CH. I. pig or goose in a country market could be bought for fourpence; a good capon for threepence or fourpence; a chicken for a penny; a hen for twopence.* Strong beer Strong beer, such as we now buy for eighteengallon. pence a gallon, was then a penny a gallon;† and a penny per Fresh fish, however, remained the luxury of the rich, and the poor were left to the salt cod, ling and herring brought in annually by the Iceland fleet. Fresh herrings sold for five or six a penny in the time of Henry VIII., and were never cheaper. Fresh salmon five and six shillings apiece. Roach, dace, and flounders from two to four shillings a hundred. Pike and barbel varied with their length. The barbel a foot long sold for fivepence, and twopence was added for each additional inch: a pike a foot long sold for sixteen pence, and increased a penny an inch.-Guildhall MSS. Journals 12, 13, 14, 15. * STAFFORD'S Discourse on great nets that stretched all the State of the Realm. It is across Limehouse reach four to be understood, however, that fathoms deep. these rates applied only to articles of ordinary consumption. Capons fatted for the dinners of the London companies were sometimes provided at a shilling apiece. Fresh fish was also extravagantly dear, and when two days a week were observed strictly as fasting days, it becomes acurious question to know how the supply was kept up. The inland counties were dependent entirely on ponds and rivers. London was provided either from the Thames or from the coast of Sussex. An officer of the Fishmongers' Company resided at each of the Cinque Ports, whose business it was to buy the fish wholesale from the boats and to forward it on horseback. Three hundred horses were kept for this service at Rye alone. And when an adventurous fisher-lings, then he shall sell a gallon man, taking advantage of a fair wind, sailed up the Thames with his catch and sold it first hand at London Bridge, the innovation was considered dangerous, and the Mayor of Rye petitioned . against it. Salmon, sturgeon, porpoise, roach, dace, flounders, eels, &c., were caught in considerable quantities in the Thames, below London Bridge, and further up, pike and trout. The fishermen had *When the brewer buyeth a quarter of malt for two shil of the best ale for two farthings; when he buyeth a quarter malt for four shillings, the gallon shall be four farthings, and so forth . . . and that he sell a quart of ale upon his table for a farthing.'Assize of Brewers: from a MS. in Balliol College, Oxford. By an order of the Lord Mayor and Council of the City of London, in September, 1529, the price of a kilderkin of single beer was fixed at a shilling, the shilling per table-beer less than a halfpenny. French and CH. 1. German wines were eightpence the gallon. Spa- Wine eightnish and Portuguese wines a shilling. This was pence to a the highest price at which the best wines might gallon. be sold; and if there was any fault in quality or quantity, the dealers forfeited four times the amount.* Rent, another important consideration, cannot be fixed so accurately, for parliament did not interfere with it. Here, however, we are not without very tolerable information. 'My father,' says Latimer,† was a yeoman, and Latimer's kilderkin of double beer at two shillings; but this included the cask; and the London brewers replied with a remonstrance, saying that the casks were often destroyed or made away with, and that an allowance had to be made for bad debts. Your beseechers,' they said, have many city debtors, for many of them which have taken much beer into their houses suddenly goeth to the sanctuary, some keep their houses-some purchase the king's protection, and some, when they die, be reckoned poor, and of no value, and many of your said beseechers be for the most part against such debtors remediless and suffer great losses.' They offered to supply their customers with sixteen gallon casks of single beer for eleven pence, and the same quantity of double beer for a shilling, the cask included. And this offer was accepted. The corporation, however, returned two years after to their original order. Guildhall Re เ cords, MS. Journal 13, pp. *28 Hen. VIII. cap. 14. The quality of the wine sold + Sermons, p. 101. account of the scale of rents before the Reformation. dozen men. CH. I. had no lands of his own; only he had a farm of three or four pounds by the year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half-aHe had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a harness with himself and his horse. I remember that I buckled on his harness when he went to Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the King's Majesty now. He married my sisters with five pounds, or twenty nobles, each, having brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbours, and some alms he gave to the poor; and all this he did of the said farm.' If 'three or four pounds at the uttermost' was the rent of a farm yielding such results, the rent of labourers' cottages is not likely to have been considerable.