The Coming of the Friars Part 8

If it happened sometimes that the plague brought out the good in a man, sometimes changed his life from one of covetous indifference or grasping selfishness into a life of earnestness and devout philanthropy, it happened at other times--and I fear it must be confessed more frequently--that coa.r.s.e natures, hard and cruel ones, were made more brutal and callous by the demoralizing influences of that frightful summer.

I am sure it will be very gratifying to some enlightened and chivalrous people to learn that I have at least one bad story against a parson.

Here it is!

The rolls of the manor of Waltham show that the plague lingered about there till late in the spring of 1350. As elsewhere, there must needs have been much change in the benefices of the neighbourhood. Of course some of the new parsons were scamps, the laity who survived being, equally of course, models of all that was lovely and estimable. One of these clerical impostors had got a cure somewhere in the neighbourhood--where is not stated, but, inasmuch as his clerical income had not come up to his expectations or his necessities, or his own estimate of his deserts, he found it necessary to supplement that income by somewhat unprofessional conduct. In fact, the Rev. William--that was his name--seems actually to have thrown up his clerical avocations and by his flagrant irregularities had got to himself the notorious sobriquet of William the One-day priest. I should not be surprised to find out that this worthy was captain of a band of robbers who infested Epping Forest.

In the end of January, 1351. Matilda, wife of John Clement de G.o.dychester, was quietly riding homewards when, as she pa.s.sed by the sheepfold of Plesset, out came the Rev. William and bade the lady stand and deliver. Her attendants, it is to be presumed, took to their heels, and the lady, being unable to help herself, delivered up her purse--the account says the Rev. William cut it off--and moreover surrendered a ring of some value, after which she continued her journey. She raised the hue and cry to some purpose, and the clerical king of the road was taken and... there is no more. No! It is a story without an end.

But there were then, as there are now, other ways of preying upon our fellow-creatures and levying blackmail from them, without going to the length of highway robbery--cold work, and a little risky at times.

Henry Anneys, at Lessingham, could work upon the fears of Alice Bakeman and extort a douceur from her without resorting to violence.

Mrs. Bakeman had succeeded to the property of some dead kinsman, and Mr. Anneys heard of it. He called on the lady and informed her that for a consideration he would save her from paying any heriot to the lord; he had certain information which he could use either way.

Finally, it was agreed that Alice should give the rogue a cow as hush-money, and with the cow Mr. Anneys departed. His triumph was brief. When the time for holding the next court arrived, others came round the poor woman, and made it quite evident that the lands she had succeeded to were not heriotable at all, and that Henry Anneys was a swindler. So the case was brought before the homage as usual, the cow was ordered to be returned, and a substantial fine imposed upon Anneys.

Almost the first thing that strikes a novice who looks into the village history of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is the astounding frequency of b.l.o.o.d.y quarrels among the rustics. In the records of the Courts Leet for Norfolk it is very seldom indeed, that you can find a court held at which one or more persons, male and female, are not amerced for "drawing blood" from somebody. Whether it was by punching their opponents on the nose, or whether they used their knives, I hesitate to decide; but I suspect, from the frequent mention of knives and daggers, that sticking one's enemy with cold steel was not so very un-English a practice as popular prejudice is wont to a.s.sume it to be. One thing is very certain, and that is--that all over East Anglia, five hundred years ago, there was such an amount of bloodletting in village frays as would hardly have disgraced the University of Heidelberg. In Norfolk these sanguinary fights must have been a pa.s.sion; but one would have thought that, while the plague was raging and after it had begun to subside, then, if ever, men and women would have become less savage and ferocious.

So far from it, such records of the years 1349 and 1350 as I have examined are fuller than ever of fights and quarrels At Lessingham, about Christmas time, 1349, there was a free fight of a most sanguinary character, men and women joining in it freely. It seems to have arisen from some one finding a horse wandering about the deserted fields. As a stray it belonged to the lord--the finder took a different view, somebody cried "Halves!" and somebody else said, "Til give information," and somebody else replied, "So will I,"

whereupon arose a b.l.o.o.d.y battle as has been told. About the same time at Hunstanton, Catherine Busgey, evil-disposed old hag that she was, had stript a dead man of his leather jerkin. Did she proceed to wear the manly attire that she might be dagger-proof for the next encounter? Rash woman! The dead man's friends recognized the well- known coat, it was forfeited and delivered over to the lord.

