AFTER THE PEASANT REVOLT 73 



game provided valuable winter food. A statute * was also 

 enacted directed to keeping the country people in the 

 country, by forbidding the apprenticeship of country 

 children to trades in the town ; and, about the same time, 

 the Universities closed their doors to the peasants' 

 children, and so probably put an end to the peasant 

 priests, a class that seems in earlier days to have taken 

 the side of the people in their controversies with the 

 manorial lords. Nevertheless, on the whole the peasants 

 steadily if slowly improved their position. Undoubtedly 

 the more intelligent of the lords of the manors, who must 

 have seen that it profited them little to spend their 

 lives quarrelling with the tenants, continued to commute 

 the old obligations and services for money rents, and 

 to deal with their estates by the new methods. Some 

 took up sheep farming ; others let off the home farm. 

 Some let off the whole manor : and we know that in 

 certain manors such leases were granted to the bailiffs 

 or to the village community as a whole. By the close 

 of the XlVth century the struggle was dying out, 

 and a new generation had arisen, imbued with new 

 ideas. 



The period which began with the new century 

 divides itself naturally into two parts, the first extend- 

 ing up to about 1485, the beginning of the 

 and disorder Tudor period, and the second continuing 



intnexvth f rom t h at time until the middle of the 

 century. 



X VI ith century. 



The XVth century appears to have been, on the 



whole, a prosperous time for country people ; yet 



there were certain strong cross currents of events that 



seem inconsistent with this general condition. Un- 



1 See Appendix, p. 167. 



