IN the mid fifteenth century wages — at least for building craftsmen — were higher than they had been before the Black Death, and food prices were generally low. Real wages thus increased significantly. Wives and children were employed more frequently, and their wages swelled the family income. At the same time an active land market allowed the lowest category of villagers — the landless or cottagers with less than an acre — to acquire land or to expand their holdings. Christopher Dyer succinctly summed up current thinking when he wrote, ‘Every change favored the wage earners.’ None the less, the well-being of any particular family depended on a variety of circumstances, such as the form in which the wages were paid, the number of days in a year they were employed, their access to the resources of the wild, and how much land they had, if any. The position of wage-earners, moreover, did not remain unchanged in the next hundred years. During bad harvests, when prices soared, wages did not always keep pace. Industrial developments such as the spread of hopped beer, or the rise and fall of the cloth market, could affect the opportunities for women to earn extra money through brewing and spinning. In the second quarter of the sixteenth century, rising prices and changes in the land market eroded the earlier favorable position for some workers.