CHAPTER XVIII. 



ON THE PRICE OF MATERIALS. 

 Iron> Lead, and other Metals. Glass. 



I PROPOSE in this chapter to deal with materials employed 

 in domestic economy, and in particular with such records of 

 metals and metallic products as are entered for use and con- 

 sumption by weight. As I have frequently had occasion to 

 state, the accounts would have given ample information had 

 it not been the case that, in the progress of social life during 

 the seventeenth century, the artisan becomes a contractor and 

 an employer of labour, and engages (no doubt supplying a 

 bill of particulars, examined at the time and afterwards thrown 

 aside) to carry out some work, the gross charges of which 

 alone are entered in the account. Naturally, the corporations 

 (whose expenditure was large, whose margin over current 

 charges was narrow, and who had numerous members whose 

 leisure was sufficient for supervision, and whose duty and 

 interest equally stimulated them to economy) continued to 

 make purchases in gross, and to deal them out to those whom 

 they employed, longer than private individuals did. At last 

 however they fall under the customary influence, and the 

 phrase, ut patet per billam, effectually hides the information 

 one seeks. 



IRON. The custom of purchasing iron in mass and doling 

 it out to the local smith, once universal, lingers in private 

 families well into the first quarter of the seventeenth century. 

 Certain dockyard accounts which I have discovered show that 

 the practice continued in the Admiralty after it had been 



