ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 279 



a saddler 3^. and 5^., a plumber 3^. and 6\d. The services of 

 painters, glaziers, shingle-layers, arundinatores and their helps 

 (that is, men who thatched with reeds), paviors, whitewashers, 

 stone-cutters (as opposed to masons), pointers, and pinners, 

 are specified. The London dauber, whose wages have not been 

 reckoned in the average, receives 7^., and his man $d. But, as 

 we have elsewhere stated, the wages of London labour are 

 always high. 



Some kinds of labour, chiefly gathered from the earlier part 

 of the period, will be found among the Sundry Services, vol. ii. 

 pp. 576-583. Thus there are several entries in the thirteenth 

 century of the price paid for a pole or perch of wall or ditch. 

 The payment made for the former is, on an average, 5^., of 

 the latter aj*/. A tailor is paid %d. a day in 1315, but was 

 probably boarded. 



Shingle-laying is sometimes paid by the thousand, at from y. 

 to y. 4*/. Shingle-making, by the same quantity, invariably at 

 zs. \d. Charcoal is manufactured at from \\d. a quarter to 2*/., 

 though these rates again are early. 



Fagots were made in several localities, and, to judge from the 

 very various rates paid for making the same quantity, this labour 

 must have been harder in some cases than in others. The price 

 is found as low as id. a hundred in one or two localities, and in 

 the early part of the fourteenth century is as high as %d. The 

 most suggestive payments, however, are those supplied from 

 the Elham farm accounts, distinct and sufficiently continuous 

 evidence from which estate commences in 1329 and continues 

 to 1364. Payments of wages in Kent are always high, and 

 even supposing that the Elham fagots were particularly large, 

 the rate in this case, nearly y\d. the hundred, is no exception. 

 After the date of the Plague the rate rises to is. Z\d.^ and in 

 the year 1361, when the second visitation occurs, is as high as 

 \s. *]d. 



Reaping is sometimes paid by the day, and even threshing 

 on rare occasions. The entries, however, are too few for 

 purposes of inference. Ploughing is also occasionally paid for 



