ON THE PRICE OF GRAIH. 259 



one of which is the most abundant of the century. Two more 

 moderately cheap years follow, these five years together 

 forming a marked and immediate contrast to those which 

 follow, and suggesting that the cheapness might be due to the 

 loss of population. Then come five more years of very strait- 

 ened prices, one of them, 1661, being the dearest on record 

 during the century, and not to be rivalled till the close of the 

 following century, the price in some parts of the year rising 

 to near IOO.T. the quarter. Two rather dear years follow, and 

 then follow nine years of plenty. Then come two dear years, 

 two cheap years, and two dear years, five cheap years, one 

 rather dear year, six exceedingly cheap years, and two of 

 moderate prices. Then comes the well-known seven years' 

 dearth at the conclusion of the seventeenth century, one of the 

 years not deserving the appellation, then a year of rather high 

 prices, the period finishing with three very cheap years. 



It is not a little remarkable that there does not appear 

 to have been any comment made on these remarkable agri- 

 cultural experiences. The first prolonged scarcity occurred 

 during the heats of civil war, and though of unexampled 

 and prolonged severity, may have escaped notice when more 

 pressing events were tasking the attention and occupying the 

 energies of men. But I do not remember to have read of any 

 allusion to the famine of 1661-2. The scarcities or famines 

 of 1315-16, of 1321, of 1369, of 1438, of 1551, of 1556, of 

 1596-97 are fully commented on by contemporaries, but these 

 dearths, which must have had a great and most disastrous 

 effect on the condition of the labourers, have not been com- 

 mented on. But I shall have a fuller opportunity of indicating 

 their significance in the economical history of England when I 

 come to deal with their relation to the wages of labour, and 

 the considerable and permanent rise which took place in those 

 wages after the conclusion of the Civil War. 



The average price of barley is 21 s. for the whole period, 

 21 s. nj*/. for the hundred years 1603-1702, and i6s. ^d. for 

 the first twenty years. In the last forty-two years of my 



s 2 



