Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1884 — Values in the Time of Henry VIII. [ARTICLE]

Values in the Time of Henry VIII.

In the early part of the sixteenth century, just before the Beformation, the ounce of silver was worth ts. 4d., or, in other words, the shilling of Henry VIII. was in intrinsic value 1.05 the modern coin. The wages of an ordinary laborer were 6 id. per day. The rents of cottages varied from ‘2s. Fd. to 4s. per annum. Six or eight days’ labor was, therefore, sufficient to pay the year’s rent. At the present day, taking an agricultural laborer’s wages at 1 s. a week, and cottage rent at 2s. a week, or £5 a year, it requires forty days’ labor to pay the yearly rent. No doubt the cottages at that time were mere hovels, but I fear a large number at the present day are little better. About the same period wheat was 6s. Bd. per quarter, the price of a pig 3s. Bd., and of a cow IDs. A laborer earning 6|d. a day, or 3s. 3d. per week, could purchase a quarter of wheat with a fortnight’s labor, which would now require three weeks, or a pig with one week’s work, which would certainly now require the labor of three. Leaving out of view the cost of clothing and of the higher agremens which modern habits require, there can be no doubt that the common people before the lleformatiou enjoyed an amount of rude plenty which has never since been equaled.— London Notes and Queries. An English journal recalls the fact that our first President never saw a steamboat, our second never saw a railroad train, our seventh never heard of the electric teleg aph, and our seventeenth lived only long enough to know of the existence of the telephone.