ON CANDLES, TALLOW, AND FUEL. 389 



it is called Cutthorpe coal. At Wormleighton it is bought by 

 the load and the buttrice, the two quantities, to judge by the 

 price, being nearly the same. In 1621 Lord Spencer buys 

 Bedworth coal by the hundred at from yd. to io\d. Bedworth 

 is near Nuneaton. 



Sometimes the cost of carriage is included in the price, 

 especially at Cambridge. This means carriage from the 

 wharf to the College coalyard. Occasionally the cost of 

 carriage is specified. 



CHARCOAL. This kind of fuel is bought by the load, the 

 quarter and the sack, the number of sacks in the load being 

 variable. It is bought as regularly in Cambridge as sea-coal 

 is, though sometimes the register is deficient, King's College 

 failing me four times in the 120 years, though on two of these 

 occasions a double quantity is bought in the following year, 

 a hint I think that the bargain was made one year and the 

 payment the next. In Oxford, the quarter is also called the 

 standard. 



During the whole period the price of charcoal rises, till at 

 last it is steady for forty years at Cambridge, at nearly double 

 the price at which it stood in the first decade. So unchanged 

 is the Cambridge price during these forty years that I cannot 

 but conclude that it was a contract price. The rise at Eton is 

 still more remarkable, as is also the progressive manner in 

 which the price creeps up, till in the last thirty years it is 

 regularly nearly three times as dear as it was at the beginning. 

 It is not remarkable therefore that, the price of this fuel tending 

 upwards so steadily, the use of other kinds of fuel, as at Cam- 

 bridge turves and sea-coal, should have limited the consump- 

 tion of that which was once so universally employed. I infer 

 that at last charcoal was used only for the great open grate 

 which I remember to have survived in S. John's College, Cam- 

 bridge, in the middle of the hall, the fumes escaping by a 

 louvre in the roof. At King's College, the yearly supply in 

 the earlier years of the period is often eighty loads, towards 

 the conclusion it often sinks to less than twenty. 



