e than 1d. These prices are
certainly difficult to understand. Hay-making has usually been paid
for at a rate above the ordinary, because of the longer hours; and
here we find the price fixed at half the usual wages, while mowing is
five times as much, and double the price paid for reaping, though they
were normally about the same price.[117]

It is interesting to learn from the statute that there was a
considerable migration of labourers at this date for the harvest, from
Stafford, Lancaster, Derby, Craven, the Marches of Wales and Scotland,
and other places.

Such was the first attempt made to control the labourers' wages by the
legislature, and like other legislation of the kind it failed in its
object, though the attempt was honestly made; and if the rate of wages
fixed was somewhat low, its inequity was far surpassed by the
exorbitance of the labourers' demands.[118] It was an endeavour to set
aside economic laws, and its futility was rendered more certain by the
depreciation of the coinage in 1351, which led to an advance in
prices, and compelled the labourers to persevere in their demands for
higher wages.[119]

Both wages and prices, except those of grain, continued to increase,
and labour services were now largely commuted for money payments,[120]
with the result that the manorial system began to break up rapidly.

Owing to the dearth of labourers for hire, and the loss of many of the
services of their villeins, the lords found it very hard to farm their
demesne lands. It should be remembered, too, that an additional
hardship from which they suffered at this time was that the quit rents
paid to them in lieu of services by tenants who had already become
free were, owing to the rise in prices, very much depreciated. Their
chief remedy was to let their demesne lands. The condition of the
Manor of Forncett in Norfolk well illustrates the changes that were
now going on. There, in the period 1272-1307, there were many free
tenants as well as villeins, and the holdings of the latter were
small, usually only 5 acres. It is also to be noticed that in no year
were all the labour services actually performed, some were always sold
for money. Yet in the period named there was not much progress in the
general commutation of services for money payments, and the same was
the case in the manors, whose records between 1325 and 1350 Mr. Page
examined for his _End of Villeinage in England_.[121] The reaping and
binding of the