I have not been able to
ascertain; but, on his decease, one of his _Golden Legends_ was
valued, in the churchwardens' books, at six shillings and eight
pence.[177] Whether this was a great or small sum I know not; but,
from the same authority we find that twenty-two pounds were given,
twelve years before, for eleven huge folios, called '_Antiphoners_.'[178]
In the reign of Henry VIII. it would seem, from a memorandum in the
catalogue of the Fletewode library (if I can trust my memory with such
minutiae) that Law-Books were sold for about ten sheets to the
groat.[179] Now, in the present day, Law-Books--considering the
wretched style in which they are published, with broken types upon
milk-and-water-tinted paper--are the dearest of all modern
publications. Whether they were anciently sold for so comparatively
extravagant a sum may remain to be proved. Certain it is that, before
the middle of the sixteenth century, you might have purchased
Grafton's abridgment of Polydore Virgil's superficial work about _The
Invention of Things_ for fourteen pence;[180] and the same printer's
book of _Common Prayer_ for four shillings. Yet if you wanted a
superbly bound _Prymer_, it would have cost you (even five and twenty
years before) nearly half a guinea.[181] Nor could you have purchased
a decent _Ballad_ much under sixpence; and _Hall's Chronicle_ would
have drawn from your purse twelve shillings;[182] so that,
considering the then value of specie, there is not much ground of
complaint against the present prices of books."

[Footnote 176: By the 1st of Richard III. (1433, ch. ix.
sec. xii.) it appeared that, Whereas, a great number of the
king's subjeets [Transcriber's Note: subjects] within this
realm having "given themselves diligently to learn and
exercise THE CRAFT OF PRINTING, and that at this day there
being within this realm a great number cunning and expert in
the said science or craft of printing, as able to exercise
the said craft in all points as any stranger, in any other
realm or country, and a great number of the king's subjects
living by the craft and mystery of BINDING OF BOOKS, and
well expert in the same;"--yet "all this notwithstanding,
there are divers persons that bring from beyond the sea
great plenty of printed books--not only in the Latin tongue,
but also in our maternal English tongue--some bound in
boards, some in leather, and som