SUNDRY TIMBER PRODUCTS. 529 



oaks, the first hundred at 2,6s. 7*/., the others at 28^. In 1623 

 ten trees are bought at Wytham for ,9 95. In 1633, one at 

 Basingstoke, already felled and barked, for 8oj., a very high 

 price; and two more at 42 s. 6d. In 1674, again, a tree, not 

 further described, is sold for 50^. 



By an oversight, a few entries of underwood by the acre are 

 included in this register of prices. Some were put, especially 

 from documents which I consulted at a later, period, in the 

 register of fuel prices, some among sundries. All that are given 

 have come from Cambridge, and these with one exception from 

 the sales of King's College, and generally in the last forty years 

 of the period. The price, as may be expected, varies greatly. 

 It appears that underwood was sold by auction at stated times 

 to woodmen and charcoal burners. The average of fifteen years 

 is nearly 695. an acre, and the price varies in the same year, 

 and apparently at the same place, from 35 s. an acre to 165^. 



Imperfect and broken as the information is which I have 

 been able to collect, it nevertheless indicates clearly that the 

 price of home-grown timber was rapidly rising, that the 

 demand on the woods was more than they could adequately 

 supply, and that recourse must be had to other places for 

 English wants. Not a little of the deficiency is, on the 

 testimony of the time, to be traced to the iron smelting and 

 glass-houses of the seventeenth century. It was to meet the 

 increasing dearness of fuel at iron-works that cast-iron was 

 used, and the process of smelting it was facilitated by the use 

 of pit coal. A further cause of deficient supply was the great 

 progress which ship-building made in the same century and the 

 start which English commerce achieved. The gains of the 

 East India Company were very great, though they had active 

 rivals in the Dutch. The tobacco trade from the English 

 plantations, which had now almost superseded Spanish growths, 

 developed the mercantile marine trading to the American 

 coasts. Now at the end of the century King calculated the 

 woods and coppices at three million acres 1 . There are no 

 1 See above, p. 92. 



VOL. V. Mm 



