there are serious gaps from time to time in their
continuity. (Vol. I., we may remind our readers, began with a document of the beginning of the twelfth century.) The whole furnishes materials for a very interesting survey of municipal history. These materials require much piecing together and a very careful study. Difficulties arise from time to time; from want of some
necessary information, too obvious, possibly, to be recorded at the time, we fail to get a complete Picture. Still, we can get a
general idea' of the relation betieeen the town and its lord- at one time the relation was double, the lord being King during the Lancastrian period-of its domestic government, its trade and commercial arrangements, and, tp a certain extent, of its social life. One interesting set of facts has to do with prices. These are sometimes perplexing. The prices of fish, for instance, on p. 67. are extraordinarily high. Pike, bream, eels, lampreys, and salmon (a dozen of each) given in 1346 as a present to the Earl of Lancaster cost more than .212. (The lampreys are put
down at £5 Os. 8d.) A tun of trite cost £5 13s. 4c1., something over 5d. per gallon. About thirty years after a horse is priced at 23 Os. 8d. Charcoal is fixed at 7d. a quarter from All Hallows to Easter, and 6d. for the rest of the year. A pheasant is priced. at Is. Gd. (very dear), a rabbit at 4d. "Two geese in hotch- potch" are marked at 7d. These are fourteenth-century prices. The rents on pp. 266-68 (this refers to 1468) are scarcely in keeping. The highest are a little more than 20s.; some are as low as tici. The vicar of St. Martin pays 3s. 4d.
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