SUNDRIES. 741 



brought out in the Mendham purchase of 1633, where the 

 firkin is 25^. and the dozen Ibs. 7^. 



Starch is of very different prices. I have found it as low as 

 2s. 6d. a dozen, and as high as 12^., when it is spoken of as 

 white starch. It is of course much more common in the first 

 forty years of the period than it is at a later date, when the 

 fashion of starched ruffs went out. The common price is 4s. 

 the dozen pounds. The average of twenty-four entries is 

 4s. i \d. 



Blue starch, i.e. starch coloured with stone blue, is found 

 three times at 14^. the dozen in 1608, and i6s. the dozen in 

 1610 and 1616. Stone blue, by which I suppose is meant 

 smalt, is 35. a pound in 1698, when it is bought it seems to 

 colour starch. 



Feathers are 6s. a dozen in 1583, 6s. 6d. in 1584, and Js. in 



1663. 



The foregoing subjects are all more or less related to certain 

 localities in a home, mansion or college, these localities being 

 of a more or less distinguishable character. There yet remain 

 a number of objects which cannot be colourably referred, and, 

 singularly enough, the first of these on which I have to treat 

 is the only article from which I can construct decennial 

 averages. I have forty-eight entries of wheelbarrows, so 

 scattered over the period that no decade is without a repre- 

 sentative, though some decades are fuller than others. The 

 wheelbarrow was used everywhere, in the field, in the garden, 

 in the offices, in the stable especially, and as occasion arose 

 even in every apartment on a ground floor. 

 The following are the decennial averages : 



1583-1592 ... 35. 6\d. 1643-1652 ... 6s. o$d. 



1593-1602 ... 4J. 3&/. 1653-1662 ... i os. 



03-1612 ... 4s. yd. 1663-1672 ... 8j. 6d. 



1613-1622 ... ^s. 4</. 1673-1682 ... JS. 4\d. 



1623-1632 ... 4s. yt. 1683-1692 ... 6s. lod. 



1633-1642 ... 6s. o\d. 1693-1702 ... 85-. it/. 



General average, Js. i \<L 



