History of Lancashire. By Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Fishwick. (Elliot Stock.)—This is
one of the series of " Popular County Histories," books which always make us think regretfully of the genuine County History with its massive proportions and unstinted wealth of details,—local, historical, personal. It a ould be un- grateful, however, to depreciate these very valuable and useful volumes. Shortness of space compels the author to omit much, all biographical matter, for instance, but he gives us much that we are glad to have. The chief Roman remains of the county are at Ribchester, where a camp of considerable extent may be traced. Of the Saxon and Danish period little is to be said. For a considerable part of it, indeed, Lancashire belonged to the British Kingdom of Cumbria. In Doomsday Book, the county does not separately appear, but some portions of it are included among the surveys of Yorkshire, Cumberland, and Westmoreland. In the Plantagenet period we have an interesting record in the account of Clitheroe Castle, belonging to the Earl of Lincoln, at the close of the thirteenth century. A waggoner's wages and food are put down at .£1 5s. 51d. A "strong mare " is valued at 3s. Haymaking costs 8d. per acre ; oats, 2s. 3d. per quarter; while wheat is as much as 8s. 6d. A reaper is paid not quite 2d. for a day's work. Multiply this by twenty, and we get the modern equivalent. The inclosing of Musbury Park cost £6010s. 51d., but then it was fifty-six miles round. The Black Death in 1349 was terribly fatal. In the hundred of Amounderness, 13,180 died ; in Preston, 3,000; in Lancaster, the same number. Passing on two hundred years we find the county called upon to provide 3,992 soldiers in 1509. About the same date we find 6d. paid for a day's mowing, wine at 2s. per gallon, a fat pig 2s., shoes ls. 3d. per pair. Such details are plentiful, taken, of course, in most instances, from the publications of the Chetham Society.
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