HIGH AND LOW PRICES, 715 



cause of the permanent rise was the first debasement of 1545, 

 and the successive issues of similar and even worse coinages. 

 It was, however, convenient to take 1541 as the beginning of 

 the new epoch, though undoubtedly to commence it at so early 

 a date is to depress the later average. The shrewdest men of 

 the time saw that the base money was the cause of the dearth. 

 The reversal of Henry's disgraceful fraud on his people was 

 desired by Edward and Mary. But the camarilla of courtiers 

 prevented it during the boy's life, and the Spanish marriage 

 postponed it during that of his elder sister. It was achieved 

 by Elizabeth at the beginning of her reign. But sixteen years 

 of base money, and that of variable debasement, had produced 

 their effect on prices, and the hope which Elizabeth enter- 

 tained, that old money values would be restored, proved abor- 

 tive. I shall, in a later part of this chapter, comment on such 

 evidence of a general rise or fall in correlated articles as may 

 appear manifest in the course of the whole period contained 

 and examined in these volumes. 



Again, upon several articles of the first importance, there is 

 a marked decline in the price from the average of 1261-1400 

 to that of 1401-1540. This would have been more con- 

 spicuous, if I had in my earlier volumes compared all prices 

 from 1261 to 1350 with those of 1351-1400. But even over 

 the whole range, every kind of grain, except wheat and peas, is 

 dearer in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than it is in 

 the first hundred and forty years of the present period, and had 

 I taken the average price of wheat during the last fifty years 

 of the fourteenth century, it would have been (6s. \\d.) dearer 

 than the average of 1401-1540 (5.9. n|^.), heightened as this 

 is by the dearness of the last thirteen years. It seemed, 

 therefore, in view of the inferences derived from the first two 

 volumes, that the limit taken in these for the period in which 

 prices are assumed to have suffered no material change from 

 those which had ruled before, was judicious, and has supplied 

 fairly accurate results. 



The comparison of such prices as are contained in these 



