72 THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND [228 



cultivating it with serf labor. The bailiffs complained of 

 the exorbitant wages demanded by servants in husbandry; 

 these wages were exorbitant only because the produce of the 

 land was so small that it was not worth the pains of tillage. 

 The most important of the many causes which were at 

 work to imdermine the manorial system in the fourteenth 

 century is, therefore, plain. The productivity of the soil 

 had declined to a point where villain holdings would no 

 longer support the families which cultivated them and where 

 demesne land was sometimes not worth cultivation even by 

 serf labor. Under these conditions, the very basis of the 

 manor was destroyed. The poverty of the peasants, the 

 difficulty with which tenants could be found for vacant hold- 

 ings, even though the greatest pressure was brought to bear 

 upon eligible villains, and even though the servile burdens 

 were considerably reduced, and the frequency with which 

 these serfs preferred the uncertainty and risk of deserting 

 to the certain destitution and misery of land-holding, are 

 facts which are intimately connected, and which are all due 

 to the same cause. It had been impossible to maintain the 

 productive capacity of the land at a level high enough to 

 provide a living for the tillers of the soil. 



