It was prohibited to export horses; as if that exportation did not encourage the breed, and render them more plentiful in the kingdom.[**] In order to promote archery, no bows were to be sold at a higher price than six shillings and fourpence,[***] reducing money to the denomination of our time. The only effect of this regulation must be, either that the people would be supplied with bad bows, or none at all. Prices were also affixed to woollen cloth,[****] to caps and hats:[v] and the wages of laborers were regulated by law.[v*] It is evident, that these matters ought always to be left free, and be intrusted to the common course of business and commerce. To some it may appear surprising, that the price of a yard of scarlet cloth should be limited to six and twenty shillings, money of our age; that of a yard of colored cloth to eighteen; higher prices than these commodities bear at present; and that the wages of a tradesman, such as a mason, bricklayer, tiler, etc., should be regulated at near tenpence a day; which is not much inferior to the present wages given in some parts of England. Labor and commodities have certainly risen since the discovery of the West Indies; but not so much in every particular as is generally imagined. The greater industry of the present times has increased the number of tradesmen and laborers, so as to keep wages nearer a par than could be expected from the great increase of gold and silver. And the additional art employed in the finer manufactures has even made some of these commodities fall below their former value. Not to mention, that merchants and dealers, being contented with less profit than formerly, afford the goods cheaper to their customers. It appears by a statute of this reign,[v**] that goods bought for sixteenpence would sometimes be sold by the merchants for three shillings.
The commodities whose price has chiefly risen, are butcher’s meat, fowl, and fish, (especially the latter,) which cannot be much augmented in quantity by the increase of art and industry. The profession which then abounded most, and was sometimes embraced by persons of the lowest rank, was the church: by a clause of a statute, all clerks or students of the university were forbidden to beg, without a permission from the vice-chancellor.[*]