536 ON THE PRICE OF FISH. 



purchasing the principal kinds of cod-fish which were salted for 

 winter and lenten diet. It will also be plain that fish was by 

 no means cheap 1 when compared with other kinds of provisions, 

 and that it did not suffer after the middle of the sixteenth 

 century a rise which, on the whole, corresponds with the rise in 

 meat and corn, as well as in other analogous articles. 



FRESH AND SHELL FISH. Besides salmon and eels, several 

 kinds offish are mentioned in the accounts. If I am right in sup- 

 posing that dentrices and dentriculi are identical with pike and 

 pikerell, this fish is one of the commonest named in my entries. 

 There is an idle story often told, and in particular repeated 

 in ordinary books, nay even made the subject of a rhyme, that 

 the pike was brought into England for the first time in the 

 reign of Henry the Eighth ; and Albin, in his work on esculent 

 fishes, gives 1537 for the date of this introduction, observing 

 also that carp had been brought into England at about 1514 by 

 one Leonard Maschal. But I found both pike and pikerell in 

 the fourteenth century (Vol. II, pp. 554-6), and I have many 

 other entries in the fifteenth. 



Pike are bought at very various prices. In 1404 they cost loos. 

 the hundred, in 1405 they are bought at about is. 8f< each. 

 But in 1473 they cost 2s. ; in 1530, 3^. 6d. and over 4^. 5^.; in 



1 53 I 3-r- and 4-r- ; in i532> 5^ 6d - 5 in J 533> 4J- ; in J 535> " a</.; 

 in 1549, 4s. id. Pikerells vary in price from ^\d. to 2s. 6d., but 

 generally cost about is. $d. Perhaps the 'pypernell' of the 

 Sion account (1448) is the same as the pikerel. A hundred 

 are purchased for 28.$-. $\d. Dentrices again vary from 4^. each 

 to $s. 4d. t though in 1453 half a hundred is bought at IDS. the 

 hundred. Dentriculi are cheaper; sixty cost 4$. 6d. in 1452, and 

 the other entries are from $d. to nd. There are in all thirty 

 entries under the four names. 



Trout, again, vary greatly in price. In 1429 six cost about 

 2s. 2\d each. In 1530 they are bought by Durham monastery 

 at id. ; in 1533 by Lewes at about >]\d. 



1 Note also that at Dartmouth, 1438, ling is 955. Sd. the hundred; cheling, 415. ; 

 and hake only 135. ^d. 



