110 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



moreover, judging by the assessments of the time, was a county 

 where agriculture was very flourishing; and thirty years after; 

 we find in Yorkshire that the winter wages of the labourer were 

 4d. and the summer ^d. a day: that is, he had little more wages 

 than in the fifteenth century, with provisions risen threefold. 

 At Chester at the same date his day's wages were to be 4d. all 

 the year round.^ In 1610 the Rutland magistrates at Oakham ^ 

 decreed that an ordinary labourer was to have 6d. a day in 

 winter and yd. in summer, the same wages as in 1564, yet 

 wheat in that year averaged ^2s. yd. a quarter. A bailiff by 

 the year was now advanced to 53^., a manservant of the best 

 sort, equal no doubt to the chief servant in husbandry, to 50J., 

 a ' common servant ' to 40^'., and a ' mean servant ' to 2gs., but 

 all without livery. At Chelmsford, in 1651, there was a very 

 different rate fixed, the ordinary labourer getting from is. to 

 IS. id. a day; but this seems to have been exceptional, as at 

 Warwick in 1684 he was only to have ^d., and as late as 

 T735 in Lancashire 9^. to \od. a day.^ In 1683, by the Bury 

 St. Edmunds assessment, a common labourer got \od. a day in 

 winter and i^. in summer, and a reaper in harvest \s. Sd. By 

 the year a bailiff was paid £6, a carter £^, and a common 

 servant £^ los., of course with food.^ These figures clearly 

 prove that the wages fixed by the magistrates were often 

 terribly inadequate, though it must be said in their defence 

 that the great rise in prices probably struck them as abnormal 

 and not likely to last. It should be remembered, too, that 

 besides his wages the labourer and his family had often bye 

 industries such as weaving to fall back upon, and in most 

 parts of England still a piece of common land to help him. 



^ Thorold Rogers, Work and Wages, t^^. 390-1. 



^ Archaeologia, xi. 200. 



' Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 396. 



* Q\x\\\ivaiHa'wsted,^.2l$. It is strange to find food reckoned so highly; 

 if the common labourer at Hawsted received his food, he was only paid 

 s^d. a day in winter, and 6d. in summer ; if one man^s food was reckoned 

 at half his wages, how far did the other half go in feeding and clothing 

 his family ? 



