WAGES. 793 



or bricklayers' men, and 15. a day for artisans, or 4^. and 6s. 

 a week, assuming that the Saturday was not a half-pay day. 

 After this time wages are as regularly is. and is. 6d., or 6s. 

 and qs. a week, and remained at this rate for a century, as 

 I find from the wages paid by Lord Lovell to his workmen 

 from 1731 to 1735, and from the evidence which Arthur 

 Young collected. Higher averages than these must therefore 

 be assigned to exceptional causes the difficulty or un- 

 pleasantness of the work, the occasional influence of London 

 prices, and perhaps the occasional scarcity of workmen. Thus, 

 as early as 1630 some London masons got 2J. a day, or 

 double the ordinary wages, some only is. Sd. Labourers too 

 got from is. 6d. to is. at a time when country-folk have only 

 Sd. (vol. vi. p. 679). But I have included these exceptional 

 advantages, that I may not seem to press my argument as to 

 the condition of labour too strictly. 



On an average wheat rose 134 per cent, between 1541 and 

 1583 over the prices which had prevailed on an average of 

 two and a-half centuries before, and between 1583 and 1702, 

 209 per cent. more. Between the early period and 1541-1582, 

 wages, taken from the mean of eleven kinds of labour, rose 60 

 per cent. ; and during the hundred and twenty years of my 

 period, the mean rise of thirteen different kinds of labour is 

 a little over 106 per cent. more. This average includes the 

 wages earned by the three kinds of artisans to whom I have 

 referred above as being affected by London prices. 



It will be seen that generally, while all kinds of provisions 

 rose most in price during the sixty years 1583-1642, the 

 wages of labour rose least during this period. To this indeed 

 there are only two exceptions ; one that of sawing by the 

 hundred, where the difference is marked, and that of the 

 agricultural labourer, where the difference though substantial 

 is slighter. But the practice of piecework sawing becomes 

 rarer as time goes on, and the record given of it almost 

 exactly conforms to the combined wages of artisan and 

 labourer in other country callings: 9 + 6, 15*. 



