Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1876 — Price of Food in Old Times. [ARTICLE]

Price of Food in Old Times.

Amid the never-ending comments on the high price of provisions, it is difficult for us to realize the fact that a time existed in Britain’s history when wheat, as food for 100 for a whole day, was worth only a shilling, and the average price of sheep four pence. In the reign of Henry I. the price of wine was raised to six pence a quart for red and eight pence a quart for white, in order that tlwsellers might be enabled to live by it. when wheat was at six shillings a quart or (eight bushels), the farthing loaf was to be equal in weight to twenty-four ounces if made of the whole grain, and to sixteen ounces it

consisting solely of white. And. when wheat was only one shilling and six peace four ounces, and the whole grain ninetysix. Think of purchasing* a six-pound loaf of good wheaten bread for a farthing I Inßhe nineteenth year of the reign of Edward 1., the price of provisions of the ■City of London was fixed by the Common Council at a tariff by which two pullet* were sold at three half-pence, a partridge •r two woodcocks for the seme, while a fat lamb was to be six pence from Christmas to Shrovetide, and the rest of the year four pence. In the fourteenth century Parliament fixed the price of a Ist ox at forty-eight shillings, a shorn sheep at five shillings, two dozen eggs at three pence, and the best wine at twenty shillings per tun. An act of Parliament, passed in 1588, settled the value of beer and pork at a half-penny per pound, and veal at three farthings.— JCnglish Magazine. ■ :