401] gives the following
average prices per tod of 28 lb.:

1706 17s. 6d.
1717-8 23s. to 27s.
1737-42 11s. to 14s.
1743 20s.
1743-53 24s.

After 1753 it fell again, largely owing to the great plague among
cattle, which brought about a 'prodigious increase of sheep'[402];
and about 1770 Young[403] favoured corn rather than wool, for there
was always a market for the former, but the foreign demand for cloth
was diminishing, especially in the case of France, besides prohibition
of export kept down the price.[404] Yet although wool was being
deserted for corn it had in Young's time 'been so long supposed the
staple and foundation of all our wealth, that it is somewhat dangerous
to hazard an opinion not consonant to its encouragement'.

At the end of the century, however, there was a rapid increase in the
price, partly due to increased demand by spinners and weavers who,
owing to machinery, were working more economically; and partly to the
enclosure of commons, and the ploughing up of land for corn.[405]

Cheshire had long been famous for cheese. Barnaby Googe, in the last
quarter of the sixteenth century, says, 'in England the best cheese is
the Cheshyre and the Shropshyre, then the Banbury cheese, next the
Suffolk and the Essex, and the very worst the Kentish cheese.' Camden,
who died in 1623, tells us that 'the grasse and fodder (in Cheshire)
is of that goodness and vertue that cheeses be made here in great
number, and of a most pleasing and delicate taste such as all England
again affordeth not the like, no though the best dairywomen otherwise
and skillfullest in cheese making be had from hence;' and a little
later it was said no other county in the realm could compare with
Cheshire, not even that wonderful agricultural country Holland from
which England learnt so much.[406] In Lawrence's time Cheddar cheese
was also famous, and there it had long been a custom for several
neighbours to join their milk together to make cheeses, which were of
a large size, weighing from 30 lb. to 100 lb. Good cheese came also
from Gloucestershire and Warwickshire. The Cheshire men sent great
quantities by sea to London, a long and tedious voyage, or else by
land to Burton-on-Trent, and down that river to Hull and then by sea
to London. The Gloucestershire men took it to Lechlade and sent it
down the Thames; from Warwickshire it went by land all the way, or to
Oxford and t