Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/364

 352 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE between 1450 and 1500. l Animal food, formerly the ordinary diet of the people, became by degrees an article of luxury. In the fifteenth century the wages for domestic service kept pace with those of the labourers. For instance, at the Castle of Dohan, in Saxony, the stable- man received, besides board and lodgings, nine florins yearly ; the donkey-driver seven florins and a half ; the dairymaid three florins and twelve to eighteen groschen, and this at a time when a fat ox could be bought for three to four florins. In Dresden the wages of a cook 1 A similar condition of things existed in England, France, and Italy. The labouring classes were much better off at the close of the fifteenth century than they are to-day in any country in Europe. See Sismondi, Histoire des Bepubliques italiennes, chap. xci. ; Histoire de Bertrand du Guesclin et de son epoque (Paris, 1876) ; see Luce, chap. hi. In speaking of the English labouring classes at the commencement of the fourteenth century Chancellor Fortescue says, ' They have abundant nourishment of both flesh and fish, and wear good woollen clothing. Their houses are well furnished and their tools are of the best.' Under Henry VIII. an Act of Parliament in the interest of the poor refers to four kinds of meat ; but the laws dating from the reign of Elizabeth are proof of the miserable condition of the poor, and pauperism is officially recognised. See Hallam, Europe during the Period of the Middle Ages, Part II. ch. ix. ; Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reform, p. 471. James C. Thorold Rogers, the most important modern English writer on political economy, says in his History of Agriculture and Prices, vol. iv. p. 23 (Oxford, 1882) : 'The fifteenth century and the early years of the sixteenth were the Golden Age of the English husbandman, the artisan, and the labourer.' At p. 100 he says : ' The fifteenth century was a period in which wealth was very generally distributed, for wages were relatively high, agricultural produce was cheap, and land was valued as a rule at twenty years' purchase.' Later, on the contrary : ' There is visible a great decline in the style of living. Before the Reformation wine was abundant, cheap, and freely used. Afterwards it became an occasional luxury. The enjoyments of the middle class were stinted, and even those of the more wealthy were few. It would be a long task to illustrate this in detail, but my reader will find, from the change in values, to be com- mented on hereafter in particular, that there was a great contrast between the plenty of the fifteenth and the scarcity of the sixteenth century ' (pp. 137-138).