Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2011
Let such have ynough
That follow the plough.
Give servant no dainties, but give him ynough,
Too many chaps walking, do beggar the plough
Poor seggons halfe starved, worke faintly and dull
And lubbers doo loiter, their bellies too full.
Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, 1573You may not exede this proporcon whiche although it be slender yet yt wilbe sufficient.
Order for the Diet at the House of Correction at Westminster, 1561In the last chapter many examples were given of the amount of beer, meat and other foods eaten by labourers. Here I will focus specifically on contemporary examples of actual daily diets, and the number of calories they provided. This will be done in order to judge how much food was available to perform the work needed to power the agricultural economy. A wide range of household accounts from the mid-sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century survive which have information on food served to servants and day labourers. These will be analysed to determine how many calories were eaten on a daily basis by labourers. In addition, prescribed institutional accounts for soldiers and for inmates in houses of correction, workhouses and hospitals will also be looked at. However, apart from the diet provided by Jacob Vanderlint for a London labourer and his family in the mid-eighteenth century there are no earlier diets for entire labouring families comparable to Eden and Davies.
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