8 INTRODUCTORY. 



minated differently, and the victory of Poitiers have been as 

 pregnant of events as that of Hastings, had it not been for 

 the Black Death. 



I shall attempt below to describe the calamity which visited 

 England, after it had wasted the greater part of Central 

 Europe. The first incidence of no plague was ever so de- 

 structive, the effects of none have been so singular. It swept 

 away half the people, according to some estimates. It cer- 

 tainly created an economical revolution. Banished at last, 

 after occasional outbreaks for several centuries, from Western 

 Europe, in consequence of improvements in the sanitary con- 

 ditions of society, it still lingers in the east, and the oriental 

 plague of the Levant and Egypt is the legitimate successor 

 of the Black Death. Its ravages in France were as destruc- 

 tive as those in England, but the weakness induced upon 

 the latter country made the resuscitation of French inde- 

 pendence possible. 



The plague bore its fruit at home in the insurrection of 

 the peasantry at the beginning of the reign of Richard the 

 Second. The rebellion was put down, but the demands of 

 the villains were silently and effectually accorded ; as they 

 were masters for a week of the position, the dread of an- 

 other servile war promoted the liberty of the serf; and the 

 close of the fourteenth century sees the small freeholder, and 

 probably the tenant in villenage, such important personages 

 in the social order, as to be competent for the possession of 

 those large political rights which are embodied in the election 

 statute of Henry IV. It is with the second year of this suc- 

 cessful usurper's reign that the economical history of these 

 volumes is concluded. 



The method which I propose, in dealing with the facts 

 contained in the second volume, is to comment, in the first 

 place, on the leading features of medieval agriculture, and 

 the rate of production from the soil. The state of society, 

 as estimated from economical considerations, will demand 

 some attention, and I shall seek, as far as the scanty mate- 



