g to trial before the upper House, any of the
King's ministers or council who should be accused of misgovernment
(1376). (See S247, and Summary of Constitutional History in the
Appendix, p. xii, S13.)

About this time, also, statutes were passed which forbade appeals from
the King's courts of justice to that of the Pope,[1] who was then a
Frenchman, and was believed to be under French political influence.
Furthermore, all foreign Church officials were prohibited from asking
or taking money from the English Church, or interfering in any way
with its management.[2]

[1] First Statute of Provisors (1351) and of Praemunire (1353)
(S265). The first Statute of Praemunire did not mention the Pope or
the Court of Rome by name; the second, or Great Statute of Praemunire
of 1393, expressly mentioned them in the strongest terms. See
Constitutionals Documents in the Appendix, p. xxxii.
[2] Statute of Provisors (1351), and see S265.

244. The Black Death, or Plague, 1349.

Shortly after the first campaign in France, a frightful pestilence
broke out in London, which swept over the country, destroying upwards
of half the population. The disease, which was known as the Black
Death, had already traversed Europe, where it had proved equally
fatal.

"How many amiable young persons," said a noted writer of that period,
"breakfasted with their friends in the morning, who, when evening
came, supped with their ancestors!" In Bristol and some other English
cities, the mortality was so great that the living were hardly able to
bury the dead; so that all business, and for a time even war, came to
a standstill.

245. Effect of the Plague on Labor, 1349.

After the pestilence had subsided, it was impossible to find laborers
enough to till the soil and shear the sheep. Those who were free now
demanded higher wages, while the villeins, or serfs (S113), and slaves
left their masters and roamed about the country asking for pay for
their work, like freemen.

It was a general agricultural strike, which lasted over thirty years.
It marks the beginning of that contest between capital and labor which
had such an important influence on the next reign, and which, after a
lapse of more than five hundred years, is not yet satisfactorily
adjusted.

Parliament endeavored to restore order. It passed laws forbidding any
freeman to ask more for a day's work than before the plague. It gave
the master the right to punish a serf who persisted in r