FROM 1583 TO 1702. 91 



and sciences, at 60, constitute the more opulent and saving 

 classes. Of all these, King concludes that the bishops save 

 the most, viz. 400 a year on an average, the merchants next, 

 and the farmers least per head of their families. 



But there is to be made a deduction from the saving power 

 of these persons. 2,675,520 persons increase the wealth of the 

 country, 2,823,000 decrease it. This class comprises seamen, 

 labourers, cottagers, and soldiers, whose income is less than 

 their expenditure. To these King adds vagrants, and con- 

 cludes that these diminish the public wealth by about 

 622,500 a year, this sum being plainly the ordinary amount 

 of the poor-rate. It is not stated, but it seems certain that 

 King included disbursements for taxation in his estimate of a 

 family's annual expenditure. Some of the calculations, as the 

 artisan's earnings at 38 a year, or a little over 145. *jd. a week, 

 and the earnings of a labouring family at 1$ i$s. a year, or a 

 fraction over 6s. a week, correspond pretty closely with 

 what I have noted as to the wages of labour. 



Now if these calculations are accurate, they show that in 

 this time the earnings of the mass of the people were insuf- 

 ficient for their existence. King estimates that the income 

 of labourers falls short of their needs, after setting the cost 

 of their maintenance at 4 I2s. per head, and that of 

 cottagers at the very low amount of 2 $s. a year. He 

 makes out that there are 849,000 families in this condition, 

 and it is plain, though he does not seem to have drawn the in- 

 ference, that wages had fallen by excess of population. The 

 facts again disclosed in this curious estimate of King's go far to 

 explain the extreme frequency of crimes against property 

 which, as one sees from authors like Luttrell, characterised 

 the times l . More than half the families in the country were 

 absolutely short of the bare necessaries of life. 



Neither King nor Davenant seems to be struck with the fact 



' The Act of aa & 33 Car. II. cap 10, making the arson of corn stacks and 

 malicious killing of cattle a capital felony, contains the strange alternative that the 

 convict may elect to be transported for seven years. 



