CHAPTER XIV. 



WOOL, HIDES, AND BARK. 



VERY little information has as yet been discovered as to 

 the price of wool and hides. No doubt a trade in wool was 

 still carried on with the Continent, though political events 

 had greatly narrowed the demand, and the growth of the 

 English woollen manufacture was tending towards an ab- 

 sorption of the home product, the price of cloth being ap- 

 parently four or five times that of the material from which 

 it was manufactured. Besides, the records of agriculture 

 are fewer as time goes on, and even in those few domestic 

 accounts of country gentlemen which still survive and have 

 been accessible, very little information has been given. It 

 would seem that sales of wool from the home farm were sel- 

 dom included in such accounts of receipt and expenditure. 



The discovery in Eton College of wool prices for thirty 

 consecutive years led me to hope that I might find in the 

 archives of such corporations as purchased large quantities of 

 sheep in near and in distant markets and retained them for 

 home consumption during a considerable part of the year, 

 entries of the wool which was shorn and sold, as well as of 

 sheep fells, which under the three names of woolfells, winter- 

 fells and shearlings were sold at such various prices. The 

 Eton entries are of this kind. The College bought large 

 numbers of sheep, sending their agents from twenty to a hun- 

 dred miles off, to attend fairs and markets and to make pur- 

 chases. These sheep were shorn at the proper time and the 

 wool was sold. These animals, which were slaughtered before 



