n a grand scale in an ordinance made by Edward
III. in the twenty-third year of his reign. This was just after the
dreadful pestilence of 1348, and it recites that, the number of workmen
and servants having been greatly reduced by that calamity, the
remainder demanded excessive wages from their employers. Such an
enhancement in the price of labour, though founded exactly on the same
principles as regulate the value of any other commodity, is too
frequently treated as a sort of crime by lawgivers, who seem to grudge
the poor that transient melioration of their lot which the progress of
population, or other analogous circumstances, will, without any
interference, very rapidly take away. This ordinance therefore enacts
that every man in England, of whatever condition, bond or free, of able
body, and within sixty years of age, not living of his own, nor by any
trade, shall be obliged, when required, to serve any master who is
willing to hire him at such wages as were usually paid three years
since, or for some time preceding; provided that the lords of villeins
or tenants in villenage shall have the preference of their labour, so
that they retain no more than shall be necessary for them. More than
these old wages is strictly forbidden to be offered, as well as
demanded. No one is permitted, under colour of charity, to give alms to
a beggar. And, to make some compensation to the inferior classes for
these severities, a clause is inserted, as wise, just, and practicable
as the rest, for the sale of provisions at reasonable prices.[412]

This ordinance met with so little regard that a statute was made in
parliament two years after, fixing the wages of all artificers and
husbandmen, with regard to the nature and season of their labour. From
this time it became a frequent complaint of the commons that the statute
of labourers was not kept. The king had in this case, probably, no other
reason for leaving their grievance unredressed than his inability to
change the order of Providence. A silent alteration had been wrought in
the condition and character of the lower classes during the reign of
Edward III. This was the effect of increased knowledge and refinement,
which had been making a considerable progress for full half a century,
though they did not readily permeate the cold region of poverty and
ignorance. It was natural that the country people, or uplandish folk, as
they were called, should repine at the exclusion from that enj