a delicacy, it
has risen beyond its proportion. In the country places of Ireland and
Scotland, where delicacies bear no price, poultry is at present as
cheap, if not cheaper than butcher's meat. But the inference I would
draw from the comparison of prices is still more considerable: I suppose
that the rates affixed by parliament were inferior to the usual market
prices in those years of famine and mortality of cattle; and that these
commodities, instead of a third, had really risen to a half of the
present value. But the famine at that time was so consuming, that wheat
was sometimes sold for above four pounds ten shillings a quarter,[*]
usually for three pounds;[**] that is, twice our middling prices:
a certain proof of the wretched state of tillage in those ages. We
formerly found, that the middling price of corn in that period was half
of the present price; while the middling price of cattle was only an
eighth part: we here find the same immense disproportion in years of
scarcity. It may thence be inferred with certainty, that the raising of
corn was a species of manufactory, which few in that age could practise
with advantage: and there is reason to think, that other manufactures,
more refined, were sold even beyond their present prices; at least,
there is a demonstration for it in the reign of Henry VII., from the
rates affixed to scarlet and other broadcloth by act of parliament.
During all those times it was usual for the princes and great nobility
to make settlements of their velvet beds and silken robes, in the same
manner as of their estates and manors.[***] In the list of jewels and
plate which had belonged to the ostentatious Gavaston, and which the
king recovered from the earl of Lancaster after the murder of that
favorite, we find some embroidered girdles, flowered shirts, and silk
waistcoats.[****]

* Murimuth, p. 48. Walsingham (p. 108) says it rose to six
pounds.

** Ypod. Neust. p. 502. Trivet Cont. p. 18.

*** Dugdale, passim.

**** Rymer, vol. iii. p. 288

It was afterwards one article of accusation against that potent and
opulent earl, when he was put to death, that he had purloined some of
that finery of Gavaston's. The ignorance of those ages in manufactures,
and still more their unskilful husbandry, seem a clear proof that the
country was then far from being populous.

All trade and manufactures, indeed, were then at a very low ebb. The
only country in the northern