Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/632

 624 SHORT NOTICES October (pp. 363, 583). The real value of the accounts lies in the light thrown upon the daily life of a middle-class household during the years 1673-8. Not much can be discovered about Swarthmoor Hall itself, except that the chimney money returns show that it had thirteen hearths, that it was heated by peat fires — coal was used only for a forge on account of its price, £28 to £32 a ton (pp. 30, 277, 323)— and that it was lighted by candles costing about id. a pound. As for the inmates of the house, Margaret Fox and her three maiden daughters, it is clear that they were not content with the grey homespun in which Quaker ladies are usually depicted. They wore white kersey, Scotch cloth, black and red ferret, red petticoats, silk, ribbons of every hue, cotton stockings (at 3s. 6d. a pair) and woollen stockings, variously dyed sky-colour, sea-green, &c, white cotton gloves and ' vizard masks '. One lady at least possessed a pocket looking-glass, while all seem to have had their own watches. There is much to illustrate the extent to which female labour was employed. One Peggy Dodgson performed most of the tasks of the household and the farm. Among her many occupations were washing, knitting and spinning, filling and scaling manure (that is, spreading it over the ground), harrowing and dressing meadows, working hay, raking bracken, and spreading peat. . Her wages average about a penny a day. Other wages for a year for women are £2, £1, 10s. 6d., and 2s., though the absence of particulars of their additional allowances in food, clothes, &c, renders these figures deceptive (pp. 3, 57, 73, 347). But it is obvious that both men and women were paid in this remote district at a far lower rate than that of the southern counties. Finally the editor and his helpers can be congratulated on the accurate transcription and valuable notes which they have supplied. Very few slips have been noticed, but 4 pounds of sweet butter can scarcely have cost 8s. Sd. (p. 85), since the usual price was about 2§d. a pound. Hearth-money did not exist as a tax from the Conquest, nor was it legalized in 1674 (p. 530) — the editor has forgotten that the reign of Charles II began legally in 1649. It is regrettable that the glossary, which is mentioned (p. 519), is not to be found in this volume. G. D. The reprint of the first volume of Dr. Wolfgang Michael's Englische Geschichte im achtzehnten Jahrhundert 1 (Berlin: Kothschild, 1921) is scrupulously described on the title-page as a Titel-Ausgabe, but an appendix of ten pages has been added after the index, in which are given five miscel- laneous illustrative extracts from manuscripts. Three of them are diplo- matic papers dealing with the court of George I, a fourth an extract from a pasquinade against him, and the fifth the preliminary instructions of Craggs to Byng before he set out to find the Spanish fleet in 1718. I. The work of Professor Bernard Moses, Spain's Declining Power in South America, 1730-1806 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1919), treats in rather episodical fashion the attempt made by the Bourbon government of Spain to establish more effective control in South America, an attempt which met with dubious success, owing to the development of the South American communities, their uneasiness under irksome i See p. 276 above.