ON CANDLES, TALLOW, AND FUEL. 383 



Candles are generally bought by the dozen pounds, a con- 

 venient form, and one to which I have reduced some pur- 

 chases of a smaller quantity. But they are occasionally pur- 

 chased by the stone, and in the early part of the period, 

 especially by King's College, Cambridge, by the hundred- 

 weight. Occasionally, the accounts giving purchases by the 

 hundredweight, also interpret the entry by the dozen. The 

 custom of buying by the hundredweight appears to be 

 peculiar to the Eastern Counties. 



The price of candles, taken from an average out of all the 

 entries of each year, shows a steady rise towards the con- 

 clusion of the period, and illustrates I think the course of 

 agriculture, as far as stock-breeding is concerned, even more 

 accurately than that of meat does, account being duly taken 

 of the upward tendency of all prices during the century. 

 This indeed I shall have to deal with in the latter part of 

 this volume, when I have to compare collectively the prices 

 of the several articles treated of separately in these chapters. 

 I need only say here that the general level of prices reached 

 at or about the middle of this century remained in great 

 measure unchanged till the last quarter of the eighteenth 

 century, at the time I mean in which Arthur Young published 

 his Tours in England, and also his Political Arithmetic. 



There is one particular however to which I must again 

 invite my reader's attention. This is the great elevation of 

 price which occurs in the five years 1646-50, a fact which 

 continually appears, and which is exceedingly marked in the 

 present article. For these five years, the average is nearly 

 6s. z\d. the dozen. In two of these years, 1647-8 and 

 1^49-50, the price is never paralleled during the whole period, 

 though the two scarcity years, 1694-5 and 1695-6, come 

 nearest to these prices. 



During the next thirty years the price is on the average 

 steady, at a little above $s. the dozen. But in the decade 

 1683-1692 the price of candles, as is the case with most other 

 articles which represent agricultural produce, falls, the period 



