EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY. 477 



after the insurrection of 1381, the landowners strove to reassert 

 a modified villenage, to coerce their customary tenants into the 

 payment of rent by labour, to check the ambition, and with 

 greater apparent success to fix, by parliamentary regulations and 

 by the imposition of mulcts and other penalties on the dis- 

 obedient, a rate of wages. We have seen, by the evidence 

 of facts, how futile were these endeavours, and how the 

 landowners in Parliament were unable to prevent a real rise 

 in the wages of labour, still less to compel the production 

 of articles, necessary for agricultural economy, at prices cor- 

 responding to those which prevailed before that great calamity 

 which destroyed a great part of the nation and freed the 

 survivors. During the time that this change was being 

 effected singular plenty reigned, and a series of harvests 

 unequalled for abundance extended over nearly a hundred 

 years ; the crops during the last twenty years of the fourteenth 

 and the first eighty of the fifteenth century having been ex- 

 ceedingly copious, and having been seldom varied from a 

 monotonous prosperity. Upon the history, however, of this 

 later period I cannot now intrude, but must reserve the facts 

 for a subsequent enquiry. 



