Early English Meals and Manners — A Reader’s Guide

lor, giving a feast: “I was made bachelor ... on Friday was se’nnight (18 June, 1479), and I made my feast on the Monday after (21 June). I was promised venison against my feast, of my Lady Harcourt, and of another person too, but I was deceived of both; but my guests held them pleased with such meat as they had, blessed be God.” The letter as to the costs is dated May 19, 1478.

“I marvel sore that you sent me no word of the letter which I sent to you by Master William Brown at Easter. I sent you word that time that I should send you mine expenses particularly; but as at this time the bearer hereof had a letter suddenly that he should come home, & therefore I could have no leisure to send them to you on that wise, & therefore I shall write to you in this letter the whole sum of my expenses since I was with you till Easter last past, and also the receipts, reckoning the twenty shillings that I had of you to Oxon wards, with the bishop’s finding:--

£ s. d. The whole sum of receipts is 5 17 6 And the whole sum of expenses is 6 5 5¾ And that [= what] cometh over my receipts & my expenses I have borrowed of Master Edmund, & it draweth to 8 0

and yet I reckon none expenses since Easter; but as for them, they be not great.”

On this account Fenn says,

“he (Wm. Paston) had expended £6 5s. 5¾d. from the time he left his mother to Easter last, which this year fell on the 22nd March, from which time it was now two months, & of the expenses ‘since incurred’ he says ‘they be not great.’ We may therefore conclude the former account was from the Michaelmas preceding, and a moderate one; if so, we may fairly estimate his university education at £100 a-year of our present money. I mean that £12 10s. 11½d. would then procure as many necessaries and comforts as £100 will at this day.”

What was the basis of Fenn’s calculation he does not say. In 1468, the estimates for the Duke of Clarence’s household expenses give these prices, among others:

s. d. £ s. d. Wheat, a quarter 6 0 now, say 3 0 0 Ale, a gallon - 1½ „ - 1 0 Beves, less hide and tallow, each 10 0 „ 15 0  0[*] Muttons „ „ 1 4 „ 2 10  0[*] Velys „ „ 2 6 „ 4 0  0[*] Porkes „ „ 2 0 „ 5 0 0 Rice, a pound 3 „ 5 Sugar „ 6 „ 6 Holland, an ell (6d., 8d., 16d.) 10 „ 1 3 Diapre „ 4 6 „ 3 0 Towelles „ 1 8 „ 1 6 Napkyns, a dozen, 12s., £1, £2, 17 4 „ 2 0 0 ---------- ------------- £2 7 0½ £31 17 8

This sum would make the things named nearly 14 times as dear now as in 1468, and raise Fenn’s £100 to about £180; but no reliance can be placed on this estimate because we know nothing of the condition of the beves, muttons, veles, and porkys, then, as contrasted with ours. Possibly they were half the size and half the weight. Still, I have referred the question to Professor Thorold Rogers, author of the _History of Prices_ 1250-1400 A.D., and he says:

“In the year to which you refer (1478) bread was very dear, 50 per cent. above the average. But on the whole, wheat prices in the 15th century were lower than in the 14th. Fenn’s calculation, a little below the mark for wheat, is still less below it in most of the second necessaries of life. The multiple of wheat is about 9, that of meat at least 24, those of butter and cheese nearly as much. But that of clothing is not more than 6, that of linen from 4 to 5. Taking however one thing with another, 12 is a safe general multiplier.”

This would make the cost of young Paston’s university education £150 11s. 6d. a year.

Mr Whiston would raise Fenn’s estimate of £100 to £200. He says that the rent of land in Kent in 1540 was a shilling or eighteenpence an acre,--see _Valor Ecclesiasticus_,--and that the tithes and glebes of the Dean and Chapter of Rochester, which were worth about £480 a-year in 1542, are now worth £19,000.

The remaining Oxford letter in the Paston volumes seems to allude to the students bearing part of the expenses of the degree, or the feast at it, of a person related to royal family.

“I supposed, when that I sent my letter to my brother John, that the Queen’s brother should have proceeded at Midsummer, and therefore I beseeched her to send me some money, _for it will be some cost to me_, but not much.”

The first school at Cambridge is said to have been founded by Edward the Elder, the son of Alfred, but on no good authority. In 1223 the term _University_ was applied to the place. The dates of the foundations of its Colleges, as given in its Calendar, are: