20

Item, ye saide Jhon and all his company y‘ he setts a worcke for ye
said house, shall be bordy’d at Thomas Shethe’s for xvjd. a week.
Item, the saide Jhon shall at his costs and charges macke all manner
of morter belonging to the masondrie.
Item, ye saide Jhon must macke all the inder court fyne souvett
and roubed bryck, all the schanck of the chymnies, as in the vineyarde ;
and the saide Jhon must have for the saide worke and finishing thereof
iic/.; to be payed xl. when he begins the foundacyon thereof, and
afterward always as xxl. worth of worke is wrought by estimacyon.
Then follow the plasterer’s and other “ bargaines.”
The average price of labour was 6d. a day.* A best joiner had 8d.,
and a labourer 4d., with sixteen pence a week per head for board.
Carvers, masons, and sawyers, seem to have been of equal value. Of
materials, iron was decidedly the most expensive.
The custom of contracting for works, of which our artisans now so
grievously complain, was then a common, and perhaps wholesome,
practice; “ For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down
first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish z7?”j' Discreet
men, who want not the taste for architectural embellishment, too often
restrict their buildings to the bare requisites of life, solely from having no
security against inconvenient, perhaps ruinous, expense, if they attempt
a higher style. If workmen be properly instructed, and attention paid
to the choice of materials ; or, in other words, if the architect be qualified,
and the “ ruler of the works” honest, there can be no reasonable ob-
jection raised against contracts formed on equitable and remunerating
* In 1732 the justices of Gloucestershire settled the wages of carpenters, masons, &c. at
1$. 2(7. a day without drink, and at Is. a day with drink.— Gent. Mag. vol. ii. p. 771.
f St. Luke, xiv. 28.