[33] HALL, p. 581.  Nor was the act in fact observed even in London itself, or towards workmen employed by the Government.  In 1538, the Corporation of London, “for certain reasonable and necessary considerations,” assessed the wages of common labourers at 7d. and 8d. the day, classing them with carpenters and masons.—­Guildhall MSS.  Journal 14, fol. 10.  Labourers employed on Government works in the reign of Hen.  VIII. never received less than 6d. a day, and frequently more.—­Chronicle of Calais, p. 197, etc.  Sixpence a day is the usual sum entered as the wages of a day’s labour in the innumerable lists of accounts in the Record Office.  And 6d. a day again was the lowest pay of the common soldier, not only on exceptional service in the field, but when regularly employed in garrison duty.  Those who doubt whether this was really the practice, may easily satisfy themselves by referring to the accounts of the expenses of Berwick, or of Dover, Deal, or Walmer Castles, to be found in the Record Office in great numbers.  The daily wages of the soldier are among the very best criteria for determining the average value of the unskilled labourer’s work.  No government gives higher wages than it is compelled to give by the market rate.

[34] The wages of the day labourer in London, under this act of Elizabeth, were fixed at 9d. the day, and this, after the restoration of the depreciated currency.—­Guildhall MSS.  Journal 18, fol. 157, etc.

[35] 4 Hen.  VII. cap. 16.  By the same parliament these provisions were extended to the rest of England. 4 Hen.  VII. cap. 19.

[36] HALL, p. 863.

[37] 27 Hen.  VIII. cap. 22.

[38] There is a cause of difficulty “peculiar to England, the increase of pasture, by which sheep may be now said to devour men and unpeople not only villages but towns.  For wherever it is found that the sheep yield a softer and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men the abbots, not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good.  They stop the course of agriculture....  One shepherd can look after a flock which will stock an extent of ground that would require many hands if it were ploughed and reaped.  And this likewise in many places raises the price of corn.  The price of wool is also risen ... since, though sheep cannot be called a monopoly, because they are not engrossed by one person; yet they are in so few hands, and these are so rich, that as they are not prest to sell them sooner than they have a mind to it, so they never do it till they have raised the price as high as possible.”—­Sir THOMAS MORE’S Utopia, Burnet’s Translation, pp. 17-19.

[39] I find scattered among the State Papers many loose memoranda, apparently of privy councillors, written on the backs of letters, or on such loose scraps as might be at hand.  The following fragment on the present subject is curious.  I do not recognise the hand:—­