finding lodging for himself and his family--as the labourer of the
nineteenth century can for a shilling. 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 6th of Henry VIII. it was enacted
that master carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tylers, plumbers, glaziers,
joiners, and other employers of such 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.[30] In the
harvest months they were allowed to work by the piece, and might earn
considerably more;[31] 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 fourpence a day for the whole year.
Allowing a 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 connection with his house, while in most parishes, if not in all,
there were large ranges of common and unenclosed forest land, which
furnished his fuel 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.[32] By the 7th of the 31st of Elizabeth, it
was ordered that no cottage should be built for residence without four
acres of land at lowest being attached to it for the sole use of the
occupants of such cottage.