COST OF BOARDING LABOURERS. 753 



navy yards of Deptford, Gillingham, and Portsmouth. Similar 

 contracts were made in later years. In 1573 the contracts for 

 the four successive quarters at Gillingham are 43. ; in 1577, 4^., 

 $s. 3<, 4$-. 6d., and 5^. for the same periods. In 1578 they are 

 4s. for the last quarter at Gillingham ; 4^-. 4^. and 4^-. 6d. for 

 two different quarters of the same year at Portsmouth. There 

 are contracts indeed made by the Queen, and are probably 

 higher than those which would represent the charge to which 

 private persons were put. But 1551 is a dear year, wheat being 

 2os. 4d. the quarter, while in 1553 it is only ios. In 1573 it 

 is 26s. $\d-, in 1577, zos. id. ; in 1578, 17^. 4^. It is plain, 

 however, that the cost of boarding a labourer is at least three 

 times as great in 1551 and 1553 as ^ was m I 54^? anc * this, I 

 can fully believe, was, generally speaking, the measure of the 

 change in his condition, and of the purchasing power of money 

 over provisions as interpreted by a workman's board, when that 

 board was provided by his employer. 



In my first volume, p. 683 sqq., I attempted to show how far 

 it was possible for a small freeholder or copyholder on a twenty- 

 acre farm to live plentifully, but coarsely, to have saved before 

 the visitation of the Great Plague, and to save to a still greater 

 extent, if he were a survivor of the calamity, after that event. 

 I do not conceive that this power of living comfortably and 

 saving steadily was curtailed during the whole of the fifteenth 

 century and the first forty years of the sixteenth. If I have 

 made myself plain in the foregoing chapter, the reader will 

 allow that the opportunity of bettering himself was still more 

 open to the peasant proprietor and the tenant farmer, after 

 the rise in prices occurred, and indeed that all these events 

 were advantageous to those who possessed land, or had capital 

 wherewith to stock that which they rented. Moreover, up to 

 the rise in prices, there were opportunities for the farm labourer, 

 if he were thrifty and prudent, to acquire possession of land. 



But I am at present concerned with those who lived by 

 wages only. That they became numerous in the sixteenth 

 century is proved by the statute 31 Eliz., cap. 7, to which I 



VOL. iv. 3 c 



