The Reign of Henry the Eighth Part 23

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 5 a year. Among ourselves, on an average of different counties, the labourer's wages are 25 to 30 a year, supposing his work constant. The farm servant, unless in the neighbourhood of large towns, receives about 6, or from that to 8.

Where meat and drink was allowed it was calculated at 2d. a day, or 1s. 2d.

a week. In the household of the Earl of Northumberland the allowance was 2-1/2d. Here, again, we observe an approach to modern proportions. The estimated cost of the board and lodging of a man servant in an English gentleman's family is now about 25 a year.

[31] Mowers, for instance, were paid 8d. a day.--_Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII._

[32] In 1581 the agricultural labourer, as he now exists, was only beginning to appear. "There be such in the realm," says Stafford, "as live only by the labour of their hands and the profit which they can make upon the commons."--STAFFORD'S _Discourse_. This novel cla.s.s had been called into being by the general raising of rents, and the wholesale evictions of the smaller tenantry which followed the Reformation. The progress of the causes which led to the change can be traced from the beginning of the century. Harrison says he knew old men who, comparing things present with things past, spoke of two things grown to be very grievous--to wit, "the enhancing of rents, and the daily oppression of copyholders, whose lords seek to bring their poor tenants almost into plain servitude and misery, daily devising new means, and seeking up all the old, how to cut them shorter and shorter; doubling, trebling, and now and then seven times increasing their fines; driving them also for every trifle to lose and forfeit their tenures, by whom the greatest part of the realm doth stand and is maintained, to the end they may fleece them yet more: which is a lamentable hearing."--_Description of England_, p.318.

[33] HALL, p. 581. Nor was the act in fact observed even in London itself, or towards workmen employed by the Government. In 1538, the Corporation of London, "for certain reasonable and necessary considerations," a.s.sessed the wages of common labourers at 7d. and 8d. the day, cla.s.sing them with carpenters and masons.--_Guildhall MSS. Journal_ 14, fol. 10. Labourers employed on Government works in the reign of Hen. VIII. never received less than 6d. a day, and frequently more.--_Chronicle of Calais_, p. 197, etc.

Sixpence a day is the usual sum entered as the wages of a day's labour in the innumerable lists of accounts in the Record Office. And 6d. a day again was the lowest pay of the common soldier, not only on exceptional service in the field, but when regularly employed in garrison duty. Those who doubt whether this was really the practice, may easily satisfy themselves by referring to the accounts of the expenses of Berwick, or of Dover, Deal, or Walmer Castles, to be found in the Record Office in great numbers. The daily wages of the soldier are among the very best criteria for determining the average value of the unskilled labourer's work. No government gives higher wages than it is compelled to give by the market rate.

[34] The wages of the day labourer in London, under this act of Elizabeth, were fixed at 9d. the day, and this, after the restoration of the depreciated currency.--_Guildhall MSS. Journal_ 18, fol. 157, etc.

[35] 4 Hen. VII. cap. 16. By the same parliament these provisions were extended to the rest of England. 4 Hen. VII. cap. 19.

[36] HALL, p. 863.

[37] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 22.

[38] There is a cause of difficulty "peculiar to England, the increase of pasture, by which sheep may be now said to devour men and unpeople not only villages but towns. For wherever it is found that the sheep yield a softer and richer wool than ordinary, there the n.o.bility and gentry, and even those holy men the abbots, not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good. They stop the course of agriculture.... One shepherd can look after a flock which will stock an extent of ground that would require many hands if it were ploughed and reaped. And this likewise in many places raises the price of corn. The price of wool is also risen ... since, though sheep cannot be called a monopoly, because they are not engrossed by one person; yet they are in so few hands, and these are so rich, that as they are not prest to sell them sooner than they have a mind to it, so they never do it till they have raised the price as high as possible."--Sir THOMAS MORE'S _Utopia_, Burnet's Translation, pp. 17-19.

[39] I find scattered among the _State Papers_ many loose memoranda, apparently of privy councillors, written on the backs of letters, or on such loose sc.r.a.ps as might be at hand. The following fragment on the present subject is curious. I do not recognise the hand:--

"Mem. That an act may be made that merchants shall employ their goods continually in the traffic of merchandise, and not in the purchasing of lands; and that craftsmen, also, shall continually use their crafts in cities and towns, and not leave the same and take farms in the country; and that no merchant shall hereafter purchase above 40 lands by the year."--_Cotton MS._ t.i.tus, b. i. 160.

