arms the payment of taxes--taxes
levied with gross unfairness in popular judgment.

The monks of Canterbury, to whom the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside
belonged, had long had their own quarrels with Archbishop Hubert, and on
this firing of their church, and the violation of sanctuary, they appealed
to the King and the Pope--Innocent III.--that Hubert should give up his
political work and attend exclusively to his duties as Archbishop. Both the
Pope and the great barons were against him, and in 1198 Archbishop Hubert
was compelled to resign the judiciarship.

THE PEASANT REVOLT AND ITS LEADERS, 1381

The great uprising of the peasants in 1381 was a very different matter from
the local insurrection made by FitzOsbert. Two centuries had passed, and in
those centuries the beginnings of representative government had been set up
and some recognition of the rights of the peasantry had been admitted in
the Great Charter.

The Peasant Revolt was national. It was carefully prepared and skilfully
organised, and its leaders were men of power and ability--men of character.
It was not only a definite protest against positive evils, but a vigorous
attempt to create a new social order--to substitute a social democracy for
feudal government.[34]

The old feudal order had been widely upset by the Black Death in 1349, and
the further ravages of pestilence in 1361 and 1369. The heavy mortality
left many country districts bereft of labour, and landowners were compelled
to offer higher wages if agriculture was to go on. In vain Parliament
passed Statutes of Labourers to prevent the peasant from securing an
advance. These Acts of Parliament expressly forbade a rise in wages; the
landless man or woman was "to serve the employer who shall require him to
do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the
neighbourhood two years before the pestilence." The scarcity of labour
drove landowners to compete for the services of the labourer, in spite of
Parliament.

Discontent was rife in those years of social change. The Statutes of
Labourers were ineffectual; but they galled the labourers and kept serfdom
alive. The tenants had their grievance because they were obliged to give
labour-service to their lords. Freehold yeomen, town workmen, and
shopkeepers were irritated by heavy taxation, and vexed by excessive market
tolls. All the materials were at hand for open rebellion, and leaders were
found as the days went by