29 ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 



time, a further sum of 4*. id. would be earned, (such a daily 

 payment representing the ordinary rate of women's and boys' 

 labour before the Plague); making an aggregate of 1 >js. ioc/. 

 After the Plague his money wages will rise to 13^.4^., the profit 

 of his wife and boy's labour to ^i 5^., and the aggregate of his 

 // earnings will be ^3 15^., if we leave his corn allowance and the 

 extra advantages of the harvest month unchanged. 



I have taken in this case the barest estimate, but it is of 

 course quite possible to conceive that one member of his family 

 might have filled some other office on the farm, as that of 

 driver, pig-keeper, or under shepherd, and in this case have had 

 money wages for the common fund and an allowance of corn of 

 considerable significance in the aggregate. We must also 

 reckon, if we seek to gather the elements needful for a com- 

 parison between the condition of such a man and that of his 

 descendant the modern agricultural labourer, that the medieval 

 peasant had his cottage and curtilage at a very low rent, and in 

 secure possession, even when, unlike the general mass of his 

 fellows, he was not possessed of land in his own right, held at 

 a labour or a money rent 1 ; and that he had rights of pasturage 

 over the common land of the manor for the sheep, pigs, and 

 perhaps cow which he owned. 



I shall attempt in a later chapter, when I have given the 

 facts which bear on the power which the possessor of money 

 had over the necessaries and conveniences of life, to exhibit the 

 real significance of such an annual rate of wages, and thus infer 

 to the actual condition of the labourer five hundred years ago. 



During the period comprised in these volumes two important 

 physical events occurred, allusion to which has been frequently 

 made. These are the scarcity which generally prevailed be- 

 tween the years 1308 and 1322, and the pestilences which ^ 

 / visited England in 1348, 1361, 1369. 



During these fifteen years the scarcity was lightened only in 



5 I may observe here, in confirmation of that which was stated above, p. 77 seqq., 

 that those tenants at Maldon in Surrey who are called "nativi" in the reign of Edward 

 the First, are described as " tcnentes per copiam" iu a Rental dated 35 Ken. VI. 



