New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1919-03-23
Large Family
OF Priests

One remarkable circumstance is that he
has eleven priests in his house, besides
seventeen persons chanters, musicians, etc,
belonging to his chapel. Yet he has only
two cooks for family of 223 persons. Their
meals were certainly dressed in the SLOW
emily manner of a ships company. 1t is
amusing to observe the pompous, even
royal, style assumed by this Tartar 60
chief. He does not give any order except
only for the right making of mustard, but
it is introduced with this preamble: 1T
seemeth best to US and our cooks!"
If we consider the magnificent and ele-
cant manner in which the Venetian and
other Italian noblemen then lived, and the
progress made by the Italians in literature
and in the fine arts, shall not wonder
that they considered the Ultramontane ma
tons as truly barbarous.
The Flemish also seemed to have eX
celled the English and even the French
Yet the earl is sometimes not deficient
in generosity. He pays, for instance, an
annual pension of a great Give cents) a
year to my Lady of Walsingham for her
interest in heaven; the same sum to the
Holy Blood at Hales. This must be grim
joke.
No mention is anywhere made of plate
but only Of the hiring of pewter vessels
The servants seemed to have all bought
their own clothes from their daily allow
ance. (MSS. ends here.)
AS servants, in return for bodily services,
were housed and fed in feudal times by
their liege lords, the only reference to
wages per diem adducibe from this inter
estng manuscript is that which allows Is
cents day in winter and 10 cents day
in summer for travelling expenses to de-
pendents when off on their lords business
and a similar allowance of cents a day
when at home under their feudal lords
roof Masons, bricklayers, Tiers, etc, were
regulated to 20 cents O0d.) per day by
statutes of Henry the VIII.
Projecting ourselves forward from 1885
to 1885, we find some pregnant confirmation
of the thread of our story in Chamberlain's
estate of England" and Dunnings "Plain
and Easy Method of Statistics" From these
authorities we learn that the wages Of labor
in England in 1856 were not half of what
they were in 1850 The justices of Chclms-
ford fixed the price of the Essex lnborer at
$1.50 (6s.) per week in summer and SITS
(7s) per week in winter This seems to
have been the very highest remuneration al
lowed in Great Britain for the agricultural
labor between the ages of Henry the VIII
and Cromwell And this in spite of the
fact that wheat in some part Of that period
cost as much as $500 per bushcl. GA writer
of 1910 speaks Of This almost a "famine
pricc.') 1t hod risen from s. 40 for cipht
bushels in 1885.
soldiers wages in 1886 we're Si1b per
week. Cromwell paid SLIGO. In the DAYS
of Charles II the country lnborcr re
coivcd only 81 per week. The artisan man.
agcd to exact % cents day.
Sugar. cloth, coal, candles, soap, shoes.
stockings and NIL items Of clothing md
bedding cost the lnboror much more i'm
1888 than in 1850
King and Davcnant ("Essays on Ways and
Moans') estimate the population of Great
Britain in 1885 Mt 100000. 1t is now not
over 10,000000, only seven and a half
times as great.
In 1855 many thousands of square miles