[358] This was a last resort, more and more frequently adopted however, especially after the plague. As Mr. Oman has justly observed, by natural disposition the villeins “were reluctant to abscond and throw up their share of the manorial acres, for only in extremity will the peasant, who has once got a grip on the soil, consent to let it go.” “The Great Revolt of 1381,” Oxford 1906, p. 9. [359] “A . . . n. S^r le Roi et Seigneurs de Parlement monstrent les chivalers des countees en ycest present Parlement, que come les Seigneurs parmy le Roialme d’Engleterre eient plusours vileins queux s’enfuont de lour Seigneurs et de lour terres en diverses citees et burghs enfranchisez, de jour en autre, et la demuront tout lour vies, par cause desqueux franchises les ditz Seigneurs ne pount aprocher lour ditz vileins. . . .” They want to be enabled to forcibly take them back. Their petition is rejected: “Le Roi s’advisera.” 15 Rich. II, “Rolls of Parliament,” iii. p. 296. [360] “Ad similitudinem cervorum domesticorum.”—“Henrici de Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ Libri V,” ed. Travers Twiss, London, 1878, i. p. 48. [361] According to Seebohm (“The Black Death and its place in English History,” two articles in the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1865), more than half of the population died during the epidemic which had begun in July 1348 and lasted till the end of 1349. Three archbishops of Canterbury died in one year. Knyghton, a contemporary, gives a striking picture of the plague at Leicester. “There were scarcely any who took heed of riches or cared for anything. . . . And sheep and oxen wandered through the fields and among the crops; there was no one to go after and collect them; but there perished an untold number in out of the way ditches and under hedges.” In the autumn the price of labour was so exorbitant that a large part of the crops were left on the ground (Twysden’s “Decem Scriptores,” col. 2599). “Through this pestilence,” say the Commons in Parliament, “cities, boroughs and other towns and hamlets throughout the land have decayed, and from day to day are decaying and several are entirely depopulated.” 25 Ed. III, A.D. 1351, “Rolls of Parliament,” vol. ii. p. 227. [362] See a concrete example of such reports being brought from the north to the south by pilgrims, further, p. 279. [363] As shown by the surnames of the members, at that period; in numerous cases, a mere indication of profession: Johannes le Baker, Galfridus le Fisshere, Johannes le Carpenter, Robertus Chaundeler, Ricardus Orfevre, Radulphus le Taverner, etc. “Return of the names of every member returned to serve in every Parliament,” London, 1878, a blue book, pp. 18, 31, 146 and _passim_; on p. 229, duly appears, as a knight of the shire, for Kent, “Galfridus Chauceres.”