498 ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 



sixteenth century, especially at Oxford, though one entry at 

 Cambridge in 1509, when sheep are washed at 4^. the score, 

 and shorn at 8^/., is beyond all parallel. 



Agricultural labour was also paid by the year, always how- 

 ever with allowances either of corn, or food, and livery. A few 

 examples are given as specimens in Vol. Ill, p. 660 sqq., chiefly 

 from Hornchurch. The rates do not differ materially from those 

 which will be found in the former volumes ; and, as may be 

 inferred from the wages paid to domestic servants in the same 

 places, and given in the same part of the third volume, the 

 money wages paid to hired servants do not rise towards the 

 conclusion of the period. The increase, in short, such as it 

 was, in the payments made for labour, was effected, as divers 

 incidents might suggest to us, only because the old rates were 

 absolutely insufficient to maintain life. The speedy necessity 

 which arose for a poor law proves that even so slight an aid 

 was, in the altered circumstances of the English labourer, wholly 

 unequal to the emergency. My reader will see that the price 

 of agricultural labour is ^d. from 1401 to 1540; is only slightly 

 raised during the next decade; is, taking the last forty-two 

 years 6\d., or if the last thirty-two years only are taken, rises 

 to jd. But it will be remembered that I have compared prices 

 throughout on the averages of 1401 1540, and 1541 1582. 



Besides money wages, when the labourers were not fed, they 

 received portions of food called nonsheyns and jentacula, and 

 allowances of beer called biberia, or beverages. These do not 

 appear, I do not affirm that they were dropped, in the later 

 period. But it may, I think, be safely inferred that the max- 

 imum rise in the wages of agricultural labour during the last 

 forty-two years of the present period was from eight to thirteen, 

 while, speaking generally, the rise in the ordinary necessaries 

 of life was from three to seven. Such a disproportion is quite 

 sufficient to account for the destitution of the working classes, 

 especially those in husbandry, and to explain the causes which 

 made the relief of destitution a necessity. One may even go 

 further, and conclude that as the prices paid for unskilled labour 



