. Such a multiplicity of cross-currents, allied to the vagaries of behaviour by individuals and groups at particular times and in particular places, was bound to ferment complexity and contradictions in the accounts of those who observed them, and to impede their ability to represent and analyse. The historian has the advantage of perspective, but also the disadvantage of distance, yet it would appear to be the case that in good times the labouring and artisan masses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries commonly refused to take all the work that was on offer.VIIt may never prove possible to measure with any pretence of accuracy the total amount of labour supplied in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, or to monitor precisely how it changed over time. To provide a conclusive test of the veracity of contemporary commentators on the behaviour of the generality of labourers and artisans one would need abundant data on the relationship between the cost of living, earnings and the numbers of days worked across a representative range of occupations in a representative sample of regions over an adequate span of years. Sadly, such robust evidence is never likely to be available in sufficient quantities to settle the issue, for the working patterns of even full-time employees can only be gathered from continuous sets of accounts covering long time periods, which record the names of individual workmen and women, the number of days they worked and the sums they were paid; precious few such records survive. However, some progress towards establishing a balance of probabilities can be achieved, and some tangential records may well yield unexpected insights,(56)Handled sensitively, the most informative records of coalmining operations can provide an illuminating case study, although it must be understood at the outset that colliers were not representative of the labour force as a whole. Due to the rapid expansion of the demand for coal...
