CHAPTER XVIII. 



ON THE PRICE OF FISH. 



THE various kinds of fish consumed by our forefathers in 

 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries will be found in Vol. Ill, 

 pp. 310-334. There are a few added in p. 696. The information 

 is far more copious than that contained in the first two volumes, 

 and given in Vol. II, pp. 552-557. Before the Reformation 

 the religious houses consumed vast quantities of fish, and a 

 fish diet, partly by ecclesiastical rule, partly by the necessities 

 of the case, occupied a more or less prolonged part of every year 

 with all. After the Reformation the discipline of the Anglican 

 church continued to prescribe a fish diet on fast days and in 

 Lent, partly as a means for sustaining a national industry, that 

 of the fisherman, whose craft was supposed to be a peculiarly 

 fit prelude to that of service in the royal navy, partly as 

 a relic of ancient rule. Most of the prices which have been 

 collected are of sea fish, salted for keeping, and purchased 

 towards the autumn, generally at Stourbridge fair, near Cam- 

 bridge, for winter and Lenten diet. We shall however find 

 a few examples of fresh fish. As a rule, fresh fish was kept 

 in stews or ponds, which were invariably dug in the neigh- 

 bourhood of monastic houses, probably of colleges. The monks 

 indeed are reputed to have introduced several kinds of fish 

 into English waters, notably the grayling of the Shropshire and 

 Hereford streams. 



HERRINGS. This is the commonest kind of fish. They are 

 occasionally bought fresh, when the purchase was near the sea, 

 sometimes by tale, by the hundred, the thousand, and the last, 

 as for instance at Yarmouth in 1405. The cade of red herrings, 



