Apart from the quality and price of bread, the mediaeval legislators were concerned (1) to insure supplies, (2) to insure good weight, and (3) to protect the Occupation from outside competition.
(1) Bread might not be sold which had been kept more than a week, and regrators and regratresses who broke this rule, and did not give the loaves back to the bakers, had to pay for all damage incurred by their keeping them. "And let them be right well amerced," said John of Norton, who was Mayor of Leicester in 1323, "if they be attainted of this after our prohibition}}." On the other hand, it was ordered in 1357 that, if it chanced that bread were wanting in the town through the bakers' fault, and if they had their flour in their houses and would not bake it, and this was discovered, that flour was forfeit.
Women who sold bread were ordered to put it in their windows, and not to hide it "in hutches or corners," and not to sell bread with butter or cheese or eggs, but each separately. In 1467 a drastic measure was passed "that the town lack no manner of bread, white nor brown, nor no other kinds of bread, in pain of imprisonment as long as the Mayor likes when the town is breadless." That such measures as this were not uncalled for is shown by a strike of bakers which occurred, a few years after this date, in 1484, at Coventry. The bakers then went to Bakynton, leaving the City destitute of bread, wherethrough "strangers resorting to the city and the inhabitants of the same were unvictualled." They were fined £20, of which £10 was given to them again.
(2) In order to insure good weight, no baker might take bread into the country without first bringing it on horseback to the mayor, or to the Wardens of the Bakers' Occupation to be weighed, "and see whether it be able bread and wholesome for man's body." And, on the other hand, no bread was to be received from the country till seen and weighed before Mr, Mayor or by his officers and by the Wardens of Bakers. Bread in the custody of the bailiffs had to be weighed within the same day or the next " so that it might not dry up too much while in their keeping."
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