Randall Taylor wrote complacently in 1689 that in comparison with the French peasants, “Our English husbandmen are both better fed and taught, and the poorest people here have so much of brown Bread, and the Gospel, that by the Calculations of our Bills of Mortality it appears, that for so many years past but One of Four Thousand is starved.”[[100]]
The woman of the husbandman class was muscular and well nourished. Probably she had passed her girlhood in service on a farm, where hard work, largely in the open air, had sharpened her appetite for the abundant diet which characterised the English farmer’s housekeeping. After marriage, much of her work was still out of doors, cultivating her garden and tending pigs or cows, while her husband did his day’s work on neighbouring farms. Frugal and to the last degree laborious were her days, but food was still sufficient and her strength enabled her to bear healthy children and to suckle them. It was exactly this class of woman that the gentry chose as wet nurses for their babies. Their lives would seem incredibly hard to the modern suburban woman, but they had their reward in the respect and love of their families and in the sense of duties worthily fulfilled.
The more prosperous husbandmen often added to their households an apprentice child, but in other cases the holdings were too small to occupy even the family’s whole time.
At harvest in any case all the population of the village turned out to work; men, women, and children, not only those belonging to the class of husbandmen, but the tradesmen as well, did their bit in a work so urgent; for in those days each district depended on its own supply of corn, there being scarcely any means of transport.
Except during the harvest, wages were so low that a man who had a holding of his own was little tempted to work for them, though he might undertake some special and better-paid occupation, such as that of a shepherd. Pepys, describing a visit to Epsom, writes: “We found a shepherd and his little boy reading, far from any houses or sight of people, the Bible to him, I find he had been a servant in my Cozen Pepys’s house ... the most like one of the old patriarchs that ever I saw in my life ... he values his dog mightily, ... about eighteen score sheep in his flock, he hath four shillings a week the year round for keeping of them.”[[101]]
Probably this picturesque shepherd belonged to the class of husbandmen, for the wages paid are higher than those of a household servant. Four shillings a week comes to £10.8.0 by the year, whereas a Wiltshire wages assessment for 1685 provided that a servant who was a chief shepherd looking after 1,500 sheep or more was not to receive more than £5 by the year.[[102]] On the other hand, four shillings a week would not maintain completely the shepherd, his boy and a dog, not to speak of a wife and other children. Thus, while the shepherd tended his sheep, we may imagine his wife and children were cultivating their allotment.
The wages for the harvest work of women as well as men, were fixed by the Quarter Sessions.[[103]] References to their work may be found in account books and diaries. Thus Dame Nicholson notes: “Aug. 13, 1690, I began to sher ye barin croft about 11 o’clock, ther was Gordi Bar and his wife—also Miler’s son James and his sister Margit also a wife called Nieton—they sher 17 threv and 7 chivis.”[[104]]
Best gives a detailed account of the division of work between men and women on a Yorkshire farm: “Wee have allwayes one man, or else one of the ablest of the women, to abide on the mowe, besides those that goe with the waines.[[105]] The best sort of men-shearers have usually 8d. a day and are to meate themselves; the best sorte of women shearers have (most commonly) 6d. a day.[[106]] It is usuall in some places (wheare the furres of the landes are deepe worne with raines) to imploy women, with wain-rakes, to gather the corne out of the said hollow furres after that the sweath-rakes have done.[[107]] ... We use meanes allwayes to gett eyther 18 or else 24 pease pullers, which wee sette allways sixe on a lande, viz., a woman and a man, a woman and a man, a woman or boy and a man, etc., the weakest couple in the fore furre ... it is usuall in most places after they gette all pease pulled, or the last graine downe, to invite all the worke-folkes and wives (that helped them that harvest) to supper, and then have they puddinges, bacon, or boyled beefe, flesh or apple pyes, and then creame brought in platters, and every one a spoone; then after all they have hotte cakes and ale; some will cutte theire cake and putte into the creame and this feaste is called the creame-potte or creame-kitte ... wee send allwayes, the daye before wee leade, [pease] two of our boys, or a boy and one of our mayds with each of them a shorte mowe forke to turn them.”[[108]]
For thatching, Best continues: “Wee usually provide two women for helpes in this kinde, viz., one to drawe thacke, and the other to serve the thatcher; she that draweth thacke hath 3d. a day, and shee that serveth the thatcher 4d. a day, because shee also is to temper the morter, and to carry it up to the toppe of the howse.... Shee that draweth thatch shoulde always have dry wheate strawe ... whearewith to make her bandes for her bottles. She that serveth will usually carry up 4 bottles at a time, and sometimes but 3 if the thatch bee longe and very wette.”[[109]]
“Spreaders of mucke and molehills are (for the most parte) women, boyes and girles, the bigger and abler sorte of which have usually 3d. a day, and the lesser sorte of them 2d. a day.”[[110]] “Men that pull pease have 8d. women 6d. a day.”[[111]]