Men believed the world to be ending, and the judgement day to be near.

A few months after the Peace came a fresh swoop of the Black Death, carrying off the Duke of Lancaster.

The repressive measures of Parliament and the landowners only widened the social chasm which parted employer from employed.

We can see the growth of a fierce spirit of resistance both to the reactionary efforts which were being made to bring back labour services and to the enactments which again bound labour to the soil in statutes which strove in vain to repress the strikes and combinations which became frequent in the towns and the more formidable gatherings of villeins and "fugitive serfs" in the country at large.

A statute of later date throws light on the nature of the resistance of the last.