624 LABOUR AND IV AGES. 



working for fifty weeks, amount to 21 $s. ; of an agricultural 

 labourer, 16 17^., including a month's harvest work. The 

 stock would be bought by the artisan with the expenditure of 

 a little less than forty weeks' labour, but the peasant could not 

 quite procure it by a whole year's labour. 



The ninth assessment is that discovered by Mr. Ruggles, 

 and printed in his History of the Poor. It is also of Essex, 

 and dated the Easter sessions, 1661. Prices are high in the 

 spring of this year, and the harvest in the autumn was the 

 worst of the whole century. This however the justices could 

 not anticipate at the beginning of April. Either Mr. Ruggles 

 was interested in agricultural labour only, and therefore does 

 not record the wages of artisans, which is most probable, or 

 the magistrates did not put artisans in the schedule. In this 

 assessment, wages are is. id. from the middle of March to the 

 middle of September, and is. from the middle of September 

 to the middle of March, i. e. are the same as they were set ten 

 years before. So are the wages of mowers and reapers at 

 is. 6d. and is. icd., and women at is. id. This identity in 

 the case of agricultural labourers suggests that the artisans' 

 wages are also unchanged. Now in this year at Lady Day 

 wheat was 42^. &/., malt 22J. 8^., oatmeal 535. 6d. ; and the 

 stock of provisions cost 15 $s. The wages of the peasant 

 are the same as they were ten years before, 16 17^., and I 

 conclude that the artisan's were also the same, zi $s. Both 

 therefore could purchase the stock with less than a year's 

 labour, the peasant having more than five weeks to the good, 

 the artisan more than fourteen. 



The tenth of the assessments is from Cullum's Hawsted, and 

 is dated April 24, 1682. It is no doubt a mere extract from 

 a far larger schedule. It is a Suffolk scale, issued at Bury 

 S. Edmund's. It merely gives the scale of agricultural labour. 

 This labour in summer is at is., in winter at icd. a day. The 

 harvest wages are is. 8d. for men, is. for women. In this 

 year wheat was 335. 4d. at Lady Day, malt ijs. 6d., oatmeal 

 . 5^., the prices coming from near the place where the 



