Decay of the Manor 35 



wine and other fine products which the wealthy aristocracy 

 demanded absorbed more men every year, and the evidence of 

 this increasing activity outside agriculture was seen in the growth 

 of towns. 



Nothing stood still with the lords and serfs on the manors. 

 The scheming, intriguing, and open warfare that went on between 

 king and barons, king and church, and barons and church had 

 their counterpart on the manors. Each estate had 'its own style 

 of management. On some, conditions were easy and favourable 

 to the villains ; on others the lords sought to confirm their grip 

 on the lives of the people in a savage manner. The Black Death 

 in 1349 and subsequent years gave the labourers and the tenants 

 who had arranged to pay their rents in money and not in labour 

 services a great advantage over the lords of the manors. By the 

 grim process of carrying off a great part of the population the 

 plague increased wages. To prevent the labourers from leaving 

 the manors to which they were attached, and to keep down 

 wages, the Statute of Labourers was passed in 1349, and many 

 times afterwards in different forms. 



In 1388 a very complete and sweeping Act was passed. ' Because 

 servants and labourers ', it said, ' will not and for long time have 

 not been willing to serve and labour without outrageous and 

 excessive hire and much greater than has been given to such 

 servants and labourers in any time past, so that for dearth of the 

 said labourers and servants, husbandmen and tenants of land 

 cannot pay their rent or hardly live on their lands, to the exceeding 

 great damage and loss as well of the lords as of the whole com- 

 mons ; and also because the wages of the said labourers and ser- 

 vants have not been put in certainty before these times, it is 

 agreed and assented that the bailiff for husbandry take i^s. ^.d. 

 a year and his clothing once a year at most, the master hind ios., 

 the carter IDJ., the shepherd IQJ., the oxherd 6s. Sd., the cowherd 

 6s. Sd., the swineherd 6s. , the woman labourer 6s., the dairymaid 



c 2 



