Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen ElizabethReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen Elizabeth
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
There were many lifestyle possibilities in the nation:
independently wealthy with 40s. yearly or goods worth 200s.;
gentleman, that is one who owned land or was in a profession
such as an attorney, physician, priest or who was a university
graduate, government official, or a military officer; employment
in agriculture, arts, sciences; employment in households and
offices of noblemen and gentlemen; independent farmers with
their own farm; fisherman or mariner on the sea or apprentice of
such; employment by carriers of grain into cities, by market
towns, for digging, seeking, finding, getting, melting, fining,
working, trying, making of any silver, tin, lead, iron, copper,
stone, coal; glassmaker.
Typical wages in the country were: fieldworkers 2-3d. a day,
ploughmen 1s. a week with board, shepherd 6d. a week and board,
his boy 2 1/2 d., hedgers 6d. a day, threshers 3-7d. depending
on the grain, thatching for five days 2d., master mason or
carpenter or joiner 4d. a day and food or 8d. without food, a
smith 2d. a day with food, a bricklayer 2 1/2 d. a day with
food, a shoemaker 2d. a day with food. These people lived
primarily on food from his own ground.
There was typical work for each month of the year in the country:
January - ditching and hedging after the frost broke, February -
catch moles in the meadows, March - protect the sheep from
prowling dogs, April - put up hop poles, sell bark to the tanner
before the timber is felled, fell elm and ash for carts and
ploughs, fell hazel for forks, fell sallow for rakes, fell horn
for flails, May - weed and hire children to pick up stones from
the fallow land, June - wash and shear the sheep, July - hay
harvest, August - wheat harvest, September and October - gather
the fruit, sell the wool from the summer shearing, stack logs
for winter, buy salt fish for Lent in the town and lay it up to
dry, November - have the chimneys swept before winter, thresh
grain in the barn, December - grind tools, repair yokes, forks,
and farm implements, cover strawberry and flower beds with straw
to protect them from the cold, split kindling wood with beetle
and wedge, tan their leather, make leather jugs, make baskets for
catching fish, and carve wood spoons, plates, and bowls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account