r wine than their
lords"; and a sumptuary law passed at the Reichstag held at Lindau, in
1497, provides that the common peasant man and the labourer in the
towns or in the field "shall neither make nor wear cloth that costs
more than half a gulden the ell, neither shall they wear gold,
pearls, velvet, silk, nor embroidered clothes, nor shall they permit
their wives or their children to wear such."

Respecting the food of the peasant, it is stated that he ate his full
in flesh of every kind, in fish, in bread, in fruit, drinking wine
often to excess. The Swabian, Heinrich Mueller, writes in the year
1550, nearly two generations after the change had begun to take place:
"In the memory of my father, who was a peasant man, the peasant did
eat much better than now. Meat and food in plenty was there every day,
and at fairs and other junketings the tables did wellnigh break with
what they bore. Then drank they wine as it were water, then did a man
fill his belly and carry away withal as much as he could; then was
wealth and plenty. Otherwise is it now. A costly and a bad time hath
arisen since many a year, and the food and drink of the best peasant
is much worse than of yore that of the day labourer and the serving
man."

We may well imagine the vivid recollections which a peasant in the
year 1525 had of the golden days of a few years before. The day
labourers and serving men were equally tantalized by the remembrance
of high wages and cheap living at the beginning of the century. A day
labourer could then earn, with his keep, nine, and without keep,
sixteen groschen[15] a week. What this would buy may be judged from
the following prices current in Saxony during the second half of the
fifteenth century. A pair of good working-shoes cost three groschen; a
whole sheep, four groschen; a good fat hen, half a groschen;
twenty-five cod-fish, four groschen; a wagon-load of firewood,
together with carriage, five groschen; an ell of the best homespun
cloth, five groschen; a scheffel (about a bushel) of rye, six or seven
groschen. The Duke of Saxony wore grey hats which cost him four
groschen. In Northern Rhineland about the same time a day labourer
could, in addition to his keep, earn in a week a quarter of rye, ten
pounds of pork, six large cans of milk, and two bundles of firewood,
and in the course of five weeks be able to buy six ells of linen, a
pair of shoes, and a bag for his tools. In Augsburg the daily wages of
an ordinary