Medieval price list

Auteur : Michal Domanski

Michal Domanski — mdoman@​plearn.​edu.​pl — yeovil@148.81.142.16

Brow­sing my files, I found this price list. I achie­ved it from Bent C. Dala­ger bcd@​pvv.​unit.​no from the Role­mas­ter Mai­ling List. Because many’ve asked about some­thing like this, I send it — maybe you’ll find it useful.

These prices are from the XV^th cen­tury (about 1450).

• 1 pound (L) = 20 shil­lings (s) = 240 d pence (d)
• 1 shil­ling (s) = 12 pence (d)
• 1 penny (d) = 4 far­things

• 1 crown = 5 shil­lings (s) = 60 pence (d)
• 1 mark = 13s 4d = 160 d pence (d)

XV^th century price list

Rare know­ledge: 75d (rea­ding dead lan­guages, des­crip­tions of foreign lands, old his­tory)

Very rare know­ledge: 200d (rea­ding ancient dead lan­guages, des­crip­tions of the far­thest reaches of the known world, ancient his­tory)

Dangerous/​illicit know­ledge: 500d+ (rea­ding magi­cal texts, des­crip­tions of poi­sons, here­ti­cal theo­lo­gi­cal spe­cu­la­tion)

Coi­nage: the basic unit was the penny (d). 12 pennys made one shil­ling (s), and 20 shil­lings made one pound (£) ster­ling. (So we’re tal­king silver, not gold). There was also a coin called the Mark, which equal­led 13s.4d, or 2/3 of a pound. There were gold coins, called nobles or royals, worth ori­gi­nally 6s.8d, and later 10s, and half-nobles worth 5s. A far­thing = 2s.6d.

XV^th century incomes

• The Dukes of York, Buckin­gham, and the Earl of War­wick — the Donald Trumps of their day — made bet­ween £4,000 and £6,000 per year.
• Mini­mum income to be an offi­cial like jus­tice of the peace — £20 (from land, not trade, etc.).
• Mini­mum income needed to vote in a county elec­tion = 40s/​year from land.

Basic wages

• Agri­cul­tu­ral Labo­rer — about 4d./day.
• Buil­ding worker — 5–6d. per day.
• Sol­diers’ wages : 
  • A knight — 2s. per day.
  • A man-at-arms — 1s. per day.
  • An archer — 6d. a day.
• A large, for­ti­fied manor house/​castle with all the amme­ni­ties : (top of the line) — £6,000.
• A one-bay cot­tage — £3.4s.

XV^th century food prices

List of medieval prices

From : Ken­neth Hodges hodges@​jif.​berkeley.​edu hodges@​math.​berkeley.​edu

The list of medie­val prices which fol­lows is by no means com­plete or tho­roughly resear­ched ; I merely extrac­ted refe­rences from some of the books I have, and I thought others might like to ins­pect it. The sources I used are listed at the end. If an item is listed seve­ral times, it is because I had seve­ral refe­rences I wished to record.

Money goes as fol­lows :

• (£) = 20 shil­lings (s) (soli­dus)
• 1 crown = 5 shil­lings
• 1 shil­ling = 12 pence (d)(denarius)
• 1 penny = 4 far­things
• 1 mark = 13s 4d

The French Livre, sou, and denier are equi­va­lent to the pound, shil­ling and penny (Latin liber, soli­dus, and dena­rius, I believe, which is where the weird English abbre­via­tions come from).

For ease, I’ve divi­ded this list into the fol­lo­wing sec­tions : tools, horses, food and live­stock, books and edu­ca­tion, buil­dings, cloth and clo­thing, armor, wea­pons, mar­riage, fune­rals, travel, mis­cel­la­neous goods, and wages.

Of course, a price list is a mis­lea­ding guide to a feudal eco­nomy, because so many goods were either pro­du­ced within a hou­se­hold, or sup­plied by a lord. Retai­ners could get money, but they would also get food, lod­ging, wea­pons (some­times), and cloth. Knights Tem­plar were pro­vi­ded with clothes, horses, and armor.

Tools

Horses

Note: Horse prices varied dra­ma­ti­cally ; for ins­tance, they dou­bled bet­ween 1210 and 1310. (3, p. 37).

Food And Livestock

Rela­ted Note: around 1380, these are the ave­rage costs per day of fee­ding people on an estate (3, p. 65): lord, 7d ; esquire, 4d ; yeoman, 3d ; and groom, 1d.

Books And Education

* Source says 2s/​day. This is not only insa­nely high, but the text also claims that the board was the same as at —i.e., 2s/​week or 104s/​year.

** A pecia is 16 columns of 62 lines of 32 let­ters, i.e., 31,744 let­ters, or about 7500–8000 words. Rental period is not spe­ci­fied, but I would guess a year ; books were rented to be copied, and copying the Bible took 15 months. See 9, p. 172.

Buildings

Note: tithes were often cal­cu­la­ted at 1d a week for every 20s of annual rent paid (4, p. 208).

The fol­lo­wing are the esti­mates of labor that went into the tower of Lan­geais, a rec­tan­gu­lar, tape­ring stone tower built in 992– 994. The source is 6, pp. 47ff. The dimen­sions at the base were by ; the height was 16m (3 floors); the walls were 1.5m thick, made of two shells filled with loose rock.

