In the Middle Ages the notion prevailed that there was a just and equitable price for everything, and that any person who tried to obtain more than this price was a sinner. Trade for gain was anathema; the man who bought the principal commodities of that time, such as corn or herrings, with a view to selling them at a profit, was guilty of “craft and sublety”--as the old English statutes read--that infallibly cost him his goods and brought him to the pillory. Thus in the year 1311 one Thomas Lespicer of Portsmouth was caught red-handed in London with six pots of Nantes lampreys stored in a fishmonger’s cellar in the hope of a rising market. The law required that when he arrived in London from Portsmouth with his lampreys he should proceed to the open market under the wall of St. Margaret’s Church in Bridge Street, and stand there four days selling at current prices to any one who cared to buy. His failure to do so, and his wickedness in attempting to “bull” the lamprey market by hiding them in the fishmonger’s cellar, resulted in the arrest of himself and the fishmonger, and their trial and punishment at the hands of the Mayor and Alderman. Professor W. T. Ashley, who cites this incident in his “Introduction to English Economic History and Theory” (London 1892), also gives another instance in which our modern theories of natural rights and freedom of contract seem to be in hopeless conflict. John-at-Wood, a baker, was arrested in 1364 charged with the profane practice of “bulling” wheat. “Whereas one Robert de Cawode,” the indictment reads, “had two quarters of wheat for sale in common market on the pavement within Newgate; he, the said John, cunningly and by secret words whispering in his ear, fraudulently withdrew Cawode out of the common market, and they went together into the Church of the Friars Minor, and there John bought the two quarters at 15½d per bushel, being 2½d over the common selling price at that time in the market, to the great loss and deceit of the common people, and to the increase of the dearness of wheat.” At-Wood denied this heinous offence and “put himself on the country,” whereupon a jury was empanelled, which gave a verdict that At-Wood had not only thus bought the grain, but that he had afterward returned to the market and boasted of his crime, and “this he said and did to increase the dearness of wheat.” Accordingly he was sentenced to be put in the pillory for three hours, and one of the sheriffs was directed to see the sentence executed and proclamation made of the cause of the punishment.