8.
** Hall, fol.

110.
*** 6 Henry VIII.c.

3.
**** 1 Henry VIII.c.14.6 Henry VIII.c.I 7 Henry VIII.
c.

7 The chancellor and other ministers were empowered to fix the price of poultry, cheese, and butter.[*] A statute was even passed to fix the price of beef, pork, mutton, and veal.[**] Beef and pork were ordered to be sold at a halfpenny a pound; mutton and veal at a halfpenny half a farthing, money of that age.

The preamble of the statute says, that these four species of butcher's meat were the food of the poorer sort.
This ace was afterwards repealed.[***] The practice of depopulating the country by abandoning tillage, and throwing the lands into pasturage, still continued;[****] as appears by the new laws which were from time to time enacted against that practice.
The king was entitled to half the rents of the land, where any farm houses were allowed to fall to decay.[v] The unskilful husbandry was probably the cause why the proprietors found no profit in tillage.