Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/345

 causes of the outbreak which alarmed all England at this important and most interesting crisis—an outbreak which, if organisation had been possible, and if competent leaders had been forthcoming, might have still more deeply modified the whole future history of the country, even if it had not then and there set up a durable commonwealth on a broad basis of enfranchisement.

First and foremost amongst these causes must be reckoned the obsolescence and gradual decay of the feudal system, owing not so much to the Anglo-French dynastic wars—which were but one chapter of a long story—as to certain natural and logical developments of feudalism, sure to take place sooner or later, and already in operation when the fourteenth century began. Feudalism could not endure more than a century or two, at any rate in its original form, in any country not perfectly secure against the risk of foreign wars. It arose out of anarchy and general insecurity, and was the best attainable device for supplying the two great needs of humanity under such conditions, protection for the weak and military aid for the ruler. But its deterioration as a system began at the very moment of its establishment, and sprang from the same causes which had called it into existence. Moreover this deterioration proceeded most rapidly in a country where feudalism had been imposed on a subject race by their conquerors. The combination of the weak gradually made them strong, and the dependence of the rulers on the lower grades, both for men-at-arms and for supplies of money, gradually made them weak.