* The penny in the reign Some uncertainty is unavoidable in all calcuof Henry lations of the present nature; yet, after making in terms of the utmost allowances for errors, we may conclude bread, beef, from such a table of prices that a penny, in terms VIII. equal and beer, to the pre- of the labourer's necessities, must have been nearly sent shil ling. equal in the reign of Henry VIII. to the present shilling. For a penny, at the time of which I write, the labourer could buy as much bread, beef, beer, and wine-he could do as much towards finding lodging for himself and his family-as the * See HARRISON, p. 318. | price of produce kept pace with At the beginning of the century the rent. The large farmers farms let for four pounds a year, prospered; the poor forfeited which in 1576 had been raised their tenures. to forty, fifty, or a hundred. The wages of fivepence labourer of the nineteenth century can for a shil- CH. 1. ling. I do not see that this admits of question. Turning, then, to the table of wages, it will be easy to ascertain his position. By the 3rd of the Average 6th of Henry VIII. it was enacted that master artisans carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tylers, plumbers, halfpenny glaziers, joiners, and other employers of such a day. skilled workmen, should give to each of their journeymen, if no meat or drink was allowed, sixpence a day for the half year, fivepence a day for the other half; or fivepence-halfpenny for the yearly average. The common labourers were to receive fourpence a day for half the year, for the remaining half, threepence.* In the harvest The wages were fixed at a maximum, showing that labour was scarce, and that its natural tendency was towards a higher rate of remuneration. Persons not possessed of other means of subsistence were punishable if they refused to work at the statutable rate of payment; and a clause in the act of Hen. VIII. directed that where the practice had been to give lower wages, lower wages should be taken. This provision was owing to a difference in the value of money in different parts of England. The price of bread at Stratford, for instance, was permanently twentyfive per cent. below the price in London. (Assize of Bread in England: Balliol MS.) The statute, therefore, may be taken as a guide sufficiently conclusive as to the practical scale. It is of course uncertain how far work was constant. The ascending tendency of wages is an evidence, so far as it goes, in the labourer's favour; and the proportion between the wages of the household farm servant and those of the day labourer, which furnishes a further guide, was much the same as at present. By the same statute of Henry VIII. the common servant of husbandry, who was boarded and lodged at his master's house, received 16s. 8d. a year in money, with 4s. for his clothes; while the wages of the out-door labourer, supposing his work constant, would have been 57. a year. Among ourselves, on an average of different counties, the labourer's wages are 251. to 30%. a year, supposing his work constant. The farm servant, unless in the neighbourhood of large towns, receives about 67., or from that to 81. Where meat and drink was allowed it was calculated at 2d. a day, or 1s. 2d. a week. In Average wages of CH. I. months they were allowed to work by the piece, and might earn considerably more;* so that, in fact (and this was the rate at which their wages were usually estimated), the day labourer, if in full employment, received on an average fouragricultu pence a day for the whole year. Allowing a ral labour- deduction of one day in a fortnight for a saint's day or a holiday, he received, therefore, steadily and regularly, if well conducted, an equivalent of something near to twenty shillings a week, the wages at present paid in English colonies: and this is far from being a full account of his advantages. Except in rare instances, the agricultural labourer held land in connexion with ers fourpence a day. vantages of his house, while in most parishes, if not in Other ad- all, there were large ranges of common and the labour- unenclosed forest land, which furnished his fuel ing classes. to him gratis, where pigs might range, and ducks and geese; where, if he could afford a cow, he was in no danger of being unable to feed it; and so important was this privilege considered, that when the commons began to be largely enclosed, parliament insisted that the working man should not be without some piece of ground on which he could employ his own and his family's industry.† paid 8d. a day.—Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII. the household of the Earl of |