ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 2qJ 



those who witnessed it, by noticing certain entries made in the 

 records of several Hertfordshire manors, in which the pestilence 

 appears to have raged with special deadliness. Here it was for 

 thirty years the practice to head the list of the expenses of the 

 manor with the account of the lives which were lost and the 

 tenancies which were vacated by the great death of 1348. 



At first there was a suspicion that the disease was due to 

 human agencies, and, as usual, the Jews were asserted to have 

 contrived the machinations by which the calamity was created. 

 They were charged with poisoning the wells, and through 

 France, Switzerland, and Germany, thousands of these unhappy 

 people were destroyed on evidence derived from confessions 

 obtained under torture. As far as he could, the Emperor 

 Charles the Fourth protected them. They escaped persecution 

 too in the dominions of Albrecht of Austria. It is said that the 

 great number of the Jewish population in Poland is due to the 

 fact that Casimir the Great was induced by the entreaties of 

 one Esther, a favourite Jewish mistress of that monarch, to 

 harbour and shelter them in his kingdom. It should be men- 

 tioned that Clement the Sixth forbad the persecution of the 

 Jews at Avignon. Since the time of Edward the First this 

 people had been formally expelled from England, and few 

 could have lingered here. 



All contemporary writers inform us that the immediate con- 

 sequence of the Plague was a dearth of labour, an excessive 

 enhancement of wages, and thereupon a serious loss to the 

 landowners. To meet this scarcity the king issued a proclama- 

 tion directed to the sheriffs of the several counties, which 

 forbad the payment of higher than the customary wages, under 

 the penalties of amercement. But the king's mandate was 

 everywhere disobeyed, and farmers were compelled either to 

 see their crops ungathered or to comply with these exorbitant 

 demands. Finding his proclamation disregarded, the king, we 

 are told, laid heavy penalties on abbots, priors, barons, the 

 crown tenants, and others holding lands under mesne lords. 

 Perhaps this charge for contumaciously evading a command 



