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The first of these events was the civil war, which, by

discouraging tillage and interrupting commerce, must have raised

the price of corn much above what the course of the seasons would

otherwise have occasioned. It must have had this effect, more or

less, at all the different markets in the kingdom, but

particularly at those in the neighbourhood of London, which

require to be supplied from the greatest distance. In 1648,

accordingly, the price of the best wheat, at Windsor market,

appears, from the same accounts, to have been £ 4:5s., and, in

1649, to have been £ 4, the quarter of nine bushels. The excess

of those two years above £ 2:10s. (the average price of the

sixteen years preceding 1637) is £ 3:5s., which, divided among

the sixty four last years of the last century, will alone very

nearly account for that small enhancement of price which seems to

have taken place in them.