| OCR Text |
Show ~68 OF THE WAGES OF LABOUR. [CH. IV. and towards the latter end of the century they would not comtnand much above one-third of the quantity of wheat which they did at the ~eginning of it. Sir F. M. Eden has noticed the price of wheat in nineteen out of the t\venty-four years of Henry VII. 's ·reign, and in some of the years two or three times.* Reducing the several notices in the same year first to an average, and then taking the average of the nineteen prices, it comes to 6s. 3-td. the quarter, rather less than 9td. the bushel, and 2fd. the peck. By a statute passed in 1495 to regulate wages, the price of common day labour seems to have been 4d. or 4td. without diet. All labourers and artificers, not specifically mentioned, are put down at 4d.; but in another part_ of the statute, even a woman labourer (I suppose in hay time) is set down at 4td. and a carter at Sd. t At the price of wheat just stated, if the wages of the labourer \Vere 4d. he would be able to purchase, by a day's labour, a peck and three quarters of wheat, 'vithin half a farthing ; if his wages were 4td. he would be able to purchase half a bushel, within a farthing. The notices of the price of day labour in the subsequent years are extremely scanty. There are none in the reigns of Henry VIII., Ed,vard, and 1\IIary. The first that occurs is in 1575, and the price is mentiQned at Sd. t rfaking an average • State of the Poor, vol. iii. p. xli. t ld. vol. iii. p. lxxxix. t Id. vol. iii. p. lx. SEC. IV.] OF THE WAGES OF LABOUR. of the five preceding years in which the pri~es of wheat are noticed, including 157 5, havtng previously averaged the several prices i~ the same year, as before, it appears that the pnce of the quarter of wheat ,;vas Il. 2s. 2d. which is 2s. f)td. the bushel, and Std. th~ peck. At this price, a day's labour would purchase a peck of corn, within a farthing, or tt of a peck. This is a diminution of nearly a half in the corn wages of labour; but at the end of the century, the diminution \\ras still greater. The next notice of the price of labour, with the exception of the regulations of the justices in some of the more northern counties, which can hardly be taken as a fair criterion for the south, is in 1601, 'vhen it is mentioned as lOd. Taking an average from the Windsor table of five years, which includes, however, one excessively dear year, and subtracting t to reduce it to Winchester tneasure, it appears that the price of the quarter was 2l. ~s. Od. which is Ss. Sd. the bushel, and ls. 3td, the peck. A day's labour would at this price purchase less than f of a peck. * This is unquestionably a prodigious fall in the * The year 1597 seems to have been an extraordinary dear one, ·and ought not to be included in so short an average. If an average was taken of the five years beginning with 1598, the labourer would appear to earn about 4 of a peck ; and, on an average of ten years, from the same period, ne would earn about 1 of a peck. During the five years from 1594 to 1598 inclusive, the _price of wheat seems to have been unusually high from un. favourable seasons. |
