Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/432

 needed than strength. Sometimes, however, as in 1297, cart-horse shoes were less than stott shoes. It is probable, too, that the strength of the shoe varied with the soil and the work. Thus at Gamlingay, in 1343, the shoes of the cart-horse were dearer than those needed for ploughing horses. The theory given above, that the shoes were light, is supported by the fact that at Farley, in the year 1320, ox-shoes are quoted at little less price than horse-shoes. The range of prices for shoes, indicated by Mr Rogers's researches, is equally suggestive with that of any other commodities. In the first ninety years shoes are dearest in 1311—1320, though the price is not materially enhanced. Afterwards they fall again, and would have fallen still more markedly, were it not for the immediate results of the Great Plague occurring at that period. This visitation produces its effects at one place only in the year 1348—this being Boxley, where the price is at once nearly four times that at which purchases were made in 1339 and 1340; but afterwards the effect is universal. Shoes customarily worth only a halfpenny before, are instantly and permanently a penny, and the price never falls again. For when we consider how steadily the need increased for these articles, how universal was the smith's labour, and how the relative value of the commodity was governed by causes over which the interference of the legislature could exercise only a very partial control—if, indeed, it could effect any real control at all—we should be prepared to anticipate the result which actually ensued, that the price was doubled. Even here, however, we may trace the same phenomenon, adds Mr Rogers, which has so often occurred. Prices are higher in the decade 1371 —