Constitutional JTisfori/.
[chap.
Clergy and
laity.
Landowners
and landless.
In the lower
classes.
estranging and dividing influences by which interest was set
against interest, estate against estate. The relation of the
clergy to the laity was, as to some degree it always must be, an
obstacle to any perfect identity of class interests. The legal
and social immunities which belonged to the former were
begrudged and watched jealously by the latter. Between the
landowning and landless classes there were similar grounds of
division; for, although the actual value of land, as property,
was neither so great nor so highly appreciated as in later times,
the privileges which the possession of it included were even
greater, politically and socially, than they are at the present
day. A lower rate of taxation, the possession of the county
franchise and of a considerable share of the Iiorouch franchise
also, the legal protection with which the ownership of land had
been guarded from the earliest times, and the strictness of the
land-law framed upon feudal ideas, were benefits which were
not shared by even the wealthiest of the mercantile classes.
The landowner had a stake in the country, a material security
for his good behaviour ; if he offended against the law or the
government, he might forfeit his land ; but the land was not
lost sight of, and the moral and social claims of the family
which had possessed it were not barred by forfeiture. The
restoration of the heirs of the dispossessed was an invariable
result or condition of every political pacification ; and very few
estates were alienated from the direct line of inheritance by one
forfeiture only. With the merchant, it was not so ; if he
offended, all his material security was at once swallowed up by
the forfeiture ; a record might be kept of the profits, but they
were not to be recovered ; as he had risen, so he fell, unless he
had in good time invested some part of his fortune in land. In
the lower classes, again, the distinctions of interest in land, and
varying views as to the employment of it, caused great heart-
burnings and social discontents. As the freeholder engrossed
the county franchise, the political divisions in the agricultural
class scarcely rose to the level of parliament ; but out of par-
liament they were the causes of much discontent, which found
vent in the popular risings, and a welcome sympathy in the
631
XXI.]
Class Grievances.
social doctrines of Lollardy. The burdens of the copyhold and
customary tenures, the heavy heriots and fines, the unpaid
services of villenage, the difficulty of obtaining small holdings
on fair terms, combined with the equally important questions
between tillage and pasturage to divide the agricultural class
against itself. The price of wool enhanced the value of pas- Tillage and
. t pasturage.
turage, the increased value of pasturage withdrew field after
field from tillage ; the decline of tillage, the depression of the
markets, and the monopoly of the wool trade by the staple
towns, reduced those country towns which had not encouraged
manufacture to such poverty that they were unable to pay their
contingent to the revenue, and the regular sum of tenths and
fifteenths was reduced by more than a fifth in consequence.
The same causes which in the sixteenth century made the
inclosure of the commons a most important popular grievance,
had begun to set class against class as early as the fourteenth
century, although the thinning of the population by the Plague
acted to some extent as a corrective. Besides these deeply-
seated sources of division, the invidious laws on apparel and
sumptuary regulations were small matters of aggravation, which
served to bring more prominently before men’s eyes the outward
marks of inequality.
That these causes were at work during the fifteenth century,
as well as those which preceded and followed it, there is 1:0
doubt. The great dynastic quarrel gave more prominence to Connexion
local and personal faction than to class distinctions and sépara- grievances
tions; the great crisis of the constitutional history turned, or dynastic
seemed to turn, on points rather of dynastic than of social 4∙uaπβl'
importance. But whilst town and country, clergy, nobles, and
commons, were alike divided, house against house, family against
family, bishop against bishop, man against wife, we can see in
the attempts made by the two rival factions to turn the social
divisions to account, that the social divisions were scarcely less
deep and wide than they had been in the days ofΛVat Tyler
and Jack Straw. The anti-Lancastrian party in the reign of
Henry IV courted the Lollards in and cut of parliament ; the
Lancastrian House fortified itself in the support of the clergy,