488 ON THE PRICE OF MATERIALS. 



a real and considerable exaltation in price. Lead is always 

 cheapest in London, see for example the prices of 1683 and 

 1684, and it may be that the Plague and the Fire had seriously 

 and for a long time dislocated the cheapest market in which 

 purchasers could deal. The reader should note that lead is 

 less than half the price of iron, a fact which speaks volumes 

 for the condition of the arts in the seventeenth century. 



A few entries of lead by the fother between 1584 and 1639, 

 in which year the last entry of this weight occurs, give an 

 average of lead, undoubtedly in the mass, of 8 4^-. \v\d. 

 Two early entries of lead by the cwt., in what is plainly the 

 same state, give an average of Js. id. A series even more 

 suggestive comes from the Chatham dockyard, of lead in sows, 

 between 1619 and 1630, and gives an average of \is. 6\d. Now 

 during this time the price of wrought lead, on the average of 

 sixty years, is 15^. id. Thus the ton of lead in the second 

 series is 7 4^., in the third 12 IDS. 8^., while the fother when 

 expanded into the ton is ,8 9^. id., the price of wrought lead 

 also by the ton being 1$ $s. ^d. In other words, the average 

 of unwrought lead from the three sources is 9 js. qd. the ton 

 as .compared with 1$ 3^. 4^. for wrought or run lead; or, in 

 other words, the cost of manufacture adds nearly sixty-five 

 per cent, to the raw produce. In the fifteenth and the early 

 part of the sixteenth centuries the difference was eighty per 

 cent., in the last forty-two years thirty ; but the spoil of the 

 monasteries, which it must have taken some time to distribute, 

 when one came to the lead, is the explanation of the fact. My 

 contrast, as on other occasions, is between what is plainly raw 

 lead and various forms of manufactured product. 



But the same sources which have enabled me to illustrate 

 and confirm the inferences which I drew from such information 

 as I had before me as to iron, do the same service on the cost 

 of lead. The kinds employed by builders were two, ordinary 

 rolled or sheet lead, and mason's lead, the latter being scraps 

 or cuttings purchased for the purpose of melting in a ladle, 

 and running into the cramp irons with which the stones were 



