62O LABOUR AND IT AGES. 



peasant earns his store by a little over forty-two weeks' labour, 

 the artisan with a little more than twenty-eight. 



The Lancashire assessment of 1595 begins with an elaborate 

 recitation of the Act, which the justices were commanded to 

 administer, and the workmen to obey, upon the pains and 

 forfeitures appointed by the said statute. The scale is exact 

 and comprehensive. It divides the year into two portions 

 five months, from the first of May to the first of October, dur- 

 ing which time it permits the higher wages, the lower scale 

 prevailing over the other seven months. The highest rate 

 allowed to the labourer in husbandry during the shorter 

 period is 6d. a day without meat and drink, and during the 

 longer $d. Saturdays and the eves of holidays are to be 

 half-days. Mowers of hay or corn are to have in harvest- 

 time &/., their attendants 4d. During hay-making a woman 

 is to have 3^., during harvest 4d. Master artisans, masons, 

 carpenters, joiners etc., able to be entrusted with work, are 

 to have Sd. t others working under them 6d., their apprentices 

 $d. A pair of sawyers are to have is. 4d. together, or, if 

 they work by the piece, is. 6d. for every hundred of board 

 sawn. 



Now the price of wheat about Easter 1595 was 4os. the 

 quarter, of malt 2is. 4^., of oatmeal 38^. 8d., the price of the 

 last being for once lower than that of wheat, though it is 

 generally a good deal higher. It may be added that the 

 harvests of 1595, 1596, and 1597 were worse than in any 

 previous experience, and that the Government was seriously 

 alarmed. The proclamation book contains several instruments 

 in which the dearth is set down to the arts of speculators and 

 forestallers, and the penalties of the statute thereafter provided 

 are invoked against these reputed malefactors. 



Again, taking 300 as the working days of the year, the 

 wages of the best-paid servant in husbandry, under the 

 Lancashire scale, would be 135^. 5*/., from which must be 

 deducted 9^. lod. for the Saturday half-day, leaving I2$s. yd. 

 as the full year's wages, and taking no account of the eves of 



