SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



of murder and manslaughter perpetrated in the neighbourhood of the town." 

 The knights of the shire carry war into each others' manors. One of them 

 hurls a justice from his bench at Ipswich. Seven other free-lances entrenched 

 in the parish church defy the law at Stowmarket." The justices are fined 

 heavily for extortion, but make terms with the Exchequer." The Abbot of 

 Bury, besieged by his Suffolk tenants, cannot collect his rents in Northampton- 

 shire. His bailiffs, when they attempt to exalt the alewives of Mildenhall in 

 the tumbril, have to fly for their lives. Between the regular and secular 

 clergy there is constant and bitter feud." The monks are accused of ' con- 

 sorting with notorious criminals, and of committing rape, adultery, highway 

 robbery, perjury, simony, and usury.''* 



The social discontent of the peasant and artisan class finding expression 

 for the first time through widespread organization in a simultaneous rising 

 in support of a common programme — it is this no doubt that gives the 

 events of 1381 their permanent historical interest. But that this had little 

 relation to the flood of violence let loose by the rising will be evident to any- 

 one who studies the narrative given by Mr. Powell of what happened in 

 East Anglia.®' If we subtract from the total of local disturbances in Suffolk 

 all those that were due to a desire to pay off old scores and family feuds, all 

 those that originated in the action of knights, esquires, and well-to-do gentry 

 (like Thomas Sampson, whom we shall hear of later) ; if we allow for the ill- 

 feeling generated in the recent dispute about the appointment of a new abbot, 

 and in the long-drawn contest between the abbey and the town of Bury; and 

 finally, if we take account of the natural indignation aroused against the 

 ministers of state and their local officials by the exaction of the poll-tax — 

 there will remain very little lawlessness to be laid to the charge of the strictly 

 agrarian movement. 



That movement itself was not the fruit of any sudden fit of perversity 

 on the part either of lords or of peasants, but was due to more gradual and 

 general causes. For more than two centuries the wealth and population ™ of 

 the country, in spite of war and pestilence, had been steadily increasing. The 

 soil produced more, and the growth of an industrial population raised the 

 value both of food and of raw material. Under this stimulus to improved 

 methods of rural economy the old communal arrangements were gradually 

 abandoned in practice, though the legal form associated with them long sur- 

 vived. Status was giving way to contract. A social stability resting on a 

 wasteful uniformity of custom was being displaced by the irregularities and 

 uncertainties which inevitably accompany enterprise and competition. The 

 typical mediaeval holding of from fifteen to thirty acres was being absorbed 

 into larger farms or broken into smaller holdings. The number of labourers 

 with two or three acres had greatly increased. The condition of the labourer 



" Hist. MSS. Com. Ref>. ix, App. i, 226 ; Suff. Arch. Inst, xii, 192-3- 

 « Cal. Pat. 1338-40, p. 273 ; l34°-3, P- 313- 



«Ibid. 1340-3, p. 316; 1343-5, p. 156; 1340-3, pp. 207-8. , ,„ „ c V - ^ 



=' Ibid. 1334-8, pp. 35, 44, 207. " Mem. of St. Edmunds (Rolls Ser.), ui, 65. 



^' E. Powell, The Rising in East Jnglia, 9-25, 103. 



" This would seem an inevitable inference from all the local evidence. The poU-tox of 1377 was levied 

 on 2,445 persons in Bury, 1,507 in Ipswich, and on 58,610 in the rest of Suffolk. If we multiply these 

 figures by 2, and compare them with those of Domesday multiplied by ; (a very rough method of comparison), 

 the increase indicated is only 25 per cent. It is possible some of the persons enumerated in Domesday 

 appear twice. 



653 



