In the (anonymously published) Chronicon Preciosum Fleetwood asked, how much would £5 in 1440 buy today? The question (the case) arose because a correspondent would lose the fellowship of an Oxford college if he had outside income in excess of £5; the college statute was composed in 1440. Fleetwood showed how much bread, drink, meat, cloth and books could be purchased at the earlier and later dates. He tabulated the changing prices of many commodities and noted that most of the prices grew at the same rate. He concluded that £5 in the fifteenth century would be worth £28 or £30 today, at the beginning of the eighteenth.
Adam Smith used some of Fleetwood's data in the Wealth of Nations (1776) at the end of Book I, chapter XI but he did not develop—or even adopt—the idea of comparing purchasing power at different dates. Admiration for Fleetwood's work and efforts to build on it only came in the nineteenth century. For Edgeworth the Chronicon Preciosum was "the oldest and one of the best treatises on index-numbers."
Fleetwood's sermons often dealt with subjects of economic interest. For example, his sermon against clipping (of gold coins), delivered before the Lord Mayor of London, explained the function of money and the "mischiefs of corrupting and debasing money." He published his sermon on paying debts during the South Sea panic.
Fleetwood seems to have been a practical Christian and, from the account of his life, a very political bishop.
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