THREAD. SEWING SILK. HAIR-CLOTH. 563 



and white, cost id. each in 1512. The average of these ten 

 entries of silk by the ounce gives i s. Q\d. 



Here it may be convenient to refer to the price of hair-cloth, 

 a material manufactured for the purpose of drying malt in the 

 oast. My accounts supply me with twenty-one entries between 

 1409 and 1537, and three afterwards. In all cases the material 

 is sold by the yard. The price varies from lod. to ^d. As 

 usual it is high at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The 

 average price in the first period is $s. 8d. the dozen yards, in 

 the latter (three entries in 1554, 1555, 1556) the average is 

 8s. 6d. In 1533 sewing hair, employed to join the breadths of 

 this hair-cloth, costs ^d. the pound. In my first volume, the 

 price of the dozen of hair-cloth was 3^-. yd. before the plague, 

 and 8s. id. after it, the value gradually declining. In the 

 fifteenth century the same decline continues ; prices as usual are 

 very low in the last part of the fifteenth and the beginning 

 of the sixteenth centuries, and the rise in prices finally puts 

 the material at a little above the level of the last half of the 

 fourteenth. 



It will be obvious, from the entries made as to the length 

 of the piece, that purchasers measured their goods after buying 

 them, having probably given earnest of what they bought. 

 This fact is curiously illustrated by the Cambridge entry of 

 1486, in which it is stated that the twenty-one and a half 

 ells of ' Bresell ' cloth was a quarter ell short, and the twenty- 

 six ells of Holland was similarly deficient by half an ell. This 

 looks as though the short measure was detected when it was 

 too late to rectify the price. 



WOOLLEN CLOTH. The revenues of collegiate and monastic 

 foundations were charged with the clothing as well as the 

 board and lodging of those who were supported by the charity. 

 The residue of these revenues was divided according to a fixed 

 proportion. The head of the college, the abbot, prior, or other 

 principal official had his share, the officers of the establishment 

 (in the case of a college the bursars and deans) had their fixed 

 money payments, and the remainder, if aught remained, was 



002 



