Pagina 506 de 2651

Thus, in the assize of bread and ale, of the 51st of Henry III.

the price of bread was regulated according to the different

prices of wheat, from one shilling to twenty shillings the

quarter of the money of those times. But in the manuscripts from

which all the different editions of the statutes, preceding that

of Mr Ruffhead, were printed, the copiers had never transcribed

this regulation beyond the price of twelve shillings. Several

writers, therefore, being misled by this faulty transcription,

very naturally conclude that the middle price, or six shillings

the quarter, equal to about eighteen shillings of our present

money, was the ordinary or average price of wheat at that time.