^. 8af. 

 the hundredweight. In 1415, 1418, 1419, 1421, 1422, 1432, 

 1433 it: is purchased again at York at 28.$-. In 1417 it costs 

 2u. the hundredweight at Windsor. But the king, being Duke 

 of Cornwall, was perhaps buying it at his own stannary price. In 



