Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/190

188 acts is another of a directly opposite character, ordaining that, for the future, along with every butt of either Malvesy (Malmescy) or Tyre wine brought to the country by the Venetians or others should be imported ten good and able bowstaves. Formerly, it is alleged, bowstaves used to be sold at 40s. the hundred, or 46s. 8d. at most; but now, by the seditious confederacy of the Lombards trading to this country, they had risen to the "outrageous price" of 8l. the hundred. This, it may be observed, was the second attempt that had been made to remedy the grievance in question. The way in which it was first attacked was more direct. In 1482 it was ordained that, whereas the bowyers in every part of the realm sold their bows "at such a great and excessive price, that the king's subjects properly disposed to shoot be not of power to buy to them bows; "therefore, from the feast of Easter next coming, no bowman should take from any of the king's liege people for a long bow of yew more than 3s. 4d. This was certainly carrying faith in the virtue of an act of parliament as far as it could well go.

Here, then, were two legislative modes of keeping down prices. The last of the acts of Richard's parliament which it remains for us to notice furnishes an example of a third. The evil against which this act is directed is the high price of Malmesey wine—a public calamity which is both pathetically and indignantly bewailed. Butts of wine called Malvesy, it is affirmed, were wont in great plenty to be brought into this realm to be sold "before the 27th and 28th years of the reign of Henry IV., late in deed and not of right king of England, and also in the same years;" at which time they held from 140 to 126 gallons a piece; "and then a man might buy and have of the merchant stranger, seller of the said Malveseys, by mean of the said plenty of them, for 50s., or 53s. 4d. at the most, a butt of such wine, he taking for his payment thereof two parts in woollen cloth wrought in this realm, and the third part