ancient order, and those seeds
fructified more rapidly in England by reason of the plague.[1] It is
only because of the impetus which it gave to changes already in progress
that the pestilence had in a fashion more lasting results in England
than elsewhere. The last thirty years of the reign of Edward were an
epoch of social upheaval and unrest contrasting strongly with the
uneventful times that had preceded the Black Death. It is not right to
regard the period as one of misery or severe distress. The war of
classes, which was beginning, sprang not so much from material
discomfort of the poor, as from what unsympathetic annalists called
their greediness, their pride, and their wantonness. The wage-earner was
master of the situation and did not hesitate to make his power felt.
While the spread of manufactures, the rise of prices, and the opening
out of wider markets still secured the prosperity of the shopkeeper, the
merchant, or the artisan of the towns, the whole brunt of the social
change fell upon the landed classes, and most heavily upon the
ecclesiastics and especially upon the monks. Broken down by the heavy
demands of the state, unable to share with the layman in the new avenues
to wealth opened up by the expanding resources of the country, the monks
saw the chief sources of their prosperity drying up. Their rents were
shrinking and it became increasingly difficult to cultivate their lands.
They never recovered their ancient welfare, and were already getting out
of touch with the national life.

[1] See for this W. Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and
Commerce,_ vol. i., p. 330 ff. (ed. 4); T.W. Page, _The End of
Villainage in England_ (American Economic Association, 1900);
and, above all, P. Vinogradoff in _Engl. Hist. Review, xv._
(1900), 774-781.

One immediate result of the plague was a renewed activity in founding
religious houses. Upon the two plague pits west and east of the city of
London, Sir Walter Manny set up his Charterhouse in Smithfield, and
Edward III. his foundation for Cistercian nuns between Tower Hill and
Aldgate. More characteristic of the times was the foundation of secular
colleges, which were established either with mainly ecclesiastical
objects or to encourage study at the universities. Both at Oxford and
Cambridge there were more colleges set up in the first than in the
second half of the fourteenth century; and it is noteworthy that
several Cambridge colleg