14
The alarm that elites felt at the empowerment of the lower orders by the massive mortality is clearly expressed in the Ordinance of Laborers, issued by the king and his councilors on June 18, 1349, while the plague was still raging in many parts of the realm. This legislation, which was reiterated throughout the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, sought to compel the common people to work when required and accept wages no higher, and conditions of service no better, than those current in the five or six years prior to the Black Death. In letters addressed to all English bishops, the king and his council requested that this ordinance be proclaimed in all churches, and that the rectors and vicars of these churches should “beseech and persuade their parishioners to labor and to keep the ordinances, as instant necessity demands.” Naturally, attempts to enforce the ordinance provoked considerable discontent and resistance among the peasant, laboring, and artisan masses, who saw it as an act of oppressive lordship which threatened to restrict their freedom and snatch away unprecedented opportunities for boosting their income. Wage inflation was not restricted to the peasantry, and every bishop was urged to do all within his power to “constrain the wage-earning chaplains of [his] diocese, who refuse in like manner to serve without excessive salary.”
The medieval world was steeped in custom and precedent, and change generally occurred at a slow pace. Society was rigidly stratified, and its highly unequal distribution of wealth, status, and authority was reinforced by a powerful ideology. For centuries the world had been divided conceptually into three estates—those who labored, those who fought, and those who prayed— and the members of each had essential tasks to perform to the best of their ability, for the good of the whole community, and in accordance with God ’s will. In the eyes of the elites, an efficient economy, social stability, and the maintenance of civilized life depended on the masses performing the manual toil for which they had been divinely ordained. If the masses at the bottom of the social pyramid did not perform their allotted role, the world would collapse. As Thomas Wimbledon wrote in the late fourteenth century, “If laborers work not, priests and knights must become cultivators and herdsmen, or else die for want of bodily sustenance.”
Before the Black Death the shortage of land and work had helped keep the great mass of the laboring poor subservient, but now the population had been sliced virtually in half the social and economic order was gravely threatened by what was seen as the greedy, selfish, and sinful demands of the lower orders. The great pestilence let loose powerful forces that threatened upheaval in the social order, affecting not just peasants and laborers but clergy and lords. But change of this kind was interpreted as sinful and likely to antagonize an already angry God, who might react by inflicting further plagues on mankind. The dreadful paradox was highlighted by a rapidly emerging awareness that the inordinately harsh penalties God had apparently exacted for sin had not led to the improvement in the behavior of any social stratum, which instead had become worse.
There are excellent series for the prices of a number of major commodities in fourteenth-century England, and they show that all kinds of food were exceptionally cheap at the time of the Black Death and in the months following. The low prices in the spring and summer of 1349 must reflect the severe disruption to trade and travel caused by pestilence and the fear of it, as well as the sharply reduced demand from the shrunken population. The price of all grains plunged at the same time, and barley, rye, oats, and peas were the cheapest ever seen, and the same was true of cheese. The fact that wheat, although cheap, did not fall in price as much as the other grains was probably due to survivors using their improved income to eat more wheat bread at the expense of loaves made out of inferior coarser grains. Manorial accounts show that the price of all types of farm animals also slumped dramatically, in many cases to levels not seen since the early thirteenth century. By contrast, the price of manufactured items such as cloth, clothes, nails, and wheels soared, pushed up by the substantially enhanced wages of the people who made them.
The reader is reminded again that the narrator of this book is an educated person writing soon after the Black Death, who tells the story from the perspective of the literate and religious elites, and gives voice to their fears and resentment about the new order, and especially the threat posed by assertive peasantry and laity.
The great mortality had raged in Walsham for little more than two months, but during that brief time it scythed the village’s population by half. At the height of the carnage in late April and early May, it had seemed to any sensible villager that all humankind might perish. In those dark days, only the knowledge that the pestilence had ravaged but not entirely destroyed other places in England and overseas nurtured the faint hope in those who had not yet perished that the world might not end. This proved to be so. During the second half of May and into early June, the torrent of deaths slowed, imperceptibly and irregularly at first and then more evidently. When stock was taken of the victims in the epic court session of June 15, the terrible power of the pestilence was ebbing fast, and by mid-July the deaths had ceased. God had ordered the pestilence to leave, and obediently it moved on to devastate the north of England.
As the villagers emerged from the thrall of God’s cruel purging, they blinked like prisoners liberated from dungeons into the sunshine. But the blessed relief was mixed with profound loss, and when they had time to think of their new predicament, with bewilderment and guilt. After the joy of survival had subsided somewhat, the shock of the loss of loved ones and the absence of so many familiar faces intensified, as did concern over why they were spared when so many others had perished. Cherished and trusted family, friends, and neighbors were no longer there when they were needed, whether to loan food, money, or a farming tool, or to make a gift of time and friendship. Many leading members of the community had also been destroyed, along with familiar figures of authority, officials of the lord and the parish. And, of course, some families counted themselves unfortunate indeed if they had not lost a rival, an enemy, or a creditor or two.
