Page:Wiltshire, Extracted from Domesday Book.djvu/21

[ xv ] greatly beyond my etimation of it, and greatly beyond the truth. I mut, however, oberve that the breed of cattle is coniderably enlarged, and, probably, a fat ox, formerly, might not have half the quantity of meat, as a common ox now has. But even this reduction will not be ufficiently low for my etimate, though it may, in ome degree, render it probable, when we advert that meat has been advanced in price, in a greater proportion than any other article.

If any circumtance could tend to bring this ubject to a demontration, it would be the price of labour, which, we may naturally uppoe, mut have been at all times ufficient for the daily upport of the labourer. But as labourers for hire were unknown at the time of the urvey; we mut advance omewhat forward in the Englih Hitory, before we can make any dicovery of that nature. The earliet authentick account, that I have been able to meet with, of the ettled price of labour, is to be een in Fleetwood's Chronicon precioum, p. 129; where, in the year 1351, the daily pay of a labourer appears to have been legally fixed at one penny and a halfpenny, or nine pence by the week, which, regulated by our preent tandard, would be one hiilling and ten pence. Now, I think a fair concluion may be made, that in the pace of near 300 years, the price