to take up again the customary
services, and forced work on all who had no income in land, or were not
otherwise engaged. The lord on whose manor the tenant had heretofore
dwelt had preferential claim to his labour, and could threaten with
imprisonment every refractory villein. Within two years a statute had
been enacted by Parliament which was far more detailed in its operation,
fixing wages at the rate they had been in the twentieth year of the
King's reign (_i.e._ at a period before the plague, when labour was
plentiful), and also with all appearance of justice determining the
prices of agricultural produce. It was the first of a very long series
of Acts of Parliament that, with every right intention, but with a
really obvious futility, endeavoured to reduce everything to what it had
been in the past, to put back the hands of the clock, and keep them
back. But one strange fact is noticeable.

Whether unconsciously or not, the framers of these statutes were
themselves striking the hardest blow at the old system of tenure. From
1351 the masters' preferential claim to the villeins of their own manor
disappears, or is greatly limited. Henceforth the labourers are to
appear in the market place with their tools, and (reminiscent of
scriptural conditions) wait till some man hired them. The State, not the
lord, is now regulating labour. Labour itself has passed from being
"tied to the soil," and has become fluid. It is no longer a personal
obligation, but a commodity.

Even Parliament recognised that in many respects at least the old order
had passed away. The statute of 1351 allows "men of the counties of
Stafford, Lancaster, Derby, the borders of Wales and Scotland, &c., to
come in August time to labour in other counties, and to return in
safety, as they were heretofore wont to do." It is the legalisation of
what had been looked at, up till then, askance. The long, silent
revolution had become conscious. But the lords were, as we have said,
not altogether sorry for the turn things had taken. Groaning under
pressure from the King's heavy war taxation, and under the demands which
the advance of new standards of comfort (especially between 1370 and
1400) entailed, they let off on lease even the demesne land, and became
to a very great extent mere rent-collectors. Commutation proceeded
steadily, with much haggling so as to obtain the highest price from the
eager tenant. Wages rose slowly, it is true, but rose all the same; an