The sense of shock in Walsham was compounded by the news pouring into the village of the ruin of all other towns and villages around, as well as farther afield. No community, it seemed, had escaped the scourge; all had been struck severely. The streets of Bury were said to be deserted, many of its fine houses uninhabited, its markets sparsely attended, its stalls and shops lacking both customers and commodities. The great monastery had lost forty of its monks, and the greater part of its chaplains and servants, and was now said to be urgently seeking permission from the pope to allow mere schoolboys to take vows of profession to enter the community to fill the places of the venerable wise and holy men who had perished. But St. Edmundsbury had fared better than the Dominicans of Norwich, who had been wiped out almost to a man.
Bewilderment followed from the shifting or transformation of so many landmarks of village life. In this new world, people repeatedly found themselves unprepared for the positions they found themselves in, and often lacked the experience to exploit fully the opportunities which now presented themselves. Not a few of those who now had sizable farms to run had little knowledge of farming or the skill to carry out its variety of tasks. New occupiers were often inadequately accomplished at plowing or mowing, or shepherding or harrowing, and they did not know enough about judging the quality of soils, selecting seeds, or caring for sick animals. Many had never possessed more than a garden plot before, and had earned their crusts by doing odd jobs and what they were told. Now they were giving orders and having to manage not only their own affairs but those of others too.
Frustratingly, those who were now rich in land often lacked the ready cash to exploit it adequately. Money had leaked away in the weeks before the pestilence arrived, as fear of infection disrupted patterns of work, travel, and trade. And while the pestilence raged, survival, prayer, and care of the sick rather than money making absorbed the hours of day and night. Then, when they came to inherit, the heirs found that the two best animals the family possessed had been taken by the lord and the Church. The loss of these cows, horses, oxen, and even sheep meant a loss of milk and cheese to eat and to sell, and often also the means of drawing a cart or hauling a plow. On top of this, the lord and lady demanded that they pay large fines to have their tenancy confirmed.
Many of the poorest sort had, of course, already derived some benefit from the high wages they could get for doing even menial jobs during the pestilence, but their earnings did not amount to much when it came to meeting the costs of equipping a farm and its cottage for efficient occupation. While the baser sort, who had robbed their betters by demanding outrageous fees for tending the sick or disposing of their bodies, soon wasted most of their ill-gotten gain in the alehouses and on prostitutes.
Walsham began to experience a loosening of constraints as villagers enjoyed the taste of new freedoms. However, it was early days for the new world, and there was much disorder and confusion. The unprecedented speed of the changes sweeping through the dazed community presented formidable challenges as well as an array of choices and opportunities, both to lowly folk accustomed to a life of dull and harsh routine and to more fortunate villagers who possessed greater wealth. The departure of the sickness liberated the survivors from the stifling fear of death, but the harsh experience of a lifetime could not be unlearned in weeks or months. Survivors, lords as well as peasants, found it difficult to grasp the significance of what had happened and to distinguish reality from illusion, prospects from pitfalls.
Life had never been busier for the distracted villagers of Walsham. There had never been more things that needed doing and so few people to do them. As the village struggled to right itself, everyone craved assistance. Only a fortunate few had not lost the invaluable help of partners, parents, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters in carrying out a multitude of tasks in their houses, on their farms, and in their daily lives. Men who had lost their wives found that household and farmyard duties took them away from their work in the fields, and if they had children to look after, these added greatly to their burdens. Widows, though experienced with managing a wide range of household and farm tasks, were now forced to struggle alone with the heavier work in the fields. Jobs took longer to complete because there were fewer people to do them, and those folk who were forced to work alone found that many tasks were impossible to accomplish single-handedly. But scarcely any who craved assistance were able to hire sufficient workers, and certainly not at an acceptable price.
The numbers of people seeking work in Walsham had shrunk alarmingly. Smallholders who had previously been pleased to accept a penny or two for any day’s work offered to them now had enough acres and animals of their own to care for, and most of the landless folk who had swelled the ranks of willing laborers before the pestilence had disappeared. Half were in the graveyard, and many others had left the village. Of those who remained, a good number acquired land of their own, some by inheritance and some by leasing the surplus furlongs, pightles, and acres of other tenants. In this way the cultivation of their own plots now took up much of the time they had previously spent laboring for others.
