GOLDEN AGE OF THE LABOURER 6^ 



sequently about the same or a little better than in the preceding 

 period.^ 



At the end of the fourteenth century the ordinary wheat crop 

 at Hawsted was in favourable years about a quarter to the acre, 

 but it was often not more than 6 bushels ; and this was on 

 demesne land, usually better tilled than non-demesne land.^ 

 As for the labourer, it is well known that Thorold Rogers calls 

 the fifteenth century his golden age, and seeing that his days' 

 wages, if he 'found himself, were now ^d. and prices were hardly 

 any higher all round than when he earned half the money in 

 the thirteenth century, there is much to support his view. As to 

 whether he was better off than the modern labourer it is some- 

 what difficult to determine ; as far as wages went he certainly 

 was, for his ^d. a day was equal to about 4^. now ; it is true 

 that on the innumerable holidays of the Church he sometimes 

 did not work,^ but no doubt he then busied himself on his bit 

 of common. But so many factors enter into the question of the 

 general material comfort of the labourer in different ages that 

 it is almost impossible to come to a satisfactory conclusion. 

 Denton paints a very gloomy picture of him at this time ; * so 

 does Mr. Jessop, who says, the agricultural labourers of the 

 fifteenth century were, compared with those of to-day, * more 

 wretched in their poverty, incomparably less prosperous in 

 their prosperity ; worse clad, worse fed, worse housed, worse 

 taught, worse governed ; they were sufferers from loathsome 

 diseases, of which their descendants know nothing ; the very 

 I beasts of the field were dwarfed and stunted ; the disregard of 



^ Thorold Rogers, op. cit. iv. 39. 



- CuUum, Hawsted, p. 187. The amount of seed for the various crops 

 j was, wheat 2 bushels per acre, barley 4, oats z\. 



I ' By 4 Hen. IV, c. 14, labourers were to receive no hire for holy days, 

 j or on the eves of feasts for more than half a day ; but the statute was 

 1 largely disregarded. 



* See England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 105 : 'The undrained 

 neglected soil, the shallow stagnant waters which lay on the surface of 

 the ground, the unhealthy homes of all classes, insufficient and unwhole- 

 some food, the abundance of stale fish eaten, and the scanty supply of 

 vegetables predisposed rural and town population to disease.' 



F a 



