[358] This was a last resort, more and more frequently adopted however, especially after the plague. As Mr. Oman has justly observed, by natural disposition the villeins “were reluctant to abscond and throw up their share of the manorial acres, for only in extremity will the peasant, who has once got a grip on the soil, consent to let it go.” “The Great Revolt of 1381,” Oxford 1906, p. 9.
[359] “A . . . n. Sr le Roi et Seigneurs de Parlement monstrent les chivalers des countees en ycest present Parlement, que come les Seigneurs parmy le Roialme d’Engleterre eient plusours vileins queux s’enfuont de lour Seigneurs et de lour terres en diverses citees et burghs enfranchisez, de jour en autre, et la demuront tout lour vies, par cause desqueux franchises les ditz Seigneurs ne pount aprocher lour ditz vileins. . . .” They want to be enabled to forcibly take them back. Their petition is rejected: “Le Roi s’advisera.” 15 Rich. II, “Rolls of Parliament,” iii. p. 296.
[360] “Ad similitudinem cervorum domesticorum.”—“Henrici de Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ Libri V,” ed. Travers Twiss, London, 1878, i. p. 48.
[361] According to Seebohm (“The Black Death and its place in English History,” two articles in the Fortnightly Review in 1865), more than half of the population died during the epidemic which had begun in July 1348 and lasted till the end of 1349. Three archbishops of Canterbury died in one year. Knyghton, a contemporary, gives a striking picture of the plague at Leicester. “There were scarcely any who took heed of riches or cared for anything. . . . And sheep and oxen wandered through the fields and among the crops; there was no one to go after and collect them; but there perished an untold number in out of the way ditches and under hedges.” In the autumn the price of labour was so exorbitant that a large part of the crops were left on the ground (Twysden’s “Decem Scriptores,” col. 2599). “Through this pestilence,” say the Commons in Parliament, “cities, boroughs and other towns and hamlets throughout the land have decayed, and from day to day are decaying and several are entirely depopulated.” 25 Ed. III, A.D. 1351, “Rolls of Parliament,” vol. ii. p. 227.
[362] See a concrete example of such reports being brought from the north to the south by pilgrims, further, p. [279].
[363] As shown by the surnames of the members, at that period; in numerous cases, a mere indication of profession: Johannes le Baker, Galfridus le Fisshere, Johannes le Carpenter, Robertus Chaundeler, Ricardus Orfevre, Radulphus le Taverner, etc. “Return of the names of every member returned to serve in every Parliament,” London, 1878, a blue book, pp. 18, 31, 146 and passim; on p. 229, duly appears, as a knight of the shire, for Kent, “Galfridus Chauceres.”
[364] Both documents, the first in Latin, the second in French, in “Statutes of the Realm”; a text, revised on the originals, is in the Appendix to Miss Bertha H. Putnam’s “Enforcement of the Statutes of Labourers during the first Decade after the Black Death,” New York, 1908, pp. 8* and 12*.
[365] The taking of money out of the realm was especially feared: “Quamplures ejusdem regni nostri cum pecunia quam in eodem regno habere poterunt, ad partes exteras in dies se transferunt et transferre proponunt.” Dec. 1, 1349, Rymer’s “Fœdera,” vol. v. p. 668.
[366] “Rolls of Parliament,” vol. ii. p. 233. Compare the French ordinances; that of John the Good, January 30, 1350 (Isambert, “Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises,” iv. p. 576), orders the idle people of Paris, picturesquely described as “gens oiseux ou joueurs de dez ou enchanteurs (singers) es rues ou truandans ou mandians, de quelque estat ou condition qu’ils soient, ayans mestier ou non, soient hommes ou femmes,” to either work or go away, which was less radical and still less to the point than the English rules. Another order of the same king (Nov. 1354, ibid. p. 700) was directed against the workmen who since the plague were exacting exorbitant wages, and, in addition to that, “wine, meat and other unwonted things.” If denied, they preferred to do nothing but would go to taverns and there had been heard to say that, “owing to the great price they are accustomed to take, they will work only two days a week,” a kind of difficulty which, dating back six centuries, is not entirely of the past.
[367] “Rolls of Parliament,” vol. ii. p. 261, parliament of 1354.