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was to put their trust in princes. Within a fortnight (on June 30th) Richard issued a proclamation that all tenants, whether villeins or free, should render all accustomed services as heretofore; and on July 2nd he formally annulled the charters of freedom, a step that was subsequently sanctioned by Parliament when it met again on November 5th (5 Richard II., c. 6). Special commissioners were sent into the country to punish the insurgents,3 and it would seem that as many as 1500 persons were executed by their orders. Everywhere the peasants and their leaders were put down by the severest measures. Richard marched through Kent and Essex with an army of 40,000 men, ruthlessly punishing all resistance.5 "Villeins you were," he cried, as the men of Essex claimed from him his own royal promise; "villeins you were, and villeins you are. In bondage you shall abide, and that not your old bondage, but a worse!"6 At St Alban's John Ball was hanged on July 15th, and so, too, was another leader, one Grind-cobbe, as he was called. But as he died Grindcobbe uttered the words, which, in spite of king and lords, at last came true-" If I die, I shall die for the cause of the freedom we have won, counting myself happy to end my life by such a martyrdom." 8

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§ 108. The Result of the Revolt.

And, as a matter of fact, the peasants in reality gained their point. They had to shed their own blood, but they won in the end. The landowners in Parliament certainly refused any notion of compromise at first; they even prayed the King to ordain "that no bondman nor bondwoman (i.e., no villein) shall place their children at school, as had been done, so as to advance their children in the world by their

1 Rymer, Foedera, iv. 126.

2 Ib.

3 Richard himself had to interfere to repress their severity. Rymer, Foed., iv. 133.

4 Annals, p. 205; Stubbs, quoting Mon. Evesh., p. 33, says that in all 7000 insurgents were executed.

5 Green, History, i. 484.

7 Stubbs, Const. Hist., ii. p. 452, note.

8 Green, History, i. 485.

¤ Walsingham, Hist. Angl., ii. 18.

going into the church." They even asked that lords might reclaim villeins from the chartered towns,2 but the king had the sense to refuse both petitions. The poor priests, unlicensed preachers, or "Lollards," were ordered to be arrested or held in strong prison "until they justify themselves according to the law and reason of Holy Church." 3 But after the first year or two, all these efforts fortunately proved abortive. Villeinage rapidly became practically extinct, and commutation of labour services for money rents became more and more common.1 Evidence of this is seen in the whole tone of the writings of Fitzherbert, the author of a well-known work, " On Surveyinge," who, about 1530, instead of regarding the surviving instances of villeinage as quite the natural thing, laments over its continuance as a disgrace to the country-a marvellous change of attitude since the fourteenth century.5 Almost the last cases of survival occurred under Elizabeth, who enfranchised the bondmen on royal estates in 1574, though a few later notices of the custom appear. No doubt some traces of the old order remained for centuries; indeed, it would have been strange if such had not been the case. Although, for instance, the old manorial system is long since dead, its relics survive among us to-day, and courts leet are still held in many places. Yet no one contends that the manor survives as in the fourteenth century. But, speaking broadly, the peasants achieved their object; the labours of John Ball, Tyler, and Grinde-cobbe were not altogether futile; and the century that followed the Great Revolt was, on the whole, one of considerable prosperity for the English labourer.7

1 Rot. Parl., iii. 294, 296. 35 Ric. II., st. 2, c. 5.

2 Ib.

4

Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. ch. xvi. 463. 5 Cf. Cunningham, i. p. 360, who, however, thinks villeinage did not die out so quickly.

6 Rymer, Foed., xv. 731.

"In this account of the Peasants' Revolt I find myself in agreement with the general conclusions of Thorold Rogers, though the careful reader will notice that none of the references in the footnotes refer to his works, but are taken from other authorities. Some modern economic historians have criticised (with more or less severity) the conclusions of this eminent authority, but, curiously enough, when their own theories are looked into,

§ 109. The Condition of the English Labourer. After this great insurrection came a time of considerable prosperity for the English labourer, and it lasted all through the fifteenth century. Food was cheap and abundant; wages were amply sufficient. In fact, soon after the Revolt a statute of 1388 complains of them being "outrageous and excessive."1 True, the employers of they merely confirm those held by Thorold Rogers, at least in their broad outlines. Professor W. J. Ashley has an elaborate criticism of Rogers' work in general and his theory of the Peasants' Revolt in particular in the Political Science Quarterly, Vol. IV., No. 3, and roundly accuses Rogers of belonging to the "cataclysmic school" (p. 400) of history, of seeking after dramatic effect rather than absolute truth, and of not being "guided by the idea of gradual, reasonable, undramatic development" in history (p. 407). Unfortunately for this criticism, however, human history, even on its economic side, refuses to be either gradual, undramatic, or even consistently reasonable. If it were, it would not be human, though it might be academic-a dubious gain. There have been sudden and dramatic developments often enough, as witness the discovery of the New World, and its conquest by the Spaniards; or the rise of Napoleon; or the very dramatic (not to say theatrical) French Revolution. The Industrial Revolution in England was rightly called by Toynbee a revolution and not an evolution, for it presents a sudden and by no means gradual development. And the Peasants' Revolt was certainly one of the "dramatic" developments of our social history. It is impossible to read contemporary documents without noticing the important place it took in the minds of those who lived through it, short though it was; and I am prepared to follow Bishop Stubbs in his estimate of it rather than attempt to minimise its importance. As to the cause of the revolt as set forth by Stubbs and Rogers, Professor Ashley says (P. S. Q., p. 399), "Certainly no evidence has yet been adduced that can be regarded as confirming it." This is utterly to ignore the words of Wiklif, "Piers the Plowman,” and the preambles to the statutes of the day. As a matter of fact, however, Professor Ashley quotes them himself, and admits from them practically all Rogers' conclusions as to the origin of the Revolt. Dr Cunningham (Growth of English Industry, i. 359-360) does the same, and, of course, both declare that the Revolt failed. Dr Cunningham says that in the fifteenth century services were still rendered by villeins (i. 360), and thinks this fact alone proves the failure. Of course services continued to be rendered, but they were on a very different footing than in the days before the Revolt. From 1381 onwards we find them no longer flourishing but decaying, and within one hundred years they are practically, and in two hundred almost entirely, extinct. Considering how many relics of the old manorial system survive in the nineteenth century, is it not a little remarkable that villeinage died out so rapidly? No historian in his senses would say that services ceased immediately after the Revolt, but we need not deny that from that time forward they began to die out more rapidly than before.

