CHANGE IN CONDITION OF THE ARTISAN. 405 



1380, and are lower afterwards. 'Were there sufficient 

 evidence for the last ten years, the facts which I have 

 been able to collect would, I am confident, have been 

 varied in the averages, and the quotations in all likelihood 

 would have to be put on the ten years at 8.?. ; instead of 

 being, as I am constrained to return them, at the great 

 price of 13^. 6^cl. The causes to which the deficient 

 information of the later part of the period must be 

 ascribed, are : the change which takes place in the method 

 of agriculture, and the change which the course of events 

 had induced upon the condition of the smith. The 

 reader will anticipate that the former cause consists in the 

 fact, that the system of bailiff farming was gradually re- 

 linquished after the event of the plague. But accounts 

 are not kept in so careful a manner. The dearth of hands 

 had produced its effects on the inferior clergy, the scribes 

 and accountants of the middle ages. Items which used 

 to be carefully distinguished are lumped in one general 

 sum — credited, for instance, to the bailiff, as the year's 

 charge for shoeing. Services which used to be cheap 

 and effectual, had now become dear and negligent ; and 

 such symptoms were apparent in the economy of agricul- 

 ture, as designated that a radical alteration in the method 

 of tenure was impending. And there are also indications 

 that oxen, according to Walter de Henley's advice, were 

 superseding horses in farm-work. The other cause is the 

 change which comes over the condition of the artisan. 

 Hitherto it was very seldom that such persons dealt in 

 finished goods. As a rule, they were hired to do work 

 on materials purchased by their employer ; and in some 

 occupations, as in the building trades, this purchase of 



