§ 12. THE RISE IN RENT—The farmer himself, however, was heavily taxed for his land, and though the high prices he got for his corn up to the repeal of the corn laws enabled him to pay it, his rent was certainly at a very high figure. The rise had begun after the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century, though in that period the rise was slow. But Latimer asserts that his father only paid £3 or £4 for a holding which in the next generation was rented at £16, the increased figure being only partially accounted for by the general rise in prices. In the seventeenth century, according to King, rents were more than doubled, and the sixpence per acre of mediæval times must have seemed almost mythical. The Belvoir estate, the property of the Dukes of Rutland, who are spoken of as indulgent landlords, forms a good example of the rise of rent in the two following centuries. In 1692 land is found rented at 3_s._ 9⁠¼_d._ an acre, and a little {119} later at 4_s._ 1⁠½_d._ By the year 1799 the same land had risen to 19_s._ 3⁠¾_d._, with a further rise in 1812 to 25_s._ 8⁠¾_d._ In 1830 it was at 25_s._ 1⁠¾_d._, but in 1850 had risen to 38_s._ 8_d._, that is about ten times the seventeenth century rent. This enormous rise was not by any means due solely to increase of skill in agricultural industry, but was largely derived from increased economy in production, or, in other words, from the oppression and degradation of the agricultural labourer. § 13. THE FALL IN WAGES—This degradation was brought about by the system of assessment[37] of wages which we noticed in Elizabeth’s reign, a system by which the labourer was forced by law to accept the wages which the justices (generally the landed proprietors, his employers) arranged to give him. It is not the business of an historian to make charges against a class, but to put facts in their due perspective. Therefore without comment upon the action of the justices in this matter I shall merely refer to one or two of these assessments and show their effect upon the condition of labour, especially of agricultural labour, which occupied more than one-third of the working classes. Speaking generally, we may quote Professor Rogers’ remark, that “if we suppose the ordinary labourer to get 3_s._ 6_d._ a week throughout the year, by adding his harvest allowance to his winter wages, it would have taken him more than forty weeks to earn the provisions which in 1495 he could have got with fifteen weeks’ labour, while the artisan would be obliged to have given thirty-two weeks’ work for the same result.” To give details, we may first quote, as an example, the Rutland magistrates’ assessment, in April 1610. The wages of an ordinary agricultural labourer {120} are put at 7_d._ a day from Easter to Michaelmas, and at 6_d._ from Michaelmas to Easter. Artisans get 10_d._ or 9_d._ in summer, and 8_d._ in winter. Now, the price of food was 75 per cent. dearer than in 1564, while the rate of