• Limes­tone in buil­ding : about 1050 cubic meters, or 2 600 000 kg
• Wood in buil­ding : 47.5 cubic meters, or 34 600 kg
• Nails : 3 400, or 50 kg
• Mortar : 350 cubic meters. To make the mortar : 
  • sand : 225 cubic meters, or 360 000 kg
  • limes­tone : 40 cubic meters, or 160 000 kg
  • green wood : 540 cubic meters, or 286 000 kg

Labor Costs, in Ave­rage Wor­king Days (AWD):

• Pro­cu­re­ment : 14 250
• Trans­port : 2 880
• Labor :
• Uns­killed : 63 500 
  • Mason : 12 700
  • Smith : 1 600

Note: loose tunics take 2.25–2.5 yards. In the late 14^th cen­tury, shor­ter dou­bled (lined) tunics, known as dou­blets, became fashio­nable, requi­ring (3, pp 175,176).

Armor

Note: mail is chain­mail ; almost all the rest is plate-armor. The armor of the knight in 1374 was pro­ba­bly mail with some plates ; same for ​’s. Mail was extre­mely sus­cep­tible to rust, and was clea­ned by rol­ling it in sand and vine­gar in a barrel. Paul­drons are shoul­der plates ; morions are open helms, bur­go­nets and bas­ci­nets closed helms ; and a target refers to any of a number dif­ferent kind of shields. 

Armor of proof is tested during the making with blows or shots from the stron­gest wea­pons of the time ; if a weapon is listed, the armor does not claim to be proof against eve­ry­thing, only that it is proof up to that weapon’s strength (eg pistol proof is not musket proof, but may be sword proof). 

All plate armor was lined with cloth, to pad the wearer, quiet the armor, and reduce wear bet­ween the pieces. This, along with the neces­sary straps, was a signi­fi­cant amount of the expense. An armo­rer asking for money to set up shop in 1624 esti­ma­ted pro­duc­tion costs and profit for a number of dif­ferent types of armor : I give two examples below (5, pp. 189–190).

Cui­rass of proof with paul­drons :

• Plates : 5s 6d
• Fini­shing, rivets, and straps : 7s 6d
• Sel­ling price 26s
• Lance armor :
• Plates 14s 5d
• Fini­shing, et cetera 40s
• Sel­ling price 80s

Weapons

Note: Sorry, folks, that’s all I found. It was man­da­tory in for all free­men to own cer­tain types of wea­pons and armor. (In 1181 every free­man having goods worth 10 marks (1 mark = 13s 4d) had to have a mail shirt, a helmet, and a spear. All other free­men should have helmet, spear, and gam­be­son (quil­ted armor) 4, p. 39.) Later, the govern­ment stored arms and armour in churches for use ; in the 13^th cen­tury anyone with an income of £2–£5 (weal­thy pea­sants) had to have bows ; archery prac­tice became com­pul­sory on Sun­days and holi­days. You may know that the extreme range of the long­bow was , but did you know that a sta­tute of Henry VIII no one over 24 could prac­tice at a range of less than ? (See 4, p. 95 and elsew­here).

Note: for gues­sing prices, see the sec­tion on tools (an axe for 5d). An armo­rer might make 24s a month ; say a week to make a decent sword, and you might get a price that way. See the sec­tion on books and edu­ca­tion for fen­cing ins­truc­tion.

Marriage

Note: these costs will be wildly varying depen­ding on cir­cum­stance.

Funerals

Note: Chris­to­pher Dyer gives as a rough rule of thumb 1 year’s income for a fune­ral (3, p. 85)

Travel

Note: 1, pp 126–129, gives the fol­lo­wing prices at an inn in 1331. For one day, 3 men with 4 ser­vants spent : Bread, 4d ; beer, 2d ; wine 1.25d ; meat, 5.5d ; potage, .25d ; candles, .25d ; fueld, 2d ; beds, 2d ; fodder for horses, 10d. The four ser­vants staying alone sleep 2 nights for 1d. Gene­rally, all 7 spend 2d a night on beds ; in , it is 1d per head. 

Miscellaneous

Note: most of these come from inven­to­ries of pea­sants’ belon­gings. The fine goods would be more expen­sive.

Note about ligh­ting: great houses could use of wax and tallow in a single winter night (3, p. 74). Others, not as rich, would go to sleep ear­lier.

Wages

Note: she­riffs of paid £300 per year, hoping to make a profit from the fines they col­lec­ted.

Note: 30 adult sheep could pro­duce about 20s of wool per year in 1299 (3, p. 114).

Note: To get a VERY ROUGH sense of money, I repro­duce the fol­lo­wing chart from Dyer (3, p. 206). These are ave­rages of daily wages in pence.

Sources

1. English Way­fa­ring Life in the XIVth Cen­tury, J. J. Jus­se­rand, trans Lucy Smith, Putnam’s Sons, New York,1931 (Orig. 1889).

2. London in the Age of Chau­cer, A. R. Myers, Uni­ver­sity of Okla­homa Press, Norman, 1972 

3. Stan­dards of Living in the Later Middle Ages, Chris­to­pher Dyer, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1989 

4. English Wea­pons & War­fare — 449‑1660, A. V. B. Norman and Don Pot­tin­ger, Barnes & Noble, 1992 (orig. 1966) 

5. The Armou­rer and his Craft from the XIth to the XVIth Cen­tury, Charles ffoulkes, Dover, 1988 (orig. 1912) 

6. The Cost of Castle Buil­ding : The Case of the Tower at Lan­geais, Ber­nard Bachrach, in The Medie­val Castle : Romance and Rea­lity, ed. Kathryn Reyer­son and Faye Powe, Kendall/​Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1984 

7. The Knight in His­tory, Frances Gies, Harper & Row, New York, 1984 

8. Methods and Prac­tice of Eli­za­be­than Sword­play, Craig Turner and Tony Soper, Sou­thern Illi­nois Uni­ver­sity Press, Car­bon­dale, 1990 

9. Life in a Medie­val City, Joseph and Frances Gies, Harper & Row, New York, 1969

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