SPINNING AND WEAVING BYE-INDUSTRIES. 587 



what was the cost of woollen goods to the rich, the middle 

 classes, and the poor. There is also, I am convinced, sufficient 

 to show what the charge was at which the better-off people in 

 English society could procure those luxuries which fashion 

 required or demanded or enforced. 



It must not be forgotten, however, that in many places 

 spinning and weaving were a bye- product in English industry, 

 and that they were generally and assiduously practised. The 

 spinning wheel and the weaver's frame were I am certain 

 common all over rural England not only in the seventeenth 

 century, but during a considerable part of the eighteenth also. 

 Home-spun was the clothing of many peasants and workmen, 

 and in the intrepretation of the manner in which wages were 

 exchanged for the labourer's needs, we must take into account 

 that not a little of his clothing was the work of himself and 

 his family after his agricultural or other labours were ended. 



The tables appended to this chapter give the annual prices 

 of cloth from the purchases for the Cambridge choristers, the 

 Eton boys, the Eton servants, and the Winchester boys. They 

 also give a fourth column of such prices as can be found for 

 the commoner kinds of clothing. In these tables, the first, 

 fourth, and fifth are by the dozen yards, the second and third 

 by the piece of thirty-three yards for the boys and twenty- 

 seven for the servants. The decennial averages include also 

 the price of S. John's livery cloth by the dozen, of the best 

 cloth by the yard, and of velvet by the yard. 



