Page:Wiltshire, Extracted from Domesday Book.djvu/22

[ xvi ] price of labour might be doubled, and, conequently, that labour might have been worth, at the time of the urvey, eleven pence of our money by the week.

If we can thus dicover the proportion between the price of labour at that period, and at the preent, we may, probably, not be far from olving the quetion. I hall take it for granted, that the general price of labour is now even hillings a week, and therefore, as eleven pence is to even hillings, o will be the difference of the value of money, between the time of the urvey, and the preent period. It will appear, by this calculation, that the difference is omething more than even and a half, and that we mull multiply the valuations in Domeday by twenty-two and a half (the pounds in Domeday being equal in weight to three terling pounds) before we can pretend to form any judgment of the value affixed to the etates decribed in that book.

I am aware, that the value, thus multiplied, will be far from being adequate to the preent rents of the etates; though, perhaps, if no improvements of any kind had been made in hubandry, and the original erroneous mode of cultivation had been implicitly continued, it might not have been greatly wide of the truth,