[1] In Scotland, villeinage lasted much longer, and as late as 1774, in the reign of George III, men working in coal and salt mines were held in a species of slavery, which was finally abolished the following year. So long as he was a serf, the peasant could claim assistance from his master in sickness and old age; in attaining independence he had to risk the danger of pauperism, which began with it,--this possibility being part of the price which man must everywhere pay for the inestimable privilege of freedom. 253. The New Movement in Literature, 1390 (?). The same spirit which demanded emancipation on the part of the working classes showed itself in literature. We have already seen (S246) how, in the previous reign, Langland, in his poem of "Piers Plowman," gave bold utterance to the growing discontent of the times in his declaration that the rich and great destroyed the poor. In a different spirit, Chaucer, "the morning star of English song," now began (1390?) to write his "Canterbury Tales," a series of stories in verse, supposed to be told by a merry band of pilgrims on their way from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury (S170). There is little of Langland's complaint in Chaucer, for he was generally a favorite at court, seeing mainly the bright side of life, and sure of his yearly allowance of money and daily pitcher of wine from the royal bounty. Yet, with all his mirth, there is a vein of playful satire in his description of men and things. His pictures of jolly monks and easy-going churchmen, with his lines addressed to his purse as his "saviour, as down in this world here," show that he saw beneath the surface of things. He too was thinking, at least at times, of the manifold evils of poverty and of that danger springing from religious indifference which poor Langland had taken so much to heart. 254. Wycliffe; the First Complete English Bible, 1378. But the real reformer of that day was John Wycliffe, rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire and lecturer at Oxford (S246). He boldly attacked the religious and the political corruption of the age. The "Begging Friars," who had once done such good work (S208), had now grown too rich and lazy to be of further use. Wycliffe, whose emaciated form concealed an unconquerable energy and dauntless courage, organized a new band of brothers known as "Poor Priests." They took up and pushed forward the reforms the friars had dropped. Clothed in red sackcloth cloaks, barefooted, with staff in hand, they went about from town to town[1] preaching "God's law," and demanding that Church and State bring themselves into harmony with it. [1] Compare Chaucer's "A good man ther was of religioun, That was a poure persone [parson] of a town." Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales" (479)