ON THE PRICE OF GRAIN. 263 



averages. Flour is also Sos. in 1596, m 1648, 1649, and at 

 87^. $d. in 1 66 1, as indeed might be expected. 



I have found only twenty-nine prices of rye for the whole 

 period, and these chiefly in the earlier years. This grain was 

 I imagine rarely used for food in Southern England, and was 

 never used by those corporations from whose records I have 

 derived the greater part of my evidence. It only occurs in 

 one of the famine years, 1596, when it is nearly as dear as 

 wheat, 52^. q\d. It occurs again in one of the cheap years, 

 1627, when it is only 13^. $d. 



Beans and peas, the latter generally grey, i.e. the cheaper 

 kind of field peas, are never both absent from my evidence 

 in any one year. But beans fail me for fifteen years, peas for 

 nine. They are at nearly the same price. The general average 

 of beans is 22s. 3 1*/., of peas 22^. ^\d. ; for the hundred years 

 2$s. \\d. and 23^. i\d. They are almost invariably bought 

 for stable purposes, beans generally at Oxford, peas generally 

 at Cambridge. At about the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, New College, Oxford, made a bargain with some of 

 the farmers at two of their estates in Buckinghamshire to 

 supply the College stable with certain quantities of beans at 

 market rates, the College paying a stipulated sum for carriage. 

 Besides those peas for which the purpose is obvious, there 

 are entries of other kinds of peas evidently for the table ; 

 these will be commented on hereafter. 



It now remains that I should comment on the averages 

 obtained from Houghton's prices. He gives eight kinds of 

 grain, and I have condensed his information into four tables. 

 The first is of districts, in which the local averages are 

 gathered and a general average derived ; the second table is 

 one of the general average of each kind of grain for the twelve 

 years of his publication ; the third is the annual average of 

 the Home, Southern and Eastern districts, with their average 

 for the twelve years ; and the fourth is the averages of wheat 

 and malt for Oxford and Eton as comprised in the Home 

 district, for Winchester as in the Southern, and for Cambridge 



