ON THE PRICE OF FISH. 529 



252 gallons, it plainly is the same with the barrel. At 

 Salisbury in 1406, and at Pershore in 1462, 1463, 1465* and 

 1471, I find salmon purchased by the pipe. Here it appears 

 that the pipe was the double barrel, for the butt (III, 315, iv) is 

 plainly half the pipe, and is the same as the barrel. Even with 

 this explanation the price is high, but the Severn salmon were 

 always of the best quality, and commanded the highest price. It 

 is possible that the Salisbury purchases were from the Severn. 



I have found no salt salmon by the barrel between 1421- 

 1440 inclusive. But in 1427 nine salt salmon are bought at 

 is. each, and in 1437 four at is. %d. If my reader will turn 

 to Vol. I, p. 613, he will find that I have been able to make 

 use of information as to the number of salmon in a barrel, 

 supplied by an entry of the year 1395 from Bexley. The 

 Cambridge fish, however, unless the price in the years above 

 quoted was very high and the price of the single fish seems 

 to suggest the fact must have been far larger than those of 

 1395, or the price of the barrel would be very exceptional. 

 Still, the early years of the fifteenth century were dear, for 

 I find the barrel of salmon 41^. %d. in 1406, and 32^. id. in 

 1441. The Bexley barrel of 1395, containing four dozen 

 salmon, was 32^. Dried salmon, I presume, is sold by the 

 cord in 1500 at Cambridge. The quantity seems to be the 

 same as the barrel. It is very possible, salt and fresh salmon 

 being a favourite food of our ancestors, that high prices de- 

 terred purchasers. Salmon are very liable to disease in our 

 own time, and most likely they had no immunity four centuries 

 and a half ago. In 1561 and 1579 the Cambridge barrel is 

 described as Berwick salmon. 



The price of salt salmon by the barrel rises rapidly at and 

 after 1549, and becomes very high in 1570-7 and 1579. It is 

 likely (as salmon streams were franchises, over which as we 

 know from the times of the Great Charter the owners exercised 

 vexatious rights, and ventured on arbitrary usurpations) that 

 the rise in the price of this article of diet was due to the 

 action of the owners of fisheries. 



VOL. IV. M m 



