[CHARLES I].

£1,250 · Offered by Sokol Books

Rare first edition of this important set of ‘Orders’ by Charles I to regulate the grain market. during a period of famine. 1629 and 1630 were years of dearth; there was much unemployment in the cloth trade, rioting in London and the South East and the West Country. The 1629 harvest was uninspiring, and 1630 terrible; the price of wheat rose from 38 shillings in 1629 to 54 shillings in 1630. This work is a collection of orders to the justices of the peace dictating how they were to respond to food scarcity in their communities. As the proclamation itself notes, this was largely an expansion of similar orders and reforms to the poor laws made by Elizabeth I and James I. Among other requirements, the orders mandated that corn be sold in an open market and that justices of the peace be present to ensure fair prices and prevent hoarding. “Under Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts the central government through the Privy Council increased its intervention in nearly every aspect of the English economy. The distribution of grain, which had always been subject to local restriction and control, became governed by an increasingly elaborate centralized machinery. Marking what N. S. B. Gras called “the apogee of paternalism” in the history of the English grain trade, the first Book of Orders for the relief of dearth was issued in early 1587 It attributed the high price of grain to hoarding and outlined detailed instructions regarding the disposition of private stocks in crisis per

• Binding: Hardcover

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