There were, of course, villagers who remained landless by choice or ill fortune, and they continued to live off the labor of their hands. But they were no longer the tireless and subservient toilers they once had been. In days just past they had begged for hire and sweated ceaselessly when they were fortunate enough to obtain it. Now, in the summer of 1349, with wages higher than they had ever been and food of all kinds unusually abundant and cheap, these lowly folk could choose when and for whom to work, and how much effort to expend. Whereas, just a couple of months ago, such men and women would have been delighted to win the security of an annual contract as a farm servant with board and lodging, now they frequently chose freedom and spurned the opportunity to be bound by such contracts, believing they could earn far more for less effort by taking casual work as and when it suited them. In the weeks and months after the pestilence this proved to be true. All about there were rustics who, finding that they could keep themselves by laboring just three or four days a week, refused to sweat for five or six. In desperation householders and farmers, deprived of the services of full-time adult servants, sought to replace them with girls and boys. But in contrast to what had happened before the pestilence, parents now usually chose to keep their children at home, where there was much for them to do. In any case, those who did manage to find a child to serve them learned that the young were no more willing to work hard than their elders.
Everywhere, therefore, jobs went undone. Not just those that could reasonably be postponed, such as fencing and ditching, but tasks essential for getting the best out of the land and its livestock, such as manuring, hoeing, weeding, and tending the ailments of sheep and cattle. And this lack of sufficient attention took place not just on the great farms of lords and ladies or the large farms of richer villagers, but also on the smallholdings of ordinary people. Due to a shortage of time and hands, land that could have raised decent crops was often turned over to rough pasture, and the crops growing in arable fields and plots did not receive anything like the close care previously paid to them.
The lives of those who lived through the pestilence had been rent asunder, and the accustomed patterns of daily existence recast. Nor did the fear of infection cease when people stopped dying in Walsham. It was not known for certain what was happening in places round about Walsham, and gloomy rumors repeatedly sprang up, fed by the fact that the plague continued to rage to the north and west of the realm for many months. In the summer and autumn of 1349, therefore, the recovery of trade between people and places remained fitful, disrupted by both a reluctance to travel and the loss of so many familiar merchants and carriers. Markets that had previously thrived now attracted few buyers and sellers, and it was no longer possible to rely on finding all the goods that one sought, or the dealers and merchants ready to buy the items one wished to sell. This meant that much of the food that would otherwise have been sent for sale outside Walsham remained on the manor, and since the number of purchasers had fallen it was possible to eat extraordinarily cheaply. Even in late summer, just before the new harvest, which was normally the dearest time of the year, there was an abundance of grain. So, with so much work available at unprecedented wages, there were few in Walsham whose bellies were not full.
But cheapness and plenty was far from true of all items. Anything which required labor to produce, such as shoes or boots, or even the leather to make them with, quickly became very expensive. A multitude of craftsmen—cobblers, weavers, tailors, tanners, and suchlike—had perished in Walsham and the surrounding villages and towns, and those who had come through the pestilence were only willing to sell their wares for excessive rewards. But it was also vanity that drove the prices of clothing ever higher. For lowly folk, who now had a little spare money in their purses, eagerly sought to acquire things beyond their station, and ape the attire of their betters. As a consequence, a pair of quite ordinary shoes formerly to be had for a few pence now cost 10, 12, or even 14d, and the price of ordinary cloth at least doubled.
The new life, however, was not simply a matter of work, money, and goods. The absence of dear and trusted partners, family, friends, and neighbors left painful gaps in the lives of the survivors. The need for love and companionship, as well as practical support, prompted a multitude of recent widows and widowers hastily to seek new partners, and the months after the pestilence saw a huge upsurge in marriage and in couples cohabiting, openly but illicitly. This impulsive behavior offended both the lords of Walsham and High Hall and the clergy. The former because many unions were contracted without the permission or knowledge of the officials of Lady Rose or of Edmund and Margery de Welles and thus escaped the payment of marriage fines, and the latter because marriage was a solemn sacrament only to be entered into after due personal and spiritual consideration. Now, however, time-honored formalities and blessings were being thrust aside in a selfish or sinful manner.
Many routine aspects of village life became more difficult in Walsham because so many experienced and prudent men and women had died, and so many unknowing newcomers had arrived. Organizing essential communal activities, in the church as well as in the fields, was suddenly far more difficult than it had ever been. Manorial and parish business was impeded, and the accustomed hierarchy of wealth and power upset. Not only were there half as many people to call on to fill the gaps left in the administrative offices in the village, but many of those who now lived in Walsham and occupied her farms were strangers, whose strengths, weaknesses, and motives were unknown and untried. The setting up of the sheepfolds on the commons, the allocation and supervision of grazing rights, the selection of crops, the planning of the harvest, the enforcement of good standards of husbandry, the maintenance of pathways, and much more besides, now involved extended discussions with newcomers, and greater persuasion and education than ever before. And, despite best efforts, what with goodwill should have been simple and amicable to organize all too frequently became the subject of rancorous disputes.
