ASSIZE of BREAD. The Assize of Bread together with sundry good and useful ordinances for bakers, brewers, inholders, victualers, vintners, and butchers: and also other assizes in weights and measures, London: printed by William Stansby, to be sold by John Grismand, 1626, 4°, collation: A-G4, A1 blank, printed in black letter, repeated woodcut illustrations at head of tables, woodcut initials and decorations (some old stains to page edges, soil mark to F3r), recent half calf. [STC 880; not in Goldsmiths' or Kress]

Details

ASSIZE of BREAD. The Assize of Bread together with sundry good and useful ordinances for bakers, brewers, inholders, victualers, vintners, and butchers: and also other assizes in weights and measures, London: printed by William Stansby, to be sold by John Grismand, 1626, 4°, collation: A-G4, A1 blank, printed in black letter, repeated woodcut illustrations at head of tables, woodcut initials and decorations (some old stains to page edges, soil mark to F3r), recent half calf. [STC 880; not in Goldsmiths' or Kress]

Provenance

manuscript ordinances in a contemporary hand on blank A1; arithmetical sums on verso of final leaf; J. Brand, Coll. Linc. Oxon., 18th-century bookplate.

Lot Essay

From 1266 onwards for more than five hundred years the price and quality of bread and ale were nationally controlled by the system of assizes (see "The Assize of Bread" by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in Economic Journal, vol. 14, 1904). The first printed Assise of Bread and Ale appeared ca. 1532, and while many other issues followed up to 1636 all are extremely rare, STC locating just 3 copies of this issue at the British Library, Rothamstead Experimental Station, and Columbia University.

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