In the middle of the fourteenth century occurred the famous Black Death, the worst infliction that has ever visited England. Its story is too well known for repetition, and it suffices to say that it was like the bubonic plague in the East of to-day: it raged in 1348-9, and killed from one-third to one-half of the people.[113] It is said to have effected more important economic results than any other event in English history. It is probable that the prices of labour were rising before this terrible calamity; the dreadful famine of 1315-6,[114] followed by pestilence, when wheat went up to 26s. a quarter, and according to the contemporary chroniclers, in some cases much higher, destroyed a large number of the population, and other plagues had done their share to make labour scarce, but after the Black Death the advance was strongly marked. It also accelerated the break-up of the manorial system. A large number of the free labourers were swept away, and their labour lost to the lord of the manor; the services of the villeins were largely diminished from the same cause; many of the tenants, both free and unfree, were dead, and the land thrown on the lord's hands. Flocks and herds were wandering about over the country because there was no one to tend them. In short, most manors were in a state of anarchy, and their lords on the verge of ruin. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that they immediately adopted strong measures to save themselves and their property and, no doubt they thought, the whole country. Englishmen had by this time learnt to turn to Parliament to remedy their ills, but as the plague was still raging a proclamation was issued of which the preamble states that wages had already gone up greatly. 'Many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they get excessive wages', and it is, therefore, hard to till the land. Every one under the age of 60, it was ordered, free or villein, who can work, and has no other means of livelihood, is not to refuse to work for any one who offers the accustomed wages; no labourer is to receive more wages than he did before the plague, and none are to give more wages under severe penalties. But besides regulating wages, the proclamation also insists on reasonable prices for food and the necessaries of life: it was a fair attempt not only to protect the landlords but the labourers also, by keeping both wages and prices at their former rate, so that its object was not tyrannous as has been stated.[115] It was at once disregarded, a fate which met many of the proclamations and statutes of the Middle Ages, which often seem to have been regarded as mere pious aspirations.

Accordingly, the Statute of 1351, 25 Edw. III, Stat. 2, c. 1, states that the servants had paid no regard to the ordinance regulating wages, 'but to their ease and singular covetise do withdraw themselves unless they have livery and wages to the double or treble of that they were wont to take'. Accordingly, it was again laid down that they were to take liveries and wages as before the Black Death, and 'where wheat was wont to be given they shall take for the bushel 10d. (6s. 8d. a quarter),[116] or wheat at the will of the giver. And that they be hired to serve by the whole year or by other usual terms, and not by the day, and that none pay in the time of sarcling (weeding) or hay-making but a penny a day, and a mower of meadows for the acre 5d., or by the day 5d., and reapers of corn in the first week of August 2d., and the second 3d., without meat or drink.' And none were to take for the threshing of a quarter of wheat or rye more than 2d., and for the quarter of beans, peas, and oats more than 1d. These prices are certainly difficult to understand. Hay-making has usually been paid for at a rate above the ordinary, because of the longer hours; and here we find the price fixed at half the usual wages, while mowing is five times as much, and double the price paid for reaping, though they were normally about the same price.[117]

It is interesting to learn from the statute that there was a considerable migration of labourers at this date for the harvest, from Stafford, Lancaster, Derby, Craven, the Marches of Wales and Scotland, and other places.

Such was the first attempt made to control the labourers' wages by the legislature, and like other legislation of the kind it failed in its object, though the attempt was honestly made; and if the rate of wages fixed was somewhat low, its inequity was far surpassed by the exorbitance of the labourers' demands.[118] It was an endeavour to set aside economic laws, and its futility was rendered more certain by the depreciation of the coinage in 1351, which led to an advance in prices, and compelled the labourers to persevere in their demands for higher wages.[119]

Both wages and prices, except those of grain, continued to increase, and labour services were now largely commuted for money payments,[120] with the result that the manorial system began to break up rapidly.

