Our description of the social conditions existing during the period which ushered in the Reformation has been confined to Germany. The great religious movement took its origin in that land, and it is of the utmost importance to study the environment there. But the universal economic changes were producing social disturbances everywhere, modified in appearance and character by the special conditions of the various countries of Europe. The popular risings in England, which began with the gigantic labour strike under Wat Tyler and priest Ball, and ended with the disturbances during the reign of Edward VI., were the counterpart of the social revolt in Germany. From all that has been said, it will be evident that on the eve of the Reformation the condition of Europe, and of Germany in particular, was one of seething discontent and full of bitter class hatreds,—the trading companies and the great capitalists against the “gilds,” the poorer classes against the wealthier, and the nobles against the towns. This state of things is abundantly reflected in the folk-songs of the period, which best reveal the intimate feelings of the people. For it was an age of song everywhere, and especially in Germany. Nobles and knights, burghers and peasants, _landsknechts_ and Swiss soldiers, priests and clerks, lawyers and merchants—all expressed the feelings of their class when they sang; and the folk-songs give us a wonderful picture of the class hatreds which were rending asunder the old conditions of mediæval life, and preparing the way for a new world. This social ferment was increased by a sudden and mysterious rise in prices, affecting first the articles of foreign produce, to which the wealthier classes had become greatly addicted, and at last the ordinary necessaries of life. The cause, it is now believed, was not the debasing of the coinage, for that affected a narrow circle only; nor was it the importation of precious metals from America, for that came later; it was rather the increased output of the mines in Europe. Whatever the cause, the thing was to contemporaries an irritating mystery, and each class in society was disposed to blame the others for it. We have thus at the beginning of the sixteenth century a restless social condition in Germany, caused in great measure by economic causes which no one understood, but whose results were painfully manifest in the crowds of sturdy beggars who thronged the roads—the refuse of all classes in society, from the broken noble and the disbanded mercenary soldier to the ruined peasant, the workman out of employment, the begging friar, and the “wandering student.” It was into this mass of seething discontent that the spark of religious protest fell—the one thing needed to fire the train and kindle the social conflagration. This was the society to which Luther spoke, and its discontent was the sounding-board which made his words reverberate.