( 135 ) 



May 15. At night, about ten o'clock, a comet de- 

 scending in the north-west, the beard whereof streamed 

 into the south-east (Holinshed). 



Within these last thirty years commodities had in 

 general risen fifty per cent., some more. Price of ordi- 

 nary labour, %d. a day (Hume). 



Ratio of rise in prices since 1540: Grain, 2-40; live 

 stock, 2*62; labour, i'6o; building materials, 171; 

 metals, r88; clothing, 2-12 (Rogers). 



1582 Wheat, igs. i \d. ; barley, 13^.; rye, 22.$-.; beans, 

 i2.r. i\d. j peas, I2S. ; malt, I2S. $\d. (Rogers). 



August 12. A great tempest of lightning, thunder, 

 whirlwind, and rain with hailstones like to the rowels of 

 spurs, two or three inches about in the county of Norfolk 

 between the market towns of North Waltham and 

 Worsted, which tempest beat the corn flat unto the 

 ground, rent up many trees, and shivered them in pieces, 

 or wound them like withes. At Hening the west door 

 of the church, weighing more than three hundred pounds, 

 was lifted off the hooks and thrown over the font. The 

 top of the church was riven up. At East Russen many 

 barns were blown down and houses uncovered (Holin- 

 shed}. 



Unskilled labour, 7^. per day. Carpenters, is. 

 (Rogers). 



1583 January 13. In the parish of Ermitage, in a place 

 called Blackemore, in Dorsetshire, a piece of ground con- 

 taining three acres, removed from the place where it was 

 first planted, and was carried clean over another close 

 where alder and willow trees grew, the space of forty 

 goads (every goad fifteen foot), and hath stopped up an 

 highway that directed towards the market town of Cerne, 

 and yet notwithstanding the hedges wherewith it was 

 enclosed, environ it still, and the trees stand thereon bolt 

 upright saving one oak tree, that is well nigh twenty 

 goads removed, the place whereat the ground had his 



