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APPENDIX.

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THE following extracts are taken from lectures on “The Economic Interpretation of History,” delivered at Oxford in 1887-8 by Professor Thorold Rogers. The words are here given as a supplement to the note on p. 393 [CSOU: i.e., note 8].

Speaking of a law of 2 Henry VII., cap. 22, Professor Rogers says: “A schedule of wages is given, which, considering the cheapness of the time, is exceedingly liberal. At no time in English history have the earnings of labourers, interpreted by their purchasing power, been so considerable as those which this Act acknowledges. But the day is twelve hours, from March to September, from daybreak till night for the rest of the year. It is certain that fifty years before the labour day was one of eight hours only, and the wages paid were far in excess of what was the statutable rate at the time” (p. 34).

Again: “During all this time¹ the mass of English labourers, by no means claiming more than the reasonable reward for their services, were thriving under their guilds and trade unions, the peasants gradually acquiring land, and becoming the numerous small freeholders of the first half of the seventeenth century, the artisans the master hands in their craft, contractors in the same period for considerable works, planning the solid and handsome structures in what is known of the Perpendicular style, and withal working with their own hands on the buildings which their shrewdness and experience had planned. It is true that at the very best age of the workman a ruin was impending, the causes of which I have been able to collect and shall now proceed to expound” (p. 34).

He then draws out the extravagance of Henry VIII., and the accompanying dissolution of the monasteries, the confiscation of the guild panels by the Protector Somerset and the other unprincipled guardians of Edward VI., and the iniquity of the issue of base coinage. Of this last fact he writes, “The base money had driven the working classes to beggary, and England, once the most powerful of western states, was of little more account in the policy of Europe than a petty German princedom was.” “His (the labourer's) guild lands, the benefit societies of the Middle Ages, which systematically relieved destitution, were stolen by the greedy leader of the new aristocracy, he had suffered eighteen years' experience of a debased currency, prices rose 150 per cent., and the wages of labour were almost stationary” (p. 37).

Elizabeth indeed reformed the currency, but she introduced a new Statute of Labourers, which Professor Rogers styles infamous, and of which he thus speaks: – “In the Statute Book it is known as 5 Eliz., cap. 4. It began by repealing all the statutes which had regulated labour since 23 Edward III., over two centuries before. It then took all that was most stringent from the statutes which I have already referred to, and put them into a comprehensive enactment, which was hereafter to regulate, the relations of employer and labourer. I do not indeed believe that Elizabeth and her councillors intended to deal unjustly by the workmen; some indeed of the clauses of the Act are intended for the working man's protection, but the mischief of the Act was in the machinery, by which it would be carried out, and in the terribly depressed condition of the labourer. He was handed over to the mercy of his employer at a time when he was utterly incapable of resisting the grossest tyranny. The government of the day probably remembered the uprisings of Tyler and Cade, certainly that of Ket, and they determined to make use of an instrument, the justices in quarter sessions, who would be able to check any discontent, even the discontent of despair, and might be trusted, if necessary, to starve the people into submission. We shall see how completely success attended their efforts” (p. 38). After enumerating many hard provisions from the above statute, Professor Rogers, quotes from it that “the justices are to enquire periodically into the execution of the Act, and to revise their rates according to the cheapness or dearness of the necessaries of life” (p. 40). But “the justices in quarter sessions took no note, as the statute instructed them, of the cheapness or dearness of provisions. Their object was to get labour at starvation wages, and they did their best to effect their object. The law gave them the power, and provided no appeal from their decision” (p. 41). The first extant assessment of the justices (for the rate of wages) is of June 7, 1563. “Altogether I have found thirteen of these assessments between the years 1563 and 1725. I believe that they were discontinued during the eighteenth century, not because the law was neglected, but because the assessment had effectually done the work for which it was designed, the, labourers' wages being now reduced to a bare subsistence. The object of this celebrated or infamous statute was threefold – (1) to break up the combinations of labourers, (2) to supply the adequate machinery of control, and (3) by limiting the light of apprenticeship, to make the peasant labourer the residuum of all other labour, or, in other words, to forcibly increase the supply” (p. 40).

