A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



and it was not to ' be jagged or cut,' nor was a ruffled shirt to be worn. The 

 same orders also applied to journeymen and apprentices, and tailors who 

 supplied any of the prohibited finery were mulcted 6oj. for each offence. 



For the first half of the seventeenth century there is no scale of wages 

 given by the justices, but from other sources of information it appears that 

 a slight rise took place. At Wing m there was a parish mole-catcher who 

 was paid by the year ; he had formerly received 26s. 8d. from the church- 

 wardens, the maximum wage for a common servant in husbandry in 1562. 

 It was arranged, however, that the parish was in future to pay him only half 

 that sum, for work in Wing field and Wing mead, but that owners of 

 inclosed land were to pay him themselves for work that he did for them. In 

 another case, an artisan who worked in the church and must have been either 

 a carpenter or mason received is. 2d. a day. At Eton 163 artisans' labourers 

 received lod. or is. a day. At Horton, 16 * where paper-mills had been estab- 

 lished, the workmen and labourers were said to be paid double the rate of 

 wages of ordinary day-labourers. When the mills were stopped during a 

 time of plague in 1636, the manufacturer petitioned for relief, and amongst 

 other items there appeared 45^. a week for his man and four apprentices ; if 

 they all were paid at the same rate, they would each have received is. 6d. a 

 day, considerably above the rate of artisans' labour elsewhere, but in all pro- 

 bability the apprentices would have had less than a man who appears to have 

 been the head man at the paper-mill. Unfortunately there is no mention of 

 the number of the other labourers for whom 5 a week was required. There 

 were, however, twelve paper-mills in Buckinghamshire in which a consider- 

 able number of men must have been employed at a high rate of wages. At 

 this time, however, the market price of corn was extremely high, and at 

 several epochs scarcity prices prevailed throughout the county, in spite of the 

 interference of the justices ; at Eton 185 in 1600, at the close of a period of 

 dearth, wheat was42J. 8d. a quarter, but during the next years it had dropped 

 to 3U. 4*/. and 26s. 8d., the lowest price for several years. It was over 40^. 

 a quarter in 1607, and in 1622 the justices 166 of the peace in the three 

 hundreds of Aylesbury reported that it had been as high as 6oj. a quarter. 

 Still it was the custom, in some parts of the county at least, to sell to the 

 poor at a lower rate, at the corn-masters' own houses, so that the market price 

 given by the justices does not show the real price paid by the labourers them- 

 selves. An adequate supply of corn in this long period of scarcity cannot 

 have been within their means, since charitably inclined people bought rye, 

 which was not grown in Buckinghamshire, and sold it at less than cost price 

 to the poor. Less than ten years later the justices were again forced to 

 regulate the sale of corn in the markets, since in Desborough Hundred w 

 wheat had reached the price of jzs. a quarter, while barley was dearest in 

 Cottesloe and Buckingham 167 Hundreds at 48^. a quarter. 



Until 1687 188 none of the scales of wages drawn up at quarter sessions 

 has been preserved, but in that year the scale shows that the necessity of a 

 rise had been recognized by the magistrates, though with but little approach 



163 Wing, Churchwardens' Accts. 163 Eton Acct. Bks. 



164 S.P. Dom. Chas. I, vol. 344, No. 40. 165 Eton Acct. Bks. 



16; S.P. Dom. Jas. I, vol. 140, No. 19. 16? Ibid. vol. 142, No. 44. 



168 Quart. Sess. Rec. 1687. 



70 



