第490页 / 共2651页

This statute is surely a better evidence of what was reckoned, in

those times, a moderate price of grain, than the prices of some

particular years, which have generally been recorded by

historians and other writers, on account of their extraordinary

dearness or cheapness, and from which, therefore, it is difficult

to form any judgment concerning what may have been the ordinary

price. There are, besides, other reasons for believing that, in

the beginning of the fourteenth century, and for some time

before, the common price of wheat was not less than four ounces

of silver the quarter, and that of other grain in proportion.