ch had been held from father to son, on condition of
performing personal labor or other services on the estate of the
landowner, was subject not only to the demands of his master, but to the
tithing of the Church; to the doles exacted by the swarms of begging
friars, who, like Irish beggars of the present day, invoked cheap
blessings on the cheerful giver, and launched bitter curses at the heads
of those who refused alms; to the impositions of the wandering
"pardoners," with their charms and relics; and to the tyrannical
exactions of the "summoners," who, under pretence of writs from
ecclesiastical courts, robbed all who were not in position to resist
their fraudulent demands. What these spared was frequently swept away by
the visits of the king's purveyors and the officers of others in power,
who, not content with robbing the poor husbandman of the proceeds of his
toil, treated the men with violence and the women with outrage.
Complaint was useless. The "churl" had no rights which those in office
were bound to respect.

Ignorant, superstitious, and condemned to a life of unrequited toil and
unredressed wrongs, the mental and moral condition of the agricultural
poor was wretchedly low. Huddled together in mud cottages, through the
rotten thatches of which the rain penetrated; clothed with rough
garments that were seldom changed night or day; feeding on coarse food,
and that in insufficient quantities,--their physical condition was one
of extreme misery. The usual daily allowance of food to the bond laborer
of either class, when working for the owner of the land, was two
herrings, milk for cheese, and a loaf of bread, with the addition in
harvest of a small allowance of beer. Occasionally, salted meats or
stockfish were substituted for the herrings.

The condition of the free laborer was measurably better; but even he was
condemned to a life of privation and wretchedness, relieved only by the
knowledge that his scanty earnings were his own, and that he could
change the scene of his labors if he saw fit. The ordinary agricultural
laborer, at the wages usually given, would have to work more than a week
for a bushel of wheat. At harvest-time and other periods when the demand
for labor was unusually great, as it was after the pestilences that
swept the land about the time of which we write, the free laborers
demanded higher wages; and although laws were passed to prevent their
obtaining more than the usual rates, necessity