FROM 1583 TO 1702. 79 



county, there being in it 72.55 acres to each house ; then 

 Cumberland, and next Wales, North and South, and inclusive 

 of Monmouthshire. But the acreage assigned in the other 

 counties amazed me when the figures came out. Next to the 

 metropolitan counties come Worcester and Suffolk, each having 

 less than twenty acres to a house. But for the rest, taking all 

 the circumstances into account, especially the large amount of 

 unenclosed and undrained land, explaining for example the high 

 average of Lincolnshire, England must at this time have been 

 peopled up to the full capacity of its agricultural produce, 

 and one need not wonder at the high price of wheat during 

 the last half of the seventeenth century. Those counties which 

 contribute so small a proportion of the taxation compared 

 with their area, such as Northumberland and Durham, Cheshire 

 and Yorkshire, are only a little less densely peopled than 

 those whose contingent was much more highly assessed. Un- 

 doubtedly had Davenant been able to have assigned the 

 acreage to the houses, his inference that the northern and 

 western counties were let off very easily in direct taxation 

 would have been verified. For example, the taxation of Lan- 

 cashire, area for area, is generally a third of that levied on 

 Hunts, but the population is more dense. 



It is very likely, however, that money was more scarce in 

 these northern and western regions, and that prices were 

 generally lower, as appears to be indicated by Houghton's 

 corn returns, and later than the period comprised in these 

 volumes by .the schedule of wages published by the Lan- 

 . ire magistrates in 1 723 l , by Arthur Young's Tours, and by 

 the collections of Sir Frederic Eden in his History of the 

 Poor. But unless the prices of agricultural, manufacturing, 

 and mining produce were correspondingly low, the low rate of 

 c:s ought to have increased the taxable means of the land- 

 owner or the employer. On the whole, I repeat that these 

 house and hearth returns prove conclusively that England and 



1 See my 'Six Centuries of Work and Wage*/ p. 396. 



