LABOUR AND WAGES. 653 



vest operations, and perhaps thatching, both temporary or 

 exceptional, the best agricultural skill is shown in making a 

 new ditch ; and if I am rightly informed, there is no part of 

 the farm labourer's craft, which has perished more generally, 

 under the hateful tyranny to which the peasant has been sub- 

 jected at the hands of his oppressors, than good ditching. 



Almost all the entries of ditching which I have discovered 

 are therefore the cleansing of old ditches. The highest price 

 which I have noted is in 1637, when lod. a pole is paid. In 

 the entry of 1638, the newness is in the hedge. The old 

 quickset or crab hedge was worn out, and having been cut 

 down and perhaps grubbed up, the husbandman planted a 

 new one, the sets for which he frequently collected himself, as 

 part of his agreement, in the coppices. Planting a pole of 

 quicksets is well illustrated in the next entry from Eton in 

 the year 1638. Hedging and ditching without new planting 

 is paid at 6d. the pole. The planting is 4d. a rod, and a good 

 workman could plant over two rods a day. 



Ditching by the pole varies greatly according to the state 

 of the ditch. In my notes, it ranges from ?\d. a pole to iod. t 

 and there are indications that the price was in accordance 

 with the general rise in the wages of labour during the last 

 sixty years of the period. An average of thirteen entries 

 between 1589 and 1695 is $\d. the pole. 



The price of hedging by the pole, only occasionally varies 

 through the whole period, wherever the information comes 

 from. Between 1644 and 1701 there is only one year in 

 which any other price than $d. is given, and in that it is an 

 alternative. Before that period it ranges from id. to $\d. It 

 is also found twice by the score of poles, at is. the score. In 

 one year the price (yd.) includes quicksetting, by which is 

 I infer meant that the hedge had become thin, and the work- 

 man had filled up the gaps. The hedging was merely clipping 

 the shoots of whitethorn or crab. Our ancestors used these 

 shrubs only in their hedges, the blackthorn or sloe making in- 

 different cover, and being apt to tear sheep's wool. Plashing, 



