Mediaeval Socialism | Page 8

within their jurisdiction those whose own
masters ill-treated them in any way. The villeins themselves sought to
procure enfranchisement, and the right to hire themselves out to their
lords, or to any master they might choose. Commutation was not
particularly in evidence as the legal method of redress; though it too
was no doubt here and there arranged for. But for the most part the
villein took the law into his own hands, left his manor, and openly sold
his labour to the highest bidder.
But at once the governing class took fright. In their eyes it seemed as
though their tenants were taking an unfair advantage of the
disorganisation of the national life. Even before Parliament could meet,
in 1349 an ordnance was issued by the King (Edward III), which
compelled all servants, whether bond or free, to take up again the
customary services, and forced work on all who had no income in land,
or were not otherwise engaged. The lord on whose manor the tenant

had heretofore dwelt had preferential claim to his labour, and could
threaten with imprisonment every refractory villein. Within two years a
statute had been enacted by Parliament which was far more detailed in
its operation, fixing wages at the rate they had been in the twentieth
year of the King's reign (i.e. at a period before the plague, when labour
was plentiful), and also with all appearance of justice determining the
prices of agricultural produce. It was the first of a very long series of
Acts of Parliament that, with every right intention, but with a really
obvious futility, endeavoured to reduce everything to what it had been
in the past, to put back the hands of the clock, and keep them back. But
one strange fact is noticeable.
Whether unconsciously or not, the framers of these statutes were
themselves striking the hardest blow at the old system of tenure. From
1351 the masters' preferential claim to the villeins of their own manor
disappears, or is greatly limited. Henceforth the labourers are to appear
in the market place with their tools, and (reminiscent of scriptural
conditions) wait till some man hired them. The State, not the lord, is
now regulating labour. Labour itself has passed from being "tied to the
soil," and has become fluid. It is no longer a personal obligation, but a
commodity.
Even Parliament recognised that in many respects at least the old order
had passed away. The statute of 1351 allows "men of the counties of
Stafford, Lancaster, Derby, the borders of Wales and Scotland, &c., to
come in August time to labour in other counties, and to return in safety,
as they were heretofore wont to do." It is the legalisation of what had
been looked at, up till then, askance. The long, silent revolution had
become conscious. But the lords were, as we have said, not altogether
sorry for the turn things had taken. Groaning under pressure from the
King's heavy war taxation, and under the demands which the advance
of new standards of comfort (especially between 1370 and 1400)
entailed, they let off on lease even the demesne land, and became to a
very great extent mere rent-collectors. Commutation proceeded steadily,
with much haggling so as to obtain the highest price from the eager
tenant. Wages rose slowly, it is true, but rose all the same; and rent,
though still high, was becoming, on the whole, less intolerable.

But the drain of the French war, and the peculation in public funds
brought about the final upheaval which completed what the Black
Death had begun. The capricious and unfairly graduated poll-tax of
1381 came as a climax, and roused the Great Revolt of that year, a
revolt carefully engineered and cleverly organised, which yet for the
demands it made is a striking testimony to the moderation, the good
sense, and also the oppressed state of the English peasant.
The fourfold petition presented to the King by the rebels was:
(1) The abolition of serfdom.
(2) The reduction of rent to 4d. per acre.
(3) The liberty to buy and sell in market.
(4) A free pardon.
Compare the studiously restrained tone of these articles with the
terrible atrocities and vengeance wreaked by the Jacquerie in France,
and the no less awful mob violence perpetrated in Florence by the
Ciompi. While it shows no doubt in a kindly light the more equitable
rule of the English landholder, it remains a monument, also, of the
fair-mindedness of the English worker.
In the towns much the same sort of struggle had been going on; for the
towns themselves, more often than not, sprang up on the demesne of
some lord, whether king, Church, or baron. But here the difficulties
were complicated still further by the interference of the Guilds, which
in