694 ON THE COST OF CARRIAGE. 



castle to Durham, by sea and river as from Norwich to Yar- 

 mouth, by river as from London to Henley, the farthest point 

 to which, before locks were erected, the Thames was ordinarily 

 navigable. Land carriage is either of cart and two horses 

 hired by the day, and in the later part of the period by the 

 mile ; of known quantities of heavy and easily packed goods, as 

 quarters of corn or lime, carried over known distances; of 

 heavy, valuable, and inconvenient goods, such as wine, copper 

 vessels, cloth, &c., generally by the common carrier, the rate of 

 which is much higher ; of heavy goods, the weight of which is 

 indeterminate, as millstones; and of personal effects, as in 

 1497, the baggage of the Warden of New College, conveyed 

 by the common carrier from London, the charge for which is 

 the highest. To these may be added the payments made for 

 conveying money, when the amount paid appears to include 

 the insurance of the sum entrusted to the carrier. 



The load of a cart with two horses appears to have been a 

 ton 1 . But four men and six horses were sometimes used, and 

 the load is proportionately increased. Thus, six pipes of wine, 

 carried from Southampton to Oxford in 1406, are taken in 

 three carts, each of which has six horses, the journey to and 

 fro occupying ten days. A load of stone, amounting to 60 

 cubic feet, must have been carried in a strong waggon by at 

 least four horses. It will also be found, as might be expected, 

 that the carriage of equal quantities over distances which differ 

 in length, the longest of which does not exceed a day's journey, 

 and the shortest of which would spoil a day for other work, are 

 paid at the same or nearly the same rates, for the carriage 

 would include loading and unloading. Thus, the journey by 

 land from Guton manor to Norwich is, we are told in the 

 account, seven leagues (21 miles), and Fastolfe pays ^d. a 

 quarter for the whole distance in 1438, but a little less in 1443 

 and 1444. But in 1447 the Abbot of Fountains pays at the 

 same rate for nine miles, the distance which his account de- 

 clares to be that between the abbey and Boroughbridge. But 



1 See Vol. Ill, p. 667, ii. 



