A chief servant in husbandry, which can eire (plough), sow,
    mow, thresh, make a rick, thatch and hedge, and can kill
    and dress a hog, sheep, and calf, by the year 40s., and 6s.
    for his livery.

  A common servant in husbandry, which can mow, sow, thresh,
    and load a cart, and cannot expertly make a rick, hedge, and
    thatch, and cannot kill and dress a hog, sheep, or calf, by
    the year 33s. 4d., and 5s. for his livery.

  A mean servant in husbandry, which can drive the plough, pitch
    The cart, and thresh, and cannot expertly sow, mow, thresh,
    and load a cart, nor make a rick, nor thatch, by the year 24s.,
    and 5s. for his livery.

The chief shepherd is only to receive 20s. and 5s. for his livery; but this must be an error, as in the statutes 6 Hen.  VIII, c. 3, and 23 Hen.  VI, c. 12, he was placed next the bailiff as we should expect.

These wages were evidently ‘with diet’, and show a considerable advance on those fixed by 6 Hen.  VIII, c. 3.[247] By the day the ordinary labourer was to have 6d. in winter, 7d. in summer, and 8d. to 10d. in harvest time, ‘finding himself.’  A mower with meat earned 5d., without meat 10d. a day; a man reaper with meat 4d., without 8d.; a woman reaper 3d., and 6d.

As the price of corn and meat was three times what it had been in the fifteenth century, and the labourers’ wages, taking into consideration his harvest pay, not quite double, the Rutland magistrates hardly observed the spirit of the Act.  Rutland, moreover, judging by the assessments of the time, was a county where agriculture was very flourishing; and thirty years after we find in Yorkshire that the winter wages of the labourer were 4d. and the summer 5d. a day:  that is, he had little more wages than in the fifteenth century, with provisions risen threefold.  At Chester at the same date his day’s wages were to be 4d. all the year round.[248] In 1610 the Rutland magistrates at Oakham[249] decreed that an ordinary labourer was to have 6d. a day in winter and 7d. in summer, the same wages as in 1564, yet wheat in that year averaged 32s. 7d. a quarter.  A bailiff by the year was now advanced to 52s., a manservant of the best sort, equal no doubt to the chief servant in husbandry, to 50s., a ‘common servant’ to 40s., and a ‘mean servant’ to 29s., but all without livery.  At Chelmsford, in 1651, there was a very different rate fixed, the ordinary labourer getting from 1s. to 1s. 2d. a day; but this seems to have been exceptional, as at Warwick in 1684 he was only to have 8d., and as late as 1725 in Lancashire 9d. to 10d. a day.[250] In 1682, by the Bury St. Edmunds assessment, a common labourer got 10d. a day in winter and 1s. in summer, and a reaper in harvest 1s. 8d.  By the year a bailiff was paid L6, a carter L5, and a common servant L3 10s., of course with food.[251] These figures clearly prove that the wages fixed by the magistrates were often terribly inadequate, though it must be said in their defence that the great rise in prices probably struck them as abnormal and not likely to last.  It should be remembered, too, that besides his wages the labourer and his family had often bye industries such as weaving to fall back upon, and in most parts of England still a piece of common land to help him.