USE OF CORN IN ENGLAND. 75 



want to abundance, from famine to fulness. That 

 useful class of men who employ themselves in pur- 

 chasing from the producers that they may sell again 

 to the consumers, was then unknown in England 

 Immediately after the harvest, the people bought their 

 corn directly from the farmers at a cheap rate, and, as 

 is usual under such circumstances, were improvident 

 in the use of it, so that the supply fell short before the 

 arrival of the following harvest, and prices advanced 

 out of all proportion. 



In a valuation of Colchester, in 1296, almost every 

 family was provided with a small store of barley and 

 oats, usually about a quarter or two of each. Scarcely 

 any wheat is noticed in the inventory, and very little 

 rye.* The corn was usually ground at home in a 

 handmill, or quern ; although wind and water mills 

 were not uncommon. The general use of the latter 

 machines was probably prevented by the compulsory 

 laws by which the tenant was under an obligation to 

 grind his corn at the lord's mill ; and, therefore, to 

 evade the tax, called multure, the labour of the hand- 

 mill was endured. In Wicliff's translation of the 

 Bible we find a passage in the 24th chapter of St 

 Matthew thus rendered : ' Two wymmen schulen 

 (shall) be gryndynge in one querne.' Harrison, the 

 historian, two centuries later, says, that his wife ground 

 her malt at home upon her quern. In the present 

 authorized version of the Bible, published more than 

 half a century after Harrison, the word ' quern' 

 yields to ' mill.' By that time, probably, the trades 

 of a miller and a baker were freely exercised ; and the 

 lord's mill and the corporation oven had been super- 

 seded by the competition growing out of increasing 

 capital and population. 



The Reformation, and the discovery of America, 



* For some particulars of another valuation of this town, see 

 Rights of Industry Capital and Labour, p. 101. 



