ON THE PRICE OF FISH. 535 



fish was separately valued according to its size, though the 

 article is called by the same name with that which is sold at 

 much higher or at much lower prices. 



The hundred appears to be 120. This is the quantity given 

 to it at Salisbury in 1406. Such a number is also implied in 

 an entry like that from London under the year 1574, where 

 ' nine hundred five score and nine ' fish (stock) are bought at 

 3</. each. But in 1499 the Si on account describes the hundred 

 as ten score and three, an unintelligible note. 



Generally the warp of salt fish, common or ordinary ling, 

 even when described as orgas ling, and lob fish is about is. 4^. 

 The warp of cod is not more than a third the price. But even 

 when, as in 1415, the same kind of fish is bought by the warp 

 and by the hundred, there is no relation discoverable among 

 the prices. 



The price of cod does not rise so largely towards the latter 

 end of the period as that of ling does. But it is difficult to 

 draw instructive or indeed suggestive averages from the entries. 

 Thus in 1460 Sion buys 120 orgas ling, paying .11 for the 

 whole, and three other kinds of cod, viz. mulvell, fungiae, and 

 haburden, the first at icSs. 8d. the hundred, the next at about 

 29^. (the ordinary price of cod, or stock-fish, as the word is 

 explained in 1458), and the third at 4^-. id. the score, or at 25 s. 

 the long hundred, and in 1494 gives 14 i$s. ^d. for 84 orgas 

 ling. The prices of the other fish are intelligible, but those of 

 the ling are wholly unapproached till 1547, when the rise in 

 money values is being effected, and the hundred of ling is worth 

 10 IQS. at Cambridge. Subsequently, in 1550, Peterhouse, 

 Cambridge, buys a quarter of a hundred of organ ling at .20 

 the hundred, a price which is never reached again, though in 

 1560 King's College pays 16 for organ ling, as it does again 

 * n J 575 I 5 in J 579, an ^ 15 ios. in 1582. I have therefore 

 felt much hesitation in constructing my annual tables of ling 

 and cod, though I feel confident that the decennial and general 

 averages will, the figures correcting each other, give a fairly 

 exact account of the cost to which a household was put in 



