of the weather put certain opportunities within the reach of the labourers which, as their numbers had now become scantier, they could easily use. The immediate rise in the wages of labour after the famine of Edward the Second's reign is as Lach as from 23 to 30 per cent., and a considerable amount of this becomes a permanent charge on the costs of agriculture. That part which is permanent amounts to 20 per cent. on an average.

The habit of cutting corn high up on the straw, and therefore of avoiding weeds, must have materially shortened the drying process, and subsequently that of threshing out the grain. Hence I conclude, if the corn only ripened, the mere presence of rain was not so injurious as it came to be, when, at a later period, the corn was cut low with the weeds. That this change took place is proved by the statement of Fitzberbert, who advises that corn used for home consumption should not be screened too carefully, as the seeds of many weeds in corn supply a notable quantity of meal which might well be saved for flour. In Arthur Young's times, it is again clear that wheat was cut high on the stalk.

During the reign of Edward II., the practice became increasingly general to accept money compensations in lieu of labour rents, and by the end of the first quarter of the century the rule had become almost universal. It was to the interest of both parties that these commutations should be effected. It was a vexation to the tenant that he should be called away from the work of his own holding to do the lord's labour. It is plain, from Walter de Henley's statement, quoted above, that the bailiff had no little trouble in getting the due quota of work from the tenant, some three roods of first ploughing a day, or an acre of second stirring. Hence, if the lord could get a fair money compensation for the labour, he could spare the cost of the bailift's supervision over unwilling labourers. And as money was more useful than the work he got, as well as perhaps more profitable in the end, he would be induced to make liberal terms with his tenants in villeinage, even if he were not morally constrained to take the alternative in money, which was prescribed as an alternative in case the labourer, for any cause, made default in the field. At the same time he could, unless he made a special bargain, save the allowances which he made of bread and beer, and the license

of every day taking as large a sheaf as the serf could lift on his sickle from the corn crops. These commutations would be entered on the manor rental, and would tend to assimilate the enure of the surf, now increasingly called a tenant by copy or custom, with that of the freeholder who sat at a fee farm rent, besides familiarising all parties with the redemption of those contingencies which affected the status of a serf. Ultimately the money payments would be deemed to be fixed and determinate liabilities, the satisfaction of which was a discharge of all the old labour rents, and the proffer of which was a tender which the steward was bound to accept. I do not mean to say th the change was invariable, for there is evidence that the m ...teries clung to the old system longer than lay lords did, and it is alleged that, while the regular clergy urged on these lords the expediency and humanity of enfranchising their serfs, they failed to practise in their own persons the moderation which they commended to their patrons and their penitents.

The period which intervened between the last of three bad harvests and the great event to which I shall next advert was one of exceptional prosperity. The harvests were generally abundant, the wages of labour had been permanently improved, and all kinds of produce were cheap, The early days of the great war did not impair the general well-being of the English people. The supremacy of England on the sea was assured, and the famous battle of Crecy was fought, less considerable in its immediate consequences than in the exalted reputation which it conferred on English arms. But this country, and all Europe with it, was on the verge of a great calamity, the most extensive in its immediate incidence, and the most significant in its ultimate effects, of all events which have happened in the history of this country, and, indeed, of all Europe.

The Black Death is alleged to have had its origin in the centre of China, in or about the year 1333, and is reported to have been accompanied by various phenomena in the earth and atmosphere of a very novel and destructive character, such, indeed, as were noticed as long ago as in the plagues of Athens and the simultaneous visitations at Rome, or the mortality which prevailed in northern Europe near three centuries before our era. and at the

terrible pestilence which visited the known world in the age of Justinian. So in later times the cholera and the influenza were traced to particular spots in India or China, which had been desolated by earthquakes, as Justinian's plague was said to have had its origin at Pelusium. Nearly every infectious or contagious disease which has desolated mankind appears to have had its origin in the farthest East, and to have travelled along thence to Europe, though the yellow fever is said to be a product of the West. It is alleged, that before it reached the West, the Black Death exhausted itself in the place of its origin. Like most other plagues, it was infinitely more destructive at the commencement of its career, than after it had endured for a time. This is not to be accounted for by the fact that the weakest members of the community naturally succumbed the first, for we are told that it killed the strong, and that, just as with the Asiatic cholera, when it is most virulent, many of those attacked perished speedily, and before the disease had developed its most characteristic symptoms. It appears, indeed, and the impression is confirmed by scientific research, that when some new infection or contagion is developed, the whole population is specially liable to the assaults of the disease, and that sometimes it may totally perish, as in all likelihood the ancient occupants of the ruined cities in Central America have disappeared without leaving any sign, other than their stupendous buildings, of their existence. So also diseases familiar to us in England, and now become mild, are specially deadly to those races into which they have been for the first time introduced. In course of time, either the original virus of the disease is weakened, or those who are most susceptible of it are removed by death, or remedial measures are discovered which check or extinguish it. For more than three centuries the plague wasted England, though at no time, it seems, so seriously as at its first and last visitations.

