§ 39. The Church in England in the Fourteenth Century.
The 14th centu£y_witnessed^^ater social changfis^in Englaiidthan_an;^other century except the 19th. These changes were in large part a result of the hundred years' war with France, which began in 1337, and the terrible ravages of the Black Death. The century was marked by the legal adoption of the English tongue as the language of the country and the increased respect for parliament, in whose counsels the rich burgher class demanded a voice, and its definite division into two houses, 1341. The social unrest of the land found expression in popular harangues, poems, and tracts, affirming the rights of the villein and serf class, and in the uprising known as the Peasants' Revolt.
§ 39. THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 303
The distinctly religious life of England, in this period, was mjjdifid by_Qbstiiiaie rfisiatance lo the papal claims of jurisdjxjtion, culminating in the Acts of Provisors, and by the appearance of John Wyclif, one of the most original and vigorous personalities the English Church has produced.
An industrial revolution was precipitated on the island by the Great Pestilence^f 1M8. The necessities of life rose enormously in value. Large tracts of land passed back from the smaller tenants into the hands of the landowners of the gentry class. The sheep and the cattle, as a contemporary wrote, " strayed through the fields and grain, and there was no one who could drive them." The serfs and villeins found in the disorder of society an opportunity to escape from the yoke of servitude, and discovered in roving or in independent engagements the joys of a new-found freedom. These unsettled conditions called forth the famous statutes of Edward III.'s reign, 1327-1377, regulating wages and the prices of commodities.
The popular discontent arising from these regulations, and from the increased taxation necessitated by the wars with France, took the form of organized rebellion. The age of feudalism was coming to an end. The old ideas of labor and the tiller of the soil were beginning to give way before more just modes of thought. Among the agitators were John Ball, whom Froissart, with characteristic aristocratic indifference, called "the mad priest of Kent," the poet Longland and the insurgent leader, Watt Tyler. In his harangues, Ball fired popular feeling by appeals to the original rights of man. By what right, he exclaimed, " are they, who are called lords, greater folk than we ? On what grounds do they hold us in vassalage? Do not we all come from the same father and mother, Adam and Eve?" The spirit of individual freedom breathed itself out in the effective rhyme, which ran like wildfire,—
When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then the gentleman ?
llie__rhym£S»_wlncJi__W^ sent forth in his
Complaint of Piers JPlaughman, veniilated the suft'erings and demands of the day laborer and called for fair treatment such
30-1 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1204-1517.
as brother lias a riglit to expect from brother. Gentleman and villein faced the same eternal destinies. " Though he be thine underling," the poet wrote, " mayhap in heaven, he will be worthier set and with more bliss than thou." The rising sense of national importance and individual dignity was fed by the victory of Crecy, 1346, where the little iron balls, used for the first time, frightened the horses ; by the battle of Poictiers ten years later ; by the treaty of Br^tigny, 1360, whereby Edward was confirmed in the possession of large portions of France, and by tlie exploits of the Black Prince. The spectacle of the French king, John, a captive on the streets of London, made a deep impression. These events and the legalization of the English tongue, 1362,^ contributed to develop a national and patriotic sentiment before unknown in England.
The uprising, which broke out in 1381, was a vigorous assertion of thepopular demand for^aTreHress oFThe^ociaTTneijualities between classes in Englaiid. The insurgent bands, which marched to London, were pacified by the fair promises of Richard II., but the Kentish band led by Watt T3'ler, before dispersing, took the Tower and put the primate, Sudbury, to death. He had refused to favor the repeal of the hated decapitation tax. The abbeys of St. Albans and Edmondsbuiy were plundered and the monks ill treated, but these acts of violence were a small affair compared with the perpetual import of the uprising for the social and industrial well-being of the English people. The demands of the insurgents, as they bore on the clergy, insisted that C'hurcli lands and goods, aft^r sufficient allowance had been made for the reasonable wajits of the clergy, should be distributed among the parishionecs, and that there should be a single bishop for England. This^ involved a rupture with Rome.^
It was inevitable that the Church should feel the effects of these changes. Its wealth, which is computed to have cov-
^ Mandeville composed his travels in 1366 in French, and then translated out of P'rench into English, that every man of his nation might understand. Trevisa, writing in 1387, said that all grammar schools and English children "leaveth French and construeth and learneth English."
2 See Kriehn, Am. Hist. Rev., pp. 480, 483.