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In ancient times, they seem to have been common all over Europe.

In countries ill cultivated, and worse inhabited, the greater

part of landlords and farmers could not otherwise provide

themselves with the extraordinary number of hands which country

labour requires at certain seasons. The daily or weekly

recompence which such labourers occasionally received from their

masters, was evidently not the whole price of their labour. Their

small tenement made a considerable part of it. This daily or

weekly recompence, however, seems to have been considered as the

whole of it, by many writers who have collected the prices of

labour and provisions in ancient times, and who have taken

pleasure in representing both as wonderfully low.