292 Gold, Silver and the Coinage of the Silver Dollar. 



" In the sixth year of Henry VI (1428), the price of things growing 

 higher by reason of the raising of moneys, it was provided by statute 

 that the justice of the peace might rate as well the hire of day-laborers 

 as the wages of servants- as they should find fit in sessions, notwith- 

 standing the former statute of 25 Edward (1352), and 12 of Richard 

 II (1389). notwithstanding the money had been raised not above the 

 sixth part, which I attribute to the great want of servants and laborers, 

 the kingdom being then exceedingly exhausted by the long continu- 

 ance of the wars in France. 



" In the 11th of Henry VII (1496), there was a new statute for the 

 rating of servants' wages and the hire of day-laborers. By this statute 

 the meat and drink of the day-laborer is valued at 2d. 



"A statute of 17th of King James (1620), rates the threshing a 

 quarter of wheat at 18d; barley 10d; beans and peas 9d; the hire of a 

 man a day for hay making lOd; a woman 8d; master carpenters and 

 tvlers 20d a day; the second sort of the said workmen 16d a day; and 

 laborers of the best sort at 12d a day; of the second sort lOd a day; 

 a bailiff £3 3s 8d a year, with living; carters £5; the best sort of 

 plough-men, carters or shepherds are rated at £3; the second sort of 

 hinds and all servants in husbandry at £2 6s 8d; a dairy woman 6s. 

 By the said rate in Middlesex the best women servants are rated at 

 40s a year; the second sort at 33s, and 4rf. In Essex the best women 

 arc rated at 33s Ad; the second sort at £L 6s 8d. See Vaughan's 

 Coins and Coinage, pp. 107-119. 



The author adds: " And if any man shall object, that the present 

 rates will not generally through the whole kingdom hold thus high, 

 though they are thus rated in the parts near adjoining London, it 

 may be answered, that by the old statutes it was provided that in no 

 place any higher rates than those should be given, but they might give 

 less where less in former times had been used to be given." 



"But on the other side it may be much more probably objected, 

 that the rates are now greater than they are here set down, because it 

 is not so strictly observed as it should be; whereas when the old 

 statutes were first made, it is probable that the rates were with the 

 largest, and were more strictly ohserved than they now are." Vaughan, 

 p. 119. 



It should be borne in mind that this author wrote his treatise about 

 1625 or 1630. The statute of King James from which he quotes was 

 the latest statute of the kind then adopted — only some five or ten 

 years previously. He quotes it, and compares it with those of 1352, 



