ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapters we have attempted to give an idea of the state of industry and commerce in England in the Middle Ages. We now come to a most important landmark in the history of the social and industrial condition of the people—viz., the Great Plague of 1348 and subsequent years. Almost two centuries had elapsed since the death of Stephen (1154) and the cessation of those great civil conflicts which harried England in his reign. These two centuries bad witnessed on the whole a continuous growth of material prosperity. The wealth of the country had increased; the towns had developed, and their development was partly the effect and partly the cause of the growth of a prosperous mercantile and industrial middle class, who regulated their own affairs in their gilds, and also had a voice in municipal management. No doubt it was true that in the fourteenth century municipal life was still on a small scale, 1 but much progress had been made since the twelfth century. Already it was a great advantage to be a “burgher,” for the towns opened up to the artisan and shopkeeper a way to take their place among people of privilege. 2 But the country at large was still mainly devoted to agricultural and pastoral pursuits, and the mass of the people were engaged in tilling the ground or feeding cattle. The mass of the people, too, were now better fed and better clothed than those of a similar class on the Continent, and though there were social discontents at intervals, there was nothing in England so terrible and so outrageous as the “Jacquerie” revolt in France. The industrial factor, more-over, was making itself more and more felt in national and political life, for industrial questions assumed a hitherto unsuspected importance when a large proportion of the House of Commons was formed of burghers directly interested in trade and manufactures. 1
