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'judge from their names, Englishmen, and perhaps, since 'Queen's was a north country college, from Westmoreland ' and Cumberland.' Each receives a fee of ten florins, the last two having further demands. The journey from Avignon to Calais occupied eighteen days, and cost 21. 4s. 74d. in English money. The cost of travelling from Calais to Oxford was 7s. The expenses attending the use of the Court were 'large; for the custom of the Roman curia, as indeed universally elsewhere, was to grant a monopoly of office by pur'chase, a fashion which lingers with us still in the buying and 'selling of army commissions. But it does not seem that the Court was oppressive or dishonest.' Considering that Sparsholt was but a poor living, the expenditure incurred for it was great indeed. How much of the sum and substance of mediæval, and of early modern history, is illustrated by a chance dip of this kind into the most trifling details of real life! We see at a glance the source of the enormous wealth, and profuse extravagance, of the Papal Court at one period of its existence; the origin of the wars of a Julius, the excesses of an Alexander, the cultivated extravagance of a Leo. We are admitted behind the scenes, into the details of the enormous and constantly increasing pecuniary pressure on the faithful which fed that extravagance; the operative cause which went so far towards producing a Wycliffe, a Huss, and a Luther. We see at a glance one reason, at least, which led to the especial success of the Reformation in those countries where the population had been most devout and most squeezable in our own island, the Low Countries, Germany.

Religion and its abuses were, however, by no means the only causes which led to the peculiarly locomotive habits of European society during this century, and a little later. The institution of chivalry, with its multiform knight-errantry, contributed; so did the constant international communication of merchants transacting business for themselves. And looking still more generally at the subject, we come to realise the fact that Patriotism (with its caricatures, local Philistinism and Chauvinism, as the Germans and French are pleased to phrase them), after prevailing so extensively as to constitute the ruling element of European society in the classical times, went out of date during the Middle Ages, and revived only at the commencement of times strictly modern. The gentlementhe priests-the traders, throughout Europe, formed so many guilds apart; with similar usages and feelings, and, to a great extent, a common language for each. The French knight, in their chronicles, is on far closer terms of union with the

knight of England or Flanders than with the French merchant. The chivalrous combatant of the pages of Froissart owes his allegiance to the Leopards or to the Fleurs-de-lys, not to the natale solum,' on either side of the Channel; and, still more closely, to the banner of his immediate feudal superior. If the latter changes sides in a quarrel, he changes also, without much or any regard to the manner in which the question may interest his country. If the sentiment of attachment to la patrie' existed at all, it was in the lower orders: Jacques Bonhomme was, in his rude way, far more of a Frenchman than his lord. M. Martin, the historian, remarks on this quality as evinced in the pages of the popular chronicler, the Continuator of William de Nangis, dont 'le patriotisme démocratique fait un contraste si frappant avec) 'le cosmopolitisme féodal de Froissart.' That exaltation of national feeling, which we now regard as the indispensable foundation of civic virtues, seems to have commenced, in this island, with the wars of Wallace and Bruce; on the Continent, when the old quarrel of kings, between France and England, had hardened into an inveterate quarrel of nations, in the fifteenth century. Europe, from having been cosmopolitical, became municipal-a few generations may see the progress

reversed.

The first of those two remarkable national events to which we have alluded as constituting special interruption to the ordinary course of events was the famine of 1315-16.

The highest actual price recorded was at Leatherhead, in February 1315-16, that is, after the first deficient harvest it reached 26s. 8d. the quarter—that is, adopting our common multiple of eight, 107. 11s. 4d. of actual money. This however is exceptional; but in the following year, 1316, 20s. a quarter (81. modern money) is paid in several localities. We shall find that at no time in English history has a dearth of such magnitude occurred as that immediately before us. The scarcity was not local, but universal, the whole country having been similarly affected. . . . The highest quotation of wheat in modern English history was that of December 1800, when it is returned at 61. 15s. 4d. This however was not much more than double the ordinary price while the scarcity of 1315 represents a quintuple rise in many places, and that of 1316 almost a quadruple of the general average.' (Vol. i. p. 198.)

It is difficult to imagine how society went through such a trial as this, insulated and unprotected as the condition of men then comparatively was; unless we are right in suspecting that wheat was not so exclusively the food of the multitude as now. But sharp as the trial must have been, its permanent effects were inconsiderable. Judging from the statistical tables with

which the Professor has himself supplied us, we should incline to think he had slightly exaggerated them in the following passage:

There can, I think, be no doubt that the mortality consequent upon these calamities did affect in a marked manner, and to some extent permanently, the wages of labour. We have seen in this inquiry that a considerable rise did take place in the price of labour during the decade of years in which the scarcity was greatest, and that this rise continued even after general prices became cheaper. Now such a result could not have been effected unless, in the first place, a scarcity of hands had made the demand for labour excessive, and unless the labourer were put into such a situation as would enable him to secure the advance which he had for a time enjoyed. This rise cannot, on the whole, be reckoned at less than 10 per cent.' (Vol. i. p. 292.)