1 12 Rich. II., cc. 3-7, preamble-"The servants and labourers will not

labour still tried, by various petitions and Acts,1 to enforce the Statute of Labourers, but they were practically unsuccessful, and prosperity seems to have been progressive and continuous till the days of Henry VIII. The wages of a good agricultural labourer, before the Plague, have been calculated at £2, 7s. 10d. per year as an average,2 including the labour of his wife and child; after the Plague his wages would be £3, 15s., and the cost of his living certainly not more than £3, 4s. 9d. An artisan, working 300 days a year, would get, say, £3, 18s. 1 d. before 1348, and after that date £5, 15s. 7d., which was so far above the cost of maintenance as to give him a very comfortable position. By the day wages were for agricultural labourers 4d. a day, and for artisans, 6d. His working day, too, was probably not excessive,5 for although the legal day was one of about twelve hours for agricultural labourers, it is pretty certain that, as in other cases, the statutes were generally evaded. Rents were low, and these low rents were one great cause of the prosperity of the new yeoman or tenant farmer class (p. 157) that had arisen after the collapse of the capitalist landowners in consequence of the Plague-a class which remained for at least two centuries the backbone of English agriculture.

Several recent historians, however, have taken a view of the labourer's life in the fifteenth century that by no means agrees with the pleasant condition of things which the statistics of wages seem to indicate. Instead of accepting the fifteenth century as an era of great prosperity, they have endeavoured to paint from various sources a very different

serve and labour without outrageous and excessive hire, and much more than hath been given in any time past." The Act then goes on to fix wages. Surely this is a sign of the practical success of the Peasants' Revolt.

1 For example, 7 Henry IV., c. 17; 23 Henry VI., c. 12; 11 Henry VII., c. 22, and others. 3 Ib.

2 Rogers, Hist. Agric., i. 290, 684, 689, and iv. 757. 4 Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 327.

5 Rogers infers from various grounds (Hist. Agric., iv. 755) that the working day was of only eight hours, chiefly arguing from the heavy payments for overtime. Dr Cunningham (1-477) thinks the contrary, and quotes the Acts of 11 Hen. VII, c. 22, and 6 Hen. VIII., c. 3.

6 See the two Acts just quoted.

and very gloomy picture. When it is pointed out that wages were high both for artisans and labourers, while the prices of food were particularly low, it is contended on the other hand that the high wages were only those paid by the day, that yearly wages were much lower, and that even for day labourers employment was not constant.1 The balance of advantage is said to lie with the modern artisan.2 If we take the "common servant in husbandry," it is said, we find3 he is only paid 20s. 8d. a year, and his wife only 14s., though their food is provided; and even the bailiff only gets 26s. 8d. a year, with 5s. extra for clothing, and his food as well. But it must be remembered that the statute which prescribes these rates is, of course, laying down the minimum rates, and there is not the slightest doubt that far higher wages were habitually paid, not merely for the work of a few days or weeks, but for work extending over a whole year. This, at any rate, is clear enough in the case of artisans, for at Windsor in 1408 we find carpenters getting 6d. and 5d. a day for 365 days in the year, which shows that they were paid an annual wage at a daily rate, even including Sundays and holidays. We find similar high wages at York, while at Oxford men were paid full rates and fed by the College as well." As for agricultural labourers, it must be noted that the majority of them lived in their master's house," when they did not happen to be the sons of small tenants, or tenants themselves, who had their land to fall back upon. Those who lived in their master's house would certainly be well fed while there, for food was both abundant and cheap. Even the minimum basis of wages just quoted (20s. 8d. per year) cannot be called low, when we remember that it represents between £12 and £13 of our money,10 in addition to good board and lodging. Many an agricultural 1 Cf., e.g., Cunningham, Growth of English Industry, i. 348, 349. 2 Ib., 349.

8

4

Rogers, Six Centuries. p. 389.

6

Ib., 328.

3 In the 11 Henry VII., c. 22.

5 Ib.,

328.

7 Froude, History of England, i. p. 5.

8 Rogers, Hist. Agric., i. 689, 691.9 Froude, History, i. 21.

10 Taking the now generally admitted multiple of twelve to compare prices of to-day with those of the fifteenth century; cf. Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 539, 172; Froude, History, i. 26.

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