Life-cycle changes in the living standards of rural wage-earners, 1550–1650

Abstract Concentrating on individual workers hired by the Shuttleworths, a gentry family from Lancashire, this article offers the first attempt to combine household accounts with probate inventories to track life-cycle changes in the living standards of rural wage-earners between the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries. Based on original household and farm accounts of the Shuttleworths (1582–1621) and probate records left by Shuttleworth employees and Lancashire wage-workers whose occupations were recorded between 1550 and 1650, the findings reveal two key points. Firstly, using inventories left by labourers entitled in probates underestimates the living standards of early modern wage-earners, as some had diverse sources of income and enjoyed comfortable lives. Secondly, money wages can be used to measure only the purchasing power of wage-earners during a specific period of their life cycle, and do not have a positive correlation with living standards measured using inventories. The significance of money wages varied among different types of wage-earner and at different stages of their lives. In fact, other factors, including occupational distinctions, access to land, family structures and the availability of family labour force, had a greater impact on rural wage-earners’ changing living standards.