A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



bourne Abbots, who received 2$s. a week. 1 Eight pounds of bread was not 

 a large allowance, for the Gloucester prisoners about 1790 were receiving 

 loj Ib. a week, besides a pint of strong soup, 'made from coarse but 

 wholesome meat.' 3 After the rise of wheat in 1801 (to 1191. 6d. per 

 quarter) the prisoner's weekly fare was, however, cut down to 7 lb. s 

 In 1802 vain efforts were made by the magistrates at Gloucester to enforce 

 the Ancient Assize of Bread, in order to keep down prices. This must 

 have been the worst period in the history of the Gloucestershire labourer. 

 In 1632, when wheat was 38^. 8</., an ordinary labourer's wage in Gloucester- 

 shire had been fixed by quarter sessions at 8d. a day, or 4^. a week, a 

 carpenter's at 6s., and a tiler's at js. per week. In 1655 the same labourers 

 received respectively 5^., IQJ. and js. Wheat was then cheaper zos. per 

 quarter. In 1632 the labourer would thus have been very badly off, earning, 

 according to Rogers' calculations, 10 8s. 4^., while the artisan earned 

 >Ti6 5-r. Neither could have earned a proper living, which would have 

 cost 16 8s. (allowing for a family of four persons). In 1655 provisions 

 for a similar family would only have cost 9 7^ 4-d-, and wages had risen, 

 so that an agricultural labourer could earn his store of food for the year by 

 thirty-five weeks' labour, a chief carpenter or mason in nineteen weeks, 

 and a tiler in thirty weeks.* We get no further statistics as to the wages 

 of the agricultural labourer till 1769 (only two quarter sessions assessments 

 having been preserved for Gloucestershire). Arthur Young reports that the 

 average p>rice of day labour in Gloucestershire was from %d. to lod. a day 

 (4-r. to 5-f. a week) in winter and spring, is. in summer, and is. 8d. in 

 harvest time. Wheat was threshed at from lod. to 2s. per quarter, which 

 he considers an unusually low rate. 6 Wheat was then about 351. per 

 quarter, so that the labourer's condition was nearly as bad in 1769 as it 

 had been in 1632. Since the fourteenth century it had declined enormously, 

 prices having risen by a multiple of 8 to 12, wages only by a multiple of 4.' 

 Except in the richer parts of the Vale, Young seems to have been struck 

 with the backward state of the county and lack of enclosures, of which 

 only sixteen had been made in Gloucestershire in 1769. By 1801, how- 

 ever, some forty more enclosures had taken place, mainly in the Vale, or on 

 the edges of the Wolds, and from this time onwards the process went on in 

 iin ever-increasing stream. 7 By 1821 when Cobbett's 'rural rides' first 

 brought him to Gloucestershire, he was able to admire the Vale country as 

 st?en from ' Burlip Hill." ' All here is fine ; fine farms ; fine pastures ; all 

 inclosed fields ; all divided by hedges ; orchards a plenty.' ' The girls at 

 w<prk in the fields are not in rags,' as in Wiltshire. 8 But for the hill country 

 hel does not find much good to say, except that the turnips were good, and 

 th/at the ox-teams used for ploughing were ' some of the finest I ever saw.' 9 

 He notes the falling-off of the population about Withington, owing to the 



1 Record Books. ' Gough Glouc. 32. ' Minute Books, i. 



4 Rawlinson MSS. C. 358, quoted by Rogers, Hist, of dgric. and Prices, v, 622-3. 



* Tour through the Southern Counties, 2nd ed. 6 Rogers, Hist, of Agric. and Prices, \, ch. 29. 



' See Return of Commons (Inclosure Awards), Feb. 1 894. The confusion of manors and townships, 

 which has been noticed above (p. 142), was a considerable source of trouble when enclosures had to be made. 

 Parishes were found to be much intermixed, and detached portions were common. In some cases several 

 parishes held intermixed strips in one large common field. One enclosure near Gloucester included pieces of 

 ten parishes. See Minutes of Evidence before Com. on Boundaries of Parishes, Part. Pap. 1873, v l- v '"' 

 {308). ' Rural Rides (ed. W. P. Cobbett), i, 23-4. ' Ibid, ii, 178. 



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