What did a medieval royal wet nurse earn?
20 pounds a year, later doubled to 40.
About $4,400 a month in today's gold.
A month of that pay weighs about as much as 9 dice in gold.
You ask the king's council for a raise and get your pay doubled. Nursing a prince pays.
Where the money came from
Henry VI became king of England at nine months old, and the real government rested with a council that ruled in his name. Joan Astley was probably his nurse from the day he was born, and the crown first granted her £20 a year for good service. She asked the council for a rise, and in January 1424 it doubled her pay to £40 a year, for as long as the king pleased. That was as much as a royal councillor got: Thomas Chaucer and William Allington, who sat on the council, were paid £40 each. The other women of the baby king's chamber, Margaret Brotherman, Agnes Jakeman, a laundress and Matilda Fosbroke, his daily nurse, got £5 a year each, so Joan earned eight times as much as any of them. In February 1424, when the king was only two, his governess, Dame Alice Botiller, was given written leave to punish him within reason, and the same pay as Joan. A royal nurse could be remembered for life: Richard I, once king, gave Hodierna of St Albans, the wet nurse who had fed him, a generous pension. By one estimate for these years, an archer might expect £9 a year and a knight about £60 on average, so Joan earned more than four times an archer's pay, and two thirds of a knight's.
Sources: en.wikisource.org · kinghenryvi.com · en.wikipedia.org
What a royal wet nurse's pay bought in 1350
a day of a master mason: less than a day's pay
a fur-lined garment: a week's pay
a hand-copied book: 3 weeks' pay
a great stained-glass window: 3 years' pay, more than a whole year of it
a warhorse: 4 years' pay, more than a whole year of it
Every price of 1350, with its source, is on the prices page.