political life, for industrial questions assumed a hitherto unsuspected importance when a large proportion of the House of Commons was formed of burghers directly interested in trade and manufactures.1

§ 93. Social Changes. The Villeins and Wage-paid

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Labourers.

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Besides the growth of material prosperity in these two centuries, we find that the commutation of villeinage services into money payments to the lord of the manortendency frequently commented upon-had been growing apace. This commutation had been going on for a long time, in fact, ever since the Conquest, if not before, and the villeins had in many cases freed themselves not only from labour dues, but from the vexatious customary fines or "amercements" which they had to pay to the lord of the manor on certain social occasions-such as the marriage of a daughter, or the education of a son for the Church. But of course this freedom was not complete, though it is important to notice its growth, for we shall see that it formed the occasion of a great class struggle some years after the Great Plague.

There is another feature which is also of importance, and which had come more and more into prominence during the past two centuries. I refer to the increase in the numbers of those who lived upon the labour of their hands, and were employed and paid wages like labourers of the present day. It has been mentioned before that they arose from the cottar class, from the small tenants and landless cottagers,1 who had not enough land to occupy their whole time, and who were therefore ready to sell their labour to an employer. These two features-the commutation of labourdues for money payments and the rise of a wage-paid labouring class-are closely connected, for it was natural that, when the lord of a manor had agreed to receive money from his tenants in villeinage instead of labour, he

1 Mrs Green, Town Life, i. 72.

2 Ashley, Econ. Hist., II. ii. 265, 267. 3 The ordination of villeins had become so common that the constitutions of Clarendon were inclined to restrict it. Cf. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. ch. xi. p. 431 and Const. Clar., 16. Ashley, Econ. Hist., II. ii. p. 267.

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should have to obtain other labour from elsewhere and pay for it in the money thus received by commutation. The tendency of these social changes was greatly in favour of the villeins, whose social condition had steadily improved,1 and whose tenancy in villeinage was fast losing its originally servile character. Neither were the villeins, whether comparatively well-to-do yeomen or agricultural labourers, so much bound to the manor as formerly, for in proportion as their labour services were no longer necessary, their lord would let them leave the manor and seek employment, or take up some manufacturing industry, elsewhere. It had always been possible for the villeins or serfs to do this on payment of a small fine (capitagium),2 and it is certain that, as money-payments became increasingly the fashion, the lord would not object to receiving this further payment, unless perchance he required a good deal of labour to be done upon his own land.

§ 94. The Famine and the Plague.

The position of the labouring class had been further improved by the effects of the famines which occurred in the early years of the fourteenth century. Of course they suffered great hardships, and their numbers were considerably thinned, but at the same time this loss of life and diminution in their numbers caused their services to become more valuable in proportion to their scarcity, and they gained a rise of some 20 per cent. in wages. From this date till the coming of the Great Plague, some thirty years later, they and the rest of the English people enjoyed a period of great prosperity. It was on the whole a "merry England" on which the Great Plague suddenly broke. The prosperity of the people was reflected in the splendour and brilliancy of the court and aristocracy, while the national pride had been increased by the recent capture of Calais (1347), and by the other successes in the French war, which brought 1Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. ch. xvi. p. 454.

2 Bracton, De Leg. (ed. Twiss), ch. x. ƒ. 6b p. 49.

3 Cf. Stowe, Annals, for 1314 and 1315 A.D.; and Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 217. Rogers, ib., p. 218. 5 Ib., 219

"Green, History of English People, i. 429.

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not only glory but occasionally wealth, in the shape of heavy ransoms. But in 1348 the prosperity and pride of the nation was overwhelmed with gloom. The Great Plague came with sudden and mysterious steps from Asia to Italy, and thence to Western Europe and England, carried some say by travelling merchants, or borne with its infection on the wings of the wind. It arrived in England at the two great ports of Bristol and Southampton 1 in August 1348, and thence spread all over the land. Its ravages were frightful. Whole districts were depopulated, and about one-third of the people perished.2 Norwich and London, being busy and crowded towns, suffered especially from the pestilence, and though the numbers of the dead have been grossly exaggerated by the panic of contemporaries and the credulity of modern historians, there can be no doubt that the loss of life was enormous.* The plague fell alike upon the dwellers in the towns, with their filthy, undrained streets,5 and upon the labourers working in the open fields amid the fresh air and the sunshine. The same fate came to all. "The fell mortality came upon them, and the sudden and awful cruelty of death winnowed them."

§ 95. The Effects of the Plague on Wages.

The most immediate consequence of the Plague was a marked scarcity in the number of labourers available; for 1 Henry of Knighton's Chronicle, ii. p. 61, ed. Lumby.

2 Rogers (Six Centuries, p. 223) thinks one-third died; Cunningham (English Industry, i. 304) thinks nearly half; Denton (England in Fifteenth Century, p. 98) more than half.

