796 ON PRICES GENERALLY BETWEEN 1583 AND 1702. 



dearest of the whole twelve, there is a marked and generally 

 permanent rise in all products at this crisis. My readers will 

 of course anticipate that when corn is dear, other articles 

 tend to fall in price, because a stint in the necessaries of life 

 leaves a narrower margin for that consumption which is more 

 or less voluntary. Now in this decade a notable rise occurs 

 in the price of beef, mutton and lamb, of horses, of most 

 kinds of poultry, of most kinds of fuel, of the commonest 

 kind of fish, of wine, of lead and solder (iron being rather 

 lowered, because the Sussex forges were at this time in full 

 work), of most kinds of building materials, of most kinds of 

 linen, and of most kinds of cloth. It is true that, in all these 

 articles, larger prices are subsequently found, but it is rarely 

 the case that the higher subsequent price is so great an 

 advance as that made at this epoch. I conclude then that 

 what was practically the full effect of the new prices was 

 exhibited at and after the conclusion of the Civil War, for 

 it was when the war was virtually over with the battle of 

 Naseby (June 14, 1645) that the rise was most characteristic. 

 Of course it is a well-known fact that war, especially civil 

 war, is exceedingly destructive and distracting, and that 

 a sharp rise in prices almost invariably follows on warfare. 

 But the armies of the Parliamentary war were small, the 

 interests engaged in the quarrel were narrow, the working 

 classes had been by this time too effectually impoverished to 

 care for the matters between King and Parliament, and it 

 does not appear that the war was one in which pillage was 

 practised. England was in those days spared the miseries 

 which the hordes of enlisted brigands inflicted on Germany 

 during the Thirty Years' War. 



Prices steadily creep up during nearly every decade of the 

 first sixty years. This is noticeable in corn, the first and 

 greatest rise being after the first ten years, in that most 

 capricious and uncertain of products, hops ; in hay and straw ; 

 in stock and meat ; in dairy produce and poultry ; in all 

 kinds of fuel ; in most kinds of fish ; in salt ; in metals ; in 



