: 4 /.V7. ^AT. 



consumption of the establishment was very large, and the 

 numbers to be maintained out of the revenues bring a known 

 quantity, the rents in kind could be easily calculated in refer- 

 ence to the a\ .ints of the Corporation. I am disposed to 

 believe that they finally accepted the provisions of the statute, 

 because it fixed the money value of the rents in kind at the 

 est price in the market of the day, while there was no 

 certainty that the rents in kind would be of the best produce, 

 or that if the best were stipulated for, that the best when 

 p.iy-day came would or could be forthcoming 1 . By adopting 

 the statute therefore, the College would get its rent in the 

 best, and in money, while it could purchase at lower prices in 

 the market, for its domestic wants. 



The thrift which was in the first place a necessity, became 

 a habit. It is true that no records survive of the manner in 

 which a yeoman or a labourer lived. But in these volumes, 

 though the main facts are extracted from four localities, and 

 from certain corporations in two of these localities, I have been 

 able to gather some information as to the expenditure of the 

 Spencer family at Wormleighton and Althorp, of the Pembroke 

 family (Herbert) at Worksop, and of some other persons whose 

 fortunes were smaller. But it would not be difficult from the 

 prices recorded here to give an account constructively of how 

 incomes could be spent in the necessaries and conveniences of 

 life. 



The most considerable corporations would have a gross 

 income from all sources of from 2500 to 3000 a year 

 at about the middle of the seventeenth century. But there 

 were large outgoings in the collection of this income. As a 

 rule indeed, the corporation did not entrust its business 

 to subordinates. It was the duty of the head and of the 

 officials to visit the estates, to collect rents, and to draw up 



1 In 1665-6 the bursars of S. John's College, Cambridge, taking the whole of 

 their CNtati-s, note that their wheat rent amounted to 536 13*. 8rf., the 'old rent' 

 being only 139 13^. ()\d. ; and that their malt rent was 91 i6s. 3</., the old rent 

 l*iag 27 4J. 6g</. 1665-6 was a cheap year. 