The Black Death, as our forefathers called it, from the dark purple blotches which appeared on the skin, when the blood and tissues had become wholly disorganized through the virulence of the disorder, still lingers in the East, under the name of the Levant, or Oriental, plague. Even now we are occasionally informed of some outbreak in an Eastern plague spot, where the

hateful Turk has reduced every one to squalid poverty and misery, and whence Europe is again threatened. But the progress of sanitary science has probably put an end to the worst ravages of a disease which was so terrible more than five centuries ago. In. England it does not seem to have been assisted by any prevalent distress among the people, as the Athenian plague was by overcrowding, as that of Cadiz was in 1800, or as the last visitation of small-pox was by the miseries of the Franco-German war. The period just before the plague was one of prosperity and abundance; and though our forefathers were immeasurably unclean in their habits and surroundings, and remained unclean for centuries afterwards, the best conditions of life do not appear to have given an immunity from the plague. Among the victims of the first year were one of Edward's daughters and three Archbishops of Canterbury. So the narrative given us by Boccacio proves that all classes were equally affected, for the ladies and gentlemen who retire in the Decameron to tell each other stories in a country house on the road to Fiesole had all of them lost relations by the plague. The Black Death visited Christ Church, Canterbury, very lightly, for a century before the prior had laid on pure water from the hills to the monastery.

The Black Death first attacked Europe in Cyprus at about the end of the year 1347, and was accompanied by great convulsions of the earth, and by atmospheric disturbances. Many persons who were seized with the disorder died instantly. The plague seemed not only to the frightened imagination of the people, but even to the more sober observation of such men of science as lived at the time, to be moving forward with slow progress from the desolated East, under the form of a dark and fœtid mist, which settled on the garden of the Lord, and left it a howling wilderness. On January 25th, 1348, an earthquake had laid waste great part of the peninsulas of Italy and Greece. Meanwhile the mischief was steadily progressing along the basin of the Mediterranean, for the caravan traffic was carrying it everywhere, as the pilgrimages to and from Mecca disseminate disease in the homes and cities of returning devotees. The Black Death appeared at Avignon in January 1348, was in Florence by the middle of April, and had thoroughly penetrated France and

Germany by August. It entered Poland in 1349, reached Sweden in the winter of the same year, and Norway, by infection from England, at about the same time. It spread even to Iceland and Greenland, the former, a well-wooded country and fairly flourishing Colony of Norse origin; the latter a region with which communications had been kept up for centuries. We are told that, among the physical changes which ensued from the Black Death, or preceded and aided it, vast icebergs were formed on the eastern side of Iceland and on the whole coast of Greenland, and effectually cut off all communication between the Old World and those parts of the New which heretofore had been familiarly visited. In 1351 it reached Russia, after having inflicted its first severities on the rest of Europe, and having taken the circuit of the Mediterranean. It is probable that the caravan trade through Russia had been at this time suspended, and that the natural spread of the disease had been checked by the barrier of the Caucasus.

On the 1st of August, 1348, the disease made its appearance in the seaport towns of Dorsetshire, and travelled slowly westwards and northwards, through Devon and Somerset, to Bristol. In order to arrest the progress of the mortality, the authorities of Gloucestershire prohibited all intercourse with the citizens of Bristol. It was in vain; the plague spread to Oxford, where it was terribly destructive, and travelling slowly in the same measured way, reached London by the 1st of November. It appeared in Norwich on the 1st of January, and thence spread northwards. Later in the year 1349, the Scotch made one of their customary raids into England, and, as they ravaged the north, invented an oath, "By the foul death of the English." On their retreat they were attacked by the pestilence in the forest of Selkirk, and the northern part of the island suffered as seriously as the more populous south.

The mortality was no doubt enormous and appalling. It is probable that one-third of the population perished. To be sure, panic always exaggerates numbers. One chronicler says that nine out of ten died. Similar amplifications, which have been heedlessly accepted by writers who are inexperienced in possibilities, are found in all the chroniclers. We are told that sixty thousand persons perished in Norwich between January and July, 1349.