II THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 27 



there was little or no villeinage/ as well as in Essex, where 

 there was much. No doubt some of the rebels desired to 

 escape from villein status, and desired that the services 

 due from villein tenure should be commuted for a fixed 

 sum. But the rebellion was largely joined by free 

 labourers and townsmen, and was probably caused far 

 more by the Statute of Labourers, by the poll tax, and by 

 the general political discontent 2 than by any special griev- 

 ances of the villeins by tenure. Moreover, the rebellion 

 failed. 



Thus, then, so far as we are concerned, the direct and 

 permanent results of the plague were not as great as many 

 have asserted. Economic history, as Maitland reminded 

 us, is not catastrophic. Many of the changes which have 

 been attributed to it had begun before ; some of these it 

 checked, others it accelerated slightly, and that is all. A 

 few years after the visitation and the peasants' revolt the 

 manors assumed their old aspect. A few more services 

 had been commuted, and a little more land was let on 

 lease. But villeinage by status and the services of the 

 villein by tenure still survived. 3 The only serious results 

 were that the number of the villeins, either by status or by 

 tenure, was reduced partly by death of the tenants or 

 because they had run away ; that in this way the peasant 

 was divorced from the soil and went to swell the class of 

 landless but free labourers; that more land without any 

 inhabitants had fallen to the lords of the manor, of which 

 they could at first make little use; and that labour had for 

 the first time learnt its value. 



Nevertheless, the disintegrating influences of the plague 



1 Vinogradoff, Villeinage, pp. 205, 218. 



2 Ashley, Economic Hist, i, pt. i, p. 31. 



3 Page, Villeinage, p. 92; Cunningham, i. 515; Cheyne, English 

 Hist. Keview, xv. 35 ; Maitland, English Hist. Review, ix. 423 ; 

 Reville, Soulevement des Paysans, c. xxix. 



