صفحة 492 من 2651

These prices are not recorded, on account of their extraordinary

dearness or cheapness, but are mentioned accidentally, as the

prices actually paid for large quantities of grain consumed at a

feast, which was famous for its magnificence.

In 1262, being the 51st of Henry III. was revived an ancient

statute, called the assize of bread and ale, which, the king says

in the preamble, had been made in the times of his progenitors,

some time kings of England. It is probably, therefore, as old at

least as the time of his grandfather, Henry II. and may have been

as old as the Conquest. It regulates the price of bread according

as the prices of wheat may happen to be, from one shilling to

twenty shillings the quarter of the money of those times. But

statutes of this kind are generally presumed to provide with

equal care for all deviations from the middle price, for those

below it, as well as for those above it. Ten shillings,

therefore, containing six ounces of silver, Tower weight, and

equal to about thirty shillings of our present money, must, upon

this supposition, have been reckoned the middle price of the

quarter of wheat when this statute was first enacted, and must

have continued to be so in the 51st of Henry III.