LABOUR AND WAGES. 635 



worst series of consecutive harvests during the whole century, 

 for in 1646 wheat was at $is. ioj</., in 1647 at 6zs. 6d., in 1648 

 at 6js. io\d., in 1649 at 65^. 6d., in 1650 at 55^. 4^., and in 

 1651 at 48 s. i o^/., prices to which no parallel could be found, 

 all circumstances being considered, at any previous period of 

 English agricultural history. Nor is it easy to see how, 

 through this terrible time, workmen could have subsisted at 

 all, even though their wages were substantially raised. 



Between 1663 and 1672 there is another marked rise in wages, 

 not indeed absolutely universal, but so general that it cannot 

 fail to be recognised. This I believe was due mainly to the 

 ravages of the plague, for on the whole the price of wheat was 

 low during this decade, being only up to the average of the 

 whole century in one year ; and I cannot but conclude, well as 

 I am aware that wages are generally higher when prices are 

 low, that looking at the existing organisation of English 

 society, at the severity of the labour laws, and the determina- 

 tion of the landowning interest of the time to sacrifice and 

 screw everybody if they could only raise their rents, the 

 improvement of the labourers' condition was due to a scarcity 

 in the labour market with which even justices' assessments 

 could not grapple and no scales could control. 



The last thirty years of the period are greatly modified by 

 London prices. As time goes on, the accounts become less 

 precise, contracts take the place of hirings, and even occasional 

 repairs are paid for in a collective bill. Country prices do not 

 it is true quite fail, but they become very few and irregular. 



The principal part of my information during the last thirty 

 years is derived from two manuscript volumes in the Bodleian 

 Library, one in the Rawlinson, and the other in the Gough 

 collection. The former is a very large and thick folio, con- 

 taining an account of the expense incurred, under the general 

 superintendence of Wren, in rebuilding the many city churches 

 destroyed in the fire of 1666, for which collections were made 

 all over England, and a special tax imposed on London, 

 Middlesex, and part of the adjoining counties, in the shape of 



