London : Printed for T. Osborne... 1745. Second Edition
8vo, 5ff, 147, [3], 30 pp, 12 engr. plates of coins, [2] pp (adverts), contemporary sprinkled calf, double-fillet gilt borders, lacks label on spine, edges sprinkled red, fine copy.
Bishop Fleetwood had been required to adjudicate whether the statutes of a college (founded c. 1450) making the possession of an estate of £5 per annum a bar to the retention of a fellowship should be taken literally, or with regard to the altered value of money. In the present work he attempts to establish a price equivalent in 1706 for the £5 set in the fifteenth century. The result is the earliest treatise on index-numbers and one of the best, where the conception of purchasing power and the measures of changing purchasing power of money are first treated after the modern manner.
Reference: Kress 4758 Goldsmiths 8173