CHANGES BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE BLACK DEATH
1. In the middle of the fourteenth century, in the reign of King Edward
III, came the Black Death. It carried off half the population of the
country at least, and all classes of society felt its effects.
2. We have said that in some of the old parish churches you can see, by
some of the work done just after this time, that the builders were very
much poorer than they had been, and had to finish off in a very plain
fashion work begun on a grand scale. You must remember, too, that there
were several different kinds of land-owners or overlords--the king, the
great lords, bishops, colleges, and monasteries. The manors, of which
these estates were made up, in the course of centuries were divided and
subdivided in many ways as the land became more valuable. Many people
might thus have an interest in one manor which a couple of hundred
years before had been in the hands of one person only. That made law
business very complicated when these little parcels of land changed
hands.
3. Though manors could not be bought and sold outright, little by
little money was paid to have bits of manors and the various rights
in manors let out, or =leased=, for a term of years. This was
especially the case with property in towns, and with lands belonging to
corporations, like colleges and monasteries, which were often scattered
about in various parts of the country.
4. On the manors in the country districts the same thing was going
on, though perhaps more slowly than in the towns. It became much more
convenient for the villeins and cottiers, and other tenants of a manor,
to pay a =rent= to the lord instead of actually working on the lord's
land. At first this rent was paid in the produce of the land--a few
hens or eggs, a calf or a lamb, or so much corn, till by and by we find
actual payments in money as rent.
5. Then, too, a class of =labourers= had gradually sprung up on
the manors. As the tenants and villeins began to pay to the lord a
quit-rent, instead of working so many days a week on the land, the lord
of the manor had to employ persons to do the work on his home-farm.
These would naturally be the cottiers and serfs on the manor--the
"landless men"--who thus became what we know as labourers.
6. All these had to be accounted for in the =manor court=, which was
held regularly every few weeks. If a labourer was missing he was sought
for, and brought back to the manor, which he might not leave without
his lord's permission. It is quite true that if he could only remain
unclaimed in some borough town for a year and a day he was no longer
bound to the lord of his native manor; but the towns did not encourage
strangers, as we have seen. If, however, labour happened to be wanted
in the town, no doubt his being there would be "winked at", and no
notice would be taken of his "harbouring" there.
7. But it was not an easy matter for a labourer to get away from his
native manor. After the Black Death, labour became very scarce, for
on some of the manors almost every tenant and labourer died. All over
the country land-workers were wanted badly; and tenants and landlords,
when they were so hard pushed, were glad to employ almost any man who
appeared, and they did not trouble to ask whose "man he was" or whence
he came.
8. The wages of the labourers, of course, went up; but before very long
the landlords saw that that would not do; it made their farming so much
more expensive, and so their incomes were less and less. Law after law
was passed to get the labourers back to their native manors, and to
keep down the price of labour.
9. All classes of overlords, and especially the colleges and
monasteries, had much difficulty in working their lands, and so the
custom of letting them out in =farms= increased a good deal after the
Black Death.
10. At first the owners let out these farms with a certain amount of
stock on them. They were let for so many years, or for so many lives.
At the end of the time the farm had to be given up and the stock
replaced as it had been at the first. The land belonging to the farm
was mixed up with the land of other tenants in the manor, in the big
unenclosed fields, and had to be farmed still according to the old
customs of the manor. Some of the very oldest farms existing to this
day began in this kind of way, and there are possibly a few of the very
oldest farmhouses which were first built early in the fifteenth century.
=Summary.=--Manors were much broken up and underlet in various
ways, and _rent_ was gradually being paid in place of personal
service. _Labourers_ had taken the place of serfs, but until after
the Black Death they were tied to their native manors.
After the Black Death land began to be _farmed out_; that is the
beginning of our oldest farms. The farms were not compact, but the
land lay about in strips in the big common fields.