36 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II 



the fifteenth century, the great men had taken to sheep- 

 farming, when the class of tenant farmers, eager for 

 land, grew, and the system of enclosures began, the tables 

 were turned. The large owners now desired to increase 

 their landed property and their rents, and also to get rid 

 of the copyholders, whose dues could not easily be raised 

 beyond the terms of the manorial roll. Now would be 

 the time when the landlords might take advantage of the 

 insecurity of the small tenants, who had taken leases for 

 life or lives, and evict. There is, however, no proof that 

 this did occur to any extent until the closing decades of 

 the fifteenth century at least, and the question how far it 

 occurred subsequently belongs to my next lecture. 



Thus then, in spite of the important changes in the 

 economical structure of England during the later fourteenth 

 and fifteenth centuries, it does not appear that, apart from 

 the actual destruction of the villein class by the plague 

 itself and the voluntary departure of some of the survivors 

 themselves, there was during that period any serious 

 diminution in their number. Their position was indeed 

 altered in some cases for the better, in others for the worse. 

 But the numbers remain much the same. Meanwhile it 

 seems probable that the number of the freeholders increased. 

 A good deal of land, it would appear, came into the market 

 and was sold outright, and the new purchasers, especially of 

 land on the demesne, would hold their land neither in 

 villeinage, nor in copyhold, nor by lease, but in freehold. 



Such a process was facilitated by the economical and 

 political conditions of the time. Owing to the dearness of 

 labour it was not very easy to cultivate land profitably, 

 otherwise than as a sheep farm at least, and land was there- 

 fore cheap. This was just the moment when the man with 

 a little capital might purchase lands on easy terms. We 

 know that the fifteenth century was marked by a serious 



