Books of a great size were frequently monuments of patience and industry, and sometimes half a lifetime was devoted to a single volume. Books therefore fetched high prices, though they were not always paid for in money. In 1174 the Prior of St Swithun's, Winchester, gave the Canons of Dorchester in Oxfordshire, for Bede's Homilies and St Augustine's Psalter, twelve measures of barley, and a pall on which was embroidered in silver the history of St Birinus' conversion of the Saxon King Cynegils. A hundred years later a Bible "fairly written," that is, finely written, was sold in this country for fifty marks, or about £33. At this period a sheep cost one shilling. In the time of Richard de Bury a common scribe earned a halfpenny a day. About 1380 some of the expenses attending the production of an _Evangeliarium_, or book of the liturgical Gospels, included thirteen and fourpence for the writing, four and threepence for the illuminating, three and fourpence for the binding, and tenpence a day for eighteen weeks, in all fifteen shillings, for the writer's "commons," or food. The book-writers or copyists became, later, the booksellers, very much as they did in old Rome. Sometimes they both wrote and sold the books, and sometimes the sellers employed the writers to write for them, or the writers employed the sellers to sell for them. Publishers as yet did not exist. Practically the only method of publication known consisted of the reading of a work on three days in succession before the heads of the University, or other public judges, and the sanctioning of its transcription and reproduction. The booksellers were called "stationers," either because they transacted their business at open stalls or stations, or perhaps from the fact that _statio_ is low Latin for _shop_; and since they were also the vendors of parchment and other writing-materials, the word "stationer" is still used to designate those who carry on a similar trade to-day. As early as 1403 there was already formed in London a society or brotherhood "of the Craft of Writers of Text-letter," and "those commonly called 'Limners,'" or Illuminators, for in that year they petitioned the Lord Mayor for permission to elect Wardens empowered to see that the trades were honourably pursued and to punish those of the craft who dealt disloyally or who rebelled against the Wardens' authority. This petition was granted. By 1501 the Company of Stationers was established, and it is highly probable that this was only the Brotherhood of Text-writers and Limners under the more general designation.