bushel than they may sell it in
the market. But, as these things are worthy redress, so I wish that God
would once open their eyes that deal thus to see their own errors: for as
yet some of them little care how many poor men suffer extremity, so that
they fill their purses and carry away the gain.

It is a world also to see how most places of the realm are pestered with
purveyors, who take up eggs, butter, cheese, pigs, capons, hens, chickens,
hogs, bacon, etc., in one market under pretence of their commissions, and
suffer their wives to sell the same in another, or to poulterers of
London. If these chapmen be absent but two or three market days then we
may perfectly see these wares to be more reasonably sold, and thereunto
the crosses sufficiently furnished of all things. In like sort, since the
number of buttermen have so much increased, and since they travel in such
wise that they come to men's houses for their butter faster than they can
make it, it is almost incredible to see how the price of butter is
augmented:[93] whereas when the owners were enforced to bring it to the
market towns, and fewer of these butter buyers were stirring, our butter
was scarcely worth eighteenpence the gallon that now is worth three
shillings fourpence and perhaps five shillings. Whereby also I gather that
the maintenance of a superfluous number of dealers[94] in most trades,
tillage always excepted, is one of the greatest causes why the prices of
things become excessive: for one of them do commonly use to outbid
another. And whilst our country commodities are commonly bought and sold
at our private houses, I never look to see this enormity redressed or the
markets well furnished.

I could say more, but this is even enough, and more peradventure than I
shall be well thanked for: yet true it is, though some think it no
trespass. This moreover is to be lamented, that one general measure is not
in use throughout all England, but every market town hath in manner a
several bushel; and the lesser it be, the more sellers it draweth to
resort unto the same. Such also is the covetousness of many clerks of the
market, that in taking a view of measures they will always so provide that
one and the same bushel shall be either too big or too little at their
next coming, and yet not depart without a fee at the first, so that what
by their mending at one time, and impairing the same at another, the
country is greatly charged, and few just measures to b