Digression Concerning the Variations in the Value of Silver during the Course of the last Four Centuries.
First Period
In 1350, and for some time before, the average price of the quarter of wheat in England seems not to have been estimated lower than four ounces of silver, Tower weight, equal to about twenty shillings of our present money. From this price it seems to have fallen gradually to two ounces of silver, equal to about ten shillings of our present money, the price at which we find it estimated in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and at which it seems to have continued to be estimated till about 1570.
In 1350, being the 25th of Edward III., was enacted what is called, The Statute of Laborers. In the preamble it complains much of the insolence of servants, who endeavored to raise their wages upon their masters. It therefore ordains, that all servants and laborers should for the future be contented with the same wages and liveries (liveries in those times signified, not only clothes, but provisions) which they had been accustomed to receive in the 20th year of the king, and the four preceding years; that upon this account their livery-wheat should nowhere be estimated higher than ten-pence a bushel, and that it should always be in the option of the master to deliver them either the wheat or the money. Tenpence a bushel, therefore, had, in the 25th of Edward III., been reckoned a very moderate price of wheat, since it required a particular statute to oblige servants to accept of it in exchange for their usual livery of provisions; and it had been reckoned a reasonable price ten years before that, or in the 16th year of the king, the term to which the
