-citizens, a far poorer man than his ancestry ever
were. Wheaten bread is, indeed, his necessity, but good fresh meat
(for example) is an exception for him.

Now the Englishmen of earlier times made beef a necessity, and yet we
find that beef will permit a higher multiple than wheat. Beef will
give you a multiple of 12, and just as wheat, giving you a multiple of
8, permits a somewhat higher general multiple, so beef, giving you a
multiple of 12, permits a higher one. So if we were to make beef our
staple instead of wheat we should get a multiple of 13 or 14 by which
to turn the money of the first third of the sixteenth century into the
money of our own time.

But beef, in its turn, is not a fair standard; during much of the year
pork had, under the circumstances of the time, to be eaten instead of
fresh meat. Pork is to-day almost the only meat all the year round of
many labourers on the land. Now pork gives a still higher multiple: it
gives 20. For the pound that you would now give in Chichester Market
for a breeding sow, you gave in the early years of the sixteenth
century a shilling. So here you have another article of common
consumption which gives you a multiple of 20.

Strong ale gives you a higher multiple still--one of nearly 24. You
could then get strong ale at a penny a gallon. You will hardly get it
at two shillings a gallon to-day; and yet it is made of the same
materials. The small ale of the hayfield will give you almost any
multiple you like; it is from eightpence to ninepence a gallon now: it
was often given away in the sixteenth century as water would be.

The consideration of but a few sets of prices such as those we have
quoted shows that the ordinary multiple might be anything between 8
and 24, with a prejudice in favour of the higher rather than the lower
figure. But there are other lines of proof which converge upon the
matter, and which permit a greater degree of certitude. For instance,
even after the rise in prices in the early part of Elizabeth's reign,
while sixpence a week is thought low for the board and lodging of a
working man, a shilling is thought very high, and is only given in the
case of first-rate artisans; and if we consider the pre-Reformation
period, when the position of the labourer was, of course, much better
than it was under Elizabeth, or ever has been since, we find something
of the same scale. A penny a day is thought a rather mean allowance,
but twopence a day is a fir