Strona 508 z 2651

In an ancient manuscript of the Regiam Majestatem, an old Scotch

law book, there is a statute of assize, in which the price of

bread is regulated according to all the different prices of

wheat, from tenpence to three shillings the Scotch boll, equal to

about half an English quarter. Three shillings Scotch, at the

time when this assize is supposed to have been enacted, were

equal to about nine shillings sterling of our present money. Mr

Ruddiman seems {See his Preface to Anderson's Diplomata Scotiae.}

to conclude from this, that three shillings was the highest price

to which wheat ever rose in those times, and that tenpence, a

shilling, or at most two shillings, were the ordinary prices.

Upon consulting the manuscript, however, it appears evidently,

that all these prices are only set down as examples of the

proportion which ought to be observed between the respective

prices of wheat and bread.