Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/347

 amassed wealth, and, when opportunity offered, bought up the interests of such of the older barons and knights as were compelled to part with their estates and manors. They bought, of course, the villeins and serfs together with the land, or at any rate they bought the power to exact service from these weakest units of the population. The amount and kind of service due from each, or the rent paid in lieu of service, was set forth in the transferred title-deeds, which were proof and evidence of hereditary servitude. The villeins, free labourers, and smaller farmers who had gradually risen above the class of serfs, whether by redemption or by free grant of immunity, often continued for a long time to render some acknowledgment to the lord of the manor, in the shape of work or its equivalent; and a sentiment of personal loyalty would maintain the custom of this acknowledgment even in cases where it had ceased to be legally due. But when the baron or manorial lord had brought himself into difficulties, by luxury, travel, war, or chivalry, and his estate had been sold to a new-comer, sentiment had no more to say in the matter, and the subordinate folk stood towards the stranger on their legal or moral rights. The feudal link was in these instances finally severed, and only the serfs and the more subservient labourers remained thus closely addicted to the soil.

Towards the middle of Edward's reign the serf, the villein, the large manor-farmer himself, eager to establish complete independence, or occasionally fired by mere ambition or greed, was ready for the first opportunity of cancelling every record of