FUSTIAN. SAY. FINE CLOTH. 569 



Say, chiefly manufactured at Norwich, is bought by the 

 piece and by the yard ; the latter rarely. It first occurs in 

 1466, when it costs 48.$-. ^d. the piece, a price never nearly 

 equalled afterwards. Omitting this entry, the average is iSs. i\d. 

 the piece. The entries by the yard are at is. $\d.> and it would 

 appear therefore that the piece contained less than a dozen 

 yards, or perhaps a dozen, if, as we may infer, prices were less 

 in bulk than in small quantities. Later in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury say is sold at 27.?. yd. the piece. 



As some kinds of cloth were, either from the scanty breadth 

 of the article or its poor quality, too cheap for my average, so 

 others are too dear. Such are articles purchased occasionally 

 for heads of colleges and religious houses, and for nobles and 

 wealthy gentlemen, and especially in the later part of the 

 enquiry. Examples are the cloth of the Warden of New Col- 

 lege in 1414; the articles priced in the Howard accounts for 

 1462, 1463, 1464, 1465, 1466, 1467, 1469, 1481, 1482; that at 

 London in 1467 ; at Norton Mandeville in 1499; at Battle in 

 1502; at Oxford in 1506; at Hickling in 1515; at Stonor (as 

 far as regards the first entry) in 1517; at Oxford in 1525, and 

 at Warwick (as regards the second entry) in the same year; at 

 Oxford in 1528, at Warwick in 1531, at Greenwich in 1532, 

 at Stonor in 1533 and 1534, at London in 1546, at Oxford in 

 1549, and at London in 1553, in one item. 



As regards the principal items in the accounts, those of cloth 

 designed for the liveries of persons maintained in public insti- 

 tutions, and generally provided for by the statutes of the 

 founder, I have put the evidence for each year in which I could 

 interpret the facts into an average. It will be found, either 

 that cloth was cheaper at Oxford and its neighbourhood, or that 

 the quality was inferior, or that the piece of twenty-four yards 

 was narrower than that bought in the eastern counties. Some 

 of the facts suggest the second of these explanations, for King's 

 College, Cambridge, from which I have generally gained the 

 facts of the Cambridge prices, pays more than (as I find from 

 the entries of Peterhouse) a poorer college would. The same 



