The Performance of the Glass Industry in Sixteenth-Century England

Bibliographic Data

ID3272218
AuthorsDavid Crossley (0000-0002-6380-7106, University of Sheffield, corresponding author), D W Crossley (corresponding author)
Year1972
Volume25
Issue3
Pages421-433
Publication date1972-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Economic History Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1468-0289.1972.tb02185.x
OpenAlexW2028135185
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited4

MHE attention given to the pattern of rising prices of foodstuffis in sixteenthcentury England has scarcely been matched by inquiry into those of manufactured goods. It is hardly surprising that this should be so, for the employment of a composite sample of goods, available and useful in the case of agricultural prices, has limitations when applied to industrial products. Industrial prices are less simple to correlate with the broader changes in the economy of the period, for while the prices of food were apt, by and large, to move together under pressures such as population change or the quality of the harvest, a sample of items chosen from a wide range of industries will include materials upon which strong and perhaps unique influences may act; these can easily obscure the effect of general pressures. Sometimes, it is true, several factors work in the same direction; for instance in the I540's a number of influences apart from debasement of the coinage may have helped to raise prices of goods in the sample used by Phelps Brown and Hopkins; the export market, for instance, exerted a strong pull on cloth output during the I540's, and over much of the period military demand might be expected to have had some effect on prices, particularly of metal goods. However, later in the century, although there is a gentle upward drift in the prices of the sample as a whole, within it lie some widely varying price series for individual articles, governed by differing levels of demand, improvement in methods, or supply of raw materials.2 Table i attempts to illustrate this point, using figures for pewter, nails, tiles, and glass in southern England. Nails, tiles, and glass were all in increasing demand, particularly from a buoyant building industry in the second half of the century; but while the price of iron goods rose little and that of glass fell not only in real terms but in the London area in money prices, the price of tiles in southern England rose appreciably. One is thus tempted to speculate not only on the relative demand for these goods but also on the degrees of technical advance in their production, involving, here, comparison of improvements in glassand ironmaking with what appear to have been traditional methods in brick and tile manufacture. In a different field, pewter was also a durable good in demand, as

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