CH. I. it fell immediately after to five shillings and four.* Six and eightpence continued to be considered in parliament as the average;† and on the whole it seems to have been maintained for that time with little variation.‡ Beef and pork were a halfpenny a poundmutton was three farthings. They were fixed at these prices by the 3rd of the 24th of Hen. VIII. But the act was unpopular both with buyers and with sellers. The old practice had been to sell in the gross, and under that arrangement the rates had been generally lower. Stow says, 'It was this year enacted that butchers should sell their beef and mutton by weight-beef for a Average halfpenny the pound, and mutton for three farthings; which being devised for the great commodity of the realm (as it was thought), hath proved far otherwise: for at that time fat oxen price of meat, as fixed by statute, from a halfpenny to three farthings the pound. STOW's Chronicle. From 1565 to 1575 there say that this extremity is oft so well seen in time of plenty as of dearth, but if I should I could easily bring my trial. For, albeit that there be much more ground eared now almost in every place than hath been of late years, yet such a price of corn continues in each town and market, that the artificer and poor labouring man is not able to reach to it, but is driven to content himself with beans, peas, oats, tares, and lentils.'-HARRISON, p. 283. The condition of the labourer was at this period deteriorating rapidly. The causes will be described in the progress of this history. || Chronicle, p. 568. were sold for six and twenty shillings and eight- CH. I. pence the piece; fat wethers for three shillings and fourpence the piece; fat calves at a like price; and fat lambs for twelvepence. The butchers of London sold penny pieces of beef for the relief of the poor-every piece two pound and a half, sometimes three pound for a penny; and thirteen and sometimes fourteen of these pieces for twelvepence; mutton eightpence the quarter, and an hundred weight of beef for four shillings and eightpence.' The act was repealed The act fixin consequence of the complaints against it, the prices never fell again to what they had been, popular although beef sold in the gross could still be had alike with for a halfpenny a pound in 1570.† Other articles sellers. of food were in the same proportion. The best * 33 Hen. VIII. cap. II. The change in the prices of such articles commenced in the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., and continued till the close of the century. A discussion upon the subject, written in 1581 by Mr. Edward Stafford, and containing the clearest detailed account of the alteration, is printed in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. ix. p. 139, &c. Leland, Itin., vol. vi. p. 17. In large households beef used to be salted in great quantities for winter consumption. The art of fatting cattle in the stall was imperfectly understood, and the loss of substance in the destruction of fibre by salt was less than in the falling off of flesh on the failure of fresh grass. The Northumberland Household Book describes the storing of salted but provision for the earl's esta- ing the price of meat un buyers and CH. 1. pig or goose in a country market could be bought I. for fourpence; a good capon for threepence or fourpence; a chicken for a penny; a hen for two Strong beer, such as we now buy for eighteenpence a gallon, was then a penny a gallon;† and * STAFFORD'S Discourse on the State of the Realm. It is to be understood, however, that these rates applied only to articles of ordinary consumption. Capons fatted for the dinners of the London companies were sometimes provided at a shilling apiece. Fresh fish was also extravagantly dear, and when two days a week were observed strictly as fasting days, it becomes acurious question to know how the supply was kept up. great nets that stretched all across Limehouse - reach four fathoms deep. Fresh fish, however, remained the luxury of the rich, and the poor were left to the salt cod, ling and herring brought in annually by the Iceland fleet. Fresh herrings sold for five or six a penny in the time of Henry VIII., and were never cheaper. Fresh salmon five and six shillings apiece. Roach, dace, and flounders from two to four shillings a hundred. Pike and barbel varied with their length. The barbel a foot long sold for fivepence, and twopence was added for each additional inch: a pike a foot long sold for sixteen pence, and increased a penny an inch.