CHAPTER XI. 



ON THE PRICE OF STOCK AND MEAT. 



FOR some years into the seventeenth century the great cor- 

 porations, which have principally supplied me with details of 

 information, purchased cattle and sheep for their domestic 

 consumption, and after they ceased to buy live stock, bought 

 beef and mutton by the carcass. This is shown for example 

 at Eton, where the skin of the ox and the wool or fell of the 

 sheep are duly entered among the liabilities of the bursar. 

 Nor do I doubt, if we could only find the accounts, that the 

 purchase of sheep by Magdalen College, Oxford, which re- 

 mained a late practice of this society, would illustrate the 

 price of wool late into the seventeenth century. But un- 

 fortunately the accounts of receipts by this society have 

 disappeared. 



This kind of stock was purchased at distant markets. Eton 

 College sends into remote counties to buy cattle and sheep, 

 the cost of driving them to the College closes being a con- 

 siderable item in the charge of supply. So the Magdalen 

 College manciple goes to similar markets for his stock, which 

 were no doubt after purchase kept in the meadow adjacent to 

 and enclosed within the College walks, and were used in the 

 kitchin as need arose. After 1640 there occurs a gap in the 

 Eton accounts, and when, three or four years later, the com- 

 putus begins again, the College drops buying beef by the 

 whole carcass, and keeps up the practice of purchasing sheep 



