If we accept the Assessments as representing the actual wages earned by the ordinary labourer we can estimate with approximate accuracy the total income of a labourer’s family, for we have defined the wage-earner as a person who depended wholly upon wages and excluded from this class families who possessed gardens. Taking a figure considerably higher than the one at which the Assessment averages work out, namely 5d. per day instead of 4d. per day, to be the actual earnings of a labouring man in addition to his meat and drink, and doubling that figure for the three months which include the hay and corn harvests, his average weekly earnings will amount to 3s. 2d. Except in exceptional circumstances his wife’s earnings would not amount to more than 1s. a week and her meat and drink. The more young children there were, the less often could the wife work for wages, and when not doing so her food as well as the children’s must be paid for out of the family income. In a family with three small children it is unlikely that the mother’s earnings were more than what would balance days lost by the father for holidays or illness, and the cost of his food on Sundays, but allowing for a small margin we may assume that 3s. 6d. was the weekly income of a labourer’s family, and that this sum must provide rent and clothing for the whole family and food for the mother and children. A careful investigation of the cost of living is necessary before we can test whether this amount was adequate for the family’s maintenance. There is no reason to suppose that a diet inferior to present standards could maintain efficiency in the seventeenth century. On the contrary, the English race at that time attributed their alleged superiority over other nations to a higher standard of living.[123] Footnote 123: The dietary in charitable institutions gives an idea of what was considered bare necessity. (_Children’s Diet in Christ Church Hospital_, 1704.) For breakfast, Bread and Beer. For dinner, Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, boiled beef and pottage. Monday, milk pottage, Wednesday, furmity. Friday old pease & pottage. Saturday water gruel. For supper bread and cheese or butter for those that cannot eat cheese. Sunday supper, legs of mutton. Wednesday and Friday, pudding pies. (_Stow, London, Book_ I, p. 182.) _Diet for Workhouse, Bishopsgate Street, London._