corn, cattle, poultry, &c. It sometimes happened,
however, that the landlord would stipulate,
that he should be at liberty to demand
of the tenant, either the annual payment in
kind or a certain sum of money instead of it.
The price at which the payment in kind was
in this manner exchanged for a certain sum of
money, is in Scotland called the conversion
price. As the option is always in the landlord
to take either the substance or the price,
it is necessary, for the safety of the tenant,
that the conversion price should rather be below
than above the average market price. In
many places, accordingly, it is not much above
one half of this price. Through the greater
part of Scotland this custom still continues
with regard to poultry, and in some places
with regard to cattle. It might probably have
continued to take place, too, with regard to
corn, had not the institution of the public fiars
put an end to it. These are annual valuations,
according to the judgment of an assize,
of the average price of all the different sorts
of grain, and of all the different qualities of
each, according to the actual market price in
every different county. This institution rendered
it sufficiently safe for the tenant, and
much more convenient for the landlord, to
convert, as they call it, the corn rent, rather
at what should happen to be the price of the
fiars of each year, than at any certain fixed
price. But the writers who have collected
the prices of corn in ancient times seem frequently
to have mistaken what is called in
Scotland the conversion price for the actual
market price. Fleetwood acknowledges, upon
one occasion, that he had made this mistake.
As he wrote his book, however, for a
particular purpose, he does not think proper
to make this acknowledgment till after transcribing
this conversion price fifteen times.
The price is eight shillings the quarter of
wheat. This sum in 1423, the year at which
he begins with it, contained the same quantity
of silver as sixteen shillings of our present
money. But in 1562, the year at which he
ends with it, it contained no more than the
same nominal sum does at present.
Secondly, they have been misled by the slovenly
manner in which some ancient statutes
of assize had been sometimes transcribed by
lazy copiers, and sometimes, perhaps, actually
composed by the legislature.
The ancient statutes of assize seem to have
begun always with determining what ought to
be the price of bread and ale when the price
of wheat and barley were at the lowest; and
to have proceeded gradually to determine what
it ought to be, according as the prices of those
two sorts of grain should gradually rise above
this lowest price. But the transcribers of
those statutes seem frequently to have thought
it sufficient to copy the regulation as far as
the three or four first and lowest prices; saving
in this manner their own labour, and judging,
I suppose, that this was enough to show
what proportion ought to be observed in all
higher prices.
Thus, in the assize of bread and ale, of the
51st of Henry III. the price of bread was regulated
according to the different prices of
wheat, from one shilling to twenty shillings
the quarter of the money of those times. But
in the manuscripts from which all the different
editions of the statutes, preceding that of
Mr Ruffhead, were printed, the copiers had
never transcribed this regulation beyond the
price of twelve shillings. Several writers,
therefore, being misled by this faulty transcription,
very naturally conclude that the
middle price, or six shillings the quarter, equal
to about eighteen shillings of our present
money, was the ordinary or average price of
wheat at that time.
In the statute of Tumbrel and Pillory, enacted
nearly about the same time, the price of
ale is regulated according to every sixpence
rise in the price of barley, from two shillings,
to four shillings the quarter. That four shillings,
however, was not considered as the
highest price to which barley might frequently
rise in those times and that these prices
were only given as an example of the proportion
which ought to be observed in all other
prices, whether higher or lower, we may infer
from the last words of the statute: "Et
sic deinceps crescetur vel diminuetur per sex
denarios." The expression is very slovenly,
but the meaning is plain enough, "that the
price of ale is in this manner to be increased
or diminished according to every sixpence rise
or fall in the price of barley." In the composition
of this statute, the legislature itself
seems to have been as negligent as the copiers
were in the transcription of the other.
In an ancient manuscript of the Regiam
Majestatem, an old Scotch law book, there is
a statute of assize, in which the price of bread
is regulated according to all the different
prices of wheat, from tenpence to three shillings
the Scotch boll, equal to about half an
English quarter. Three shillings Scotch, at
the time when this assize is supposed to have
been enacted, were equal to about nine shillings
sterling of our present money. Mr Ruddiman
seems[16] to conclude from this, that three shillings
was the highest price to which wheat
ever rose in those times, and that tenpence, a
shilling, or at most two shillings, were the
ordinary prices. Upon consulting the manuscript,
however, it appears evidently, that all
these prices are only set down as examples of
the proportion which ought to be observed
between the respective prices of wheat and
bread. The last words of the statute are
"reliqua judicabis secundum præscripta, habendo
respectum ad pretium bladi."—"You
shall judge of the remaining cases, according