20 THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND [176 



demesne has been attributed to the direct influence of the 

 pestilence, which by reducing the serf population made it 

 impossible to secure enough villain labor to cultivate the 

 lord's land. The substitution of money rents in place of the 

 labor services owed by the villains has been explained on 

 the supposition that the serfs who had survived the pestilence 

 took advantage of the opportunity afforded by their reduc- 

 tion in numbers to free themselves from servile labor and 

 thus improve their social status. The connection between 

 the Black Death and the changes in manorial management 

 which are usually attributed to it could be more convincingly 

 established had not several decades elapsed after the Black 

 Death before these changes became marked. A recent 

 intensive study of the manors of the Bishopric of Win- 

 chester during this period confirms the view of those who 

 have protested against assigning to the Black Death the 

 revolutionary importance which is given it by many his- 

 torians. On these estates the Black Death " produced severe 

 evanescent effects and temporary changes, with a rapid re- 

 turn to the statiis quo of 1348." ^ The great changes which 

 are usually attributed to the plague of 1348- 13 50 were under 

 way before 1348, and were not greatly accelerated until 

 1360, possibly not before 1370, and cannot, therefore, have 

 been due to the Black Death. 



Levett and Ballard devote especial attention to the effect 

 of the Black Death upon the substitution of money pay- 

 ments for labor services and rents in kind, but their study 

 also brings out the fact that the difficulty in persuading 

 tenants to take up land on the old terms (usually ascribed 

 to the Black Death) began before the pestilence, and con- 

 tinued long after its effects had ceased to exert any influence. 

 Before the Black Death landowners were unable to secure 



1 Levett and Ballard, The Black Death on the Estates of the See of 

 Winchester (Oxford, 1916), p. 142. 



