LABOUR AND WAGES. 631 



buildings had leaden roofs. The city authorities, too, only 

 pay is. a day to artisans. In this year the price of wheat is 

 $is. 9 </., of malt ijs. 6d.- 



In 1609, which according to my method of reckoning the 

 year by the harvest is the date of the Rutland assessment, the 

 carpenter's and mason's wages have become generally is. id. 

 a day at Cambridge, but they remain at a shilling a day at 

 Oxford. I have noted that just about this time there was a 

 slight upward rise in wages at Cambridge. In this year the 

 average price of wheat was 35 s. i\d., of malt us. ^\d. 



In 1610 Dorothy Wadham is building her College, and the 

 payments, taken from the accounts, illustrate the system 

 under which this College, the handsomest specimen of Jacobean 

 architecture in existence, was erected. She gives the chief 

 man, i. e. the architect, i a week, and he certainly did his 

 work better than the modern impostor does, who gets fifty 

 times as much. She seems to have hired also five different 

 classes of masons at wages ranging from 8^. a week to $s., and 

 to have paid their labourers, i.e. journeymen in this case, at rates 

 from 6s. gd. to 4^. One of her carpenters, no doubt the man 

 who planned the roofs, is paid 8s., and another 6s. The rise 

 at Cambridge is maintained, but the Oxford artisan and 

 labourer is no better off. General prices are fully 15 per cent, 

 higher at Oxford than at Cambridge, and wages nearly as 

 much lower. 



Sometimes an extraordinary price is given when the work 

 is exceedingly difficult or noisome, and occasionally the 

 account, as it were, excuses the magnitude of the pay by 

 designating the occasion. Thus for instance in 1622, Eton 

 College pays a bricklayer is. a day for fourteen days, the 

 ordinary rate being half this sum. On this occasion no in- 

 formation is given as to work done, but I make no doubt that 

 he was repairing the brickwork about the boiler, as he is 

 repairing the oven in 1640 when he is paid is. 6d. a day, other 

 bricklayers not receiving half the money. The same rate is 

 paid in 1646, 'for work under the copper, that being extra- 



