lost their grip on the land. They crowded into the towns—as Heckel says, "a false impulse" was given to town life. The first step had been taken towards getting the people off the land. Much of this evil, however, temporarily repaired itself later.
The Statutes of Labourers were an attempt to perpetuate villeinage by forcing the villein to work for the lord at the old rate of wages. After twenty years of abortive legislation on one side and increasing organisation on the other, the peasants rose in the very serious insurrection of 1381—an insurrection attributed to the outrage on Wat Tyler's daughter, but far too widespread and simultaneous not to have been brewing a long while. Wycklif and his "poor priests" had been preaching doctrines equivalent to those afterwards known as "liberty, fraternity, equality." John Ball had asked:
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?"
And the next half-century was to show that the doctrines of the Lollards had spread through every rank of society. Wat Tyler's "Rebellion" extended from Kent to Yorkshire, and from Hampshire to London It was put down with great severity, but the counsellors of Richard II. saw that it would not be safe to persist in asserting the old rights.
The result of the rise in wages and the practical abolition of serfage was that more and more of the large landowners ceased to farm their own lands by stewards, and let them on leases—often of thirty years, until by 1433 landlord cultivation was almost abandoned. Town corporations and religious houses also leased their lands. Usually the lease was "stock and land"—that is, the stock, live and dead, was leased too, and at the termination of the lease the tenant had to replace it. As everything made of iron was valuable, even rakes and hoes were specified, and spits, and raw iron for mending the ploughs. There were many dairy farms—for them the leases were shorter, no doubt that the landlord might be sure the live-stock was kept up. The landlord always covenanted to keep buildings in repair, and he insured the tenant against the murrain, but not against the scab—for the scab was curable. The utmost
