CHAPTER VII. 



ON THE PRICE OF GRAIN. 



DURING the period comprised in these volumes, the prices 

 of wheat, malt, and oats are continuous and unbroken. 

 The price of barley is in the later period interrupted, and 

 at last almost ceases. There are a few years in which the 

 price of oatmeal and wheat-meal is wanting. There is no 

 year in which a record of leguminous seeds is entirely absent, 

 though entries of peas, a constant crop in Cambridgeshire 

 and other Eastern counties, are, owing to the fact that the 

 Cambridge accounts are better preserved than those of Oxford, 

 more frequent than those of beans, a common object of Oxford- 

 shire agriculture. Rye, though occasionally recorded in the 

 earlier accounts, almost disappears as time goes on. It was 

 not consumed by the class whose expenditure and income 

 is the chief material for this part of my work. 



The corn prices of these volumes chiefly come from Oxford, 

 Cambridge, Winchester, and Eton. They are partly due to 

 the act of 1576, prescribing that rents should be paid to those 

 corporations, up to a certain extent, in corn ; the corn, viz. 

 wheat and malt (to which Winchester added oats, probably 

 because some of its land could not grow either wheat or 

 barley), being payable in money, at the highest price of 

 the several markets of the towns (Windsor in the case of Eton) 

 in which the rent became due. They are partly owing to the 

 practice of supplying the corporation with bread and beer 

 at the offices of the corporation itself. In Oxford, the College 

 went to the common baker and the common brewer, as a rule, 



