504 ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 



that of Janyns, the principal mason at Merton College, in 

 1448-50, who has 2os. a year in the same manner 1 . 



The student of medieval labour prices cannot, I think, but 

 be struck at the low rate of remuneration paid for exceptional 

 skill, that namely of the architect, or builder, or artist. The 

 cost of construction was not enhanced by great professional 

 fees allotted even to those who designed the finest and most 

 finished structures of the age. The cause, I suspect, is princi- 

 pally to be found in the general diffusion of such artistic skill 

 as the age possessed a skill which in certain departments of 

 art has not been rivalled, and is even now an object of servile 

 and often incompetent imitation. The technical knowledge 

 of the time, though not apparently scientific, was, as far as 

 practical results are concerned, of a very high order, as one 

 can see even now in the architecture and illuminations of the 

 time. But the carver of the ceiling of Magdalen College 

 chapel and hall receives only 8d. a day for his labour in 1517 

 and 1520, though his name, John de Colonia, seems to imply 

 that he was a foreigner, and probably a person of special skill. 

 In 1543 a similar artisan gets no more. Later on the 

 labour of such an artificer does not rise beyond is. So the 

 work of the embroiderer of copes and of the tailor who fashions 

 and mends them is paid at similarly low rates, while friar 

 Gerard in 1526 is employed for sixty-three days at Oxford in 

 writing books at ^d. a day, though he was doubtlessly fed at 

 the College table. The clerks at the royal works, who keep the 

 books and check the labour which is hired and paid for, receive 

 no more than ordinary artisans do, and often are paid less. Such 

 low rates of remuneration for special skill must have rendered it 

 possible that considerable works should be undertaken at very 

 small charges. I have commented in my earlier volumes on the 

 absence of all intermediaries. Purchasers of such articles as 

 were needed for buildings dealt immediately with producers, 

 when they did not, as they frequently did, manufacture the 

 necessary materials themselves. Hence the interpretation of 



1 The master mason at York (1421, Vol. Ill, p. 593, i) receives io a year. 



