Note 211 — Chapter III · THE PEASANTRY (continued)

See below, pp. 277–279, and Hist. MSS. Com., Cd. 784, pp. 322–323. Presentment by the grand jury, Worcestershire, 1661, April 23: “We desire that servants' wages may be rated according to the statute, for we find the unreasonableness of servants' wages a great grievance, so that the servants are grown so proud and idle that the master cannot be known from the servant except it be because the servant wears better clothes than his master. We desire that the statute for setting poor men’s children to apprenticeship be more duly observed, for we find the usual course is that if any are apprenticed it is to some paltry trade, and when they have served their apprenticeship they are not able to live by their trades, whereby not being bred to labour they are not fit for husbandry. We therefore desire that such children may be set to husbandry for the benefit of tillage and the good of the Commonwealth.” See also Britannia Languens (1680) for remarks on the scarcity of labour even at the end of the seventeenth century.