ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 287 



Sometimes the bailiff receives a round sum for his annual 

 fee. Thus at Framlingham, 1268, he is paid ^5 171.; at 

 Langley, 1320, ^9 2s.6d., at Staundon, 1354, $ 85-., a sum 

 which seems frequent, as it occurs at other places ; at Horn- 

 church ^5. When the highest of these sums is paid, no 

 allowance is made to this official, except his robe or livery. 

 Some few other servants, as foresters and parkers, seem to be 

 regularly paid in money. But by far the largest number had 

 money and corn payments. In making the money payments, that 

 part of the year in which harvest operations were carried on is 

 generally set at the highest rate, though sometimes, and in 

 particular towards the conclusion of the fourteenth century, the 

 system of annual wages, without discrimination of seasons, is 

 adopted. 



The money wages of these servants present (though an exact 

 estimate cannot, for obvious reasons, be very easily effected,) 

 the same rise in the rate which characterises the history of 

 labour prices by day and piece in occasional service ; with this 

 difference, that the rise is, as might be expected, far greater. 

 Up to the close of the thirteenth century, the highest rate at 

 which these services are remunerated appears to be about 6s. 

 annually. After the famines it is considerably increased. To- 

 wards the close of the period it mounts up to i6s. or ly. 4^., 

 the inferior kinds of service rising, on the whole, to a higher 

 proportionate rate. 



I am disposed to account for this rise, not only from the fact 

 that wages had generally been enhanced, but from the disincli- 

 nation felt among peasant proprietors, such as undoubtedly 

 were the great mass of the community in the period before us, 

 to bind themselves to fixed annual service. We have already 

 seen that land was greatly subdivided, and that most of the 

 inhabitants of villages or manors held plots of land, which were 

 sufficient in many cases for maintenance, and in nearly all 

 cases for independence in treating with employers. Most of 

 these farm servants were owners of land, and did the accounts 

 give names under the head of cc Stipendia famulorum," as they 



