262 ON THE PRICE OF GRAIN. 



The price of oatmeal fails me for only ten years in the 

 hundred and twenty, chiefly in the first half of the seven- 

 teenth century. On one or two occasions the meal is desig- 

 nated as groats, i.e. oats husked, and not ground or only 

 coarsely ground. For the whole period the average price 

 of this article of diet is 45.?. 9!^., for the hundred years 

 485-. 6d., and for the first twenty 32^. In the entries which I 

 made in my fourth volume I found on examining the facts, 

 and with new information discovered in another source, that 

 the ratio of oatmeal to wheat was nearly that of 19 to 15. 

 Here it stands in that of 24-25 to 20-5, no very marked dis- 

 crepancy from the previously discovered relation. It is a 

 common article of diet in the Oxford Colleges and at Win- 

 chester, where it is used apparently for thickening soup, the 

 latter society buying it largely. Had the early Winchester 

 accounts been preserved, I should have had no gap in my 

 record. 



Oatmeal is at Sos. and upwards twice, in 1596 and 1648, 

 two years of famine. It is at 70^. and upwards in 1631 

 and 1649, the latter a famine year, the other one of average 

 prices, the entry of the former coming from one Oxford College, 

 and of the latter from another. From the time at which the 

 Winchester domestic accounts commence in 1646, the prin- 

 cipal source of information for oatmeal is thence, and there is 

 good reason to believe that oats were an abundant and 

 generally a low-priced crop in Southern Hampshire. 



Wheat-flour, generally returned from the Oxford Colleges, 

 fails me for twenty-three out of the hundred and twenty years. 

 But I do not think that those deficiencies seriously affect either 

 the decennial or the general averages. The average for the 

 whole period is $is. io^d., for the hundred years 53^. 4^., for the 

 first twenty 44^. ^\d. The highest price is in 1693, 92^. 

 its next in 1698, 88s. ; and it is at Sos. or 8os. ^d. in 1692, 

 1695, 1696, and 1697, all the entries being from New College, 

 Oxford. There is also an entry from London in 1698 of 

 'finest flour' at 122^. 8d., but I have not included this in the 



