Part 12 (1/2)

A mean servant in husbandry, which can drive the plough, pitch The cart, and thresh, and cannot expertly sow, mow, thresh, and load a cart, nor make a rick, nor thatch, by the year 24s., and 5s. for his livery.

The chief shepherd is only to receive 20s. and 5s. for his livery; but this must be an error, as in the statutes 6 Hen. VIII, c. 3, and 23 Hen. VI, c. 12, he was placed next the bailiff as we should expect.

These wages were evidently 'with diet', and show a considerable advance on those fixed by 6 Hen. VIII, c. 3.[247] By the day the ordinary labourer was to have 6d. in winter, 7d. in summer, and 8d. to 10d. in harvest time, 'finding himself.' A mower with meat earned 5d., without meat 10d. a day; a man reaper with meat 4d., without 8d.; a woman reaper 3d., and 6d.

As the price of corn and meat was three times what it had been in the fifteenth century, and the labourers' wages, taking into consideration his harvest pay, not quite double, the Rutland magistrates hardly observed the spirit of the Act. Rutland, moreover, judging by the a.s.sessments of the time, was a county where agriculture was very flouris.h.i.+ng; and thirty years after we find in Yorks.h.i.+re that the winter wages of the labourer were 4d. and the summer 5d. 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.[248] In 1610 the Rutland magistrates at Oakham[249] decreed that an ordinary labourer was to have 6d. a day in winter and 7d. in summer, the same wages as in 1564, yet wheat in that year averaged 32s. 7d. a quarter. A bailiff by the year was now advanced to 52s., a manservant of the best sort, equal no doubt to the chief servant in husbandry, to 50s., a 'common servant'

to 40s., and a 'mean servant' to 29s., but all without livery. At Chelmsford, in 1651, there was a very different rate fixed, the ordinary labourer getting from 1s. to 1s. 2d. a day; but this seems to have been exceptional, as at Warwick in 1684 he was only to have 8d., and as late as 1725 in Lancas.h.i.+re 9d. to 10d. a day.[250] In 1682, by the Bury St. Edmunds a.s.sessment, a common labourer got 10d. a day in winter and 1s. in summer, and a reaper in harvest 1s. 8d. By the year a bailiff was paid 6, a carter 5, and a common servant 3 10s., of course with food.[251] 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[238] _Description of Britain_, iii. 2.

[239] _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xvii. 235.

[240] Moryson, _Itinerary_ (ed. 1617), iii. 179.

[241] _Archaeologia_ xiii. 371.

[242] In 1650 it was much cultivated about London.

[243] _Collections on Husbandry and Trade_, ii. 468.

[244] _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, p. 398.

[245] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, ii. 38. The Statute of Labourers of 1351 made the same effort, see p. 43.

[246] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, iv. 120; and _Work and Wages_, p. 389.

[247] See above.

[248] Thorold Rogers, _Work and Wages_, pp. 390-1.

[249] _Archaeologia_, xi. 200.

[250] Thorold Rogers, _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, p. 396.

[251] Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 215. It is strange to find food reckoned so highly; if the common labourer at Hawsted received his food, he was only paid 5d. 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?

CHAPTER XI

1600-1700

CLOVER AND TURNIPS.--GREAT RISE IN PRICES. MORE ENCLOSURE.--A FARMING CALENDAR

The seventeenth century was one of considerable progress in English agriculture. The decay of common-field farming was enabling individual enterprise to have its way. The population was rapidly growing; by 1688 the returns of the hearth tax prove that the northern counties were nearly as thickly populated as the southern, and prices during the first half were continually rising, though after that they remained almost stationary, since the effect of the influx of precious metals from the New World was exhausted. In the first half of the century John Smyth ascribes the advance of rents to the Castilian voyages opening the New World, whereby such floods of treasure have flowed into Europe that the rates of Christendom are raised near twentyfold'.

But the greatest agricultural event of the century was the introduction of clover and the encouragement of turnips as grown in Holland, by Sir Richard Weston, about 1645. No doubt the turnip was already well known in England. Tusser and Fitzherbert both mention it, apparently as a garden root only; but Gerard in his _Herbal_, 1597, says it grew in fields 'and divers vineyards or hoppe gardens in most places of England', which certainly points to an effort having been made generally to use it as a field crop whenever an enclosed s.p.a.ce gave it some protection from the depredations of the common herds.

However, its cultivation must have declined, as long after this it was regarded as a novelty as a field crop in most parts of England.[252]

In Holland it had been used in the field universally, and this use with that of 'great', as it was called, or broad clover, Weston pressed on the English farmer. But their progress was wofully slow. At Hawsted in Suffolk clover and turnips were first sown about 1700, and the eastern portion of England was far ahead of the north and west; as late as 1772 Arthur Young wrote that 'sainfoin, cabbages, potatoes, and carrots are not common crops in England; I do not imagine above half or at most two-thirds of the nation cultivate clover.'[253] Yet their introduction must have been of the greatest benefit to the farmer and the public; his stock of hay was increased, he could utilize his fallows, and keep a much larger head of stock through the winter, who would give him a greater quant.i.ty of manure. Every one where turnips were grown could now have fresh meat during the winter.