666 ON THE PRICE OF FOREIGN PRODUCE. 



I have adopted this measure in my tables, reducing such 

 quantities of pounds as I have found to the hundredweight. 



CURRANTS. The small grapes of the Morea and islands 

 of the ^Egean, which got the name of * raisins of corauntz,' 

 from Corinth, are always sold by the pound or dozen pounds. 

 They are the commonest kind of foreign fruit, except almonds, 

 occurring in a hundred and fourteen years out of a hundred 

 and eighty-two. Sometimes I think that an entry of raisins 

 should have been of currants, as in 1410, the scribe having 

 neglected to qualify his entry of the fruit. In later years the 

 word < currants,' as it is now spelled, becomes customary in the 

 accounts. 



The price of currants varies greatly. They are dear, rela- 

 tively speaking, for the first fifty years of the fifteenth century, 

 and gradually decline in price, till in 1491-1500 and in 

 1511-30, they are more than fifty per cent, below the average 

 of the whole 140 years. The price rises in the twenty years, 

 1521-40, but not to the amount at which they stood, on an 

 average, between 1401-50, for the Turks had not got possession 

 of all the islands in the ^Egean. After 1541 they rise in price, 

 and at the close of the period are dearer than at any time. 

 This is indeed the case with all kinds of fruit and with sugar, 

 the dearest period I shall have to make an explanation below 

 in the case of sugar being that comprised in the last twelve 

 years. 



In my first two volumes (Vol. I, p. 632) it will be seen 

 that currants are found only four times, and then chiefly in 

 the later part of the fourteenth century. The entries are in 

 1345, 1376, 1377 and 1392. In each case they are bought in 

 small quantities. In the first entry they are at is. the dozen, 

 in the second at 3.9. 6d., in the third at 35-., in the fourth, when 

 they are coupled with raisins, at 4^-. The first entry is, it will 

 be seen, before the plague, and should have been distinguished 

 in the average drawn from the later entries. But the notes 

 were few, and in the earlier stage of my enquiries hardly 

 suggestive. My reader will doubtlessly agree with me, that a 



