g at the same
time three shillings the quarter. With wheat the fluctuation was excessive;
a table of its possible variations describes it as ranging from
eighteenpence the quarter to twenty shillings; the average, however, being
six and eightpence.[16] When the price was above this sum, the merchants
might import to bring it down;[17] when it was below this price the farmers
were allowed to export to the foreign markets.[18] The same scale, with a
scarcely appreciable tendency to rise, continued to hold until the
disturbance in the value of the currency. In the twelve years from 1551 to
1562, although once before harvest wheat rose to the extraordinary price of
forty-five shillings a quarter, it fell immediately after to five shillings
and four.[19] Six and eightpence continued to be considered in parliament
as the average; [20] and on the whole it seems to have been maintained for
that time with little variation.[21]

Beef and pork were a halfpenny a pound--mutton was three farthings. They
were fixed at these prices by the 3rd of the 24th of Hen. VIII. But the act
was unpopular both with buyers and with sellers. The old practice had been
to sell in the gross, and under that arrangement the rates had been
generally lower. Stow says,[22] "It was this year enacted that butchers
should sell their beef and mutton by weight--beef for a halfpenny the
pound, and mutton for three farthings; which being devised for the great
commodity of the realm (as it was thought), hath proved far otherwise: for
at that time fat oxen were sold for six and twenty shillings and eightpence
the piece; fat wethers for three shillings and fourpence the piece; fat
calves at a like price; and fat lambs for twelvepence. The butchers of
London sold penny pieces of beef for the relief of the poor--every piece
two pound and a half, sometimes three pound for a penny; and thirteen and
sometimes fourteen of these pieces for twelvepence; mutton eightpence the
quarter, and an hundred weight of beef for four shillings and eightpence."
The act was repealed in consequence of the complaints against it,[23] but
the prices never fell again to what they had been, although beef sold in
the gross could still be had for a halfpenny a pound in 1570.[24] Other
articles of food were in the same proportion. The best pig or goose in a
country market could be bought for fourpence; a good capon for threepence
or fourpence; a chicken for a penny; a hen for twopence.[25]

Stron