the heads of the Church exercised all the rights
of a feudal lord, and were even more tenacious of their privileges. The
serfs were prohibited from migrating from one part of the country to
another. The daughter of a serf could not marry without the consent of
the lord, who frequently demanded payment for permission; or, worse
still, the infamous "Right of the First Night." The serf was bonded in a
hundred different ways, and it is significant of the esteem in which the
Church was held that in every peasant revolt which occurred, there was
always a direct attack on the Church.

Professor Thorold Rogers, writing of the twelfth century, gives the
following picture of the poorer classes:

"The houses of these villagers were mean and dirty. Brickmaking was a
lost art, stone was found only in a few places. The wood fire was on a
hob of clay. Chimneys were unknown, except in castles and manor houses,
and the smoke escaped through the door or whatever other aperture it
could reach. The floor of the homestead was filthy enough, but the
surroundings were filthier still. Close by the door stood the mixen, a
collection of every abomination--streams from which, in rainy weather,
fertilized the lower meadows, generally the lord's pasture, and polluted
the stream. The house of the peasant cottager was poorer still. Most of
them were probably built of posts wattled and plastered with clay or
mud, with an upper storey of poles reached by a ladder."

"What the lord took he held by right of force; what the Church had it
held by force of cunning. And as, in the long run, the cunning of the
Church was more powerful than the force of the robber-lord, the
priesthood grew in riches until its wealth became a threat to the whole
of the community. In England, in the thirteenth century, the clergy
numbered one in fifty-two of the population, and the possessions of the
Church included a third of the land of England. No opportunity was lost
by the Church to drain money from the people whether they were rich or
poor. The trade done in candles, and sales of indulgences brought in
large sums of money, and there were continuous disputes between the
clergy and the king and the Pope as to the divisions of the spoil. The
picture of the Church watching over the poor, sheltering them from
wrong, tending them in sickness, and relieving them in their poverty
will not do. It is totally without historic foundation. When the poor
revolted, and apart from the