FARMING IN OLDEN TIMES. 7 



Persons of all degrees were carried off . . . servants and 

 labourers working on the demesne ; farmers and freemen 

 paying rent only ; freemen bound to boon-works in addition 

 to their money payments ; virgaters and cottiers whose 

 services had been commuted ; others whose lords had ten- 

 tatively introduced the new fashion of money payments ; and 

 finally yet others who continued to perform their services or 

 some of them. 1 



The economic effects of this catastrophe were immediate 

 and inevitable. The people perished, but the land 

 remained, and it had to be cultivated by a depleted 

 population. 



Those tenants who remained on the manor found in the 

 landlord's difficulty their opportunity of demanding increased 

 wages, of commuting labour services for money payments, of 

 enlarging the size of their holdings, of establishing the prin- 

 ciple of competitive rents. . . . There was a fall in rents and 

 a rise in wages, because the supply of land exceeded the 

 demand, and the demand for labour was greater than the 

 supply. 2 



The Legislature, not for the first or last time, tried to 

 stem the economic tide with Parliamentary mops, but 

 the effects of its labours were transient. There were, 

 indeed, from this time onward innumerable Acts of 

 Parliament regulating the wages of labourers and their 

 hours of work, the prices of corn and other produce, and 

 the channels of trade therein, forbidding now exports 

 and now imports, while a whole array of enactments 

 was directed against the machinations of dealers in corn, 

 live-stock, etc. Even the depopulation of the rural 

 districts (an old story) was legislated against in various 

 ways, one Act of Richard II. forbidding those who had 

 served in agriculture until twelve years of age to be 

 apprenticed in the towns, but " to abide in husbandry." 

 In the sixteenth, as in the twentieth century, the undue 

 slaughter of calves attracted attention, and a statute of 



1 Hasbach, " A History of the English Agricultural Labourer," 

 p. 21. 



2 " English Farming, Past and Present," p. 41. 



