Page:The English Peasant.djvu/30

 emancipation by way of trade, they tried to prevent him getting it through the door of learning; Parliament praying the King to ordain that no bondman or bondwoman shall place their children at school, as had been done, with a view to their entering into the Church. And the same influence induced the new College at the Universities to close their gates to villeins.

To render the bondage still tighter. Parliament gave the Council the right to arrest and imprison, regardless of all former statutes, any person speaking evil of dukes, earls, barons, nobles, and gentlemen (gntz), or of any of the great officers of the realm (12 Rich. II., c. xi.).

However, it was one thing to make laws, another to compel a reluctant people to give them obedience. But the labourers were isolated; each set of serfs had to settle matters with their individual lord, each particular serf to make the best of his position. The audacious, the violent, the unscrupulous, forced their necks out of the collar; the meek, the faithful, bore a double load, and sank a grade lower. The first alone received a place in history. Their growing wealth, all through the fifteenth century, rendered them an important addition to the middle class, and helped greatly to increase its power.

This impetus given to industry by the wide-spread hope of rising a step in life, added greatly to the national wealth. We have abundant proof that the poor man, and especially the small husbandman, was far better off at this period than at any other. The labourer, according to Statute, received 4d. a day, if not fed in the house, and this continued his nominal wage throughout the century. At this rate, about eighteen days' work would buy him a quarter of wheat; six days, a calf; seven or eight days, a hog for fatting. A lamb would cost him between sixpence and a shilling; a hen, 2d.; a pullet, 1d. Eggs he could get at the rate of twenty for a penny; butter was a penny, and cheese was three-farthings a pound. His garden produced no potatoes, but it gave him fat peascods, and good apples and cherries. As to his drink, Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice in 1442, merrily says, "He drank no water except at certain times, and that by way of doing penance." The same authority tells us that in these days English labourers were clothed throughout in good woollens; the bedding and