It might well be supposed that, while the whole executive machinery of the country was being subject to a tremendous strain, there would be in some districts a condition of affairs which differed very little from downright anarchy. Yet here, again, the existing records are surprisingly free from any evidence tending to support such an a.s.sumption, England was not governed by the Home Secretary in those days. Every parish was a living political unit with its own police and its own local government. However desirable it may appear to some to bring back such a state of things, the question nevertheless remains how far it is ever possible to revivify an organization which has long since died a natural death. That, in the fourteenth century, the country districts governed themselves there can be no doubt at all; with what results, as far as the greatest happiness of the greatest number is concerned, this is not the time or the place to inquire or to decide. Yet I cannot withhold my conviction that, if any such gigantic calamity were to fall upon our people now as fell upon them when the Black Death swept over the face of the land five centuries ago--a calamity so sweeping, so overwhelming--its consequences upon the whole social fabric would be incomparably more disastrous than it was in times when centralization was almost unknown and practically impossible. Be it as it may, since the days when the Roman Senate pa.s.sed a vote of confidence in a beaten general because he had not despaired of the republic, I know nothing in history that impresses a student more profoundly with a sense of the magnificent self-possession, self-control, and self-respect of a suffering nation, under circ.u.mstances of unexampled agony and horror, than the simple prosaic annals which remain to us of the great plague year in England.

In only one district in Norfolk have I found evidence of any widespread lawlessness. Even there one hears of it only to hear of vigorous grappling with the ruffians, who were not allowed to have it all their own way.

The hundred of Depwade, lying to the south of Norwich, contains twenty-three parishes; and at the time we are concerned with had very few resident gentry of any consideration. Then, as now, the country parsons were the most important people in the district, and the benefices were above the average in value. In the summer and autumn, at least fifteen of these clergymen fell victims to the plague; among them the rector of Bunwell and the vicar of Tibenham, adjoining parishes. The vicarage was a poor one; it was worth no one's holding; the rectory had been held by William Banyard, a near relative of Sir Robert Banyard, lord of the manor; the plague carried him off in July, and his successor was inst.i.tuted on the 25th of the month, but does not seem to have come into residence immediately. There had been a clean sweep of the old inc.u.mbents from all the parishes for miles round; the poor people, left to themselves, became demoralized; there seems to have been a general scramble, and for a while no redress anywhere. It is recorded that the cattle roamed at will over the standing corn with none to tend them, and that there had been none to make the lord's hay; that among others who had died there were five substantial men among the homagers on whose lands heriots of more or less value were due; but no heriot was recoverable, inasmuch as since the last court certain persons unknown had plundered all that could be carried off--cattle and sheep and horses and goods, and there was nothing to distrain upon but the bare lands and the bare walls.

It may be presumed that where a scoundrel escaped the contagion altogether, while others were dying all round him, or where another recovered after being brought to death's door, in such cases the man would, as a rule, be a person of exceptional strength and vigorous const.i.tution. Such fellows, when the evil spirit was upon them, would be ugly customers to deal with. Gilbert Henry, of Tibenham, was a somewhat audacious thief when he walked into John Smith's house, where there was none alive to bar the door, and carried off certain bushels of malt and barley, with other goods not specified; and, not content therewith, stripped the dead man of his coat and waistcoat.

The value of these articles of apparel was not a.s.sessed very highly-- only sixpence each--and Master Gilbert, after paying the price of the garments, seems to have gone away with them. It is hardly to be wondered at that neither steward nor lord greatly coveted that coat and waistcoat. At the same court, too, William Hessland was amerced for appropriating the few trumpery chattels of Walter c.o.kstone, a _villein_ belonging to the lord. Another wretched pair--a man and his wife--had deliberately cleared a crop of oats off an acre and a half of land, and stacked it in their own barn. Their view was that it belonged to no one; the steward took a different view, and reminded them that what grew on no man's land was the property of some one other than the smart man who ventured to lift it.

