136 LAND REFORM 



renewed.^ They saw for the first tune the risks they 

 ran in keeping the people in slavery. Above all, they 

 realized the danger of having pitted against themselves 

 the power and unflinching courage of these despised 

 husbandmen — men of the same stuff — many of them 

 no doubt the very men — who had fought at Crecy 

 and Poitiers. 



John Ball had sounded the death-knell of slavery in 

 every form. The new ideas of personal liberty — so 

 outrageous in the eyes of the manorial lords — spread 

 far and wide and took deep root, and changed the 

 whole character of the situation. From that time 

 the conditions of the tenure of land steadily changed. 

 The Statute of Labourers, with other obnoxious laws, 

 became a dead letter. " From henceforth we find 

 little notice taken of villeinage in Parliamentary 

 records, and there seems to have been a rapid 

 tendency towards its abolition." (Hallam.) The 

 oppressive services demanded of the husbandmen 

 were either greatly modified or were converted into 

 annual money payments. The number of yeomanry 

 rapidly increased. Emancipation of the bondmen 

 largely added to the class of copyholders, a valuable 

 class who, with the yeomen and peasant proprietors, 

 became the mainstay of the nation. As already stated, 

 these copyholders had an indefeasible title to the 

 land, and could not be legally deprived of their 

 holdings so long as they fulfilled the conditions 

 inscribed in the manor rolls. These conditions 

 included fines of various sorts, heriots, and other 

 payments. Although the landlord could not dis- 



^ Lingard relates that even in Parliament " a new tax was refused on 

 the ground that it might goad the people into a second rebellion." 

 ("History of England," Vol. IV^ p. 250.) 



