certain it is that England was one of the chief springs, if not the spring-head of the movement. It was, as is well known, a movement in favour of a return to primitive Christianity and the regeneration of Europe in harmony with it. It was therefore socialist and democratic, and awakened in the hearts of the population of Europe the memories of a golden age and the promise of the Millennium.
The Black Death in 1349 swept away more than half the population of England. Those that remained soon found that their labour had doubled in value, and the labourer became at once an important person in the realm. Parliament representing only the landlords, accordingly enacted in 1349 and 1350 Statutes by which the Labourer under pain of imprisonment and fines was bound to work at the same wages that he had received before the Plague. These iniquitous statutes acted like goads to the new life stirring in the soul of the English serf.[1]
The first Statutes of Labourers having been disregarded. Parliament in 1360 passed a severer law. Instead of three days in the stocks, a labourer refusing to work at the old wages was to be imprisoned for fifteen days. If he fled from his service to another town or county he was to be outlawed and a writ for his recovery to be sent to every Sheriff in England, and if taken he was to have the letter F burnt into his forehead for his falsity. Towns harbouring such fugitives were to deliver them up under penalty of Ten pounds to the King and one hundred shillings to the master, an enormous fine when tested by such wages as these statutes allowed: for example, 1d. a day to weeders and haymakers. This Act of 1360 strictly forbade all combination among workmen.
- ↑ Sir G. Nicholls, History of the Poor Laws, chap, i, p. 45, agrees that the object of these laws was to restore the expiring system of slavery, a suggestion which Sir James Stephen in his History of English Criminal Law, vol. 3, p. 204, admits has much plausibility. Anyone who will take the trouble to read the preamble of the second Statute will soon see how wroth the upper classes were at the thought of losing their thralls. "Whereas," it says, "late against the Malice of Servants which were idle and not willing to serve after the Pestilence without taking excessive wages, etc., an ordinance was passed to which the said servants pay no regard, but considering only their ease and singular covetise do withdraw themselves from Great Men and others," etc.
