nth century in spite of prices which made it profitable for
landowners at the same time to convert a large amount of grass-land to
tillage, including enclosures which had formerly been taken from the
common fields. If these facts are accepted the explanation of the
enclosure movement which is based upon a comparison of the prices of
wheat and wool must be rejected, and the story must be told from a
different point of view.

Taking up these points in order, we shall inquire first into the
causes of the agrarian readjustments of the fourteenth century. A
generation after the Black Death, the commutation of villain services
and the introduction of the leasehold system had made notable
progress. The leasing of the demesne has been attributed to the
direct influence of the pestilence, which by reducing the serf
population made it impossible to secure enough villain labor to
cultivate the lord's land. The substitution of money rents in place of
the labor services owed by the villains has been explained on the
supposition that the serfs who had survived the pestilence took
advantage of the opportunity afforded by their reduction in numbers to
free themselves from servile labor and thus improve their social
status. The connection between the Black Death and the changes in
manorial management which are usually attributed to it could be more
convincingly established had not several decades elapsed after the
Black Death before these changes became marked. A recent intensive
study of the manors of the Bishopric of Winchester during this period
confirms the view of those who have protested against assigning to the
Black Death the revolutionary importance which is given it by many
historians. On these estates the Black Death "produced severe
evanescent effects and temporary changes, with a rapid return to the
_status quo_ of 1348."[12] The great changes which are usually
attributed to the plague of 1348-1350 were under way before 1348, and
were not greatly accelerated until 1360, possibly not before 1370, and
cannot, therefore, have been due to the Black Death.

Levett and Ballard devote especial attention to the effect of the
Black Death upon the substitution of money payments for labor services
and rents in kind, but their study also brings out the fact that the
difficulty in persuading tenants to take up land on the old terms
(usually ascribed to the Black Death) began before the pestilence, and
continued long after its effects