Owing to the dearth of labourers for hire, and the loss of many of the services of their villeins, the lords found it very hard to farm their demesne lands. It should be remembered, too, that an additional hardship from which they suffered at this time was that the quit rents paid to them in lieu of services by tenants who had already become free were, owing to the rise in prices, very much depreciated. Their chief remedy was to let their demesne lands. The condition of the Manor of Forncett in Norfolk well illustrates the changes that were now going on. There, in the period 1272-1307, there were many free tenants as well as villeins, and the holdings of the latter were small, usually only 5 acres. It is also to be noticed that in no year were all the labour services actually performed, some were always sold for money. Yet in the period named there was not much progress in the general commutation of services for money payments, and the same was the case in the manors, whose records between 1325 and 1350 Mr. Page examined for his End of Villeinage in England.[121] The reaping and binding of the entire grain crop of the demesne at Forncett was done by the tenants exclusively, without the aid of any hired labour.[122]

However, in the period 1307-1376 the manor underwent a great change. The economic position of the villeins, the administration of the demesne, and the whole organization of the manor were revolutionized. Much of the tenants' land had reverted to the lord, partly by the deaths in the great pestilence, partly because tenants had left the manor; they had run away and left their burdensome holdings in order to get high wages as free labourers. This of course led to a diminution of labour rents, so the landlord let most of the demesne for a term of years,[123] a process which went on all over England; and thus we have the origin of the modern tenant farmer. A fact of much importance in connexion with the Peasants' Revolt, soon to take place, was that the average money rent of land per acre in Forncett in 1378 was 10d., while the labour rents for land, where they were still paid by villeins who had not commuted or run away, were, owing to the rise in the value of labour, worth two or three times this. We cannot wonder that the poor villeins were profoundly discontented.

On this manor, as on others, some of the villeins, in spite of the many disadvantages under which they lay, managed to accumulate some little wealth. In 1378 and in 1410 one bond tenant had two messuages and 78 acres of land; in 1441 another died seized of 5 messuages and 52 acres; some had a number of servants in their households, but the majority were very poor. There are several instances of bondmen fleeing from the manor; and the officers of the manor failed to catch them. This was common in other manors, and the 'withdrawal' of villeins played a considerable part in the disappearance of serfdom and the break-up of the system.[124] The following table shows the gradual disappearance of villeins in the Manor of Forncett:

There is no event of greater importance in the agrarian history of England, or which has led to more important consequences, than the dissolution of this community in the cultivation of the land, which had been in use so long, and the establishment of the complete independence and separation of one property from another.[125] As soon as the manorial system began to give way, and men to have a free hand, the substitution of large for small holdings set in with fresh vigour, for we have already seen that it had begun. It was one of the chief causes of the stagnation of agriculture in the Middle Ages that it lay under the heavy hand of feudalism, by which individualism was checked and hindered. Every one had his allotted position on the land, and it was hard to get out of it, though some exceptional men did so; as a rule there was no chance of striking out a new line for oneself. The villein was bound to the lord, and no lord would willingly surrender his services. There could be little improvement in farming when the custom of the manor and the collective ownership of the teams bound all to the same system of farming.[126] In fact, agriculture under feudalism suffered from many of the evils of socialism.

But, though hard hit, the old system was to endure for many generations, and the modern triumvirate of landlord, tenant, and labourer was not completely established in England until the era of the first Reform Bill.

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CHAPTER IV

HOW THE CLASSES CONNECTED WITH THE LAND LIVED IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The castles of the great landowners have been so often described that there is no need to do this again. The popular idea of a baron of the Middle Ages is of a man who when he was not fighting was jousting or hunting. Such were, no doubt, his chief recreations; so fond was he of hunting, indeed, that his own broad lands were not enough, and he was a frequent trespasser on those of others; the records of the time are full of cases which show that poaching was quite a fashionable amusement among the upper classes. But among the barons were many men who, like their successors to-day, did their duty as landlords. Of one of the Lords of Berkeley in the fourteenth century, it was said he was 'sometyme in husbandry at home, sometyme at sport in the field, sometyme in the campe, sometyme in the Court and Council of State, with that promptness and celerity that his body might have bene believed to be ubiquitary'. Many of them were farmers on a very large scale, though they might not have so much time to devote to it as those excellent landlords the monks.

