628 SUNDRY ARTICLES. 



between 1502 and 1536 was 4^. 9^., and between 1561 and 

 1570 was js. gd. In 1574 the Crown purchases 2cwts. 36 Ibs. 

 of resin at the enormous price of 4^. the pound. If there be 

 no error in the entry, it is plain that the rate is a scarcity 

 price of an exceptional kind. The resin bought in the early 

 years of Elizabeth for navy stores is often described as 

 yellow. 



Up to 1540 resin sold in small quantities costs on an average 

 a little over \od. the dozen pounds. Later on it costs about 

 2s. 6\d., that is, the price is about tripled, an occurrence which 

 my reader will frequently find in this survey of sixteenth 

 century prices. Besides uses referred to before, of cheap in- 

 cense in churches, and for the manufacture of torches, resin is, 

 I believe, employed in the process of soldering, and therefore 

 remained in demand when the religious uses of the article 

 had ceased. 



Another material, which might have been better treated 

 under building materials, is glue. I did not find it in the 

 accounts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and I have 

 only two entries of it in the fifteenth. It becomes common 

 in the sixteenth, and I cannot but think that it was rarely used, 

 because its use had been recently discovered. The first entry, 

 1424, is at Cambridge; the next, 1482, at Stoke ; the third, 1507, 

 at Sion. I do not meet with it at Oxford till 1515. An 

 average of eighteen entries between 1424 and 1537 gives 

 exactly i\d. a pound. An average of eight entries between 

 1542 and 1570 results in 4^. a pound. 



Among the minor articles employed in buildings is plaster of 

 Paris. A small quantity is bought at $d. a pound in 1401. In 

 1420 it costs 4d. a dozen. I do not find it again till I reach 

 the Needham accounts, between 1532 and 1541, when it is 

 bought by the mount, a measure which I have not been able to 

 trace. Two entries in 1532 and 1541 of one mount, i2cwt., 

 and one mount 15 cwt., suggest that the mount must have been 

 near a ton. If so, the article must have been greatly cheapened. 

 It costs 7f. a mount in 1532, $s. %d. in 1533, $s. 8d. and $s. in 



