640 ON THE PRICE OF FOREIGN PRODUCE, 



In 1443 and 1444 entries of Rhenish wine by the butt or 

 fat of thirty-six gallons are to be found. The price of the 

 quantity is the same in both years, and the measures are pro- 

 bably identical. But the fat is said also to contain five ames, 

 and this quantity no way corresponds with the modern Rhenish 

 aum of 30 gallons. But, in 1504, I find the Rhenish aum 

 purchased at Canterbury at about the price of the fat of an 

 earlier date. In 1478 I find a rundlet of sweet wine bought 

 for 305-. in Norwich. It is said to contain sixteen gallons. 

 In Vol. Ill, p. 576, iv, an entry will be found of an empty 

 rundlet containing thirteen gallons. It would seem then that 

 a rundlet was a small cask of uncertain quantity. 



Malmsey is first entered by the butt in the Wardrobe account 

 of 1500. This is probably the same as the pipe of Spanish 

 white wine, which contains from 100 to 105 gallons. At this 

 time the Wardrobe entries may be relied on, and the price by 

 the butt, i. e. less than half a tun, compared with Gascony by 

 the tun, is fairly proportionate to that which is seen in the 

 same kind of wine purchased by the gallon. Again, at Can- 

 terbury, in 1504, the butt of Malmsey is the same price as the 

 tun of red wine. Henceforward such entries are frequent. 

 I shall compare the prices lower down. 



The price of a butt of 'Romney' in 1522 at Sion suggests 

 that this wine was probably Rhenish, and that the quantity 

 was the butt and fat of 1443, 1444, and the aum, or aulne, of 

 1504. 



In 1530 occurs the first entry of Vinum Creticum. I am 

 unable to give an explanation of this term. It is said in 

 Halliwell, who quotes Topsell, and the Morte d'Arthur manu- 

 script, to be a kind of sweet wine. But in the older author it 

 is coupled with claret, from which, at least in the earlier entries, 

 it does not materially differ in price. It is certainly not 

 derived from the island, for it does not seem that English trade 

 in the early part of the sixteenth century extended beyond the 

 ports of the south-west part of Spain. It is found at Oxford 

 only. It is once bought by the tun, and this at the price at 



