SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



the labourers. They would have liked, they said, to try to make a living on 

 the holdings if they were able to plough." The cottages were exactly what 

 was needed in Hertfordshire.'* If the scheme had been planned for the 

 agricultural labourer, with greater experience of farming, it might have been 

 prosperous and beneficial. It represented, however, ' the townsman's dream 

 of country life.' 



In the crafts wages seem to have remained fairly steady over a long 

 period. 



The rating of the justices in i 591-2 puts the carpenters, masons, joiners, 

 plasterers, wheel and plough wrights, bricklayers and tilers into one class. 

 From March to September masters or the best journeymen took 8^. a day 

 and their meals, or izd. in all. The scale for the worst workmen was 

 \d. or 8^. For the winter the highest rate was 6d. with food or i\d. a 

 day, and the lowest T^d. or jdJ^ Tailors and shoemakers' journeymen, hired 

 by the year, received from 30J-. to 53^.*° 



These wages are lower than those fixed at St. Albans in 1632. 

 Artificers of the best sort took is. a day and food or is. 4^., those of the 

 worst sort ^d. with food or lOd!'." The is. a day was paid to labourers some 

 twenty-five years later.*^ 



In 1677 the crafts are grouped rather differently. Carpenters and 

 bricklayers were getting the highest wages, ranging from is. lod. to is. a 

 day ; tailors and 'all artificers' received Sd. and food or is. zd.^^ In 1682 

 builders and carpenters were earning is. or is. id. a day.** The rise in the 

 hundred years is not great. Apparently the wage was a sufficient one until 

 the rise in the price of food about 1790. It is not until this time that 

 labour troubles appear. But then several cases suggest that even in 

 Hertfordshire industrial labourers grasped at the idea of combination. In 

 1790 eleven journeymen paper-makers employed by one Vallance at his 

 mill in Bishop's Hatfield joined to compel him to raise their wages u. a week. 

 They threatened to leave if he would not do so.*^ In 1796 some labourers at 

 Ware struck work. They tried to force four barge-masters and maltsters, 

 their employers, to raise their wages, and attempted to frighten the black- 

 legs away.*^ In such cases the labourers must always have lost, as the 

 ' conspiring ' was an indictable offence. 



From the end of the 17th century labourers and yeomen and artificers 

 were gradually being drawn into retail trading. Men of the most diverse 

 callings ' practised the mystery of a grocer without apprenticeship. The 

 grocer is the commonest case." Higglers of dead victual were also becoming 

 very numerous.** This growth of retail trade corresponds in time with the 

 development of the corn and malt trades, of which it was probably the 

 effect. 



The same period shows signs of capitalism among the workmen. The 

 evidence is clearest as to carpenters. In 1663 two carpenters and four masons 

 estimated for the repair of Welwyn steeple. They undertook the carpenters' 



'' National Land Co. Rep. iv, 3 1 et seq. ^* See above. 



" Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), i, 8-12. so jtid. 



«i Gibbs, Hist. Rec. of St. Albans, 281. 82 s^j^_ ^_ (Herts. Co. Rec), i, 130. 



8' Ibid. 292. ** Ibid. 339. *Mbid. ii, 167. 



•*' Ibid. 182 ; cf. also 249 and 277. 



«< Ibid, i, 45, 155, 183, 244, 254, 329. 88 Ibid. 62, 230, 350, 368 ; cf. 373. 



231 



