The Black Death

In the period that intervened between the battles of Crecy and Poitiers a great epidemic spread over England, known as the Black Death. During the years 1348 and 1349, in consequence of this epidemic, it is estimated that from a third to a half of the population perished. The fearful disease spared no class of society, but fell most heavily upon the artisans in the towns, the agricultural laborers in the country, the monks, and the parish priests. At one time in London the mortality rose to two hundred a day; in Norfolk two-thirds of the parish clergy died; while in certain manors of from three to four hundred population, more than a hundred and fifty of the inhabitants were carried off. The tenantry of the abbey of Ramsey perished wholesale. England did not suffer more than did Italy and the Mediterranean coast lands, but the effects of the frightful mortality were probably greater in England than elsewhere, owing to the social conditions prevailing in that country.

The Manorial System

England at this time, outside of the great towns, was a land of manors. The wills and the villagers had been gradually coming under the authority of lords; manorial lords, of whom the highest was the king, the lowest a knight of the shire or some freeholder of the county, not of feudal rank. In the period before the Black Death, the depressing of the peasantry, which had gone steadily on since the Norman Conquest, reached its lowest point, and the lot of the peasant was hardest on the lands of the large religious houses like Ramsey, Ely, and Gloucester. All land in England was at this time supposedly under a lord. The obligation of the villagers, the peasants, to remain for life and to labor on their lord's lands by the thirteenth century prevailed throughout central and southern England. Such an obligation was

ONE OF THE OPEN FIELDS OF THE MANOR OF LOWER HEYFORD, OXFORDSHIRE.

This manor now belongs to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In the fourteenth century it was held by Peter de la Mare, Speaker of the Good Parliament.

necessary at this time. Feudal lords derived their wealth from their lands ; their lands had to be cultivated; and inasmuch as hired labor had hardly as yet come into existence, the only persons to cultivate them were the tenants. Upon the manors the methods of cultivation were for the most part everywhere the same. The villagers worked in the open fields, ploughed, sowed, and harvested, much as they had done for centuries.

A Village Street: Cottages In Godshill, Isle of Wight.

A large portion of their time they devoted to the demesne lands, consisting of those strips in the great open fields that were held by the lord. They were required to make certain payments, some of which were regularly sent in for the support of the lord; others, such as chevage, merchet, and the like, only occasionally, as the token of their semi-servile condition. The amount of both labor and payments was fixed by the custom of the manor.

The king had many hundreds of manors; the smallest "lord," perhaps but one. From the "works" and payments of his villeins, each landowner derived his means of support. The greater lords had numbers of officials, bailiffs, beadles, reeves, to manage their estates and to collect their revenues.' They-had courts also at which the tenants were bound to appear, and which represented an important part of their authority. The old manor court had begun to divide into the Court Leet and the Customary Court. The former met twice a year, and looked after the keeping of the peace and the punishing of minor breaches of the law; the latter dealt with matters connected with the manor only, and met every three weeks. Later, there separated from the Customary Court the Court Baron, which dealt only with questions of land tenure, and was attended only by the free tenants. The manors varied greatly in size, generally containing only one vill; but the boundaries of the manor were by no means always the same as the boundaries of the vill. There was no general rule or law governing the relations of lord and villeins. All was determined by local custom, "the custom of the manor."