We all hear about the olde spice trade, at least I was reminded of it whne perusing arguments about the veracity of Marco Polo’s account.
Supposing I am in London, in the reign of Edward I (c1300?), I know they had a ‘global economy’ and spices should have been available. At least the medieval cookbooks I’ve read have spices in most dishes, and I presume more than just the royal palace was using cookbooks.
Today I can go to the local supermarket and buy a regular bottle of McCormick Cloves for maybe $3.
How much would these same amount of cloves have cost me in the spice stall in the 1300ad London market (adjusted for current-day US dollars of course)?
You can search inside the book on Amazon, and if you go to page 62, you’ll see that it says:
1 shilling was 12 pence (1s = 12d), so the spices we’re interested in here had a normal price of 12-36 pence per pound, sometimes going as high as 72 pence per pound, in the 14th century.
The small bottle of cloves i have in my pantry is 1.6 ounces, or exactly 1/10 of a pound. So, this would have cost anywhere from 1.2d to 3.6d under normal circumstances, sometimes going as high as 7.2d.
Now, the website i first linked also has some wages from the period.
We learn that a weaver, in 1407, earned 5d (that is, 5 pence) per day; a master mason in 1351 earned 4d per day; a master carpenter in 1351 earned 3d per day; and a thatcher, over the course of the 14th century, earned from 2.5 to 4.5d per day.
Also, in the 14th century, annual rent on a cottage was 5s, and on a craftsman’s house was 20s.
So, even at the cheaper end, 1 small bottle of cloves would have cost a weaver about one-quarter of a day’s pay, and on more expensive days, it could have been up around a full day’s pay. And a couple of pounds of cloves could have been exchanged for the yearly rent on a cottage.
Note:
I’m not a medieval historian, so there could be aspects of medieval consumer prices that i don’t grasp properly, or that i have extrapolated incorrectly. But, if the website’s figures are accurate, the above calculations should give at least some idea of the relative price of cloves.
It would NOT be the equivalent of 16.44GBP today at all.
Where are you getting your alleged equivalence from?
According to the website you are quoting, 78.39 pounds would be more than 6 years wages for a London worker in 1438. A London worker, in 1438, could purchase about 100g (just over 3 ounces) of cloves on his daily wage.
I’m not sure what the hell you’re reading in that table, but your assertion here is completely incorrect.
That site gives the prices of spices “in d.”, i.e., in pence – with 12 pence to a shilling and 240 pence to a pound (i.e., 1 GBP). It says that a pound of cloves cost 35.556 p., which is roughly 3 shillings or 0.15 GBP. That’s consistent with the top range of mhendo’s information.
Just for clarification, master tradesmen in general were fairly well compensated for their work, weren’t they? I’m surprised at the notion of them earning only a shilling or two each week. Is there any possibility that pence were still silver in those days? That much coin in silver does sound like it would have been a fairly comfortable amount for the times.
But the quality of coinage varied both in time and geography. At some times, English pennies were so high in silver content that they were counted at double value on the continent. Even coins from the same place could vary widely in value because later authorities might have debased new mintings to stretch out the money supply. Money lenders had to know the relative values of all the different types and years of coins in order to avoid getting ripped off (or so that they could rip off the unwary).