The State Protection of Agriculture. 195 



them, except to his enemies, paying the subsidies and devoirs 

 thereof due ^ eta. ^ etc. Also the State still reserved a right to 

 prohibit exportation when it considered that the interests of 

 the country demanded it.^ In 1436 ^ the wheat farmer freed 

 his rights of exportation from any State interference unless 

 home prices exceeded Qs. 8d. per quarter. He owed this piece 

 of good fortune to the exigencies of the situation created by 

 the defeats of Talbot in France, where, ever since the siege of 

 Orleans, difficulties of victualling the army in the field from 

 French sources had arisen. 



The effects of this fresh legislation, accentuated by a miser- 

 able season, seem to have been to have forced corn up to famine 

 prices ; and in 1439 and 1440 wheat was so scarce that the 

 commons petitioned the king to take certain measures in order 

 to render its circulation brisker within the kingdom. This 

 agitation, however, came to nothing ; and the Act of 1436 was 

 confirmed by 20 Hen. VI. c. 6, and made perpetual by further 

 legislation in 1445. 



About the middle of the fifteenth century ^ we find the first 

 instance of corn importation. By the efforts of the Hanse 

 League foreign competition in the home grain markets had 

 reduced the price of the quarter of wheat to 4s. 6d. Even 

 during the disturbed period of the Civil Wars it never rose 

 above 8s., and consequently in 1463 importation was prohibited 

 as long as prices fell below 6s. 8d. — the Act stating the cause 

 for this to be " because the labourers and occupiers of hus- 

 bandry within this realm are daily grievously endangered by 

 bringing corn out of other lands." Glancing in passing at the 

 market statistics, we note that wheat rose in price gradually 

 each successive year after the enactment of this measure."* 



But the wheat producer had not by any means emancipated 

 himself from legislative control, for in 1534 ^ we find the 

 sovereign resuming his rights over the exportation of every 



* Compare 4 Hen. VI. c. B. 

 « 15 Hen. VI. c. 2. 



» 3 Ed. IV. c. 2. 



* Rogers' Agriculture and Prices, vol. iv. p. 241. 



* 25 Hen. VIII. c. 2. s. 4. 



