CHAPTER XXII. 



ON THE PRICE OF FOREIGN PRODUCE. WINE. 



HITHERTO I have treated of articles which were, or might 

 have been, of English origin, or were associated with such 

 domestic produce as made simultaneous comment on them 

 a convenient method of dealing with the subject. Thus 

 I have once or twice stated that salt was principally of 

 foreign origin, and was the product of solar evaporation, being 

 cheap or dear according to the amount of solar fertility within 

 the year 1 . But much salt was also, as we may see immediately, 

 and by inference, the produce of English salterns on the coast, 

 especially the south-west coast. Much wax and iron, and pro- 

 bably all tar and oil, were imports. But English iron is bought 

 and sold, English wax must have been familiar, the manufacture 

 of tar may have been copied from Norway, and some oil may 

 have been obtained by English enterprise. So, again, silk goods 

 were mainly introduced from abroad, but, as I have stated, they 

 were also manufactured in England as early as the fifteenth cen- 

 tury. Linen was imported from Flanders and elsewhere, cloth 



1 My attention has lately been called to a work printed by the Societe des Anciens 

 textes fran9ais, and edited by the learned Professor Meyer, entitled ' Le Debat des 

 H^raulx d'Afmes.' The work must, it seems, have been written between the years 

 1453 and 1461, since it is posterior to the capitulation of Bordeaux, and anterior to the 

 death of Charles VII. The author may well have been Powntes, the French herald- 

 at-arms, who, as Gascoigne says, e Loci e libro veritatum,' p. 205, was in England at or 

 about this time. This herald, p. 29, tells us that the two principal ports frequented 

 by the English mercantile marine were Rochelle and Bordeaux ; to which French 

 ports English ships repaired especially, ' de venir querir le sel en Bretaigne ou en 

 Guienne, et le porter es froides regions,' i.e. for domestic and foreign trade. And after 

 commenting on the vineyards of France, the herald observes, ' Et si a plus, car il a sel, 

 qui se fait par la vertu du soleil habondamment, et tant a la Bace et environ que en 

 Brouage et Xainctonge.' 



