So far from the labouring class being the chief sinners, it is in the humbler ranks that the root of goodness remains. Langland’s hero, the Ploughman, is obviously chosen to represent “that ingenuous simplicity and native candour and integrity,” which, as Burke says, “formerly characterized the English nation,” and, one may add, have been at all times its saving grace. It was in that class that the reforming movement, led by Wyclif twenty years after, had its strength. Lollardy and the Peasants’ Rebellion were closely allied. The grievance of the latter was that the gulf between the gentleman and the workman had become wider than in nature it should be. An ultimate and very indirect effect of the great mortality was to strengthen the middle class by recruits from beneath; it created the circumstances which produced the English yeoman of the fifteenth century. But we are here engaged with the immediate effect; and that was to broaden the contrast between the rich and the poor. Luxury had already touched so high a point as to call for a statute against extravagant living, the curious sumptuary law of 1336 which prohibited many courses at table. Nothing could be more significant of its later developments in London than the sarcastic description, which fills an unusual space in one of the chroniclers, of the fantastic excesses of dress and ornament among the male sex about the year 1362[356]. Some of the names of the men’s ornaments occur also in Langland’s verses: “Sir John and Sir Goffray hath a gerdel of silver, A basellarde or a ballok-knyf with botones overgilt.” These effeminate fashions actually led to a Statute of Dress in 1363, in which also the lower class are forbidden to ape their betters. It is perhaps to these hangers-on of wealth that Langland refers in his bitter lines: “Right so! ye rich, ye robeth that be rich | and helpeth them that helpeth you, and giveth where no need is. | As who so filled a tun of a fresh river | and went forth with that water to woke with Thames. | Right so! ye rich, ye robe and feed | them that have as ye have, them ye make at ease.” But, as for the poor, Avarice considers them fair game: “I have as moche pite of pore men as pedlere hath of cattes, | that wolde kill them if he cacche hem myghte, for covetise of their skynnes.” In London the preaching clergy are accused of pandering to the avarice of the rich: