Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/53

] culture must have been grievously impeded by army after army sweeping over the fields, and treading down the crops; by deterring the farmer from sowing his lands, and by drawing away all kinds of handicrafts from their trades; indeed, towards the end of this century, we hear that the traces of the plough had been almost obliterated; in both Scotland and England the traveller beheld dismal scones of ruined villages, decaying towns, and uncultivated fields; and, from want of labourers, the proprietors of large estates enclosed them in vast pasturages, where the cattle might wander without need of much looking after.

Yet, spite of all these circumstances, and of the continual drains of the people's substance to maintain these great armies, such is the indomitable energy of the British race, that, even during this most distracted age, there appears no inconsiderable progress to have been made in various ways. It is certain that the common people came out of the depressing condition of serfdom to a great extent—a very important step or passage from the condition of slaves to that of free men. This was especially promoted by the constant demands of the contending parties for soldiers. They were obliged to hurry the hind from the plough, and the artisan from his trade, to fight for one side or the other. Whoever once took up arms, never consented to return to the condition of a villein. Had their ancient lords been disposed to compel them to renew their slavery, they were now too prodigiously decimated themselves to possess the power. Thousands of estates had lost their owners, many fell to the crown, and others passed over to their enemies. While one-half of the aristocracy had fallen, the power of the other half over their villeins must have been destroyed. That race of arrogant and turbulent barons and princes of the blood, which for a century or two back had overshadowed the throne, had shaken it by their ambition and their jealousies, was now entirely cut down. More than sixty princes of the blood were sleeping in the dust, and the country had to look to an individual of so remote a claim as Henry VII. to occupy the throne.

This, while during the succeeding dynasties of the Tudors it augmented extremely the power of the crown, also contributed, and that immediately, to the liberty of the people. The decrease in the numbers of the labouring classes, as a matter of course, raised their value. Accordingly we find that while the contending monarchs or princes found increasing difficulties in bringing large armies into the field—while, instead of their 50,000 and their 100,000 men, they could scarcely muster 10,000 for a field—in the last year of Henry V., 1421, an Act was passed to repeal one issued in 1340, prohibiting a sheriff or escheator remaining more than one year in his office, and permitting them to hold office for four consecutive years, on the ground that pestilences and foreign wars had reduced the number of gentlemen in every county of England, till there were not sufficient qualified to fill those offices. Such was the diminution of the gentry, but that of the common people must have been still greater; and this fact is revealed, by the wonderful rise of wages and the manifestations of prosperity in the bulk of the population, spite of the repeated hurricanes of war which had swept the land.

If we compare the various Acts for regulating the wages of both labourers and citizens which were passed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we shall become aware of a very striking rise in the value of labour. Betwixt 1388 and 1444, the annual salary of a bailiff had risen from 13s. 4d. to 23s. 4d.; the wages of a master hind, carter, and shepherd, from 10s. to 20s.; of a farm servant, from 7s. to 15s.; and of a female labourer, from 6s. to 10s. The value of labour had, in fact, doubled in half a century. The causes of this remarkable change are obvious. The number of hinds was diminished which had been accustomed to cultivate the ground. Lands had gone out of tillage, and must be re-ploughed. But meantime, the people, amid the strife of their lords, had become free, or the majority of them, and their services were to be purchased at a proportionate rate.

Monarchs who with difficulty can maintain their standing, must court the people. Thus it was during the contentions of this century. Each party was continually obliged to solicit the populace to take arms in its behalf, and the self-estimation of the people rose in proportion. When there was scarcely a prince left to govern, the people, though they had decreased in numbers, had risen in position. It has been well remarked that in Wat Tyler's insurrection there was a vehement outcry against villenage; but that seventy years afterwards, in the insurrection of Jack Cade, nothing was said on this subject—a certain sign that it had disappeared, or was fast disappearing, and had ceased to occupy a prominent place in the popular mind.

But still more was the improved condition of the people indicated by the laws passed to restrain undue luxury in clothing. In 1444 the cost of the whole annual clothing of an agricultural servant was only 3s. 4d. But in 1463 an Act was passed to check the general extravagance in clothing, on the ground that "the commons, as well men as women, have worn, and daily do wear, excessive and inordinate array and apparel, to the great displeasure of God, and impoverishing of this realm of England, and to the enriching of other strange realms and countries, to the final destruction of the husbandry of this said realm." In this Act, the clothing of the rural labourer was permitted to be of woollen cloth, of 2s. per yard, which must have been three times the cost of the raiment allowed not twenty years before.

In the statute of 1463, many of the regulations of earlier acts of the legislature were repealed regarding the clothing of all classes, for nothing was left untouched by the paternal hand of Government in those good old times, any more than they are by the paternal Governments of the Continent at the present day. It was forbidden to all who were not of noble rank to wear woollen cloth of foreign manufacture, or the fur of sables, martens, or minevers. They were to content themselves with fur of black or white lamb. They or their wives were not to wear silk of foreign fabric, or any kerchiefs of higher price than 3s. 4d.; nor any girdle garnished with gold and silver. Fustian of Naples, and scarlet cloth in grain, were prohibited to them.

In like manner the dress and its quality of every other rank were regulated. None but the royal family, nor under the rank of a duke, were to wear any cloth of gold, of tissue, or silk of purple; none but a lord plain