About the time of Henry III., we begin to find mention in the records of the period, of persistent attempts to fix the prices of bread and ale. Laws made with this end in view were termed collectively the _Assisa Panis et Cervisiæ_ (_i.e._, The Assize of Bread and Ale). In the fifty-first year of that reign, we find it enacted that when a quarter of wheat is sold for iiis. or iiis. ivd., and a quarter of barley for xxd. or iis., and a quarter of oats for xvid., then brewers (_braciatores_) in cities ought, and may well afford, to sell two gallons of ale for a penny, and out of cities to sell three or four gallons for the same sum. By a statute { 100} passed in the same year it is enacted that if a baker or a brewster[41] (_braciatrix_) be convicted, because he or she hath not observed the Assise of Bread and Ale, the first, second, or third time, he or she shall be amerced according to the offence, if it be not over grievous; but if the offence be grievous and often, and will not be corrected, then he or she shall suffer corporal punishment, to wit, the Baker to the pillory, the brewster to the tumbrel (a cart for ignominious punishment), or to flogging. (The illustration represents a woman undergoing the punishment of the tumbrel, and is taken from the MS. _Cent Nouvelles_ in the Hunterian Library.) A jury of six lawful men is to be summoned in every township, who are to be sworn faithfully to collect all measures of the town, to wit, bushels, half and quarter bushels, gallons, pottles and quarts, as well from taverns as from other places. The jurymen are to inquire how the assise of bread has been kept, and adjudge accordingly; they are then to inquire of the assise of Ale in the Court of the Town, what it is, and whether it has been observed; and if { 101} not, they are to inquire what brewsters have sold contrary to the assises and they shall present their names distinctly and openly, and adjudge them to be fined or to the tumbrel.
[41] The old word brewster is here used in its proper signification of a female brewer. The Brewster Sessions, as Licensing Sessions are called in many parts of the country, preserve the name, though the original feminine signification has disappeared. For an account of the early brewsters and ale-wives the reader is referred to Chapter VI.