emanded
alterations in the council, and after long debate
reluctantly consented to the imposition of a new and unusual
tax of three groats[67] on every person, male and female,
above fifteen years of age. For the relief of the poor it
was provided that in the cities and towns the aggregate
amount should be divided among the inhabitants according to
their abilities, so that no individual should pay less than
one groat, or more than sixty groats for himself and his
wife. Parliament thereupon was dismissed; but the collection
of the tax gave rise to an insurrection which threatened the
life of the King and the existence of the government.

At this period [1381] a secret ferment seems to have pervaded the mass
of the people in many nations of Europe. Men were no longer willing to
submit to the impositions of their rulers, or to wear the chains which
had been thrown round the necks of their fathers by a warlike and
haughty aristocracy. We may trace this awakening spirit of independence
to a variety of causes, operating in the same direction; to the
progressive improvement of society, the gradual diffusion of knowledge,
the increasing pressure of taxation, and above all to the numerous and
lasting wars by which Europe had lately been convulsed. Necessity had
often compelled both the sovereigns and nobles to court the good-will of
the people; the burghers in the towns and inferior tenants in the
country had learned, from the repeated demands made upon them, to form
notions of their own importance; and the archers and foot-soldiers, who
had served for years in the wars, were, at their return home, unwilling
to sit down in the humble station of bondmen to their former lords. In
Flanders the commons had risen against their Count Louis, and had driven
him out of his dominions; in France the populace had taken possession of
Paris and Rouen, and massacred the collectors of the revenue. In England
a spirit of discontent agitated the whole body of the villeins, who
remained in almost the same situation in which we left them at the
Norman Conquest. They were still attached to the soil, talliable at the
will of the lord, and bound to pay the fines for the marriage of their
females, to perform customary labor, and to render the other servile
prestations incident to their condition. It is true that in the course
of time many had obtained the rights of freemen. Occasionally the king
or the lord would liberate at once