CHAPTER XXIV. 



ON THE PRICE OF FISH. 



DURING a considerable part of the year, fish formed an 

 important article of diet. In the time which preceded the 

 Reformation, and indeed long after it, it was the only animal 

 food permitted on the fasts of the Church. Besides, it was 

 largely used in winter, as one of the kinds of salted provisions ; 

 stores of herrings, red and white, and the various kinds of 

 stock-fish, being regularly purchased in autumn,- and laid up 

 for winter consumption. The latter kinds of salted fish kept 

 good for the longest time; and therefore Tusser advises his 

 readers, among the other items of his five hundred points of 

 good husbandry, to use herrings in winter, and keep stock and 

 hard fish for spring. 



Fish, as my reader will discover, was by no means a cheap 

 article of food in the Middle Ages. It was so dear, that in 

 the time before us it could hardly have been consumed by the 

 poorer classes, except as a luxury or a relish. Nor does this 

 observation apply only to the better kinds of fresh fish, as lam- 

 preys, salmon, pike, and eels. Herrings and ordinary salt and 

 stock-fish were, on the whole, relatively dear. The stories told 

 of the exceeding plenty and cheapness of salmon, if they are 

 not purely local, even in late times, would not, as far as can 

 be inferred from the accounts before me, have been true of 

 the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 



Most kinds of fish were sold salted as well as fresh; the 

 business of a stock-fishmonger 1 being a regular branch of trade 



a See above, p. 507. 



