Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/348

 ; and the chance of doing this simply, safely, and effectively was one of the more immediate inducements of the great mobilisation of 1381.

Beyond the causes already mentioned which had tended to weaken the barons and knights, and to strengthen the labouring classes, there was one which did not come into operation much before the middle of the fourteenth century, when its effect was sudden, remarkable, and decisive. This was the notable decrease of the population, brought about by two entirely distinct occurrences—war and plague. In estimating the effect of these occurrences, statistics are not wholly to be relied on. There were no means in those days of taking them exactly, or there is no evidence that the available means were scrupulously employed. The whole tendency of the time would be towards wild exaggeration. The word "million" in the mouth of a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century chronicler must be taken as an easy approximation, not as a verified figure. It has been said that more than half the population of England perished by the plague in 1348–1350 a statement which is certainly not proved by the partial computations made for London, Bristol, and Norwich. The question, however, need not be argued here. It is enough for the purpose to allow that the repeated visitations of the Black Death, the worst of which occurred in the years just mentioned, in 1361–1362, 1368, and 1374, supplemented by the French and Scottish wars, made great havoc throughout the country, and in the more unfortunate districts very seriously diminished the population.