Mediaeval Socialism | Page 7

out than elsewhere--increase of trade helped to further the same
development. Money, species, in greater abundance was coming into
circulation. The traders were beginning to take their place in the
national life. The Guilds were springing into power, and endeavouring
to capture the machinery of municipal government. As a result of all
this commercial activity money payments became more frequent. The
villein was able to pay his lord instead of working for him, and by the
sale of the produce from his own yard-land was put in a position to hire
helpers for himself, and to develop his own agricultural resources. Nor
was it the tenant alone who stood to gain by this arrangement. The lord,
too, was glad of being possessed of money. He, too, needed it as a
substitute for his duty of military service to the king, for scutage (the
payment of a tax graduated according to the number of knights, which

each baron had to lead personally in time of war as a condition of
holding land at all) had taken the place of the old feudal levy. Moreover,
he was probably glad to obtain hired labour in exchange for the forced
labour which the system of tenure made general; just as later the
abolition of slavery was due largely to the fact that, in the long run, it
did not pay to have the plantations worked by men whose every
advantage it was to shirk as much toil as possible.
But in most cases, as far as can be judged now, the lord was methodical
in releasing services due to him. The week-work was first and freely
commuted, for regular hired labour was easy to obtain; but the
boon-work--the work, that is, which was required for unusual
circumstances of a purely temporary character (such as harvesting,
&c.)--was, owing to the obvious difficulty of its being otherwise
supplied, only arranged for in the last resort. Thus, by one of the many
paradoxes of history, the freest of all tenants were the last to achieve
freedom. When the serfs had been set at liberty by manumission, the
socage-tenants or free-tenants, as they were called, were still bound by
their fixed agreements of tenure. It is evident, however, that such
emancipation as did take place was conditioned by the supply of free
labour, primarily, that is, by the rising surplus of population. Not until
he was certain of being able to hire other labourers would a landholder
let his own tenants slip off the burdens of their service.
But this process, by which labour was rendered less stationary, was
immeasurably hastened by the advent of a terrible catastrophe. In 1347
the Black Death arrived from the East. Across Europe it moved,
striking fear by the inevitableness of its coming. It travelled at a steady
rate, so that its arrival could be easily foretold. Then, too, the
unmistakable nature of its symptoms and the suddenness of the death it
caused also added to the horror of its approach.
On August 15, 1349, it got to Bristol, and by Michaelmas had reached
London. For a year or more it ravaged the countryside, so that whole
villages were left without inhabitants. Seeing England so stunned by
the blow, the Scots prepared to attack, thinking the moment propitious
for paying off old scores; but their army, too, was smitten by the

pestilence, and their forces broke up. Into every glen of Wales it
worked its havoc; in Ireland only the English were affected--the "wild
Irish" were immune. But in 1357 even these began to suffer. Curiously
enough, Geoffrey Baker in his Chronicle (which, written in his own
hand, after six hundred years yet remains in the Bodleian at Oxford)
tells us that none fell till they were afraid of it. Still more curiously,
Chaucer, Langland, and Wycliff, who all witnessed it, hardly mention it
at all. There could not be any more eloquent tribute to the nameless
horror that it caused than this hushed silence on the part of three of
England's greatest writers.
Henry Knighton of Leicester Abbey, canon and chronicler, tells us
some of the consequences following on the plague, and shows us very
clearly the social upheaval it effected. The population had now so much
diminished that prices of live stock went down, an ox costing 4s., a cow
12d., and a sheep 3d. But for the same reason wages went up, for
labour had suddenly grown scarce. For want of hands to bring in the
harvest, whole crops rotted in the fields. Many a manor had lost a third
of its inhabitants, and it was difficult, under the fixed services of land
tenure, to see what remedy could be applied. In despair the feudal
system was set aside, and lord competed with lord to obtain landless
labourers, or to entice