Thomas Lord Berkeley, who held the Berkeley estates from 1326 to 1361, farmed the demesnes of a quantity of manors, as was the custom, and kept thereon great flocks of sheep, ranging from 300 to 1,500 on each manor.[127] The stock of the Bishop of Winchester, by an inquisition taken at his death in 1367, amounted to 127 draught horses, 1,556 head of black cattle, and 12,104 sheep and lambs. Almost every manor had one or two pigeon houses, and the number of pigeons reared is astonishing; from one manor Lord Berkeley obtained 2,151 pigeons in a single year. No one but the lord was allowed to keep them, and they were one of the chief grievances of the villeins, who saw their seed devoured by these pests without redress. Their dung, too, was one of the most valued manures. Lord Berkeley, like other landlords, went often in progress from one of his manors and farmhouses to another, making his stay at each of them for one or two nights, overseeing and directing the husbandry. The castle of the great noble consumed an enormous amount of food in the course of the year; from two manors on the Berkeley estate came to the 'standinghouse' of the lord in twelve months, 17,000 eggs, 1,008 pigeons, 91 capons, 192 hens, 288 ducks, 388 chickens, 194 pigs, 45 calves, 315 quarters of wheat, 304 quarters of oats; and from several other manors came the like or greater store, besides goats, sheep, oxen, butter, cheese, nuts, honey, &c.[128] Even the lavish hospitality of the lords, and the great number of their retainers, must have had some difficulty in disposing of these huge supplies.

The examining of their bailiff's accounts must have taken a considerable portion of the landlord's time, for those of each manor were kept most minutely, and set forth, among other items, 'in what sort he husbanded' the demesne farms, 'what sorts of cattle he kept in them, and what kinds of graine he yearly sowed according to the quality and condition of the ground, and how those kinds of graine each second or third yeare were exchanged or brought from one manor to another as the vale corne into an upland soyle, and contrarily'. And we are told incidentally he 'set with hand, not sowed his beanes'. He was also accustomed to move his live stock from one manor to another, as they needed it.

The accounts also stated what days' works were due from each tenant according to the season of the year, and at the end of each year there was a careful valuation of live and dead stock.[129]

The difference between the smaller gentry and the more important yeomen[130] who farmed their own land must have been very slight. No doubt both of them were very rough and ignorant men, who knew a great deal about the cultivation of their land and very little about anything else. We may be sure that the ordinary house of both was generally of wood; as there is no stone in many parts of England, and bricks were not reintroduced till the fourteenth century and spread slowly. Even in Elizabeth's reign, Harrison[131] tells us that 'the ancient houses of our gentry are yet for the most part of strong timber', and he even thinks that houses made of oak were luxurious, for in times past men had been contented with houses of willow, plum, and elm, but now nothing but oak was good enough; and he quaintly says that the men who lived in the willow houses were as tough as oak, and those who lived in the oak as soft as willow. There are very few mansions left of the time before Edward III, for being of timber they naturally decayed.

In a lease, dated 1152, of a manor house belonging to S. Paul's Cathedral,[132] is a description of a manor house which contained a hall 35 feet long, 30 feet broad, and 22 feet high; that is, 11 feet to the tie beam and 11 feet from that to the ridge board; showing that the roof was open and that there were no upper rooms. There was a chamber between the hall and the thalamus or inner room which was 12 feet long, 17 feet broad, and 17 feet high, the roof being open as in the hall; and the thalamus was 22 feet long, 16 feet broad, and 18 feet high. About the same date the Manor house of Thorp was larger, and contained a hall, a chamber, tresantia (apparently part of the hall or chamber separated by a screen to form an antechamber), two private rooms, a kitchen, brew-house, malt-house, dairy, ox shed, and three small hen-houses.

The ordinary manor house of the Middle Ages contained three rooms at least, of mean aspect, the floor even of the hall, which was the principal eating and sleeping room, being of dirt; and when there was an upper room or solar added, which began to be done at the end of the twelfth century,[133] access to it was often obtained by an outside staircase.

If the manor house belonged to the owner of many manors, it was sometimes inhabited by his bailiff.

The barns on the demesnes were often as important buildings as the manor houses; one at Wickham, belonging to the canons of S. Paul's[134] in the twelfth century, was 55 feet long, 13 feet high from the floor to the principal beam, and 10¹/₂ feet more to the ridge board; the breadth between the pillars was 19¹/₂ feet, and on each side it had a wing or aisle 6¹/₂ feet wide and 6¹/₂ feet high. The amount of corn in the barn was often scored on the door-posts.[135] In the manor houses chimneys rarely existed, the fire being made in the middle of the hall. Even in the early seventeenth century in Cheshire there were no chimneys in the farmhouses, and there the oxen were kept under the same roof as the farmer and his family.[136] When chimneys did come in they were not much thought of. 'Now we have chimneys our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses (colds);' for the smoke not only hardened the timbers, but was said by Harrison to be an excellent medicine for man. Instead of glass there was much lattice, and that made either of wicker or fine rifts of oak in checkerwise, and horn was also used. Beds, of course, were a luxury, the owner of the manor, his guests, and retainers flung themselves down on the hall floor after supper and all slept together, though sometimes rough mattresses were brought in.

Furniture was rude and scanty. In 1150 the farm implements and household furniture on the Manor of 'Waleton' was valued and consisted of 4 carts, 3 baskets, a basket used in winnowing corn, a pair of millstones, 10 tubs, 4 barrels, 2 boilers of lead with stoves, 2 wooden bowls, 3 three-legged tables, 20 dishes or platters, 2 tablecloths worth 6d., 6 metal bowls, half a load of the invaluable salt, 2 axes, a table with trestles (the usual form of table), and 5 beehives made of rushes.[137] These articles were handed down from one generation to another, and in a lease made 150 years afterwards of the same manor most of them reappear. The greater part of the furniture, until the fifteenth century, was most likely made by migratory workmen, who travelled from village to village; for except the rudest pieces it was beyond the village carpenter, and shops there were none.

It is not to be expected that when the master lived in this manner the lot of the labourer was a very good one. His home was miserably poor, generally of 'wattle and dab', sometimes wholly of mud and clay; many with only one room for all purposes. A bill is still in existence for a house, if it can be called one, built in 1306 for two labourers by Queen's College, Oxford, which cost 20s. in all, and was a mere hovel without floor, ceiling, or chimney.[138] Their wretched houses appear to have been built on the bare earth, and unfloored. Perhaps as time went on a rude upper storey was added, the floor of which was made of rough poles or hurdles and was reached by a ladder. The furniture was miserably poor; a few pots and pans, cups and dishes, and some tools would exhaust the list.[139] The goods and chattels of a landless labourer in 1431 consisted of a dish, an adze, a brass pot, 2 plates, 2 augers, an axe, a three-legged stool, and a barrel.[140] Englishmen of all classes were hopelessly dirty in their habits; even till the sixteenth century they were noted above other countries for the profuseness of their diet and their unclean ways. Erasmus spoke of the floor of his house as inconceivably filthy. To save fuel, the labourer's family in the cold season all lay huddled in a heap on the floor, 'pleasantly and hot', as Barclay the poet tells us; and if he ever had a bed it was a bundle of fern or straw thrown down, with his cloak as a coverlet, though thus he was just as well off as his social superiors, for with them the loose cloak of the day was a common covering for the night. He was constantly exposed to disease, for sanitary precautions were ignored; at the entrance of his hovel was a huge heap of decaying refuse, poisoning air and water. Even in the sixteenth century a foreigner noticed that 'the peasants dwell in small huts and pile up their refuse out of doors in heaps so high that you cannot see their houses'.[141] Diseased animals were constantly eaten, vegetables were few, and in the winter there was no fresh meat for any one, except game and rabbits and, for the well-to-do, fish, but we may doubt if the peasant got any but salt fish. The consequence was that leprosy and kindred ailments were common; and we do not wonder that plagues were frequent and slew the people like flies. The peasants' food consisted largely of corn. In the bailiff's accounts of the Manor of Woodstock in 1242, six servants at Handborough received 41¹/₂ bushels of corn each, 2 ox herds at Combe received the same, and 4 servants at Bladon had 36 bushels each. In 1274 at Bosham, and in 1288 at Stoughton in Sussex, the allowance was the same.[142] The writer of the anonymous Treatise on Husbandry says that in his time, the thirteenth century, the average annual allowance of corn to a labourer was 36 bushels.[143] Fish, too, seem to have formed a large portion of his diet; all classes ate enormous quantities of fish, before the Reformation, in Lent and on fast days, and the labourer was constantly given salt herrings as part of his pay. In 1359, at Hawsted, the villeins when working were allowed 2 herrings a day, some milk, a loaf, and some drink.[144] Eden[145] says his food consisted of a few fish, principally herrings, a loaf of bread, and some beer; but we must certainly add pork, which was his stand-by then as now.[146] In the fourteenth century, at all events, there were three kinds of bread in use—white bread, ration bread, and black bread; and it was no doubt the latter that the peasant ate.[147] Clothing was dear and cloth coarse, the most valuable personal property consisting of clothing and metal vessels. Shirts were the subject of charitable gifts.[148] By 37 Edw. III, c. 14, labourers were not to wear any manner of cloth but 'blanket and russet wool of 12d.' and girdles of linen. If they wore anything more extravagant it was forfeited to the king.

To the labourer of modern times the life of his forefathers would have seemed unutterably dull. No books, no newspapers, no change of scene by cheap excursions, no village school, no politics. The very cultivation of the soil by the old three-course system was monotonous. But there were bright spots in his existence: the village church not only afforded him the consolations of religion but also entertainments and society. Religion in the Middle Ages was a part of the people's daily life, and its influence permeated even their amusements. Miracles and mystery plays, played in the churches and churchyards, were a common feature in village life; as were the church ales or parish meetings held four or five times a year, where cakes and beer were purchased from the churchwarden and consumed for the good of the parish. Indeed, there can be no doubt that there was much more sociability than to-day, in the country at least. Labour was lightened by the co-operation of the common fields; common shepherds and herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of the different tenants, 'a common mill ground the corn, a common oven baked the bread, a common smith worked at a common forge.' His existence, moreover, was enlivened by a considerable number of sports. A statute at the end of the fourteenth century (12 Ric. II, c. 6) says he was fond of playing at tennis(!), football, quoits, dice, casting the stone, and other games, which this statute forbad him, and enacted that he should use his bow and arrows on Sundays and holidays instead of such idle sport. This is a foretaste of the modern sentiment that seeks to wean him from watching football matches and take to miniature rifle clubs. He was also, like some of his successors, fond of poaching, though he appears to have been rash enough to indulge in it by day. 13 Ric. II, c. 13, says he was prone on holidays, when good Christian people be in church hearing divine service, to go hunting with greyhounds and other dogs, in the parks and warrens of the lord and of others, and sometimes these hunts were turned into conferences and conspiracies,' for to rise and disobey their allegiance', such as preceded the Peasants' Revolt of 1381; and accordingly no one who did not own lands worth 40s. a year was to keep a dog to hunt, or ferrets other 'engines': the first game law on the English statute book.

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CHAPTER V

THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR.—SPREAD OF LEASES.—THE PEASANTS' REVOLT.—FURTHER ATTEMPTS TO REGULATE WAGES.—A HARVEST HOME.— BEGINNING OF THE CORN LAWS.—SOME SURREY MANORS

We have seen that the landlords' profits were seriously diminished by the Black Death, and they cast about them for new ways of increasing their incomes. Arable land had been until now largely in excess of pasture, the cultivation of corn was the chief object of agriculture, bread forming a much larger proportion of men's diet than now. This began to change. Much of the land was laid down to grass, and there was a steady increase in sheep farming; thus commenced that revolution in farming which in the sixteenth century led Harrison to say that England was mainly a stock-raising country. The lords also let a considerable amount of their demesne land on leases for years. 'Then began the times to alter' says Smyth of the Lord Berkeley of the end of the fourteenth century, 'and hee with them, and he began to tack other men's cattle on his pasture by the week, month, and quarter, and to sell his meadow grounds by the acre. And in the time of Henry IV still more and more was let, and in succeeding times. As for the days' works of the copyhold tenants, they also were turned into money.'[149] Such leases had been used long before this, but this is the date of their great increase. In the thirteenth century a lease of 2 acres of arable land in Nowton, Suffolk, let the land at 6d. an acre per annum for a term of six years.[150] It contains no clauses about cultivation; the landlord warrants the said 2 acres to the tenant, and the tenant agrees to give them up at the end of the term freely and peaceably. The deed was indented, sealed, and witnessed by several persons. The impoverished landlords also let much of their land on stock and land leases. The custom of stocking the tenants' land was a very ancient one: the lord had always found the oxen for the plough teams of the villeins. In the leases of the manors of S. Paul's in the twelfth century the tenant for life received stock both live and dead, which when he entered was carefully enumerated in the lease, and at the end of the tenancy he had to leave behind the same quantity.[151] It was a common practice also, before the Black Death, for the lord to let out cows and sheep at so much per head per annum.[152] The stock and land lease therefore was no novelty. In 1410 there is a lease of the demesne lands at Hawsted by which the landlord kept the manor house and its appurtenances in his own hands, the tenant apparently having the farm buildings, which he was to keep in repair. He was to receive at the beginning of the term 20 cows and one bull, worth 9s. each; 4 stotts, worth 10s. each; and 4 oxen, worth 13s. 4d. each; which, or their value in money, were to be delivered up at the end of the term. The tenant was also to leave at the end of the lease as many acres well ploughed, sown, and manured as he found at the beginning. Otherwise the landlord was not to interfere with the cultivation. If the rent or any part thereof was in arrear for a fortnight after the two fixed days for payment, the landlord might distrain; and if for a month, he might re-enter: and both parties bound themselves to forfeit the then huge sum of £100 upon the violation of any clause of the lease.[153] There is a lease[154] of a subsequent date (the twentieth year of Henry VIII), but one which well illustrates the custom now so prevalent, granted by the Prior of the Monastery of Lathe in Somerset to William Pole of Combe, Edith his wife, and Thomas his son, for their lives. With the land went 360 wethers. For the land they paid 16 quarters of best wheat, 'purelye thressyd and wynowed,' 22 quarters of best barley, and were to carry 4 loads of wood and fatten one ox for the prior yearly; the ox to be fattened in stall with the best hay, the only way then known of fattening oxen. For the flock of wethers they paid £6 yearly. The tenants were bound to keep hedges, ditches, and gates in repair. Also they were bound by a 'writing obligatory' in the sum of £100 to deliver up the wether flock whole and sound, 'not rotten, banyd,[155] nor otherwise diseased.' The consequence of the spread of leases was that the portion of the demesne lands which the lords farmed themselves dwindled greatly, or it was turned from arable into grass. Stock and land leases survived in some parts till the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it was still the custom for the landlord to stock the land and receive half the crop for rent.[156] According to the Domesday of S. Paul, in the thirteenth century, a survey of eighteen manors containing 24,000 acres showed three-eighths of the land in demesne, the rest in the hands of the tenants. In 1359 the lord of the principal manor at Hawsted held in his own hand 572 acres of arable land, worth 4d. to 6d. an acre rent, and 50 acres of meadow, worth 2s. an acre.[157] He had also pasture for 24 cows, which was considered worth 36s. a year, and for 12 horses and 12 oxen worth 48s. a year, with 40 acres of wood, estimated at 1s. an acre. In 1387, however, the arable land had decreased to 320 acres, but the stock had increased, and now numbered 4 cart horses, 6 stotts or smaller horses, 10 oxen, 1 bull, 26 cows, 6 heifers, 6 calves, 92 wethers, 20 hoggerells or two-year-old sheep, 1 gander, 4 geese, 30 capons, 26 hens, and only one cock. The dairy of 26 cows was let out, according to the custom of the time, for £8 a year; and we are told that the oxen were fed on oats, and shod in the winter only.

But if the position of the lords was severely affected by the great pestilence that of the villeins was also. The villein himself was becoming a copyholder; in the thirteenth century the nature of his holding had been written on the court roll, before long he was given a copy of the roll, and by the fifteenth century he was a copyholder.[158] There was, too, a new spirit abroad in this century of disorganization and reform, which stirred even the villeins with a desire for better conditions of life. These men, thus rising to a more assured position and animated by new hopes, saw all round them hired labourers obtaining, in spite of the Statute of Labourers, double the amount of wages they had formerly received, while they were bound down to the same services as before. The advance in prices was further increased by the king's issuing in 1351 an entirely new coinage, of the same fineness but of less weight than the old; so that the demands of the labourers after the Black Death were largely justified by the depreciation in the currency.[159] There had also arisen at this time, owing to the increase in the wealth of the country, a new class of landlords who did not care for the old system[160]; and it is probably these men who are meant by the statute I Ric. II, c. 6, which complains that the villeins daily withdrew their services to their lords at the instigation of various counsellors and abettors, who made it appear by 'colour of certain exemplifications made out of the Book of Domesday' that they were discharged from their services, and moreover gathered themselves in great routs and agreed to aid each other in resisting their lords, so that justices were appointed to check this evil. But there were other 'counsellors and abettors' of the Peasants' Revolt than the new landlords. One of its most interesting features to modern readers is its thorough organization. Travelling agents and agitators like John Ball were all over the country, money was subscribed and collected, and everything was ripe for the great rising of 1381, which was brought to a head by the bad grading of the poll tax of King Richard. It has been said that the chief grievance of the villeins was that the lords of manors were attempting to reimpose commuted services, but judging by the petition to the King when he met them at Mile-end there can be no doubt that the chief grievance was the continuance of existing services. 'We will', said they, 'that ye make us free for ever, and that we be called no more bond, or so reputed.' Also, as Walsingham says,[161] they were careful to destroy the rolls and ancient records whereby their services were fixed, and to put to death persons learned in the law.

As every one knows, the revolt was a failure; and whether it ultimately helped much to extinguish serfdom is doubtful. It probably, like the pestilence, accelerated a movement which had been for some time in progress and was inevitable. There is ample evidence to prove that there was a very general continuance of predial services after the revolt, though they went on rapidly decreasing. One of the chief methods adopted by the villeins to gain their freedom was desertion, and so common did this become that apparently the mere threat of desertion enabled the villein to obtain almost any concession from his lord, who was afraid lest his land should be utterly deserted. The result was that by the middle of the fifteenth century the abolition of labour services was approaching completion.[162] It lingered on, and Fitzherbert lamented in Elizabeth's reign the continuance of villeinage as a disgrace to England; but it had then nearly disappeared, and was unheard of after the reign of James I.[163]

Seven years after the Peasants' Revolt another attempt was made to regulate agricultural wages by the statute 12 Ric. II, c. 4, which stated that 'the hires of the said servants and labourers have not been put on certainty before this time', though we have seen that the Act of 1351 tried to settle wages. In the preamble it is said that the statute was enacted because labourers 'have refused for a long season to work without outrageous and excessive hire', and owing to the scarcity of labourers 'husbands' could not pay their rents, a sentence which shows the general use of money rents.

The wages were as follows, apparently with food:—