THE ASSIZE OF BREAD 449 



16s. Id. The table of weights and prices, so computed and proclaimed, was 

 the Assize of Bread. Besides his allowance, the baker had for his profits 

 the offals, and his " advantage bread," consisting of the additional amount 

 which he could make out of the quarter of wheat over and above the fixed 

 418 Ibs. of bread. The flour which the baker obtained from the miller was 

 to be worked up into three different qualities of bread. Their proportionate 

 values were fixed. Thus, when one penny would buy 1 Ib. of " bread treet," 

 or household bread, it would approximately buy Ib. of " bread of the whole 

 wheat " or wheaten bread, or Ib. of " wastell," or white bread. Put in 

 another way, when the finest white bread cost one penny a pound, the pound 

 of wheaten and of household bread could be bought at the approximate 

 prices of three-farthings and of one halfpenny respectively. 



It is difficult to say whether Assizes of Bread were in the Stewart period 

 very generally set. They were certainly much more frequently proclaimed 

 in towns than in country districts where bread was usually baked at home. 

 By the end of the seventeenth century, the practice seems to have fallen into 

 disuse, even in corporate towns. An attempt to revive it was made by 

 the Government in 1710 in the interests of consumers. The statutory allow- 

 ance of bakers was raised to twelve shillings per quarter, and, as has been 

 already stated, the amount of bread to be made from the quarter of wheat 

 was reduced from 418 Ibs. to 417 Ibs. A still more important change was 

 necessitated by the intervention of a new class of trader between the baker 

 and the wheat-grower. The industrial organisation had become more com- 

 plicated than it was in the Middle Ages. Bakers no longer bought their 

 quarters of wheat direct from the farmer, carried them to the mill, paid the 

 miller for grinding, and carried away the product in the form of flour and 

 offals. Now millers themselves bought the wheat from the growers, ground 

 it into flour, separated it into different qualities, and sold them at different 

 prices to the bakers. These changed conditions were most ineffectively met 

 by empowering the justices, at their option, to calculate their tables on the 

 prices either of wheat or of flour. The local prices, thus settled by the justices 

 and returned to the Custom House officers, supplied the statistics by which, 

 under the Corn Laws, the bounties, the prohibitions of exports, and the duties 

 on imports were to a great extent regulated. 



The Act of 1710 remained unaltered till 1768. If no other proof existed, 

 it might be concluded from this fact, that the prices of wheat remained low. 

 When the prices of food rose, public discontent was generally expressed in a 

 demand for some change in the laws by which they were regulated. Prac- 

 tices which, though irritating, were tolerated in days of cheapness, became 

 in times of scarcity burdensome beyond endurance. Complaints were always 

 numerous, but mostly from the trade. It was, for instance, alleged that 

 country districts were unprotected against frauds by neglect of the practice 

 of setting Assizes which had proved beneficial in towns ; that the informers 

 who profited by the penalties under the Act were mischievously active ; 

 that bakers could not, owing to their dependence on the millers, comply with 

 the regulations ; that the wheat prices were improperly taken ; that the 

 best white bread could not be produced at the prices fixed in the tables ; 

 that the lower quality of bread was largely adulterated by the use not only 

 of alum but of burnt bones, chalk, lime, and whiting ; that the poorest 

 classes refused to eat any bread except that made from the whitest flour, 

 and sacrificed the nourishment of wheat to an absurd fashion. The last 

 complaint illustrates the tendency of history to repeat itself. The pamphlets 

 of the day exhaust the subject of the " whole meal " agitation of 1911 ; but, 

 in the early part of the eighteenth century, the demand for white bread was 

 a sign of an improved standard of living. 



The Act of 1710 remained in force till 1758. Among the bakers it was 



2F 