3 It was asserted by the fourteenth century chroniclers, and has often been repeated since, that nearly 60,000 people died in Norwich alone. Green (i. 429) says "thousands of people " died at Norwich. As a matter of fact, the whole county of Norfolk, including that city, hardly contained 30,000 people. Cf. Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 223.

4 Cf. Jessop, Coming of the Friars, p. 193, who shows that half the parish priests of certain districts died during that year. The Chronicle of St Alban's alone records (ii. 369) the death of more than forty-seven monks. 5Cf. Denton, Fifteenth Century, 103.

6 This wonderfully vivid sentence is from Henry of Knighton's Chronicle, u. s., ii. p. 63.

7 "There was such a want of servants in work of all kinds that one would scarcely believe that in times past there had been such a lack." Henry of Knighton's Chronicle, u. 8., ii. p. 64.

being of the poorest class they naturally succumbed more readily to famine and sickness. This scarcity of labour naturally resulted in higher wages. The landowners began to fear that their lands would not be cultivated properly, and were compelled to buy labour at higher prices than would have been given at a time when the necessity of the labourer to the capitalist was more obscured. Hence the

wages of labourers rose far above the customary rates. In harvest-work, for example, the rise was nearly 60 per cent., and what is more, it remained so for a long period; while the rise in agricultural wages generally was 50 per cent.2 So it was also in the case of artisans' wages, in the case of carpenters, masons, and others. It seems that the upper classes and employers of that day very strongly objected to paying high wages, as they naturally do. The king himself felt deeply upon the point. Without waiting for Parliament to meet, Edward III. issued a proclamation * ordering that no man should either demand or pay the higher rate of wages, but should abide by the old rate. He forbade labourers to leave the land to which they were attached, and assigned heavy penalties to the runaways. Parliament assembled in 1350 and eagerly ratified this proclamation, in the laws known as the Statutes of Labourers, 5 But the demand for labour was so great that such legislative endeavours to prevent its proper payment were fortunately ineffective. Runaways not only found shelter, but also good employment and high wages." Parliament fulminated its threats in vain, and in vain increased its penalties by a later statute of 1360, ordering those who asked more than the old wages to be imprisoned, and, if they were fugitives, to be branded with hot irons. For once the labourer was able to meet the capitalist on equal terms. Moreover, the effects of the Plague were not limited to those occasioned by the great 1 Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 234. 2 Ib., p. 237. 3 Ib., 234-237.

On the 18th of June 1349 (23 Ed. III.); cf. Rymer, Foedera, III. i. 198, who apparently places it a year too late.

5 The 25 Ed. III., stat. ii. c. 1, and later 31 Ed. III., stat. i. c. 6, and 34 Ed. III., cc. 9, 10, 11.

6 Knighton's Chronicle, ut supra, p. 64. 7 34 Ed. III., cc. 9, 10, 11.

visitation of 1348, for there were two or three other outbreaks of pestilence in subsequent years. Thus the scarcity of labourers was felt more and more keenly by their former employers, and the landowners naturally did their best to compel them to work. The class of free labourers and tenants who had commuted their services for money payments was oppressed, and "the ingenuity of the lawyers who were employed as stewards on each manor was exercised in trying to restore to the landowners that customary labour whose loss was now severely felt." 3 Former exemptions and manumissions were often cancelled, and labour services again demanded from the villeins. The result was inevitably a gradual union of labourers and tenants of all classes against landowners and employers— the beginnings, in fact, of a social struggle, in which we recognise the unfortunate modern tendency of "a hostile confrontation of labour and capital." Combinations and confederacies of labourers became frequent,5 and the strife grew more and more bitter, till the crisis came at last, and open revolt took place. "The difficulties of the manorial lords would be renewed with every subsequent visitation of the Plague, and the pressure on villeins to render actual service would become more severe, until at last it resulted in the general outbreak of the peasants in 1381." Nor were the social troubles thus caused in any great degree diminished by the successes of Edward III. and the Black Prince in France, or even by the conclusion of peace at Bretigny (1360). Indeed, it must be obvious to anyone who considers how wars are paid for, that military success, unless it is a great deal more productive than was that of Edward III., really only makes matters worse, owing to the financial burdens which it imposes upon the people. And 1 In 1361 and 1369. Annals of England (Parker), pp. 196, 197.

2 Thus, the penalties are far more severe in the 34 Ed. III., c. 9, 10, 11, than in previous statutes.

3 Green, History, i. 432.

4 Cf. Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. ch. xvi. 455.

5 The villeins "gather themselves together in great routs, and agree by such confederacy that everyone shall aid other to resist their lords," &c., &c. Stat. 1 Rich. II., c. 6.

• Cunningham, Growth of Industry, i. 357.