The Menagier divides his servants and workmen into three classes—­first, those engaged by the day or by the season for special work, such as porters and carriers, reapers, winnowers, coopers, and so on; secondly, those engaged on piecework, such as tailors, furriers, bakers, and shoemakers, hired by medieval households of some wealth to make what was needed from raw material purchased at fairs or in the shops of the city; and thirdly, the ordinary domestic servants, who were hired by the year and lived in their master’s house; ‘and of all these,’ he says, ’there is none who does not gladly seek work and a master’.

[Footnote G:  The Beguines were a sort of religious order, or, more correctly, a lay sisterhood, standing half-way between the lay and the monastic life, and somewhat analogous to the Franciscan Tertiaries, or Third Order.]

He gives an amusing account, evidently based upon bitter experience, of the wiles of the hired workman.  He says that they are commonly lazy, rough, quick at ‘answering back’, arrogant (except on payday) and ready to break into insults if unsatisfied with their pay.  He warns his wife to bid Master John always to take the peaceable ones and always to bargain with them beforehand as to the pay for which they will do the work.

For know that most often they do not want to bargain, but they want to get to work without any bargain having been made and they say gently, ’Milord, it is nothing—­there is no need—­you will pay me well and I shall be content with what you think fit.’  And if Master John take them thus, when the work is finished they will say, ’Sir, there was more to do than I thought, there was this and that to do, and here and there,’ and they will not take what is given them and will break out into shouting and angry words ... and will spread abroad evil report concerning you, which is worst of all.[13]

We know from the various ordinances fixing wages from the time of the Black Death onwards, that labour troubles were acute in France as well as in England at the end of the fourteenth century; and the Menagier’s advice throws an interesting sidelight on the situation.

It is, however, in his observations upon the engagement and management of maidservants that the wisdom of the serpent is most apparent.  Incidentally he gives an account of how servants were hired in fourteenth-century Paris, which shows that the registry office and the character are by no means modern phenomena.  There were recommanderesses—­women holding what we should call registry offices—­in Paris at this time, and an ordinance of 1351 (fixing wages after the Black Death) allows them to take 1s. 6d. for placing a chambermaid and 2s. for a nurse.  A servant maid’s wage at this time was 30s. a year and her shoes.  The Menagier counsels his wife thus on the delicate subject of interviewing and engaging her domestic chambermaids and serving men: