THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. 6 1 



mical consequences were very different in England and 

 France. In England it forms an era in the history of per- 

 sonal and political freedom : in France it is equally an era, 

 but only as an occasion for deeper degradation, and a more 

 hopeless misery on the part of the peasantry. I have already 

 adverted to part of the evidence from which I conclude that 

 its effects were, on the whole, ultimately beneficial to the 

 mass of the community. I must postpone the rest till I deal 

 with the facts, collected in the second volume, which bear 

 on the prices of labour before and after this occurrence. 



Popi^^^^ to judge from parallel cases, speedily righted 

 itself, fl Mmbers guessed at by contemporaries are almost 

 sure to^Be^Baggerated, so the waste of life, consequent on 

 pestilence, is rapidly counterpoised in fully-peopled countries, 

 as, I doubt not, England was at the time, considering its 

 resources. The losses caused by certain plagues, and all 

 famines, ordinarily affect the weakest portion of the com- 

 munity, and leave the stronger and more vigorous alive. If, 

 therefore, circumstances are generally favourable to the re- 

 placement of population, the void is speedily filled up. Now, 

 although for some years after the plague of 1348 the prices 

 of wheat were somewhat high, singular abundance character- 

 ized the last twenty years of the fourteenth century. 



What then was the condition of the landlord wl.en these 

 serious inconveniences overtook him, and he had to make 

 up his mind to one of two alternatives invariably distasteful 

 to agriculturists a change in his customary habits, or the 

 necessity of farming at a loss ? If, in place of the dry and 

 curt language of a petition in parliament, in which the words 

 employed to describe the effort of labourers demanding, by 

 reason of their altered position, higher rates of payment for 

 their services, is exceptionally indignant, we could have the 

 record of the debates, we should read the warmest complaints 

 on what has been called agricultural distress. To make the 

 case of the landlord clear, I must attempt to describe the 

 ordinary condition of a manorial estate, referring my reader, 



