CHAPTER XIX. 



PRICES OF ALE AND BEER. 



IN the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries such persons as 

 kept and preserved their accounts, the bailiff of the nobleman 

 or gentleman, of a college or a monastery, and the possessors of 

 great private houses, or of corporate establishments, almost 

 invariably baked their own bread and brewed their own ale. 

 There are occasions on which purchases of bread and ale were 

 made. The reader may find extensive purchases of such pro- 

 visions in Vol. II, p. 644, on the occasion of the determination 

 feast of 1395. Two thousand seven hundred loaves and nine 

 bushels of fine flour are bought ; and several quantities of ale, 

 by the quart or quarter, which, as we shall see, was a local Oxford 

 measure, and by the gallon, are also provided. The ' quart ' is 

 of three qualities, at is. &/., is., and lod. The purchases by the 

 gallon are at i\d. It is, I think, plain that the ale bought by 

 the gallon is of better quality than that purchased by the larger 

 measure. The custom changes, or rather is capricious, and the 

 facts collected are best treated in a short chapter. 



Ale was fermented wort, to which nothing was added which 

 should flavour or preserve it. Beer, a word of later origin or 

 use, was ale to which hops had been added. The use of hops 

 in beer, an invention, it appears, of the Dutch, commences in 

 the fifteenth and becomes general in the sixteenth century. 

 Hence ale was produced for immediate consumption, unless it 

 were made of extraordinary strength 1 . 



The measures by which ale and beer are sold are very various, 

 and where the same word is used, it appears that it was of very 



1 I must admit that before I saw the distinction, I translated cerevisia in the earlier 

 years as ale or beer indifferently. 