It was at Bunwell, too, that William Sigge was by way of becoming a terror to his neighbours. It was laid to his charge, generally, that he had from time to time during the pestilence carried off and appropriated various articles of property _(diversa catalla)_ too numerous to specify. They must have been a very miscellaneous lot, for they included several hurdles and the lead stripped off a dead man's roof, not to mention such trifles as garments and pots and pans. Sigge was a very successful plunderer, and, his success rather turned his head. When the autumn of 1350 came, he refused to do his autumn service, protested that there was none to do, and was fined accordingly; not only so, but he was found to have stubbed up a hedge which had been the boundary of the land of Robert Attebrigge, who had died with no one to represent him. The women were as bad as the men; they had their rights in those days. One of these beldames was caught walking away with a couple of handmills from a plague-struck dwelling, and another had looted a tenement where John Ruc.o.c.k's corpse lay; she too had stripped the dead!

It is not a little curious to notice how that love of going to law which old Fuller two hundred years ago remarked upon as a characteristic of Norfolk men comes out again when the confusion had begun to subside. The plague is no sooner at an end than the local courts are resorted to for the hearing of every kind of odd question which the complications arising from the abnormal mortality had occasioned.

When Edward Burt died at Lessingham, he left his widow Egidia all he had; but he owed Margery Brown the sum of thirty shillings. Egidia at once provided herself with a second husband, and surrendered herself and her belongings to Edward Bunting. Mrs. Brown applied for her little bill. Egidia, now no longer a widow, but lawful wife of Mr.

Bunting, repudiated the debt; she was widow no longer, she had become the property of another man; the debt, she pleaded, was buried in her first husband's grave. That little quibble was soon overruled. But there were often cases which were by no means so easily disposed of.

Robert Bokenham was lord of the manor of Tibenham, and Robert Tate was one of his tenants. Tate died; then Bokenham died. Bokenham's son was only nine years old, and no guardian had been appointed when Tate's son died. Then followed a dispute as to who was guardian of young Bokenham, and of whom Tate's land was held, and who was the true heir. A pleasant little brief there for a rising barrister to hold.

A complication of much the same kind arose at Croxton. William Galion, a man of some consideration, died in July, leaving his wife Beatrix with two sons; but he died intestate..Beatrix had just time to pay a heavy fine to the lord for the privilege of being her eldest son's guardian when the plague took her. Before she died she left the guardianship of her first-born son John to her husband's brother Adam; a few days afterwards the boy John died, and his brother Robert alone remained; the guardianship of the boy John is of course at an end, and uncle Adam applies for the guardianship of the surviving nephew; but by this time he is unable to find the money; whereupon the child's estate is taken into the hands of the lord till such time as the uncle can pay the fees demanded.

Walter Wyninge had a wise woman for his wife, and her name was Matilda. The Black Death left her & widow, but she speedily married without any license from the lord to William Oberward. The second husband had a very brief enjoyment of his married life; in a few days he too died, and Matilda married a third husband, one Peter the carpenter. At this point Matilda's turn came and she died. All this had happened in the interval of two months since the last manor court was held. The steward of the manor claimed a heriot from Wyninge's land and another from Oberward's. But the astute Peter was equal to the occasion: he pleaded that, according to the custom of the manor, no heriot could be levied from a widow till she had survived her husband a year and a day, and he demanded that the court rolls should be searched to confirm or correct his a.s.sertion. I suspect he knew his business, and no heriot came to that grasping steward. Who pities him?

