The owners of the land had thought that they should be ruined did they pay the great wages demanded of them.  Now they saw that they should be ruined quite as much if they could find no one at all to do the work.  So laws were made forcing men to work for the same wages they had received before the plague, and forbidding them to leave the towns and villages in which they had been used to live.  If they disobeyed they were imprisoned and punished.

Yet these new laws were broken again and again, because bread had now become so dear that it was impossible for men to live on as little as they had done before.  Still many masters tried to enforce the law, and the land was soon filled not only with hunger and misery, but with a fierce class hatred between master and man.  It was the beginning of a long and bitter struggle, and as the cry of the poor grew louder and louder, the hatred and spirit of revolt grew fiercer.

But the great of the land seemed little touched by the sorrows of the people.  While they starved and died, the King, surrounded by a glittering court, gave splendid feasts and tournaments.  He built fair palaces and chapels, founded a new round table, and thought to make the glorious days of Arthur live again.

And the great among the clergy cared as little for the poor as did the great among the nobles.  Many of them had become selfish and worldly, some of them wicked, though of course there were many good men left among them too.

The Church was wealthy but the powerful priests kept that wealth in their own hands, and many of the country clergy were almost as miserably poor as the people whom they taught.  And it was through one of these poor priests, named William Langland, that the sorrows of the people found a voice.

We know very little about Langland.  So little do we know that we are not sure if his name was really William or not.  But in his poem called The Vision of Piers the Ploughman he says, “I have lived in the land, quoth I, my name is long Will.”  It is chiefly from his poem that we learn to know the man.  When we have read it, we seem to see him, tall and thin, with lean earnest face, out of which shine great eyes, the eyes that see visions.  His head is shaven like a monk’s; he wears a shabby long gown which flaps in the breeze as he strides along.

Langland was born in the country, perhaps in Oxfordshire, perhaps in Shropshire, and he went to school at Great Malvern.  He loved school, for he says:—­

    “For if heaven be on earth, and ease to any soul,
    It is in cloister or in school.  Be many reasons I find
    For in the cloister cometh no man, to chide nor to fight,
    But all is obedience here and books, to read and to learn.”