e, and when fresh debts beset the Crown in 1380 a
return was again made to the old system of subsidies. But these failed in
their turn; and at the close of the year the Parliament again fell back on
a severer Poll-tax. One of the attractions of the new mode of taxation
seems to have been that the clergy, who adopted it for themselves, paid in
this way a larger share of the burthens of the state; but the chief ground
for its adoption lay, no doubt, in its bringing within the net of the
tax-gatherer a class which had hitherto escaped him, men such as the free
labourer, the village smith, the village tiler. But few courses could have
been more dangerous. The Poll-tax not only brought the pressure of the war
home to every household; it goaded into action precisely the class which
was already seething with discontent. The strife between labour and capital
was going on as fiercely as ever in country and in town. The landlords were
claiming new services, or forcing men who looked on themselves as free to
prove they were no villeins by law. The free labourer was struggling
against the attempt to exact work from him at low wages. The wandering
workman was being seized and branded as a vagrant. The abbey towns were
struggling for freedom against the abbeys. The craftsmen within boroughs
were carrying on the same strife against employer and craft-gild. And all
this mass of discontent was being heightened and organized by agencies with
which the Government could not cope. The poorer villeins and the free
labourers had long since banded together in secret conspiracies which the
wealthier villeins supported with money. The return of soldiers from the
war threw over the land a host of broken men, skilled in arms, and ready to
take part in any rising. The begging friars, wandering and gossiping from
village to village and street to street, shared the passions of the class
from which they sprang. Priests like Ball openly preached the doctrines of
communism. And to these had been recently added a fresh agency, which could
hardly fail to stir a new excitement. With the practical ability which
marked his character, Wyclif set on foot about this time a body of poor
preachers to supply, as he held, the place of those wealthier clergy who
had lost their hold on the land. The coarse sermons, bare feet, and russet
dress of these "Simple Priests" moved the laughter of rector and canon, but
they proved a rapid and effective means of diffusing Wyclif'