Ladies and gentlemen of the romantic order of mind will be shocked at the indelicacy of Mistress Matilda--she of the many names. I suspect that they would be shocked by a great many things in the domestic life of England five centuries ago. Marrying for love has a sweet sound about it, but the thing did not exist in the old days. When did it exist? History is very hard upon romance; History, disdaining courtesy, lifts one veil after another, opens closed doors, reveals long-buried secrets, turns her bull's-eye upon the dark corners, and breaks the old seals. She is very cynical, and will by no means side with this appellant or with that. Beautiful theories crumble into dust when they stand before her judgment-seat, and old dreams, offspring of brains that were wrestling with slumber in the darkness, pa.s.s away as the dawn comes, bringing with it, too often, such revelations as are not altogether lovely to dwell on. In the fourteenth century an unmarried woman was a chattel, and belonged to somebody who had the right to sell her or to give her away. That is the naked truth. You may make a man an offender for a word if you will, and object that "sell" is an incorrect term; but the fact remains, however much some may--

leave the sense their learning to display, And some explain the meaning quite away.

Hence, when a wretched woman was mourning alone over the husband who had just been hustled into his grave, the men were after her like wolves, every one of her neighbours knowing exactly what she was worth even to the fraction of a rood of land, or the last lamb that had been dropped, or the litter of pigs that were rootling up the beech-nuts in the woods. They gave her short time to make up her mind. Sentiment? We in the East--the land of the wise men since time was young--we know nothing of sentiment. We can hate with a sullen tenacity of resentment which knows no forgiveness; but love--nay we leave that for the "intense" of other climes. And women in the good old times--positively women--love one man more than another? What _they?_

"Whose love knows no distinction but of gender, And ridicules the very name of choice!"

Why, where were you born?

The records of the marriages on the court rolls of the plague year are hardly more startling than the deaths. Whether men and women paid less to the lord for a license than they were compelled to pay if they married without license I cannot tell; but that hundreds of widows must have married only a few weeks or a few days after their husbands' deaths is clear. Matilda's case was not a rare one. Alice Foghal, at Lessingham, was another of those ladies who in a couple of months had been the property successively of three husbands--the last was actually a stranger. Where he came from is not stated, but he sate himself down by the widow's hearth, claimed it as his own, and paid a double fee for his successful gallantry. How he managed the matter remains unexplained, but young brides were plentiful in the parish just about that time; and at the same court where Alice's matrimonial alliances were compounded for, no less than fifteen other young women paid their fees for marrying without license from the lord. I have only noticed one instance of anything like remission of _marriage fees_, though I hope it was less uncommon than appears on the rolls. The lady in this case was a butcher's widow, and it was too much to expect that she could wait till the next court, wherefore the steward graciously knocked off seventy-five per cent. of his due; and, in lieu of two shillings, charged her only sixpence--_ratione temporis et in misericordia_, as he sententiously observes.

Magnanimous steward!

I have met with no evidence leading to the belief that anywhere in the country villages there was anything approaching to a panic. Only a novice would be led astray by what he might read occurred at Coltishall. Five brothers named Gritlof and two other brothers named Primrose, being _nativi_, i.e., _villeins born_, and so the property of the lord, had decamped whither none could tell; the court solemnly adjudicated upon the case, and decreed that the seven runaways should be attached _per corpora_, whatever that may mean. But Coltishall is barely five miles from Norwich, and from the villages round the great city the _villeins_ were always running away in the hopes of getting their freedom if they could keep in hiding within the city walls for a year and a day. Oh, ye seven, had the yellow primrose less charm for you, and the barley loaves that were sure for you in breezy Coltishall--gritty though they might be-- less charm than the garbage that might be picked up in Norwich, in its noisome alleys reeking with corruption, and all that flesh and blood revolts from? Ah! but to be free--to be free! How that thought made their poor hearts throb!

That there was panic--mad, unreasoning, insensate panic--elsewhere than in the country villages there is abundant evidence to prove, but it was among the well-to-do cla.s.ses--the traders and the moneyed men, _bourgeoisie_ of the towns--that a stampede prevailed. Any one who chooses may satisfy himself of this by looking into Rymer's _Faedera,_ to go no further.

