File:The history of England, from the accession of James the Second (1914) (14764036672).jpg

Identifier: histofengfromthe01macauoft (find matches)
Title: The history of England, from the accession of James the Second
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron, 1800-1859 Firth, C. H. (Charles Harding), 1857-1936
Subjects: Great Britain -- History James II, 1685-1688 Great Britain -- History William and Mary, 1689-1702
Publisher: London : Macmillan
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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tly exact for our purpose. Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries great weight, informsus that a labourer was by no means in the lowest state who receivedAgricultural ^or a days work fourpence with food, or eightpence withoutwages food. Four shillings a week therefore were, according to Pettys calculation, fair agricultural wages.1 That this calculation was not remote from the truth we have abun-dant proof. About the beginning of the year 1685 the justices ofWarwickshire, in the exercise of a power entrusted to them by an Actof Elizabeth, fixed, at their quarter sessions, a scale of wages for thecounty, and notified that every employer who gave more than theauthorised sum, and every working man who received more, would beliable to punishment. The wages of the common agricultural labourer, 1 Pettys Political Arithmetic. Ill STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685 407 from March to September, were fixed at the precise amount men-tioned by Petty, namely four shillings a week without food. From
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ICTfJt ■ 1? It ///// . ch h dwv SIR GODFREY KNELLERFrom a mezzotint by J. Smith after a painting by Sir G. Kneller September to March the wages were to be only three and sixpencea week.1 1 Stat. 5 Eliz. c. 4.; Archreologia, vol. xi. 4o8 HISTORY OF ENGLAND chap, m But in that age, as in ours, the earnings of the peasant were verydifferent in different parts of the kingdom. The wages of Warwick-shire were probably about the average, and those of the counties nearthe Scottish border below it : but there were more favoured districts.In the same year, 1685, a gentleman of Devonshire, named RichardDunning, published a small tract, in which he described the condition ofthe poor of that county. That he understood his subject well it is im-possible to doubt; for a few months later his work was reprinted, andwas, by the magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, stronglyrecommended to the attention of all parochial officers. According tohim, the wages of the Devonshire peasant were,

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