ON THE PRICE OF GRAIN. i;i 



because, as I argue, the powers of the University over bakers 

 and brewers were, by charter and statute, so summary. But 

 in Cambridge, Winchester, and Eton, where these powers did 

 not exist at all, or existed in a very moderate degree, the 

 practice was for the College to supply its inmates by its own 

 action. This explains the origin of the bakehouse accounts of 

 S. John's College, Cambridge, that poor but exemplary institu- 

 tion, which has so honourable and continuous a reputation in 

 Cambridge. Unfortunately they are lost before 1607, perhaps 

 because they get, by ill-luck, into some attorney's office. 

 But from this time the series is unbroken. 



The Cambridge colleges preferred the system which they 

 had adopted before the Act of 1576, under which they called 

 on their tenants to supply them with farm produce at fictitious, 

 but ancient average prices, to the new system. To this they 

 slowly gave in. But, wiser than the Oxford bursars, who were 

 changed yearly, they took care to have more than two rent days. 

 They knew that wheat was cheapest in the first quarter of 

 the agricultural year, 25 per cent, dearer in the second, from 

 January to April, and 12 per cent, dearer still from April 

 to July, when a fair estimate would be made of the coming 

 harvest. Thus King's College had at least ten rent prices, 

 S. John's always six. Eton adopted the practice of having 

 six, but soon abandoned it. Winchester always had seven. 

 None of them, except King's, got beyond August r. I should 

 not have known as much as I do of the Oxford prices, except for 

 the All Souls accounts, which give a later day than March 25. 



The private expenditure of the corporation is different from 

 its receipts under the Act. Had I procured an unbroken 

 scries of these statistics, I should have been able to infer 

 as to the difference between a maximum and an average price, 

 in which the buyer of produce had a very different interest 

 from that of the same person as a receiver of rents. I have it 

 at S. John's ; I got it occasionally at Eton ; and in so far 

 as their records have not been lost or sold by the New College 

 attorney, as long as this corporation bought corn. Generally 



