1. The latter half of the fourteenth century was a stirring time for the English working classes. Owing to many causes-at some of which we can only guess

-an angry and fretful spirit had got the mastery over them. They felt themselves to be deeply wronged by the owners of lands, who were reaping the fruits of their industry, and yet wanted to keep them in bondage, or to bring them back to a bondage from which they had almost escaped. A great change which was going on added to the hardships of their lot, and to their wrath in consequence.

2. In earlier days most of the rustic folk, of the men who tilled the soil, belonged to the class called

villeins, who were bound to toil with their hands on the farms of their lord, and could not leave his service as they chose, for they were in a certain sense his property quite as much as his horses and dogs. But a villein had his rights; the cottage and patch of ground that his lord allowed him in payment of his labour or for his support, became in course of time his property, which his lord could not touch, so long as the services to which the villein was bound were duly rendered. After a time many lords agreed to take money in place of villein services; others set their villeins free. The spirit of the law and the influence of the Church worked together to lessen the evil of villeinage, and the number of villeins. So it came about that the rustics throughout the country were much better off than before. Most of them were as good as free; many of them were altogether so.

3. This happy state of things was rudely shaken by the great plague of 1349. In this almost, if not quite, one half of the labouring population was cut off. There were no longer labourers enough to till the soil. Wages rose suddenly to an unheard-of height; and the great lords were at their wits' end to know how to get their farms cultivated. In their distress they got a law passed, called the Statute of Labourers, by which all men trained to labour were bound under penalties to work for the same wages as had been customary in 1347. This law failed in its object; it was followed by others of a similar kind, which were alike of no effect. Many of the great landowners then began to cut up their huge farms, which had been hitherto managed by bailiffs, into smaller ones, and to let these out on short leases. Indeed, this is

said to be the beginning of the practice of letting now in use. Others, however, tried to fall back on the custom of villein service, which had so greatly fallen out of use. Many were claimed as villeins who had never had a doubt of their freedom. And it is supposed that an attempt was made at the same time by those who had taken to the custom of letting their farms, to return to the older way of farming by bailiffs.

4. About this time, also, the movement set on foot by Wicliff began to find its way down into the mass of the people. One of his peculiar doctrines-that it was unlawful for the clergy to hold propertywas turned into a belief that all property was unlawful; and many of the lower orders thought that all men should be brought to one common level. The spokesman of this doctrine was John Ball, who asked

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then a gentleman ?

5. Yet there might not have been any rising of the kind but for a measure that Parliament was forced to by the straits they were brought into regarding the means of raising money for the king. The last Parliament of Edward III. had voted a polltax of fourpence a head, which was to be paid by everyone in the land. Again, in 1379, a similar grant was made, which, however, differed from that of 1377 in the fact that each man was rated according to his rank, a duke paying 67. 13s. 4d. ; an ordinary labourer four pence. In 1380 Parliament enacted that for every person above the age of 15 there should be paid to the Crown a sum not less than twelve pence,

and not more than twenty shillings. It was this tax that did the mischief; in the June of the next year the Commons of almost every county sprang suddenly

to arms.

6. The outbreak must have been planned beforehand, for it took place in counties far apart from each other almost at the same time. Many of the classes which took part in it had little in common. Between the men of Kent, where villeinage had never been known, and the men of Essex, who clamoured to be free from villeinage, there could be little sympathy. But it would seem that all who had wrongs to complain of agreed to act together to avenge or to redress them. The men of Kent rose under Wat Tyler, and moving on London, burnt the Savoy, the palace of John of Gaunt, whom they specially disliked. At the same time the men of Essex and the men of Hertfordshire also made for the capital in separate bodies. In a few days there was hardly a shire that was not in arms. There was great destruction of legal documents, the poor rustics hoping that thus might perish every record of their past and present bondage. King Richard, who was then in the Tower, rode out to Mile End, where the men of Essex were, and heard their demands. These were that bondage and tolls at markets should utterly cease, a fixed rent be paid for land in place of villein services, and a general pardon be granted to those who had taken up arms. All these the king promised to grant; and the men of Essex went home. But while Richard was at Mile End the Kentish men broke into the Tower; seized, dragged out, and murdered Simon of Sudbury, primate and chancellor, and Sir Robert Hales, the