Since early times, agriculture has been pivotal to England's economy. This is the fourth in a magisterial seven-volume, eight-piece compilation by the economist James E. Thorold Rogers (1823–90), which represents the most complete record of produce costs in England between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing on a variety of sources including college archives and the Public Record Office, Rogers documents the fluctuating prices of commodities such as livestock, wheat, hay, wool, textiles and labour in a time of great economic change, when the growing economy of the early middle ages was shaken by famine and the Black Death, and then gradually recovered towards the Agrarian Revolution. First published in 1882, this volume discusses the period from 1401 to 1582, using the data published in Volume 3, exploring the distribution of wealth, the cost of foreign produce, weights, measures and currency, and variation in wages.
