



84 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 



i burden of proof on the lord, and the gradual decay of the 

 judicial power of the manorial courts and its transference 

 to the justices of the peace deprived the lords of their power 

 of retaining control. ' 



In spite of the assertion of Harrison in his Common- 

 wealth of England (1580), that 'of bondsmen we have none', 

 and that of Sir Thos. Smith, who writing about 1583, 

 says that he never knew of any in the realm in his time, 

 it is certain that villeinage by blood still survived, especially 

 in the west, as manorial records and contemporary authorities 

 prove. Fitzherbert in his book on Surveying (1523) says 

 that, ( it continueth as yet in some places and is the greatest 

 inconvenience that is now suffered by the Law/ Norden 

 in his Surveyors' Dialogue says the same. The abolition 

 of serfdom was one of the demands in Ket's Rebellion (1549), 

 and as late as 1575 commissioners were appointed to carry 

 out manumissions on crown manors. 1 Nevertheless for all 



"-JL | "' 4 



practical purposes villeinage by tenure and villeinage by 

 blood had disappeared by^ the close of the fifteenth century, 

 and~thus England, just at the time when she"was becoming 

 influenced by the system of (leldwirttischajl, also gained 

 pi FreizilgigkeiT) or freedom of movement. That is to say a M 

 v" \ ' society wfiich had originally been organized on the basis of// 

 i status and of custom was now attaining greater fluidity]/ 

 / and becoming subject to the influence of competition, of freel 

 J)( I contract, and of modern monetary arrangements, far earlier" 

 I than the rest of Europe. 



The result of all this is to be seen in two changes which 

 materially concern us. In the first place, to the words in 



1 Cf. Cheyne, English Hist. Review, xv. 24 ; Savine, Transactions 

 Royal Hist. Soc. xvii. 25, gives evidence of existence of bondsmen in 

 26 counties and in 80 manors at least, 500 families, perhaps 2,000 

 persons, in Tudor times. Fitzherbert, Surveying, ed. 1539, p. 31 ; 

 Scrope, Castle Combe, p. 284, for manumission of a serf who was rich 

 in 1488. 



