ON CANDLES, TALLOW, AND FUEL. 



being one of general abundance. It was I believe due to the 

 general plenty which characterised the earlier part of the last 

 quarter of the seventeenth century that the emphasis with 

 which the scarcity in the last few years of the century was 

 commented on must be ascribed. But the country had been 

 far worse off in the middle of the century. 



I have collected and averaged all the prices of tallow by 

 the hundredweight which I have discovered in my researches. 

 But of these, the averages for the first half of the period are 

 of hard or tried tallow ; those of the last half, of the purchases 

 made at Winchester for candles. Most of the early entries 

 are from the purchase of ship stores at Chatham, Rochester, 

 Deptford and elsewhere, where tallow was largely employed 

 for caulking the seams of ships. Both are called tallow, but 

 the one is certainly of hard fats, the latter probably of soft. 

 In the Winchester entries there are faint indications of the 

 dear years 1646-50. Now during the first half of the period, 

 the average price of a dozen pounds of hard tallow is 3^. *]\d., 

 of candles 4s. i'\d. 



During the twelve years over which Houghton's collections 

 extend, one of his regular entries in his weekly list of prices 

 is that of ' tried tallow' by the hundredweight. I have found 

 the expression elsewhere, as early as 1585. These purchases 

 or market values are very instructive. The prices are highest 

 at the ports, as a rule ; and in ports like London, Plymouth 

 and Pembroke, occur the greatest variations in price 1 . As in 

 some places too, and especially at the ports, where the demand 

 was accidental or capricious, one may find in the same year 

 prices which differ more than those of any other article, e.g. 

 from 56.5-. to %4s. 



As regards tallow, the price of this commodity is highest 

 in 1694-96, when the average is over 44 s. I cannot but con- 

 clude that in these three years, which include the worst 



1 Here as elsewhere, and in other articles, the Pembroke figures are so persis- 

 tently multiples or divisions of the mark, that I cannot but think that accounts at 

 this port were kept in marks and the subdivisions of 6s. $d., %s. ^d., and is. 8d. 



