640 LABOUR AND WAGES. 



wages are constantly given together, and are with very rare 

 exceptions entirely represented by country employment, show 

 the fifty per cent, rise in the last sixty years which I have so 

 frequently referred to. Sometimes, as at Eton in 1659 onwards, 

 employers hire a workman who is able to do all sorts of repairs, 

 whether as bricklayer, tiler, or mason. It is very likely that 

 many such persons were found on the spot, or let it be known 

 that they were ready for such engagements ; and that when 

 exceptional work had to be done, that it was necessary to 

 get workmen from a distance. Thus in 1617 Eton sent to 

 Maidenhead for two millwrights, and paid them the high wages 

 of i s. %d. a day for their services ; and on three occasions at 

 least, 1619, 1621, 1622, New College hired one Dubba and 

 his son to hang bells, also at a comparatively high rate of 

 payment. The New College account of 1620 is lost. 



The artisan was generally attended by a labourer, in the 

 building trades a hodman, in tiling or thatching a man or 

 woman to prepare and carry tiles or straw to the workman on 

 the roof, in carpentry and sawing to do the rough work, or to 

 stand in the saw-pit. The wages of this person are quite 

 uniform during the first thirty years of the period, whatever 

 be the place in which he is employed, and in the next decade 

 he gets only a fractional or local rise, which is quite trivial in 

 the aggregate. In the fifth decade the rise is continued, and 

 in the sixth he gets a shilling a week more than he did in the 

 first three. In the seventh there is a further rise, and for the 

 next forty years the rate is nearly uniform. The wages of 

 the last decade are heightened by London payments. The 

 rise on the last sixty years is a little over fifty per cent. 



The wages of the artisan's help represent, I feel sure, the 

 minimum rate of wages which the justices' assessments were 

 intended to enforce, more accurately than any other kind of 

 wages does, and unless Elizabeth was exceedingly extravagant 

 in the contracts which she made for her workmen in 1573, 

 1577, and 1578, must have been hardly equal to the barest 

 necessities of life. In point of fact, at the best, the prices of 



