24 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II 



half caused great dislocation. Labour became much more 

 valuable and learnt its power. Yet the effects were much 

 more serious on the last two classes than on the first. 

 Those villeins who had commuted their services were 

 comparatively little concerned. But those who still owed 

 services were unwilling- or unable to do them. In some 

 cases they were all dead ; in some, children or widows 

 alone remained; in others, they refused to serve, and 

 deserting their holdings, sometimes with leave on paying 

 a fine, sometimes without leave, joined the class of free 

 labourers, who were demanding higher pay, 1 to be met by 

 the Statute of Labourers with which we are not here con- 

 cerned, but which tried to fix wages by law. 



In all such cases, that is where the villein died or fled, 

 the land fell to the lord, and as he could not find others 

 who would perform the due labour services, or force the 

 surviving villeins to take up more land on villein tenure, 

 or increase the labour services, as he could by law, he was 

 forced either to take the land into his hands, 2 or to let it out 

 to others on lease. Thus in this way there can be no 

 doubt many villeins by their own act severed their con- 

 nexion with the land and joined the class of free labourers 

 divorced from the land, while the lords increased the 

 amount of land in their own hands. The lords too, no 

 doubt, would decline to advance further in the direction of 

 commutation since labour was now more valuable than any 

 commutation which their villeins would be likely to agree 

 to. Mr. Page suggests, indeed, that the lords would be 

 the more willing to commute, since by the halving of the 

 population the lord would have relatively more money. 



1 Maitland, A Cambridgeshire Manor, Eng. Hist. Review, ix. 423 ; 

 Norfolk manor, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xiv. 127. 



2 In one Norfolk manor, Forncett, 60 to 70 tenements were in the 

 lord's hands, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xiv. 127. 