Enough has been told in the foregoing pages to ill.u.s.trate the overwhelming violence with which the Great Plague ran its career in East Anglia. Only a small part of the evidence still ready to our hands has been examined; but if no more were scrutinized, the impression left upon us of the severity of the visitation would be quite sufficiently appalling. It is, however, when an attempt to estimate the immediate effects and the remoter consequencs that followed that our difficulties begin.

Before a man is qualified to dogmatize upon those effects, he must have gone some way towards making himself familiar with the social and economic conditions of the country during at least the century before the plague. Unfortunately the history of economics in England has never been attempted by any one at all duly qualified for dealing with so complex and difficult a subject, and the crudest theories have been subst.i.tuted for sound conclusions, then only to be accepted when based upon the solid ground of ascertained fact. In the childhood of every science dogmatism precedes induction, and in the absence of clear knowledge, foolish and wild-eyed visionaries have posed as discoverers again and again. Yet bl.u.s.ter and audacity have their use, if only to stimulate the timid and the dilatory to quicken their pace and move forwards. For my part, however, if it be necessary to choose between the two, I should prefer to err with the slow and cautious rather than with the rash and over-bold; the former may for a while serve as a drag upon the chariot wheels of progress, the latter are sure to thrust us out of the road and land us at last in some quagmire whence it will be very hard to get back into the right track.

The great teacher who, with his transcendent genius, has done more to create a school of English history than all who have gone before him, who, in fact, has made English history, not what it is, but what it will be, when his influence shall have permeated our literature, has spoken on this subject of the Black Death with his usual profound suggestiveness. The Bishop of Chester looks with grave distrust upon any theory which ascribes to the Great Plague as a cause "nearly all the social changes which take place in England down to the Reformation: the depopulation of towns, the relaxation of the bonds of moral and social law, the solution of the continuity of national development caused by a sort of disintegration in society generally."

[Footnote: "Const.i.tutional History," vol. ii. chap. xvi. p. 399, Section 259, edit. 1875.] And yet this appalling visitation must have const.i.tuted a very important factor in the working out of those social and political problems with which the life of every great nation is concerned. Such problems, however, are not simple ones; rather they are infinitely complex; and he who would set himself to a.n.a.lyse the processes by which the ultimate results are arrived at will blunder hopelessly if he takes account of only a single unknown quant.i.ty.

I. It is obvious that the sudden exhaustion of the large reserve force of clergy must have made itself felt at once in every parish in England. In the diocese of Norwich a considerable number of the parsons who died belonged to the gentry cla.s.s. Then, as now, there were family livings to which younger sons might hope to be presented, and were presented, as vacancies occurred; but, in the face of the sudden and widely extended mortality, it was inevitable that appointments should be made with very little reference to a man's social grade or intellectual proficiency. Patrons had to take whom they could get. This of itself would tend to a deterioration in the character of the clergy; but this was not all. The clergy died; but other holders of offices, civil and ecclesiastical, were not spared.

There was a sudden opening out of careers in every direction for the ambitious and the unemployed: young men who ten years before would never have dreamt of anything but "resorting to holy orders," turned their eyes to other walks and adopted other views; and it is plain that a large number of those who presented themselves for admission to the clerical profession as we now understand it, in many instances belonged to a lower cla.s.s than their predecessors. Some were devout and earnest, such country parsons as Chaucer described--he does not turn aside to caricature _them_--but others were mere adventurers, hirelings whose heart was not in their work. These clerical scamps gave Archbishop Simon Islip a great deal of trouble. The smaller livings were forsaken, the curate market rose, the chaplains would neither take the country vicarages nor engage themselves as regular helpers to the parish priests. London swarmed with itinerants who preferred picking up a livelihood by occasional duty, when they could make their own terms, to binding themselves to a cure of souls. [Footnote: Compare Chaucer's words--"He sette not his benefice to hire, And lette his sheep accombred in the mire, _And ran unto London, into Seint Paules To seken him a chanterie for Soules_"---with Wilkins' "Concilia," vol. iii. I.] The primate denounced these greedy ones again and again, but it was all in vain; the bishops found it impossible to draw the reins of discipline as tightly as they wished, and found it equally impossible to prevent the extortionate demands of such curates as could be got. The evil grew to such a height that the faithful Commons took the matter up and pet.i.tioned the King to interfere, inasmuch as "les chappeleins sont devenuz si chers" that they actually demanded ten or even twelve marks a year as their stipend--"a grant grevance & oppression du poeple." The usual methods were resorted to, and if people could be made good by Act of Parliament the evils complained of would have disappeared. They did not disappear, and the evil grew. Unhappily the increased stipends did not serve to produce a better article, and it is only too plain that the religious convictions and the religious life of the people suffered seriously. Ten years after the Black Death the Archbishop expresses his deep sorrow at the neglect of Sunday, the desertion of the churches and the decline in religious observances. Yet we must be cautious how we attribute this break-up in the old habits of the people to the plague exclusively, or even mainly. Some of the evils complained of had already begun to be felt before the plague came, and may fairly be attributed, not to the falling short of the numbers of the clergy, but exactly the reverse.

