Pagina 343 di 1118

The magistrates complied, and fixed the price on each commodity,

threatening punishment to such as should refuse to sell;

notwithstanding this, the evil continued to increase. This the

people attributed to the feebleness of the remedies, and loudly

called for some of a more decided character; unhappily they found

a man that was willing to grant them all they should ask.

In the absence of the Governor Don Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordova,

who was encamped beyond Casale, in Montferrat, the High

Chancellor Antonio Ferrer, also a Spaniard, supplied his place in

Milan. He considered the low price of bread to be in itself

desirable, and vainly imagined that an order from him would be

sufficient to accomplish it. He fixed the limit, therefore, at

the price the bread would have had when corn was thirty-three

livres the bushel; whereas it was now as high as eighty.