In the country, fields were left untilled
and harvests rotted on the ground. "The sheep and cattle strayed through
the fields and corn, and there were none left who could drive them." In
the towns, craftsmen refused to work at the old rate of wages. Higher
wages were paid, but the scarcity of food made higher prices, and men
were little better off. Many laborers, indeed, declined to work at all,
becoming tramps,--what were known as "sturdy beggars,"--or haunting the
forests as bandits.
The king and parliament sought to put an end to this state of affairs by
law. An ordinance was passed whose effect would have made slaves of the
people. Every man under sixty, not a land-owner or already at work (says
this famous act), must work for the employer who demands his labor, and
for the rate of wages that prevailed two years before the plague. The
man who refused should be thrown into prison. This law failed to work,
and sterner measures were passed. The laborer was once more made a serf,
bound to the soil, his wage-rate fixed by parliament. Law after law
followed, branding with a hot iron on the forehead being finally ordered
as a restraint to runaway laborers. It was the first great effort made
by the class in power to put down an industrial revolt.
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