crich area community news
Pound of peppers
Historically pepper has been very valuable and equivalent to money. In 408 AD Alaric, King of the Visigoths, demanded a large price for sparing the besieged city of Rome. The tribute included fine garments, gold, silver and three thousand kilograms of pepper.
Merchants of Venice would bribe tax collectors with a pound of pepper.
King Ethelred collected a tax from ships that landed at Billingsgate in the form of bags of pepper.
In France a pound of pepper was enough to free a slave.
In Germany a nickname for the rich was ‘pepper sacks’.
When the ship Mary Rose, which sank in 1545, was raised from the sea-bed nearly every sailor’s body was found to have a bunch of peppercorns in his possession.
Pepper was considered as a more stable form of currency than money! In England a pound of pepper was a commonly accepted form of rent from land tenants. The term “peppercorn rent” started off to mean that such a contract was taken very seriously, based on the cost of a given weight of peppercorns per year. In later years, when pepper became cheap, a custom of handing a single peppercorn to confirm a tenancy came into existence.
When Prince Charles became the Duke of Cornwall he received a pound of pepper as part of his tribute.
Peter Patilla