ON CANDLES, TALLOW, AND FUEL. 391 



. ; in 1596, at 185. ; in 1611, after a gap of four years in 

 which there is no information, it is 19^. ; in 1618 it rises to 2os. ; 

 in 1634 it is at 21 s. Then, the accounts supplying but 

 irregular information, and for a few years being lost, it 

 fluctuates between 1636 and 1650 at an average of 23$. and 

 305. Between 1652 and 1663 it varies from 37^. to 50^., and 

 thenceforward to the conclusion of the period, with the 

 exception of one year (1664), when it is bought at 49 s. 6d., it 

 is regularly at 50 s. 



Between 1644, with which the ordinary accounts of Win- 

 chester College commence, and 1701, the series being un- 

 broken through this period, there are forty-two entries of 

 charcoal, always by the quarter, and in fairly large quantities, 

 though probably the College charred its own charcoal by its 

 own workmen for the most part, and therefore the entries are 

 most likely only of what it needed to supplement its own 

 regular stock. The rate is very uniform, and the entries 

 suggest to me that, when the price was abnormally high, the 

 College did not purchase. Thus in 1664 the quarter is at 

 y. $\d., and the College buys none for four years, when it 

 gives is. i of*/. Nor does it buy during the dear years, as 

 they were called, at the end of the seventeenth century. 

 The decennial averages show how uniform the price was : 



1644-1652 ... 2s. 4\d. 1673-1682 ... 2s. l\d. 



1653-1662 ... 2s. K\d. 1683-1692 ... 2s. 



1663-1672 ... 2s. uj</. 1693-1701 ... 2s. 



I should however be quite ready to anticipate that the price 

 of charcoal would exhibit great variations in different parts of 

 England, as the produce and the price of it must have 

 greatly depended on the abundance or scarcity of wood, and 

 the number of those who engaged in the collier's calling. 



Very few other localities besides Oxford, Cambridge, 

 Winchester, and Eton supply prices of charcoal. The proba- 

 bility is that most country gentlemen got all the fuel they 

 used from their own woods, and rarely purchased from other 

 sources. There are however a few early entries from London, 