[40] When the enclosing system was carried on with greatest activity and provoked insurrection. In expressing a sympathy with the social policy of the Tudor government, I have exposed myself to a charge of opposing the received and ascertained conclusions of political economy. I disclaim entirely an intention so foolish; but I believe that the science of political economy came into being with the state of things to which alone it is applicable. It ought to be evident that principles which answer admirably when a manufacturing system capable of indefinite expansion multiplies employment at home--when the soil of England is but a fraction of its empire, and the sea is a highway to emigration--would have produced far different effects, in a condition of things which habit had petrified into form, when manufactures could not provide work for one additional hand, when the first colony was yet unthought of, and where those who were thrown out of the occupation to which they had been bred could find no other. The tenants evicted, the labourers thrown out of employ, when the tillage lands were converted into pastures, had scarcely an alternative offered them except to beg, to rob, or to starve.

[41] _Lansdowne MS._ No. I. fol. 26.

[42] GIUSTINIANI'S _Letters from the Court of Henry VIII_.

[43] Ibid.

[44] 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 18.

[45] Under Hen. VI. the household expenses were 23,000 a year--Cf.

_Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council_, vol. vi. p. 35. The particulars of the expenses of the household of Hen. VIII. are in an MS. in the Rolls House. They cover the entire outlay except the personal expenditure of the king, and the sum total amounts to 14,365 10s. 7d. This would leave above 5000 a year for the privy purse, not, perhaps, sufficient to cover Henry's gambling extravagances in his early life.

Curious particulars of his excesses in this matter will be found in a publication wrongly called _The Privy Purse Expenses of Henry the Eighth_.

It is a diary of general payments, as much for purposes of state as for the king himself. The high play was confined for the most part to Christmas or other times of festivity, when the statutes against unlawful games were dispensed with for all cla.s.ses.

[46] 18 Hen. VI. cap. 11.

[47] 4 Hen. VII. cap. 12.

[48] During the quarter sessions time they were allowed 4s. a day.--Ric.

II. xii. 10.

[49] The rudeness of the furniture in English country houses has been dwelt upon with much emphasis by Hume and others. An authentic inventory of the goods and chattels in a parsonage in Kent proves that there has been much exaggeration in this matter. It is from an MS. in the Rolls House.

_The Inventory of the Goods and Catales of Richd. Master, Clerk, Parson of Aldington, being in his Parsonage on the 20th Day of April, in the 25th Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King Henry VIII._

_Plate_ Silver spoons, twelve.

_In the Hall_ Two tables and two forms.

Item, a painted cloth hanging at the upper part of the hall.

Item, a green banker hung on the bench in the hall.

Item, a laver of laten.

_In the Parlour_ A hanging of old red and green saye.

Item, a banker of woven carpet of divers colours.

Item, two cus.h.i.+ons.

Item, one table, two forms, one cupboard, one chair.

Item, two painted pictures and a picture of the names of kings of England pinned on the said hanging.

_In the Chamber on the North Side of the said Parlour_ A painted hanging.

Item, a bedstedyll with a feather bed, one bolster, two pillows, one blanket, one roulett of rough tapestry, a testner of green and red saye.

Item, two forms.

Item, one jack to set a basin on.

_In the Chamber over the Parlour_ Two bedsteads.

Item, another testner of painted cloth.

Item, a painted cloth.

Item, two forms.

_At the Stairs' Hed beside the Parson's Bedchamber_ One table, two trestylls, four beehives.

_In the Parson's Lodging-chamber_ A bedstedyll and a feather bed, two blankets, one payr of sheets, one coverlet of tapestry lined with canvas, one bolster, one pillow with a pillocote.

Item, one gown of violet cloth lined with red saye.

Item, a gown of black cloth, furred with lamb.

Item, two hoods of violet cloth, whereof one is lined with green sa.r.s.enet.

Item, one jerkyn of tawny camlet.

Item, a jerkyn of cloth furred with white.

Item, a jacket of cloth furred.

Item, a sheet to put in cloth.

Item, one press.

Item, a leather mail.

Item, one table, two forms, four chairs, two trestylls.

Item, a tester of painted cloth.

Item, a pair of hangings of green saye, with two pictures thereupon.

Item, one cupboard, two chests.

Item, a little flock bed, with a bolster and a coverlet.

Item, one cus.h.i.+on, one mantell, one towel, and, by estimation, a pound of wax candles.

Item, Greek books covered with boards, 42.

Item, small books covered with boards, 33.

Item, books covered with leather and parchment, 38.

_In the said Chest in the said Chamber_ Three pieces of red saye and green.

Item, one tyke for a bolster, two tykes for pillows.