ON THE PRICE OF GRAIN. 173 



Library. But the fact remains that the principal source of 

 information, and I may add the safest, has been the four great 

 centres already referred to. 



I shall now proceed to comment on the several harvests 

 of the period dealt with in these volumes. In doing this, I 

 dwell as the case arises with the averages in each locality. 

 When I have treated those which I have found and registered 

 in the first hundred pages of the sixth volume, I shall deal 

 separately with the prices contained in Houghton's Collections, 

 for taken as they are from a very wide area, it may be well 

 to deal with them by districts. 



It may be proper however to premise, that apart from the 

 fact that the seventeenth century is affected to the full, at 

 least as regards corn prices, by the new silver and gold, it 

 is also characterised by a peculiarity which I have never yet 

 been able to notice in the long research which I have given 

 into corn prices, now with the years in this volume extending 

 to 444 harvests. This is the fact that good and bad seasons 

 lie in groups of more or less extent. The fact was recognised 

 in a rough way by the agriculturists of the time, who con- 

 stantly discuss the question as to how the farmer with his 

 fixed rent and fixed charges can tide over a period of (to him) 

 ruinous plenty, and how in a series of dear years the labourer 

 can also tide over a period of (to him) semi-starvation. None 

 of them seem to have thought of the only remedy. 



The average price of wheat for this year is slightly above 

 that at which it stood in 1582-3. But by this time any price below 

 20*. a quarter represents a cheap year, and we shall very soon find 

 that average prices are enhanced fully 50 per cent. The price at 

 Cambridge (King's College) is unchanged during the whole year, 

 ami I should have thought represented contracts entered into for the 

 s supply, had not the original account expressly stated that they 

 purchasers ' in foro.' The price at Cambridge is however lower 

 than elsewhere, and we shall find this to be a constant characteristic 

 of these local prices. The average from the Oxford entries (for 

 whatever may have been done at first with the Act of 1576, the rule 

 was speedily adopted of taking Oxford corn prices as the basis of the 



