Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/376

 Another act, cap. 22, settled servants' wages, and that at a rate which it would not be wise to mention to modern economists, unless we presume there was a handsome margin for perquisites; the wages, for instance, of a bailiff are 26s. 8d. a year; and those of the agricultural labourer 4d. or 3d. a day according to the season, his meat and drink being assumed to be worth 2d. or 1½d. a day: perhaps the proportion was not so bad. Most of the other acts of 1495 are what we should call private acts; the exceptions dealing with dishonesty in tradesmen, sheriffs, officers and jurors.

The acts of 1497 are few and not important; cap. 3 repeals the wages act of the session of 1495; cap. 6 relieves the merchant adventurers of England from the fines imposed by the merchant adventurers of London, who claimed, under colour of a fraternity of S. Thomas of Canterbury, to tax them for dealing in foreign marts: the most significant acts concern the money grants.

This brings us to the last parliament, that of 1504. This assembly passed forty statutes, some of them comprehensive and historical enough, as cap. 34, which enumerates with names and dates the successive revolts and conspiracies which had been visited with attainder; others are acts of reconciliation and restoration. The more important statutes I can only name now; cap. 14 is on maintenance and livery, increasing penalties and extending the power of the Star Chamber; cap. 15 is on Uses, a step in the growth of the doctrine afterwards fully enunciated in the statute of Henry VIII; cap. 27 settles the custom on wool taken at Calais for the payment of the garrison, to the amount of £10,022 4s. 8d. for the next sixteen years.

Other statutes are interesting mainly in relation to details of trade and to minute points of legal proceedings, and do in their particulars throw light on a few social questions on which light is much needed. Still, on the whole, the survey of the legislation of the reign does not much impress us; in spite of the one or two really important notes we have marked, there is no trace of a grand or constructive genius such as might be looked for in the opening of a new