LABOUR AND WAGES. 659 



yd. a day in 1614, women 5^., and the account, Cranfield's, 

 notes that they began work on August i8th. Squaring timber 

 is paid at 3^. a hundred in 1583, mending lead is is. a day in 

 1611, and the thatcher in 1588 gets as much as the tiler or 

 slater, is. a day. A smith is hired at is. ^d. a day in 1598, 

 and at is. in 1602 and 1604. Boys' work is $d. a day in 

 1620. 



Before I proceed to the only remaining details of this mass 

 of evidence on the wages of labour, I should comment on the 

 number of persons and the wages of persons in Lord Spencer's 

 household in 1601. I could have made a numerous collection 

 of such persons, but the magnitude of my two volumes will be 

 such that I have been constrained to drop one or two lists of 

 particulars which did not seem to me of high interest. And in 

 this case a single instance will suffice, for there is evidence 

 in abundance that the wages of domestic servants did not 

 rise very much during this period, and that justices' assess- 

 ments pretty fairly indicate what wages were actually paid. 

 Domestic service was in fact a great resource for those per- 

 sons who had no means of occupying land, and the estimate 

 which Gregory King makes of the households of persons in 

 different ranks of society is contemporaneous testimony to the 

 practice. 



Lord Spencer has thirty-one male and nine female servants 

 at Wormleighton, then his principal residence. Of the men, 

 one has 10 a year, another 66 s. 8<, a third 53 s. 4</., and one 

 2,6s. %d. The remaining twenty-seven have 40$. each. One of 

 the female servants has 10 a year, another 3, another 50?., 

 and the other six 33 s. ^d. each. 



The other kind of labour on which I have to comment, and 

 on which I have but little information, and that chiefly from 

 the North and in early times, is the labour bestowed on the 

 making of textile fabrics. I have no doubt whatever that the 

 spinning-wheel was in nearly every house and the hand-loom 

 in many, that the majority of English families were clothed in 

 homespun, linen, hempen and woollen cloth, and that the 



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