268 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



at the commencement of the nineteenth century, which were 

 said to have combined ' comfort, convenience, and economy ; ' 

 they each contained one room 12 feet by 14 feet and 6 feet 

 high with a bedroom over, and cost ,32 IQS. each. They 

 were evidently considered quite superior dwellings, far better 

 than the ordinary run of labourer's cottages. Cobbett gives 

 us a picture of some in Leicestershire in 1826 ; ' hovels made 

 of mud and straw, bits of glass, or of old cast-off windows, 

 without frames or hinges frequently, and merely stuck in the 

 mud wall. Enter them and look at the bits of chairs or 

 stools, the wretched boards tacked together to serve for 

 a table, the floor of pebble, broken brick, or of the bare 

 ground ; look at the thing called a bed, and survey the rags 

 on the backs of the wretched inhabitants.' 1 The chief 

 exceptions to this state of affairs were the estates of many 

 of the great landlords. On that of the Earl of Winchelsea 

 in Rutland, the cottages he had built contained a kitchen, 

 parlour, dairy, two bedrooms, and a cow-house, and several 

 had small holdings attached of from 5 to 20 acres. 2 Not 

 long before, wages in Hampshire and Wiltshire were $s. and 

 6s, a week. 3 



In 1822 it was stated that 'beef and mutton are things 

 the taste of which was unknown to the mass of labourers. 

 No one has lived more in cottages than I, and I declare 

 solemnly I never remember once to have seen such a thing.' 4 



A group of women labourers, whom Cobbett saw by the 

 roadside in Hampshire, presented ' such an assemblage of 

 rags as I never saw before even amongst the hoppers at 

 Farnham.' 5 



The labourer's wages may have gone a little further, but he 



1 Rural Rides, ii. 348. 



2 Loudon, Encyclopaedia of Agriculture (1831), p. 1156. 



3 Cobbett, Rural Rides, i. 149. The average, however, now was about 

 9-r. ; see Parliamentary Reports, v. 72. 



4 A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool by an Old Tory (1822), p. 16. 

 8 Rural Rides, i. 18. 



