686 ON THE PURCHASING POWER OF WAGES. 



to the place of his birth by a strict rule of settlement, would 

 not, except it had been necessary, have made exception in favour 

 of such persons as temporarily emigrated from the north to the 

 south in quest of harvest work. It is manifest that the lack 

 of labour was the great difficulty of that crisis which ensued on 

 the Great Plague, a crisis the event of which was a revolution, 

 at first economical and ultimately social. It is plain that these 

 husbandmen accumulated money, for in the days which pre- 

 ceded the outbreak of 1381 they subscribed to a common fund 

 for mutual defence, or, as the language of the time recasts the 

 act, for aggression against their lords. 



We can readily follow the fortunes of such a husbandman as 

 I have attempted to describe after the numbers of the people 

 had been so seriously weakened. He could either increase his 

 tenancy by a fresh grant either in socage or villenage, (for the 

 statute Quia emptores did not preclude lords of manors from 

 granting fresh parcels, provided the grant were made under 

 precisely the same conditions as those which were previously 

 customary in the manor,) or he might take land on lease. To 

 do the former required capital far in excess of his savings, for 

 I do not calculate the power of accumulation possessed before 

 the Plague at more than a pound of silver per annum, and have 

 estimated the stock on a twenty-acre farm at \$. Not that 

 this difficulty would deter him ; for though his stock might be 

 scanty, his labour was in excess of his holding, and might, in 

 his own eyes at least, be available for a larger area of cultiva- 

 tion. I have no doubt that modern farmers are sufficiently 

 aware of the amount of capital needed for the acreage of a 

 farm, but it is certain that in practice they are very apt to 

 underrate it, and that the command of capital which a tenant 

 has is one of the earliest and most necessary enquiries on the 

 part of the landlord. I have known farmers who have suc- 

 ceeded to a fair capital from the labours of their fathers on a 

 small holding, who have lived in the most thrifty manner, but 

 who have in consequence of overstocking themselves with land, 

 even at low rents, been poorer in their old age than they were 



