308 ON THE PRICE OF HA Y AND STRA W. 



Colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, Wadham, King's College, 

 and New College, purchased standing grass by the acre, the 

 last entry including the cost of carrying the hay, but not 

 apparently that of cutting and making. Wadham College was 

 not yet built or settled, but the entry is taken from the 

 building accounts of the College, and is no doubt a charge 

 incurred by the founders for the purpose of feeding the horses 

 employed in carting materials. The price is the rent of the 

 first growth of grass land, 33^. 4d. an acre in the first entry, 

 iSs. 6ti. in the second, and 42s. yd. in the third, for the price, 

 49, is an erratum for 44 12s. 4d. 



STRAW. The entries of this article are unbroken, every 

 year being represented. The price of straw more naturally 

 follows the price of grain than it does that of hay. The 

 dearest year for straw is 1665, and the price here is intensified 

 by the extraordinary rate at which it was bought at Win- 

 chester, the average in this locality being 22s. $d. The College 

 was in a state of panic this year owing to the plague, and though 

 the School does not appear to have been dispersed, the elec- 

 tion was held at Newbury. Now we know from other entries 

 that straw was purchased by this corporation 'for the boys' 

 beds,' and it is possible that the College went to extraordinary 

 expense and took great care so as not to procure this material 

 from an infected district, for the neighbourhood of Winchester 

 was severely visited by the plague. If we take this explanation 

 to account for the unexampled price at which it was bought, 

 the dearest rate in the whole period is that paid in 1649, 

 14^. yd. Here the purchase is made in Cambridge, where the 

 price of straw is generally low, and of course the cost is con- 

 nected with the prolonged scarcity of the period, the most 

 enduring and serious agricultural calamity of the seventeenth 

 century. 



Straw is also dear in 1628, 1629, 1637, 1648, 1684, 1685, 

 in which years, with the exception of 1648, corn was by no 

 means dear. One is led then to conclude that the cause 

 of the price is the shortness of the straw owing to dry weather 



