xii PREFACE. 



for two centuries the attempt to coerce the labourer into 

 working at wages which the law or the justices assessed 

 a tailmv, and that for near three centuries, under 

 tin 1 5th of Elizabeth, it was successful. The regulations 

 of the magistrates (several of which are printed in 

 the six tli volume) during the seventeenth century 

 brought the labourer down to absolute penury, and 

 to reliance on poor-law relief. 



Another fact, which I cannot confidently call an 

 economical phenomenon, though it certainly had marked 

 economical consequences, is the high average price of 

 wheat, and the constant recurrence of serious and occa- 

 sionally prolonged dearths. Contemporary writers 

 comment on only one of these, the seven years of high 

 agricultural prices at the conclusion of the seventeenth 

 century. But prices during these years were by no 

 means so high as at other periods, and as wages had 

 risen considerably, even under the justices' assessments, 

 at the end of the Civil War, were not nearly so distress- 

 ful to the poor as they were at earlier periods. It 

 must have been during these evil times that the staple 

 food of the English labourer, wheaten bread, was 

 changed, especially in the North, to rye, barley and 

 oat bread. It was entirely impossible that, with the 

 wages permitted him, the labourer could subsist on 

 that which his ancestor consumed. At the same time 

 it should be remembered, that though there were game 

 laws, it is plain that the fowling and snaring of wild 

 animals was still practised, and indeed could not be 

 restrained. Now what the peasant sold at the great 



