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.
It will, perhaps, be supposed that such comparative prosperity of labour was the result of the condition of the market in which it was sold; that the demand for labour was large and the supply limited; and that the state of England in the sixteenth century was analogous to that of Australia or Canada at the present time. And so long as we confine our view to the question of wages alone, it is undoubted that legislation was in favour of the employer. The Wages Act of Henry VIII. was unpopular with the labourers, and was held to deprive them of an opportunity of making better terms for themselves.[1] But we shall fall into extreme
- ↑ 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,' assessed the wages of common labourers at 7d. and 8d. the day, classing them with carpenters and masons.—Guildhall MS. 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.—Chronicles of Calais, p. 197, &c. Sixpence a day is the usual
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.