-Guildhall MSS. Journals 12, 13, 14, 15. The inland counties were dependent entirely on ponds and rivers. London was provided either from the Thames or from the coast of Sussex. An officer of the Fishmongers' Company resided at each of the Cinque Ports, whose business it was to buy the fish wholesale from the boats and to forward it on horseback. Three hundred horses were kept for this service at Rye alone. And when an adventurous fisher-lings, then he shall sell a gallon man, taking advantage of a fair wind, sailed up the Thames with his catch and sold it first hand at London Bridge, the innovation was considered dangerous, and the Mayor of Rye petitioned against it. Salmon, sturgeon, porpoise, roach, dace, flounders, eels, &c., were caught in considerable quantities in the Thames, below London Bridge, and further up, pike and trout. The fishermen had *When the brewer buyeth a quarter of malt for two shil of the best ale for two farthings; when he buyeth a quarter malt for four shillings, the gallon shall be four farthings, and so forth . . . and that he sell a quart of ale upon his table for a farthing.'— Assize of Brewers: from a MS. in Balliol College, Oxford, ... By an order of the Lord Mayor and Council of the City of London, in September, 1529, the price of a kilderkin of single beer was fixed at a shilling, the shilling per table-beer less than a halfpenny. French and CH. 1. German wines were eightpence the gallon. Spa- Wine eightnish and Portuguese wines a shilling. This was pence to a the highest price at which the best wines might gallon. be sold; and if there was any fault in quality or quantity, the dealers forfeited four times the amount.* Rent, another important consideration, cannot be fixed so accurately, for parliament did not interfere with it. Here, however, we are not without very tolerable information. My father,' says Latimer,† was a yeoman, and Latimer's kilderkin of double beer at two shillings; but this included the cask; and the London brewers replied with a remonstrance, saying that the casks were often destroyed or made away with, and that an allowance had to be made for bad debts. Your beseechers,' they said, 'have many city debtors, for many of them which have taken much beer into their houses suddenly goeth to the sanctuary, some keep their houses-some purchase the king's protection, and some, when they die, be reckoned poor, and of no value, and many of your said beseechers be for the most part against such debtors remediless and suffer great losses.' They offered to supply their customers with sixteen gallon casks of single beer for eleven pence, and the same quantity of double beer for a shilling, the cask included. And this offer was accepted. The corporation, however, returned two years after to their original order. Guildhall Re cords, MS. Journal 13, pp. * 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 14. The prices assessed, being a maximum, applied to the best wines of each class. In 1531, the mayor and corporation 'did straitly charge and command that all such persons as sold wines by retail within the city and liberties of the same, should from henceforth sell two gallons of the best red wine for eightpence, and not above; the gallon of the best white wine for eightpence, and not above; the pottle, quart, and pint after the same rate, upon pain of imprisonment.' The quality of the wine sold was looked into from time to time, and when found tainted, or unwholesome, according to the antient customs of the city,' the heads of the vessels were broken up, and the wines in them put forth open into the kennels, in example of all other offenders. Guildhall MS. Journals 12 and 13. + Sermons, p. 101. account of the scale of rents before the Reformation. CH. I. had no lands of his own; only he had a farm of The penny in the reign VIII. equal bread, beef, and beer, sent shil dozen men. three or four pounds by the year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half-aHe had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a harness with himself and his horse. I remember that I buckled on his harness when he went to Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the King's Majesty now. He married my sisters with five pounds, or twenty nobles, each, having brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbours, and some alms he gave to the poor; and all this he did of the said farm.' If 'three or four pounds at the uttermost' was the rent of a farm yielding such results, the rent of labourers' cottages is not likely to have been considerable.* Some uncertainty is unavoidable in all calcuof Henry lations of the present nature; yet, after making in terms of the utmost allowances for errors, we may conclude from such a table of prices that a penny, in terms to the pre- of the labourer's necessities, must have been nearly equal in the reign of Henry VIII. to the present shilling. For a penny, at the time of which I write, the labourer could buy as much bread, beef, beer, and wine-he could do as much towards finding lodging for himself and his family—as the ling. * See HARRISON, p. 318. | price of produce kept pace with At the beginning of the century the rent. The large farmers farms let for four pounds a year, prospered; the poor forfeited which in 1576 had been raised their tenures. to forty, fifty, or a hundred. The |