“ Engrossing and the kindred practices of forestalling and regrating were early regarded as serious offences in restraint of trade, and were punishable both at common law and by statute. They were of more particular importance in relation to the distribution of corn supplies. The statute of 1552 defines engrossing as “buying corn growing, or any other corn, grain, butter, cheese, fish or other dead victual, with intent to sell the same again.” The law forbade all dealing in corn as an article of ordinary merchandise, apart from questions of foreign import or export. ”

“ The theory was that when corn was plentiful in any district it should be consumed at what it would bring, without much respect to whether the next harvest might be equally abundant, or to what the immediate wants of an adjoining province of the same country might be. The first statute on the subject appears to have been passed in the reign of Henry III., though the general policy had prevailed before that time both in popular prejudice and in the feudal custom. The statute of Edward VI. (1552) was the most important, and in it the offences were elaborately defined ”