The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth | Page 4

and his associates, in the sixteenth century, by the
Peasants' Revolt.
To the economic causes of the unrest of the peasantry and labouring
classes during the fifteenth and sixteenth century, we can refer only

very briefly. At the time of the great migration of the fifth century, the
free barbarian nations were organised on a tribal or village basis. By the
end of the tenth century, however, what is known as the Feudal System
had been established all over Europe. "No land without a lord" was the
underlying principle of the whole Feudal System. Either by conquest or
usurpation, or by more or less compulsory voluntary agreement, even
the free primitive communities (_die Markgenossenshaften_) of the
Teutonic races had been brought under the dominion of the lords,
spiritual or temporal, claiming suzerainty over the territory in which
they were situated. The claims of the Feudal Magnates seem ever to
have been somewhat vague and arbitrary. At first they were
comparatively light, and may well have been regarded and excused as a
return for services rendered. The general tendency, however, was for
the individual power of the lords to extend itself at the cost and to the
detriment of the rural communities, and for their claims steadily to
increase and to become more burdensome. During the fourteenth
century many causes had combined to improve the condition of the
industrial classes; and during the end of the fourteenth and the early
part of the fifteenth century the condition of the peasantry and artisans
of Northern Europe was better than it had ever been before or has ever
been since: wages were comparatively high, employment plentiful,
food and other necessaries of life both abundant and cheap.[7:1] At the
beginning of the sixteenth century, however, the prices of the
necessaries of life had risen enormously, and there had been no
corresponding increase in the earnings of the industrial classes.
Moreover, the Feudal Magnates had commenced to exercise their
oppressive power in a hitherto unparalleled manner: old rights of
pasture, of gathering wood and cutting timber, of hunting and fishing,
and so on, had been greatly curtailed, in many cases entirely abolished,
tithes and other manorial dues had been doubled and trebled, and many
new and onerous burdens, some of them entirely opposed to ancient use
and wont, had been imposed. In short, the peasantry and labouring
classes generally were oppressed and impoverished in countless
different ways.
In Germany, as indeed in most other parts of Feudal Europe, the
peasantry of the period were of three different kinds. Serfs

(_Leibeigener_), who were little better than slaves, and who were
bought and sold with the land they cultivated; villeins (_Höriger_),
whose services were assumed to be fixed and limited; and the free
peasant (_die Freier_), whose counterpart in England was the mediæval
copyholder, who either held his land from some feudal lord, to whom
he paid a quit-rent in kind or in money, or who paid such a rent for
permission to retain his holding in the rural community under the
protection of the lord. To appreciate the state of mind of such folk in
the times of which we are writing, we should remember that "the good
old times" of the fifteenth century were still green in their minds, from
which, indeed, the memory of ancient freedom and primitive
communism, though little more than a tradition, had never been entirely
banished: which sufficiently accounts, not only for their impatience of
their new burdens, but also for their tendency to regard all feudal dues
as direct infringements of their ancient rights and privileges.
"We will that you free us for ever, us and our lands; and that we be
never named and held as serfs!" was the demand of the revolting
English peasant in 1381; and the same words practically summarise the
demands of the German peasantry in 1525. The famous Twelve
Articles in which they summarised their wrongs and formulated their
demands, forcibly illustrate the direct influence of the prevailing
religious revival on the current social and political thought.[8:1] Briefly,
they demanded that the gospel should be preached to them pure and
undefiled by any mere man-made additions. That the rural communities,
not the Feudal Magnates, should have the power to choose and to
dismiss their ministers. That the tithes should be regulated in
accordance with scriptural injunctions, and devoted to the maintenance
of ministers and to the relief of the poor and distressed, "as we are
commanded in the Holy Scriptures." That serfdom should be abolished,
"since Christ redeemed us all with His precious blood, the shepherd as
well as the noble, the lowest as well as the highest, none being
excepted." That the claims of the rich to the game, to the fish in the
running waters, to the woods and forests and other lands,