FROM 1583 TO 1702. 97 



those destructive and disastrous wars of religion which ex- 

 tended with hardly any cessation from the middle of the reign of 

 Charles the Fifth to the Peace of Westphalia. To the dynastic 

 war which followed after an interval in Western Europe, I 

 attribute the severity with which a comparatively new and 

 most formidable disease, the small-pox, attacked the Western 

 nations. It is true that the filthy habits of the English people 

 materially assisted the spread of the disease, and the poverty 

 of the working classes in the seventeenth century must have 

 made them liable to the attacks of epidemics. Davenant 

 expressly says that in dear years many of the people, in spite 

 of the poor-law, perished by famine. I suspect, and with good 

 reason, that this law was not very generously administered 

 in the northern counties. 



The quarter sessions' assessment of wages was generally 

 put into very effective operation. Some of these have been 

 collected and printed by Eden in his History of the Poor. 

 One of them is for the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1593, an< ^ 

 another in the same year issued by the Mayor of the city and 

 county of Chester. In both these cases, interpreting the 

 money allowances by the price of provisions, the labourer 

 could hardly have sustained life, and the artisan could have 

 had a narrow margin. In 1597, a year of serious famine, the 

 same Mayor issued a second schedule, owing as he says to 

 the scarcity. But the wages are only slightly increased. 



In 1610, the Rutland magistrates made their assessment, as 

 they had done fifty-six years before, in a proclamation, which I 

 printed at length in my fourth volume, p. 120. Now in 1564 

 wheat was 19*. 9}^. a quarter, malt loj. 8</., oats Js. In 

 16I0 1 , the price of wheat was 35^. i\d. y of malt 22s. $\d. t of 

 oats i is. 4\d. In the first assessment the artisan was to have 

 9^/. a day, the labourer yd. n In the second the wages arc from 

 od. to ex/, for artisans, labourers 7^., these being in all cases 



1 The reader must be reminded that if he turns to the corn averages he will find 

 to be the prices of 1609, 50 and 60, &c. Bat my year is from September to 

 iber, and these assessments were made in the April after September 1609, &c. 

 VOL. V. I! 



