ment, but partly also the feeling that
the laboring class were taking advantage of an abnormal condition of
affairs to change the well established customary rates of remuneration
of labor. The most significant fact indicated by the laws, however,
was the existence of a distinct class of laborers. In earlier times
when almost all rural dwellers held some land this can hardly have
been the case; it is quite evident that there was now an increasing
class who made their living simply by working for wages. Another fact
frequently referred to in the laws is the frequent passage of laborers
from one district to another; it is evident that the population was
becoming somewhat less stationary. Therefore while the years following
the great pestilence were a period of difficulty for the lords of
manors and the employing classes, for the lower classes the same
period was one of increasing opportunity and a breaking down of old
restrictions. Whether or not the statutes had any real effect in
keeping the rate of wages lower than it would have otherwise become is
hard to determine, but there is no doubt that the efforts to enforce
the law and the frequent punishment of individuals for its violation
embittered the minds of the laborers and helped to throw them into
opposition to the government and to the upper classes generally. The
statutes of laborers thus became one of the principal causes of the
growth of that hostility which culminated in the Peasants' Rebellion.

*30. The Peasants' Rebellion of 1381.*--From the scanty contemporary
records still remaining we can obtain glimpses of a widespread
restlessness among the masses of the English people during the latter
half of the fourteenth century. According to a petition submitted to
Parliament in 1377 the villains were refusing to pay their customary
services to their lords and to acknowledge the requirements of their
serfdom. They were also gathering together in great bodies to resist
the efforts of the lords to collect from them their dues and to force
them to submit to the decisions of the manor courts. The ready
reception given to the religious revival preached by the Lollards
throughout the country indicates an attitude of independence and of
self-assertion on the part of the people of which there had been no
sign during earlier times. The writer who represents most nearly
popular feeling, the author of the _Vision of Piers Plowman_, reflects
a certain restless and questioning