o supersede one often quoted by political economists, but which appears
to be founded upon very superficial and erroneous inquiries.[716]

It is by no means required that I should here offer such a table of
values, which, as to every country except England, I have no means of
constructing, and which, even as to England, would be subject to many
difficulties.[717] But a reader unaccustomed to these investigations
ought to have some assistance in comparing the prices of ancient times
with those of his own. I will therefore, without attempting to ascend
very high, for we have really no sufficient data as to the period
immediately subsequent to the Conquest, much less that which preceded,
endeavour at a sort of approximation for the thirteenth and fifteenth
centuries. In the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., previously to the
first debasement of the coin by the latter in 1301, the ordinary price
of a quarter of wheat appears to have been about four shillings, and
that of barley and oats in proportion. A sheep was rather sold high at a
shilling, and an ox might be reckoned at ten or twelve.[718] The value
of cattle is, of course, dependent upon their breed and condition, and
we have unluckily no early account of butcher's meat; but we can hardly
take a less multiple than about thirty for animal food and eighteen or
twenty for corn, in order to bring the prices of the thirteenth century
to a level with those of the present day.[719] Combining the two, and
setting the comparative dearness of cloth against the cheapness of fuel
and many other articles, we may perhaps consider any given sum under
Henry III. and Edward I. as equivalent in general command over
commodities to about twenty-four or twenty-five times their nominal
value at present. Under Henry VI. the coin had lost one-third of its
weight in silver, which caused a proportional increase of money
prices;[720] but, so far as I can perceive, there had been no diminution
in the value of that metal. We have not much information as to the
fertility of the mines which supplied Europe during the middle ages; but
it is probable that the drain of silver towards the East, joined to the
ostentatious splendour of courts, might fully absorb the usual produce.
By the statute 15 H. VI., c. 2, the price up to which wheat might be
exported is fixed at 6_s._ 8_d._, a point no doubt above the average;
and the private documents of that period, which are sufficiently
numerous, lead to a si