As exemplified in the Manor of Castle Combe. 159 
penny, and farthing loaves were ordered to be made by all bakers. 
(1557). No inhabitant was allowed to buy bread of a foreign 
baker; and such were of course prohibited from selling it, except 
on market-days and in the market of the town. 
So also in the article of Candles. The Chandlers were required 
to sell at prices fixed by the Jury. And to enable them to do so 
the butchers were prohibited from selling out of the town the fat 
of the animals they slaughtered (1572); and again no inhabitant 
was allowed to have in his house at one time more candles than he 
could readily use, (1573). The brewers were prohibited from 
selling their ‘graines’ out of the town, and the price was also fixed 
which they were bound to accept, viz.: 2d. the bushell, (1590). 
None were to sell “ grain or other viteal,”’ except on market-days, 
nor to sell at all before nine o’clock, or buy more than might serve 
their own household. This buying of any article more than was actu- 
ally required for immediate consumption was called ‘“ encroaching;”’ 
the buying before-hand for the purpose of profit by re-sale, 
“forestalling,” and the subsequent sale at a profit ‘“regrating.” 
And these practices were prohibited’as well by general statutes, as 
by the orders of the Court, and punished if detected. All those 
branches of business which are now carried on by what are called 
middle-men or salesmen, merchants who buy and sell articles of 
general consumption for the sake of the profit, and who thus act 
most beneficially for the general interests, by equalizing as near as 
possible the supply to the demand, as respects both time and place, 
were by these absurd laws and regulations prevented from exercising 
their most useful callings. It must have offered a curious and 
instructive lesson in political economy, this small community 
endeavouring in so many various ways to carry out the ‘ Protectionist’ 
principle of self-supply, by prohibiting themselves from buying or 
selling almost anything in any other market than their own, accu- 
mulating restraints upon manufactures and trades of every kind, and 
dictating the terms of almost every bargain. We have no right, 
however, to cast ridicule for these absurdities on the uneducated 
inhabitants of this remote rural township. They only copied on a 
small scale the proceedings of the Sovereign and supreme legis- 
