to the contemporary chroniclers, in some cases much higher, destroyed a large number of the population, and other plagues had done their share to make labour scarce, but after the Black Death the advance was strongly marked.  It also accelerated the break-up of the manorial system.  A large number of the free labourers were swept away, and their labour lost to the lord of the manor; the services of the villeins were largely diminished from the same cause; many of the tenants, both free and unfree, were dead, and the land thrown on the lord’s hands.  Flocks and herds were wandering about over the country because there was no one to tend them.  In short, most manors were in a state of anarchy, and their lords on the verge of ruin.  It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that they immediately adopted strong measures to save themselves and their property and, no doubt they thought, the whole country.  Englishmen had by this time learnt to turn to Parliament to remedy their ills, but as the plague was still raging a proclamation was issued of which the preamble states that wages had already gone up greatly.  ’Many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they get excessive wages’, and it is, therefore, hard to till the land.  Every one under the age of 60, it was ordered, free or villein, who can work, and has no other means of livelihood, is not to refuse to work for any one who offers the accustomed wages; no labourer is to receive more wages than he did before the plague, and none are to give more wages under severe penalties.  But besides regulating wages, the proclamation also insists on reasonable prices for food and the necessaries of life:  it was a fair attempt not only to protect the landlords but the labourers also, by keeping both wages and prices at their former rate, so that its object was not tyrannous as has been stated.[115] It was at once disregarded, a fate which met many of the proclamations and statutes of the Middle Ages, which often seem to have been regarded as mere pious aspirations.

Accordingly, the Statute of 1351, 25 Edw.  III, Stat. 2, c. 1, states that the servants had paid no regard to the ordinance regulating wages, ’but to their ease and singular covetise do withdraw themselves unless they have livery and wages to the double or treble of that they were wont to take’.  Accordingly, it was again laid down that they were to take liveries and wages as before the Black Death, and ’where wheat was wont to be given they shall take for the bushel 10d. (6s. 8d. a quarter),[116] or wheat at the will of the giver.  And that they be hired to serve by the whole year or by other usual terms, and not by the day, and that none pay in the time of sarcling (weeding) or hay-making but a penny a day, and a mower of meadows for the acre 5d., or by the day 5d., and reapers of corn in the first week of August 2d., and the second 3d., without meat or drink.’  And none were to take for the threshing