STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685 .

but there were more favoured districts. In the same year,1G85, a gentleman of Devonshire, named Richard Dunning,published a small tract, in which he described the condition. of the poor of that county. That he understood his subjectwell it is impossible to doubt | for a few months later his workwas reprinted, and was, by the magistrates assembled inquarter sessions at Exeter, strongly recommended to theattention of all parochial officers. According to him, thewages of the Devonshire peasant were, without food, aboutfive shillings a week.*

Still better was the condition of the labourer in the neigh-bourhood of Bury St. Edmund’s. The magistrates of Suffolkmet there in the spring of 1682 to fix a rate of wages, andresolved that, where the labourer was not boarded, heshould have five shillings a week in winter, and six insummer.**

In 1661 the justices at Chelmsford had fixed the wages ofthe Essex labourer, who was not boarded, at six shillings inwinter and seven in summer. This seems to have been thehighest remuneration given in the kingdom for agriculturallabour between the Restoration and the Revolution; and itis to be observed that, in the year in which this order wasmade, the necessaries of life were immoderately dear. Wheatwas at seventy shillings the quarter, which would even now beconsidered as almost a famine price.**’

These facts are in perfect accordance with another factwhich seems to deserve consideration. It is evident that, ina country where no man can be compelled to become a soldier,the ranks of an army cannot be filled if the government offersmuch less than the wages of common rustic labour. At

* Plain and easy Method showing how the Office of Overseer of thePoor may be managed, by Richard Dunning; 1st edition, 1685; 2d edi-tion. 1686.

** Cullum’s History of Hawsted.

*•* Ruggles on the Poor.