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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dogbrain" data-source="post: 1279008" data-attributes="member: 14980">According to the Beveridge Wage and Price History Collection, Box A.32 (Winchester Manorial Wages), a plain nobody agricultural day laborer in Winchester could expect between 1 to 1.5 pence per day in cash wages.  Day laborers were not entitled to payment of clothing, food, or lodging, so they had to be paid in coin.  This was a bad bargain for them, since usually things purchased in coin were more "expensive" than if they got it as part of their "compensation package".  To make matters worse for them, they could not expect year-round employment, either.A full-time unskilled town laborer could expect to see nothing more than about a pound (240 pence), if that much.  Skilled rural labor, like a thatcher's assistant, could fetch tuppence a day.  In the cities, a weaver of about the same era could expect up to five pounds sterling per year (1200 pence).  A master mason could demand more than that.  A master carpenter could get almost as much as a master mason, and a sick journeyman carpenter could get tuppence per day as a stipend from the guild.Heavy infantry got the pay of a master mason.  Minor officers (esquires, constables, etc.) got twice that.  Landless knights' mercenary pay was again double.  It is estimated that Earls could get 400-11000 pounds sterling cash income--but then that had to be used to maintain their private armies.Thus, it is easy to see that peasants should not consider a single silver coin to be a year's wages.</blockquote>

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