CHAPTER XXV. 



ON PRICES GENERALLY BETWEEN 1401 AND 1582. 



I HAVE now dealt with the several facts which have been 

 collected, and have commented on them in order. I have drawn 

 averages for each year in which I have been able to note 

 particulars, and have further collected the annual averages into 

 decennial averages. I have then taken a third set of averages, 

 in two portions ; the first, for the first hundred and forty years 

 of the enquiry ; the second, for the last forty-two. The reader 

 will find that a notable but variable rise is effected in every 

 commodity but one during the later period. This exception 

 is glass, the price of which is slightly lower in the second 

 division. This fact, concurrently with others, will be found to 

 supply a valuable corrective to the inferences which are to be 

 derived from the general aggregate of evidence. 



The division of the period comprised in these volumes 

 into the two quantities of a hundred and forty and forty-two 

 years, is in a sense arbitrary. There had been, during the last 

 half of Henry VI IPs reign, a gradual exaltation in the price of 

 all provisions, on which I shall hereafter comment, and at first 

 I thought of dividing at the year in which Henry made the 

 last reduction in the sterling currency. Had I taken this as 

 my point, the average prices of corn would have been less than 

 they were in the period comprised in the first two volumes, 

 and those of cattle only slightly in excess. But I abandoned 

 this purpose, partly because it seemed to me that the slight 

 rise which occurs at and after 1527, does not indicate any 

 relation to the change from 1-55 to 1-378, the difference 

 between the intrinsic value of Edward IV's coinage and 

 Henry VII Ps, partly because I was convinced that the real 





