4 INTRODUCTORY. 



Court of Arches, and that the practice provoked the anger of 

 the orthodox Gascoigne, who hoped that the growing unpopu- 

 larity of the Church, and the scandals which disfigured its 

 administration, would be corrected by the revival of a sound 

 discipline, exercised by a thoroughly reformed episcopate 1 . 

 And if there were scandals among the secular clergy, worse 

 scandals abounded among the wealthier orders of the regular 

 clergy, the monks and nuns of the older orders. 



It is clear that the yeomen during the fifteenth century were 

 thriving. They accumulated wealth, and they purchased land. 

 Trade too was carried on successfully ; for many a family of 

 ancient gentry, and not a few of what is now the older nobility, 

 were the creation of commerce and manufactures. In particular, 

 the county of Norfolk, then the principal seat of the woollen 

 and linen manufactures, was populous and prosperous. It is 

 said that the foundations of houses can be traced in the out- 

 skirts of many of those villages and small towns of north- 

 eastern Norfolk, in which these manufactures were anciently 

 carried on, the produce of which was sometimes exported, 

 but more frequently sold at the great fair of Stourbridge. 

 These manufactures were protected or controlled by frequent 

 acts of the legislature. 



I have stated before that the effect of the Peasants' War of 

 1381 was the practical extinction of villenage. By this I mean 

 any claim on the tenant in villenage of a payment in labour- 

 rents, at the scale of charges which prevailed before the Black 

 Death. The money equivalents of these labour-rents were 

 indeed exacted at least till the conclusion of the fifteenth 

 century, under the name of opera manualia, for they form a 

 notable and important item in the receipts of the bailiff or 

 collector reddituum. The chivage on non-resident serfs con- 

 tinues to be exigible, though this custom disappears at an earlier 

 date than the payment of the labour- rents. So, again, the 

 exaction of fines on marriage can be traced, as my reader will 



1 See for example Loci e Libro Veritatum, p. 32, and the comments (p. 16) on the 

 elevation of George Nevil to the see of Exeter. 