Very far more important were the consequences of the great epidemic which visited England and Europe, just a generation later, and is known in chronicles by the name of the Black 'Death.' It is not within our space here to dwell on the romantic or terrible incidents of an event associated in our minds with so much of historical and literary interest. We deal with it only as constituting, according to our author, a marked and very important era in English social history. This visitation took place first in 1348; but the plague 'became endemic,' and its ravages continued, though with intermissions, for several years; although (in strict conformity with the mysterious rule which seems to govern the movement of cholera and other great epidemics) its attacks were infinitely more destructive at the commencement of its career than after the disease had prevailed some time. So many accounts have been given to the world of this pestilence, and so much of historical criticism has been expended on it, that we need do no more than refer to Mr. Rogers' speculations on the subject, except so far as they illustrate his immediate subject. Nor, indeed, will most people, unless such as are to be found among the sectaries of Mr. Glaisher, receive very credulously the information that

'The Black Death seemed, not only to the frightened imagination of the people, but even to the more sober observation of the few men of science of the time, to move forward with measured steps from the desolated East, under the form of a dark and fetid mist. It is very likely that consequent upon the great physical convulsions which had rent the earth and preceded the disease' (what these were, we are not informed) foreign substances of a deleterious character had been projected into the atmosphere, had permanently infected its lower regions, and could not, by the ordinary powers of

dispersion possessed by the air, be easily eliminated or neutralised.' (Vol. i. p. 293.)

Our business is with the results of the visitation, and not with imaginary physical causes or concomitants.*

The first and most obvious of these results was an inordinate rise in wages, estimated in money. 'The immediate effect of the plague' (says Mr. Rogers, and his tables confirm it,) was 'to double the wages of labour; in some districts, to raise the rate even beyond this.' The fact is already well known in history through the Statutes of Labourers, which formed a distinguishing feature in legislation under Edward III., and which embodied a series of attempts, as unsuccessful, in all probability, as they deserved to be, to enable employers to obtain labour at less than its value. One curious mode in which the stringency of these Acts was eluded is observed by Mr. Rogers.

'I seem,' he says, 'to detect the operation of the statute in a fact which I have frequently noticed in the accounts after the Black Death. Entries of payments of wages at certain rates are cancelled, and lower rates are substituted for them. . . . I cannot help thinking that these changes point to evasions of the statute, and that perhaps the labourer was compensated to the full extent of the previous entry, but in some covert way, or by some means which would not come within the penalties of the statute.'

One other incidental circumstance is worth noting. In the accounts examined by the Professor, entries of payments for field labour performed by women are very common before the Black Death; after it they become comparatively rare, and generally at double the former rate. It is open to conjecture,

It is not improbable that this pestilence was even more felt in the northern counties of England-then very thinly peopled for the most part-than in more populous and commercial districts. It was one of its characteristics that its severity was greatest in comparatively desolate regions. The traditions of Sweden and Norway respecting it are even more dismal than those of France and Italy. In secluded glens and sea-coast tracts, the inhabitants were all but exterminated. In Sweden it is said that churches were rediscovered in the forests, after not only their parishioners had died out, but their existence had been forgotten. The legend of the valley of Justedal, near Bergen, recounts that it was filled at one time with people who sought refuge there from the Great Death' of 1350; but that all died, except one little girl, who was found in a wild state, fluttering about like a white ptarmigan, Ripa,' after which they named her: she married afterwards, and her descendants were called the Ripeslagten' or clan-Ptarmigan.

therefore, whether one of the greatest tokens of difference between our rural economy and that of our continental neighbours did not take its origin in this visitation, which for some reason or other affected the market for labour here otherwise than there.

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The next economical consequence of the Black Death-if really propter hoc and not only post hoc-is remarkable enough. The rise in money wages was accompanied by a considerable, though irregular, rise in the money prices of almost all commodities. This was long ago remarked by historians. At first the reduction in the number of consumers ' effected a proportionate reduction in the price of all merchantable commodities: in the second year the prices rose with a rapidity and to a height which alarmed the government.' According to Knyghton, the rise was fourfold (Lingard, ed. 3. chap. 3). Mr. Rogers' researches establish the fact with more particularity. During the period which followed the plague, and continued to the death of Edward III. (134877), wheat,' he says, fell rarely below the average, and was sometimes greatly above it.' The year 1351 was one of those noted as of famine price (upwards of 10s. the quarter), although there were not more than half the number of mouths to consume it. In like manner the price of live stock falls considerably in the very year of the calamity, but immediately afterwards rises above what it had been before. This augmentation in the price of articles of common consumption is not at first sight so easily accounted for as that of wages; nor does the Professor, so far as we have noticed, offer a solution. The natural inference would rather have been, that a mortality of one half the population would reduce in proportion the area on which food was raised; that the least fertile portion would fall out of cultivation, and consequently the cost of production would diminish, and food become cheaper. But one circumstance, we think, somewhat elucidates this paradoxical dearness; and that is, the probable effect of the plague on the value of the currency. If half the population perished, the coin in the possession of each survivor was (on the average) doubled. No doubt the foreign exchanges would soon dispose of the surplus, if the calamity was confined to England. But all the neighbouring regions of the Continent suffered equally; and therefore the natural result would seem to be much the same-for a short time as that of a large and sudden increase of gold and silver.

These the immediate effects of the greatest general mortality of which substantial records exist-were, of course, transitory