264 ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 



rates paid for threshing wheat differing only by eighths of a 

 penny, that is, if we take twelve as a multiplier, by only three- 

 halfpence in modern money. 



Again, we can see (and this would have been even more plain 

 had a record of lowest prices been also tabulated) that the pay- 

 ment for this service had been gradually rising up to the end of 

 the thirteenth century. This rise I am disposed to assign to the 

 generally improved condition of the peasantry, to the adoption of 

 pecuniary commutation for labour-rents, to the growth of peasant 

 proprietorship, and in part, perhaps, to the immigration to 

 the eastern manufactories. I may observe here that the de- 

 rangement of the currency in the year 1299 was felt in the 

 temporary increase in the payment of this kind of labour as 

 well as others, and that this increase was most notable in 

 the eastern district. 



The rise, on the average taken between the years 1311 and 

 1320, to which might have been added 1321 and 1322, was due to 

 ""'serious dearths which occurred in 1315, 1316, and 1321. We 

 have seen above how grievous were the famines suffered by the 

 English nation during these years, and we might infer, even if 

 contemporary chroniclers did not assure us of the fact, that in 

 so great a diminution of customary supply numbers of persons 

 must have perished of famine. No years, it seems, in the 

 whole course of the economical history of England approach 

 the scarcity of that time, except perhaps the few years at the 

 end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth 

 centuries. It may indeed have been the case that the rate of pay- 

 ment for piece-work might have been raised by the mere fact of 

 the scarcity, but it is quite as natural to assign the rise to the 

 diminution in the number of hands which could be obtained. 

 Had not the year 1318 been void of evidence from the eastern 

 counties, the rate would, I am convinced, have stood higher. 



Up to the time of the Great Plague, threshing was paid at 

 steady, and on the whole low rates, the exceptional payments 

 of the second decade in the fourteenth century, whether they 

 are to be assigned to the necessity of finding hands, or to the 



