Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/121

 more pretence for such a system where, as in most parts of England, there were still large ranges of common and unenclosed forest land on which the labourer might feed a cow, where his pigs, ducks, and geese might range, and where he could obtain his fuel without charge. Moreover, in those days labour was not, as now, a marketable commodity, it being then a recognised principle of law to apportion out, so far as seemed possible, the rights of the various classes of society, and to determine the price of such labour, not according to the demand, but according to the presumed cost of the necessaries of life.

Naturally in such attempts to regulate prices, Henry VIII. and his ministers committed many ludicrous as well as palpable mistakes, and admitted the justice of demands equally indefensible. For instance, when the bailiffs and burgesses of Bridport presented, in 1529, a petition to Parliament, stating that the inhabitants of their town had been accustomed from time immemorial to manufacture the greater portion of the large cables, etc., required for the royal navy and for merchant shipping, by which

and fourpence, and fat lambs twelvepence a piece. The best description of beer sold for one penny a gallon, while table-beer could be had for half that price. Spanish and Portuguese wines were sold at a shilling the gallon, but French and German sold for eighteenpence. These were the highest prices which could be obtained by the law, which in those days regulated all such matters; and if any fault was discovered in either the quality or the quantity, the dealers were punished by fine equivalent to four times the value of the wine which had been sold (28 Hen. VIII. ch. 14). These prices would appear ridiculously low were it not that, owing to the subsequent increase of the value of money, a penny then would purchase as much wine or beer as a shilling would now.]
 * [Footnote: oxen realised twenty-six shillings each, fat wethers three shillings