Bakers were fined for selling defective bread, for short weight, and for divers other offences against the assize of bread. They claimed, as a custom, that on the first default they should be fined 1s. 4d., at the second default 2s. 8d., at the third default 5s. 4d., at the fourth that they should be put in the pillory, or pay 40s. These fines were at first collected by the Earl's Stewards for his benefit. Thus, in 1462 a valuation of the lord's perquisites gave the value of the fines against assize of bread at £4 2s. 9d. a year. The fines were sometimes remitted to impecunious or importunate bakers. It was ordained, therefore, in 1352, by agreement between the Counsel of the Lord and the Mayor and good people of the town, that, since the bakers claimed such a custom, and no increase could be charged on bakers who were rich, no remission should be allowed to those who were less rich. The Leicester bakers were indeed dealt with leniently, for in other towns punishments more stringent than fines were enforced. Thus in London fraudulent bakers had to stand in the pillory with lumps of dough round their necks. This is almost as amusing an example of the mediaeval custom of fitting the punishment to the crime as the case of John Penrose, who was accused of selling unwholesome wine to the common people in 1364. Judgment was that he should drink a draught of the same wine which he sold to the common people, and the remainder of the wine should then be poured on his head.
In the year 1352 the assize of bread was taken in October, and the price of wheat was then very high, as a result of the Black Death, and the agricultural depression which immediately followed it. The quarter of best wheat was worth 8s. 6d., of medium 8s., and of the worst 7s. 6d. In the following year the price fell again to 4s., and during the next hundred years it averaged about that price, rising once, in 1362, to 8s. 6d., and in 1364 to as much as 12s.
The weight of the loaf, it should be noted, was measured by the weight of certain coins. "The pound sterling," as it has been said, "was not a coin in mediaeval England, but a weight of metal, coined or otherwise; it is therefore common to find
131