Already a strong reaction had set in against the friars, their influence and their teaching had begun to be regarded as menacing to the stability of existing creeds and existing inst.i.tutions. Langland hated them. Chaucer held them up to scorn. Wickliffe denounced them with a righteous wrath. Fitz-Ralph, Archbishop of Armagh, carried on open war against them. All these leaders of the chosen bands that fight the battles of G.o.d had arrived at man's estate when the Black Death came, and all survived it. They certainly were not the product of the great visitation; they were the spokesmen and representatives of a generation that had begun to look at the world with larger, other eyes than their fathers. That which was coming would have come if there had been no plague at all, and so far from its being certain that that calamity was in any great degree the cause of the upheaval that ensued, it is at least as probable that the sudden decrease in the population served to r.e.t.a.r.d the action of forces already working mightily in the direction of revolution--revolution it might be for the better, or it might be for the worse.

2. Whoever else may have been losers or sufferers by the plague, there was one cla.s.s which emerged from that dreadful year very much richer than before. The lords of the manors, the representatives of what we now call the country gentry, were great gainers. Not only did the extraordinary amount paid in heriots and fees make up an aggregate which in itself const.i.tuted a very large percentage upon the capital embarked in agriculture, but the extent of land which _escheated_ to the lords was very considerable. Moreover, the manors themselves, or as we should say, the landed property of the country, came into fewer hands; the gentry became richer and their estates larger. Knighton draws attention to the fact that in the towns a large number of houses became ruinous for want of occupants, but he adds that in the hamlets and villages the same effects followed, and that everywhere. Here again, the rolls of Parliament corroborate the a.s.sertion and inform us that not only the dwellings of the homagers but the capital mansions themselves, were deserted and falling to decay. When, in the next reign, the manor of Hockham came into the possession of Richard, Earl of Arundel, in right of his wife, he took the precaution of having a careful survey made of the condition of the estate as it came into his hands. The manor-house had not been tenanted for thirty years. It had been a mansion of considerable pretension and two stories high; on the ground-floor the doors were all gone; on the upper floor the windows were open to the air; the chamber "vocata ladyes chambre" was roofless, the offices were too dilapidated to be worth repair. The enclosing walls and the moat had been utterly neglected. The offices had formerly been adapted for a large establishment; there had been extensive farm buildings, and at least six substantial houses for the bailiff and other farm servants. Among other buildings there were two _fishouses_ built of timber and _daubur_, in which apparently the keeper of the fishponds lived, and some elaborate arrangements had existed for keeping up the supply of fish in the ponds by methods of pisciculture to us unknown. The windmill had long ceased to be used, its very grinding stones had disappeared. Worse than all, there was no more any gallows or pillory, or even stocks, _pro_ _libertate servanda_, as the jurors quaintly remark. Yet the records show that at Hockham things had gone on pretty much as before since the big house was deserted. The courts were held with exemplary regularity, the fees had been exacted with unwavering rigour, the homagers settled their own affairs in their own way; but there was this difference, that for a generation the tenants had been living under an absentee landlord, who so far from being the poorer because the big house had been tumbling down, was the richer, inasmuch as he had one mansion the less to keep up out of his income.

