in the time of Edward III. a great many free labourers who worked for money as they do now. These, too, were hardly treated and forced to work very hard for very little pay.

11. The Black Death. Whilst the villeins and labourers were grumbling, a terrible disease swept over England. It was called the Black Death, and caused more destruction than any plague which has since destroyed men. We cannot tell exactly how many died, but it is supposed by some that at least one half of the people perished. This fearful death brought some hope to the serfs and labourers who remained alive. It is true that the rich died as well as the poor; but the land did not die. There was just as much work to be done as before, just as much corn to be reaped or sheep to be shorn, and only half as many reapers or shearers to do it. Instead of a master finding more men than he wanted, he could not find enough. The labourers naturally asked for more money than they had had before, and the villeins finding their work was more wanted, were less inclined to give as much of it as they had given before. The landlords, however, chose members of parliament, and the villeins and labourers did not. The landlords, being in Parliament, made there what laws they pleased. One of the new laws made by them was known as the Statute of Labourers. By it any labourer was to be punished who asked for more wages than he had had before the Black Death. No wonder the labourers were very angry at being cheated in this way. A preacher named John Ball went about telling them not only that they had a right to as much as their

labour was worth, but that there ought to be no more landlords. He was always repeating two lines— When Adam delved and Eve span

Who was then a gentleman?

till the villeins and labourers were ready to do any thing.

12. The Last Days of Edward III.—It was not only the labourers who were dissatisfied. War with France broke out again, and the best leaders of the English were now dead. Edward III. lost his senses in his old age, and was unable either to fight or govern. The Black Prince was in ill-health. There was a new French king, Charles V., who was too prudent to fight great battles. Step by step the English lost most of the land they had in France. The English nobles thought it would be a fine thing to rob the clergy, as they could no longer rob the French; and the king's second son, called John of Gaunt, that is to say, of Ghent, the town in Flanders where he had been born, cried out loudly that the clergy should have no more power in England, and began to turn them out of the offices which they held in the government. It seems strange now that all the offices in the state should be filled by the clergy, and that a bishop should be Lord Treasurer to look after the king's money, or Lord Chancellor to decide lawsuits. But in those days no one who was not a clergyman knew enough to do anything which needed the exercise of a man's brains, and there was good sense enough still in England to remember this. The Black Prince, sick and wasted as he was, appeared in parliament and de

clared against his brother. The Good Parliament, as it was called, turned off some of John of Gaunt's friends who had been getting money by cheating the king and the nation, and put the bishops back into office. But the Black Prince did not live long enough to do more. When he died, John of Gaunt did again as he liked, and soon after Edward III. died also. All the conquests of the early part of the reign had come to nothing, and Englishmen who had set out to rob Frenchmen were trying to rob one another. Warlike glory, when it does not come from self-defence, or from an attempt to protect the weak against the strong, is like the apples which were once fabled to grow by the Dead Sea. Outwardly they were fair to look on, but they turned to dust and ashes in the mouth.

1. The Insurrection of the Peasants.--The reign of Richard II. brought more trouble. He was the son of the Black Prince, and though he was only ten years old it was hoped that he would be like his

father when he grew up. At first England was ruled by his uncles, and chiefly by John of Gaunt. The war went on, but every year some French towns were lost, and the English armies, instead of bringing home spoil from abroad, cost much money. Heavy taxes were laid on to pay the expense. If the poor had complained before of their hard treatment from the rich, they complained much more now. The taxgatherers did not find it easy to collect the money. At last one of them went into the house of Wat Tyler, a Kentish man, and insulted his daughter. Wat Tyler killed the man. Thousands of villeins rose in rebellion. They asked that the new taxes should be put down, and that there should be no more bondage, that is, that no one should be obliged to work for his landlord without being paid. But they did not ask quietly and firmly. They were angry and ignorant, and they did exactly what angry and ignorant men always do. They threw everything into confusion. They burnt the rolls of parchment on which were written the account of the services which they were bound to render to the landlords. They murdered the lawyers who had argued against them in the law-courts that they were bound to render these services. A large body of them, with Wat Tyler at their head, at last reached London. Young Richard was only sixteen, but he rode boldly out to meet them. He promised to free them from bondage. Those to whom he spoke were satisfied, and many went home. But it is impossible to satisfy a whole mob. A yelling crowd rushed through the streets of London, seized on the Archbishop of