BUILDING CONVENIENCES. 679 



There are purchases of tar for ship stores, by the last, on 

 which I shall comment presently. Shuttleworth buys it once 

 by the firkin and once by the barrel, the first of these entries 

 stating that the barrel was of sixteen gallons. In 1626 it is 

 also bought by the barrel at Mendham. The price of ten 

 entries by the gallon, between 1590 and 1620, varies from qd. 

 to 2s. The demand for the article may have been uncertain, 

 and the supply, still from Norway, have been more uncertain, 

 though the growing use of it for shipping must have 

 stimulated the latter. In the cheapest of the ten years, twenty 

 gallons are bought. But four years later, fifteen gallons are 

 purchased at is. zd. A pair of shears cost ^d. at Worksop 

 in 1598. 



In 1583 a pair of garden-shears costs 2s. ; in 1587, is. $d. 

 But in 1609 it costs is. 6d. to steel a pair of garden-shears. 



In a few of the earlier years hatchets are bought at from 

 is. to is. $d., and also in the first forty years axes at prices 

 between is. id. and 2J. 6d., the highest price being found 

 in some of the earliest years. 



There are ten entries of the price of beehives from the 

 beginning of the period till close on its conclusion. The first 

 four are from Shuttleworth's accounts, the price being very 

 low, from i\d. to id. But other purchases are much higher, 

 the lowest being 8%d. t the highest, in 1599, is. id. They are 

 bought in 1701 at lod. by the Foxcomb yeoman. Such are 

 the scanty notices of what may be conceived to be articles 

 bearing on the economy of agriculture. But though the infor- 

 mation is slight, nearly all agricultural implements are named, 

 and it would not be impossible for one to construct a table of 

 the prices at which the seventeenth-century agriculturist would 

 have to supply the exigencies of his calling. 



BUILDING CONVENIENCES. Most of the materials em- 

 ployed in building have been already commented on among 

 the topics treated of in the nineteenth chapter. There still 

 however remain some articles, which corporations and private 

 individuals had not allowed to be put into a contractor's bill, 