What happened at Hockham must have happened in hundreds of other parishes; there must have been large tracts of country during the latter half of the reign of Edward the Third where a resident landlord was the exception to that which aforetime had been the rule.

3. In the present condition of our knowledge, any estimate of the actual numbers who perished in the plague must be the merest guesswork. It may be that two millions were carried off; it may be there were three. It is undeniable that a very large proportion of the inhabitants of this island died in a few months--employers and employed. We must, however, remember that England in the fourteenth century was incomparably more self-supporting than it is in the nineteenth century; that there were no great centres of industry then; that the rural population was largely in excess of the urban population; that we exported the wool which the Flemings manufactured into cloth; and that if there were fewer hands to till the soil, there were fewer mouths to feed. No one can doubt that the labour market must have been seriously disturbed, but it is very easy to exaggerate this disturbance; and whether it were less or more than has been a.s.serted, we shall certainly err by attributing the rise in wages, which undoubtedly took place after the Black Death, to it, and to it alone--_post hoc ergo propter hoc_ is not a safe conclusion.

Granted, as we must grant, that the plague accelerated the rise in wages, it is certain the upward movement had already begun before the population had been seriously lessened. The number of clergy, to be sure, was largely in excess of the needs of the country; the clerical profession had become "choked" by the influx of young men presumably with _some_ private means to fall back upon; among them there must have been, and there was, serious compet.i.tion for every vacant post. When the reserve of supernumeraries became absorbed, the compet.i.tion turned the other way, and the surviving clergy could make their own terms. It was otherwise with the ma.s.ses, especially with the peasantry. If there were an insufficient number of labourers to till the land heretofore in cultivation, the worst land fell out of cultivation, and no one was much the worse. It was all very well for some landlords to complain that their rents had fallen off.

Yes! Then--as now, as always--the small proprietors suffered severely, and needy men are wont to be clamorous. Then--as now, as always-- the sufferers looked about them for a cause of their distress, and found it in any event that was nearest at hand. But we know that the style of living after the plague was incomparably more luxurious and extravagant than it was before. The country was producing less, it may be; but the people, man for man, were much richer than before.

When we find ourselves confronted with the rhetorical stuff which the literature of preambles and parliamentary pet.i.tions in the fourteenth century flaunts so liberally before our eyes, we must learn to accept the statements of draughtsmen _c.u.m grano_, and to read between the lines. The Commons were quite equal to making the most of any calamity that occurred. When the Parliament, which had not met since mid Lent, 1348, a.s.sembled once more in February, 1350, the plague was not forgotten. In the pet.i.tions presented to the King, the havoc wrought is dwelt upon and deplored, _not_ with a view to remedy any of the distress that had ensued, but in the hope that the arrears of taxation due from the dead might be excused to the survivors who had succeeded to the others' property. If they complain of the scarcity and dearness of corn, this is to give point to their protest against the King's servants taking it for the victualling of his army and the town of Calais. If, again, they sound a note of alarm at the outrageous insolence of the labourers who presumed to demand a large increase of wage, and would not work at the old scale of pay, there is no pretence that the employers could not afford to accede to the increased demand; the "grand meschief du poeple" consisted in this, that the tillers of the soil should have dreamt of a.s.serting themselves in any way whatever. Moreover, when it came to legislating against the mutinous labourers, King and Parliament, while sternly setting their faces against the rise in wages, _do not take the twenty-third year of the King as the standard year_ by which to settle what the normal rate of wages should be. They go back to the twentieth year, _ou cynk ou sis ans devans_. That is to say, the wages had been steadily rising for ten years before the plague; the labourers had been getting their share of the increased prosperity of the country; and the Statute of Labourers was only one of the clumsy attempts to interfere with the action of a great economical law which had been working silently for the advantage of the operatives long before the Black Death had come to perplex and confuse men's minds and disturb their calculations.

