220 



HISTORY OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 



rope, raised Uie price of provLsions. In the latter 

 lialf of the sixteenth century, wheat was three 

 times as dear, both in England and France, as in 

 the former half. The price of wheat, upon an 

 average of years, varied very little for four cen- 

 turies before the metallic riches of the New 

 World were brought into Europe; upon an 

 average of years it has varied very little since. 

 The people of the days of Henry VIII. felt the 

 change in tlie monej'--value of provisions, al- 

 though the real value remained the same ; and 

 they ascribed the circumstance to the dissolution 

 of the monasteries. 



When wheat was fourteen-pence a bushel, it 

 was probably consumed by the people in seasons 

 of plenty, and soon after harvest. During a por- 

 tion of the year there is little doubt that the 

 English labourers had better food than the French, 

 ■who, in the fifteenth century, were described by 

 Fortescue thus : " They drynke water, they eate 

 apples, with bred right brown, made of rye." 

 Locke, travelling in France in 1678, says of the 

 peasantry in his journal, "Their ordinary food, 

 lye bread and water." The English always dis- 

 liked what they emphatically termed "changing 

 the white loaf for the brown." They would 

 have paid little respect to the example of Masi- 

 nissa, the African general, who is described by 

 Polybius as eating brown bread with a relish at 

 the door of his tent. Their dislike to brown 

 bread in some degree prevented the change which 

 they proverbially dreaded. In the latter part of 

 the sixteenth century, however, this change was 

 jiretty general, whatever was the previous con- 

 dition of the people. Harrison says, speaking 

 of the agricultural population, " As for wheaten 

 bread, they eat it when they can reach unto the 

 price of it, contenting themselves, in the mean- 

 time, -with bread made of oates or barlie, a poore 

 estate, God wot !" In another place he says, 

 " The bread throughout the land is made of such 

 graine as the soil yieldeth ; nevertheless, the gen- 

 tilitie commonlie provide themselves sufficiently 

 of wheate for their ovm tables, whilst their house- 

 hold and poore neighbours, in some shires, are 

 inforoed to content themselves with rie or bar- 

 lie." Harrison then goes on to describe the se- 

 veral sorts of bread made in England at his day, 

 viz. manchet, cheat, or wheaten bread ; another 

 inferior sort of bread, called ravelled, and lastly, 

 brown bread. Of the latter there were two sorts : 

 " One baked up as it cometh from the mill, so 

 that neither the bran nor the floure are any whit 

 diminished. The other hath no floure left there- 

 in at aU ; and it is not only the worst and weak- 

 est of all the other sorts, but also appointed in 

 old time for servants, slaves, and the inferior kind 

 of people to feed upon. Hereunto, likewise, be- 

 cause it is drie and brickie in the working, some 

 add a portion of rie-meale, in our time, whereby 

 the rough drines,se thereof is somewhat qualified. 



and then it is named mescelin, that is, bread 

 made of mingled come." In the household book 

 of Sir Edward Coke, in 1696, we find constant 

 entries of oatmeal for the use of the house, be- 

 sides " otniell to make the poore folkes porage," 

 and " rie-meall, to make breade for the poore." 

 The household wheaten bread was partly baked 

 in the house and partly taken of the baker. In 

 that year it appears, from the historian Stow, 

 that there was a great fluctuation in the price of 

 com ; and he particularly mentions the price of 

 oatmeal, which would indicate that it was an 

 article of general consumption, as well in a li- 

 quid form, as in that of the oat-cakes of the north 

 of England. 



In 1626, Charles I., upon an occasion of sub- 

 jecting the brewers and maltsters to a royal li- 

 cense, declared that the measure was "for the 

 relief of the poorer sort of his people, whose 

 usual bread was barley ; and for tne restraining 

 of innkeepers and victuallers, who made their ale 

 and beer too strong and heady." The grain to 

 be saved by the weakness of the beer was for the 

 benefit of the consumers of barley-bread. 



At the period of the Revolution (1689) wheat- 

 en bread formed, in comparison with its present 

 consumption, a small proportion of the food oi 

 the people of England. The following estimate 

 of the then produce of the arable land in the 

 kingdom tends to prove this position. This es- 

 timate was made by Gregory King, whose sta- 

 tistical calculations have generally been consi- 

 dered entitled to credit. 



Bushels. 

 Wheat, . . . 14,000,000 



Rye, 



Barley, 



Oats, 



Pease, 



Beans, 



Vetches, 



10,000,000 



27,000,000 



16,000,000 



7,000,000 



4,000,000 



1,000,000 



In all, . . . 79,000,000 

 At the commencement of the last century 

 wheaten bread became much more generally used 

 by the labouring classes, a proof that their con- 

 dition was improved. In 1726, it was even used 

 in poor-houses in the southern counties. The 

 author of " Three Tracts on the Com Trade," 

 published at the beginning of the reign of George 

 III., says, "It is certain that bread made of 

 wheat is become much more generally the food 

 of the common people since 1680, than it was 

 before that time ; but it is still very far from 

 being the food of the people in general." He then 

 enters into a very curious calculation, the results 

 of which are as follow : The whole number of 

 people is 6,000,000, and of those who eat 

 Wlieat, the niimbtr is, . 3,750,000 



Barley, . . . 739,000 



Rye, . . . 888,000 



OatB, . . . 623,000 



Total, 



6,000,000 



