Six shillings is the figure I have from a history book relating to around 1780-1790. It's possible that the figure was lower at some other point - I just assumed that it wasn't!
Well, that explains the difference. I was looking at late medieval, within a couple of centuries of the Norman conquest. I'm strangely uninterested in later English history.
The fine detail may be true as well: the issue was only glanced over as part of something else. But at the prices of the time, the bag you mentioned would still struggle to be over two and half shillings (which is where I assume the 12p came from).
No, it was specified in pence. That was the only real standard for smaller amounts in the late medieval (and the only coin made in any quantity - larger denominations such as the mark and the pound were more accounting figures than actual currency).
But either way, everyone was well aware that the law was used to protect the rich from the poor, and probably always will be: the law-makers always number amongst the rich, and so do their major backers.
That is surprisingly less true than you think.
For example, there's a documentary on the life of commoners in the late medieval period. They used real records of a real person to illustrate. There was nothing unusual about her - she was chosen because she was a commoner for whom there are enough extant records to piece together enough of her life to use her as an example. Not unusual records, just a relatively full collection of ordinary records. Things like her being fined for selling beer without a license, stuff like that. One of the records is an official court record of her taking a nobleman to court over death tax levied on her husband. She argued that the law was that the shop lease on which the tax was based automatically reverted wholly to her when her husband died and thus couldn't be used for the purposes of determining his death tax. The court ruled in her favour. A financial ruling against a nobleman and in favour of a peasant woman. She wasn't even a freeman! The law was not necessarily used to protect the rich from the poor.
Back to the issue of hanging for theft - there's a record of a person being hanged for stealing a basket of eggs. Granted, that was seen as being harsh even then, but it happened. You didn't need to be rich to have a basket of eggs - a peasant with some chickens on their bit of land might well have a basket of eggs to trade at the market. The 12p figure wasn't particularly high - in those days an ordinary worker would be paid about 2p per day. That's for a common trade, not for a job with any degree of status. You didn't need to be rich to be carrying items worth about a week's pay for an ordinary worker.
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