502 ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 



charges are illustrated in the highest prices paid in the year. 

 Still the difference is not very considerable. It amounts, as 

 will be seen, to almost a penny a day in the first part of the 

 period. It almost ceases to be significant in the second part ; 

 for although the difference between maximum and ordinary 

 rates is more considerable than it was in the earlier period, the 

 local advantage passes away, the benefit of special employment 

 similarly disappears, and the difference is to be generally traced 

 to the fact that the artisan is paid better when he is engaged 

 for a short time or occasionally. The rise in the wages of the 

 mason, bricklayer, sawyer, and tiler, is less than that acquired 

 by the carpenter, whether one takes the maximum or average 

 rates of the latter .kind of labour. The reason is plain ; the 

 former kind of artisans are paid, as a rule, for work which 

 is continuous and prolonged, the carpenter only for odd and 

 occasional jobs. 



Every kind of artisan's work, if on an extensive scale, was 

 superintended by a master in the craft. He is the master 

 carpenter or the freemason. In the account books of Henry 

 the Eighth, kept by Needham, and preserved in the Rawlinson 

 collection, the principal artisans in each craft audit such parts 

 of the accounts as deal with labour, and sign every page of the 

 book. There is, I think, reason to believe, as I have said else- 

 where in this volume, and before, that the arts of reading and 

 writing were far more widely imparted before the Reformation 

 than they were afterwards. The clerk of Chatham was a very 

 universal person in the times which preceded the Reformation ; 

 he became a very rare personage afterwards. The hostility of 

 Cade to the diffusion of primary education is a gross anachron- 

 ism, for which the later chroniclers, and not Shakespeare, are 

 responsible. In the earlier times the wages of the master 

 artisan do not differ greatly from those of the ordinary crafts- 

 man. They are perhaps twenty per cent, in excess. In the 

 later period they are considerably larger. 



It is probable that in many cases such masters in the craft 

 supplied the plans for the building. The art of architecture 



