the specially
busy seasons of the year, and the required few days' services at
ploughing or mowing or harvesting were correspondingly valuable. But
even these were extremely unusual after the middle of the fifteenth
century.

This change was dependent on at least two conditions, an increased
amount of money in circulation and an increased number of free
laborers available for hire. These conditions were being more and more
completely fulfilled. Trade at fairs and markets and in the towns was
increasing through the whole fourteenth century. The increase of
weaving and other handicrafts produced more wealth and trade. Money
coming from abroad and from the royal mints made its way into
circulation and came into the hands of the villain tenants, through
the sale of surplus products or as payment for their labor. The sudden
destruction of one-half of the population by the Black Death while the
amount of money in the country remained the same, doubled the
circulation _per capita_. Tenants were thus able to offer regular
money payments to their lords in lieu of their personal services.

During the same period the number of free laborers who could be hired
to perform the necessary work on the demesne was increasing. Even
before the pestilence there were men and women on every manor who held
little or no land and who could be secured by the lord for voluntary
labor if the compulsory labor of the villains was given up. Some of
these laborers were fugitive villains who had fled from one manor to
another to secure freedom, and this class became much more numerous
under the circumstance of disorganization after the Black Death. Thus
the second condition requisite for the extensive commutation was
present also.

It might be supposed that after the pestilence, when wages were high
and labor was so hard to procure, lords of manors would be unwilling
to allow further commutation, and would even try to insist on the
performance of actual labor in cases where commutation had been
previously allowed. Indeed, it has been very generally stated that
there was such a reaction. The contrary, however, was the case.
Commutation was never more rapid than in the generation immediately
after the first attack of the pestilence. The laborers seem to have
been in so favorable a position, that the dread of their flight was a
controlling inducement to the lords to allow the commutation of their
services if they desired it. The interest of the lords i