Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/349

 It has been urged, and it is doubtless partially true, that this depletion of men improved the condition of the free labourers who were left, and who were now able to command a higher price for their labour. Of course it must have been so in many instances. The figures adduced by Mr. Thorold Rogers in his History of Prices—irrefragable as statistics, but perhaps safer within particular areas than for general application—sufficiently attest the fact. It is hardly necessary to say that nothing like a universal or even a general amelioration of the condition of the poorest classes can have taken place in England in consequence of the shrinking population. Still less could any such amelioration have lasted up to 1380. The evils of plague and war far outweighed their advantages to the survivors. If wages increased, so also did the price of various commodities and necessities of existence; and the attempt of the free labourers to sell their work for anything more than the indispensable requirements of life was promptly met by royal ordinances (on the advice of Parliament) in 1349, 1350, and succeeding years, strictly limiting the remuneration of labour.

Moreover the scarcity of labour was counteracted by the dereliction of farms—and we need not travel from our own generation to appreciate the fact that a large efflux of labourers from the country is not enough of itself to raise the wages of those who remain. The various causes which were at work acted and reacted on each other. Landlords and even clergymen quitted their posts and crowded into the capital. Serfs risked the penalties of outlawry and