Some of us remember when the science of geology was young--and we were young too--we remember how there was a certain romance and fascination about those fearless and richly imaginative theories which explained all the great changes in the crust of the earth by magnificent cataclysms, upheaving, exploding, overwhelming. The crack of doom meant something after all! What had been should be again. Old times had stories to tell of sublime catastrophes, the crash of systems, and the swallowing up of chains of cloud-capped mountains in the yawning abysses of a world that might at any moment turn itself inside out. Alas! the cataclysm theories had to die the death, and we had to comfort ourselves with a dull prosaic dream of forces acting with infinite slowness, grinding, and evolving through unnumbered ages, the great laws working themselves out without haste or any tendency to those picturesque paroxysms which have a certain charm for us in our nonage. When Sociology shall have risen to the dignity of a science--and that day may come--I think she too will be chary of resorting to the cataclysm theory; she and her handmaid History will hardly smile approval upon pretenders who are anxious to discover a single efficient cause for results which a million influences have combined to bring about, or who a.s.sume that every new phenomenon must disturb the equilibrium of the world. To take up with theories first in the hope, and sometimes with the determination, that facts shall be found to support them at last, is the vice--I had almost said the crime--of too many of those who now are styled historians.

If at this point I leave to others the further pursuit of a subject which deserves a more comprehensive treatment than it has yet received, it is not because I have not much more that I could tell.

If it be true that the proper study of mankind is man, it is at least as true that the proper study of Englishmen is the history of England; that, however, means a great deal more than is usually understood by the words. It means the history of English inst.i.tutions, of the social, the intellectual, and the religious life of our forefathers--it means a great deal more than the life of our sovereigns, their wars, their virtues or their follies. Unhappily historic studies in England, notwithstanding the splendid impetus that has been given to them of late by the brilliant achievements of some philosophic enquirers, receive but scant encouragement, and for the most part a man's labour must be his own reward. In our elementary schools History is almost utterly ignored. A whole people is rapidly breaking with the past from sheer ignorance that there is any past that is worth knowing. Who shall estimate the immeasurable harm that must be wrought to a nation that has lost touch with the past? Let men but believe, to their shame, that

The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things,

and what becomes of patriotism? Granted, if you will, that English history has been made too often a dry and repulsive study by those who have undertaken to teach it and write it; need it remain so? It must remain so as long as we keep to the old lines and content ourselves with the old methods. What is wanted to make any science _interesting_ is that it should push its inquiries into new fields of research. The means and appliances, and opportunities for pursuing historical researches open to those whose youth is not all behind them, are such as we, their seniors, never dreamt of when we were in our early manhood. There are whole worlds as yet unexplored and waiting to be won. Do men whimperingly complain that there is no longer a career for genius? Tush! It is enthusiasm that is wanted.

Give us that, and the career will follow. But the enthusiasm must be of the real sort--not self-a.s.serting, self-conscious, self-seeking; but earnest, patient, resolute, and reticent: for science, too, needs heroism no less than war.

In the domain of Physical Science there has been in our own time no lack of intelligent co-operation, and volunteers have been many and earnest, nor have they spared themselves or shrunk from sacrifices.

In the domain of Historical Science the labourers are few and far between; there research proceeds with lagging steps. No one sneers at a philosopher who travels to Iceland to investigate the habits of a gnat, or who counts it the pride of his life to have discovered a new fungus, but simpletons are pleased to make themselves merry with caricaturing any student of his country's inst.i.tutions who is "always poring over musty old parchments." And yet these minute researches will have to be made sooner of later, and till we can bring ourselves to study the structure and the tissues and the comparative anatomy of Inst.i.tutions, and to go through all the drudgery which sluggards loathe and fools deride, the light of truth will be dim for us all; our Ethical, equally with our political Philosophy must remain in a condition of hopeless sterility. Nevertheless History too has her mission, though her time has not yet come. It will not always be that the past will be to us "as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith I cannot, for it is sealed; and the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned."

No! It will not be always so.