For a year or more it ravaged the countryside, so that whole
villages were left without inhabitants. Seeing England so stunned by the
blow, the Scots prepared to attack, thinking the moment propitious for
paying off old scores; but their army, too, was smitten by the
pestilence, and their forces broke up. Into every glen of Wales it
worked its havoc; in Ireland only the English were affected--the "wild
Irish" were immune. But in 1357 even these began to suffer. Curiously
enough, Geoffrey Baker in his Chronicle (which, written in his own hand,
after six hundred years yet remains in the Bodleian at Oxford) tells us
that none fell till they were afraid of it. Still more curiously,
Chaucer, Langland, and Wycliff, who all witnessed it, hardly mention it
at all. There could not be any more eloquent tribute to the nameless
horror that it caused than this hushed silence on the part of three of
England's greatest writers.

Henry Knighton of Leicester Abbey, canon and chronicler, tells us some
of the consequences following on the plague, and shows us very clearly
the social upheaval it effected. The population had now so much
diminished that prices of live stock went down, an ox costing 4_s._, a
cow 12_d._, and a sheep 3_d._ But for the same reason wages went up, for
labour had suddenly grown scarce. For want of hands to bring in the
harvest, whole crops rotted in the fields. Many a manor had lost a third
of its inhabitants, and it was difficult, under the fixed services of
land tenure, to see what remedy could be applied. In despair the feudal
system was set aside, and lord competed with lord to obtain landless
labourers, or to entice within their jurisdiction those whose own
masters ill-treated them in any way. The villeins themselves sought to
procure enfranchisement, and the right to hire themselves out to their
lords, or to any master they might choose. Commutation was not
particularly in evidence as the legal method of redress; though it too
was no doubt here and there arranged for. But for the most part the
villein took the law into his own hands, left his manor, and openly sold
his labour to the highest bidder.

But at once the governing class took fright. In their eyes it seemed as
though their tenants were taking an unfair advantage of the
disorganisation of the national life. Even before Parliament could meet,
in 1349 an ordnance was issued by the King (Edward III), which compelled
all servants, whether bond or free,