432 ON THE PRICE Of SALT. 



if the price were not greatly raised but there was a suspicion 

 that it would be, the corporation would, as in 1596 and 1597, 

 make exceptionally large purchases, and by holding its stock, 

 need less for the following year. The stock of salt was kept 

 under lock and key in its own chamber or closet. 



The statement which I have made before, that the price of 

 salt is a rough measure of the solar heat of the previous season, 

 is borne out by the records of salt prices. It will be constantly 

 found that the price of this article rises in the year following 

 one of high corn prices, and this I conclude, for the reason 

 given above, that the purchases were made late in the year. 

 Thus the bad harvest of 1596 is reflected in the price of salt 

 at Cambridge in 1597. These facts are modified in so far 

 as the salt consumed is foreign, and the price is therefore less 

 affected by the conditions of English weather and the amount 

 of solar heat. The price of salt will also, if this contention is 

 admitted, help to assist in the interpretation of the question 

 whether prices of corn are to be assigned to inclement weather, 

 or to that gradual stiffening of all agriculture prices which we 

 shall see, when the results are tabulated, was a general 

 characteristic of the seventeenth century. 



There is no year in which the price of salt is wanting. But 

 the difference in price between the purchases in places which 

 are near the sea and water-carriage and those which are 

 remote is so marked, that I have, as in the case of sea-coal in an 

 earlier chapter, drawn up a double column, the first of Eastern, 

 the second of Midland prices. The averages of the first are 

 derived from the Eastern counties, and especially from Cam- 

 bridge. In them I include such records from London 1 and 

 Eastern ports as imply easy water-carriage. Oxford and 

 other Midland localities supply the facts for the second column. 

 When, at or about the middle of the seventeenth century, the 

 stretch of difficult Thames transit by water between Burcot 



1 London prices include an octroi duty, under the name of cranage, of five per 

 cent, levied for 'the Lord Mayor,' &c. This was a ' liberty' which the city had 

 or took. 