Of the effect of the statute of Elizabeth upon the comfort of the labourer he says, “while the Act of 1495 enabled an artisan, in prices of that time, to procure a certain amount of food and drink with a fortnight's labour, at the rates of the statute, and an agricultural labourer to obtain the same with three weeks' labour, the justices' assessment rarely enabled the peasant to obtain the same quantities with a whole year's labour, and would sometimes have required two years' incessant labour. For it must be remembered that though the law pressed hardly on the artisan, it was intended to press far more hardly on the peasant, cheap agricultural labour, in the absence of any notable, as I shall show hereafter, any possible improvement in the art of agriculture, being, as was seen clearly enough, the best means by which, concurrently with a high price of produce, agricultural rents could be raised. . . . It is true that in some particulars the position of the peasant was not so bad as it now is. He was rarely without his patch of land. . . . Again, beyond the plot which he held in severalty, the peasant had more or less extensive rights of common. The common, even if it did not afford herbage for his cow, was a run for his poultry, and assured him the occasional fowl in the pot. . . . These advantages, which one discovers by studying the social legislation and habits of the time, existed to an equal or a greater extent in the time of the first Tudor sovereign. It is the gradual deprivation of them, without any compensation beyond the concession of a bare subsistence, which marks the economical history of the poor as the centuries pass on. It is, I think, most probable that the practice of the quarter sessions assessment ceased in the south of England at the close of the seventeenth century, and in the north at the beginning of the eighteenth. It would be strange if the practice was continued, while agricultural history, now getting full of comments on the situation, is entirely silent on the subject. But in fact the justices had done their work. They had made low wages, famine wages, traditional, and these wages, insufficient by themselves, were supplemented from the poor rate” (pp. 41-43).

“Legislation for the relief of the poor, at first by voluntary contributions, began with the year 1541. Between this date and 1601 inclusive, when the first and permanent statute of Elizabeth was enacted, there were twelve Acts of Parliament passed with the distinct object of providing relief against destitution” (p. 241).

“The fact that laws for the relief of the poor were enacted after the Dissolution of the monasteries has led some writers to connect them with this event. Others have pointed out, perhaps to relieve the Reformation from these odious features, that poverty, for which the state was anxious, existed before this action of Henry. I dare say that the Dissolution aggravated the evil. It is possible that sheep-farming, rent raising, and attempts to aggregate farms may have increased the mischief. But I am entirely convinced that the four causes given above are amply sufficient to account for it” (p. 243). The four causes are:– (1) debased coinage; (2) confiscation of the guild lands; (3) the inevitable rise in prices; (4) Elizabeth's Statute of Labourers.

“The necessity of the English Poor Law can be traced distinctively back to the crimes of rulers and their agents. I do not say that if those four causes which I have recounted had been absent, destitution would never have ensued; but I am certain that it would have been more manageable, the police which legal relief must in the end administer would have been less harsh, and the relief itself more gently given and more gratefully received. In a vague way the poor know that they have been robbed by the great in past time and are stinted now” (p. 244). Lastly, in contrast to all this, Professor Rogers gives a calm judgment upon the state of things in the Middle Ages. “In the age which I have attempted to describe,” he says, “and in describing which I have accumulated and condensed a vast mass of unquestionable facts, the rate of production was small, the conditions of health unsatisfactory; and the duration of life short. But, on the whole, there were none of those extremes of poverty and wealth which have excited the astonishment of philanthropists, and are now exciting the indignation of workmen. The age, it is true had its discontents, and these discontents were expressed forcibly and in a startling manner. But of poverty which perishes unheeded, of a willingness to do honest work and a lack of opportunity, there was little or none. The essence of life in England during the days of the Plantagenets and Tudors was that everyone knew his neighbour, and that everyone was his brother's keeper. My studies lead me to conclude that, though there was hardship in this life the hardship was a common lot, and that there was hope, more hope than superficial historians have conceived possible, and perhaps more variety than there is in the peasant's lot in our time” (p. 63).