Although Master John lived through the pestilence, Walsham suffered severe losses among its other clergy. By the twin blows of desertion and death during the pestilence and promotion to fat livings soon afterward, the parish was for a time reduced to its priest, a single clerk, and a handful of lay helpers. Master John lost his housekeeper and had to make new arrangements for his cooking and the washing and repair of his vestments. Two of the best bell ringers had died, along with his favorite choirboy. Most of all Master John missed his sexton, who knew every detail of the liturgy of every Mass and every festival throughout the Christian year, and unfailingly anticipated his master’s needs for the books, vestments, plate, sacred vessels, and furniture that each one required. Eager new helpers came forward, of course, and the priest was pleased to welcome them. But they needed time to learn their tasks properly and, in Master John’s mind, many of the assistants and servants he had lost were irreplaceable. Moreover, three of the four women who had faithfully cleaned the church were no longer in Walsham, and the old man who looked after the brass and latten plate and candlesticks, and kept them clean and in a good state of repair, had passed away just after Easter.
Though there were far fewer people in the parish, the weight of spiritual guidance they required seemed heavier than ever. Master John was well aware that the appetite for spiritual sustenance provided by Masses and confessions, and all sorts of rites and censings, had scarcely diminished since the pestilence, but, confusingly for him, it now existed alongside a rampant decline in morality and in the observance of the teachings of the Church. Everywhere he looked he saw people acting from selfish motives, not just in the pursuit of money but in the pursuit of lust. He was especially concerned with the unseemly haste with which his bereaved parishioners rushed into new emotional attachments, and he constantly warned them that they would repent at leisure. A marriage was for life and had to be founded on love and respect, but now people were rushing into matrimony because they were desperate for help in running household and farm, for a parent for their children, or, worst of all, because they were attracted by the possessions of a wealthy widow or widower.
In fact, Master John worried more about his parishioners’ loss of respect for the traditional teachings on matrimony than the manorial lords did about the loss of marriage fines. During his tenure of the parish of Walsham, Master John had always encouraged the formal and public betrothal of couples, which usually involved the exchange of gifts as tokens of mutual love and trust and their commitment to marry, and he had been remarkably successful in cajoling even the most reluctant of them into having their marriages sanctified by him in St. Mary’s church. So he was sorely troubled that a large and growing number of couples were living together, not only without solemn betrothal but lacking due consideration and notice. While he had always condoned sexual activity between couples who had solemnly pledged themselves to each other, he did not believe that true marriage took place until a ceremony was held in his church. Now, however, couples were sharing houses and beds out of convenience and self-indulgence, without exchanging binding vows in public or even to each other, without the reading of banns in church, and certainly without having their union blessed.
Such sinful behavior was certain to anger God and had to be stopped, but Master John found himself unable to halt it. Try as he might, he could not exert sufficient persuasion or coercion on the majority of offenders to cause them to desist. Not only were there too many who were misbehaving, he frequently encountered among them a new spirit of independence which he called stubbornness. In these matters, as well as in many others of which he disapproved, Master John felt himself losing authority. And it was not just because so many of his parishioners behaved with blind and stubborn willfulness, it was because the deaths and departures among his junior clergy had left him unable to perform adequately all the spiritual duties and moral teaching that were essential for the cure of souls in his parish. There were far fewer people in his flock, but the heavy routine of Masses and other offices he had to celebrate in St. Mary’s church, as well as the distances he had to travel visiting parishioners, were undiminished. Before the pestilence many good priests seeking preferment were willing to work for small stipends in every parish, but now they were scarce and expensive everywhere, and Walsham was no exception. The pestilence had taken two of Master John’s chaplains, another had fled, and now another, born and brought up in Walsham, Robert Terwald, had just been appointed rector of Herringswell, a few miles away, near Newmarket and Mildenhall. Master John liked Terwald, but the young man still had much to learn; it was far too early for him to assume such heavy responsibilities and so fat a stipend. He grumbled publicly that the rectorship of Herringswell was a most unsuitable promotion for such a young cleric.
In the world as it was now the scarcity of priests was every bit as severe as the scarcity of laborers. Not only had almost one in every two priests in the realm perished in the pestilence, the demand for the services of the survivors had grown rather than diminished. What is more, so had the number of positions, both in the Church and outside. Every gentleman’s household now sought to have its personal confessor, and even the miserly Edmund de Welles paid freely for the services of a young clerk who traveled from nearby Ixworth to conduct private Masses in a room in High Hall manor house that had recently been consecrated as a chapel. Each guild and fraternity, however humble, sought its own priest, and the fraternity of Corpus Christi in Walsham risked the ire of Master John by taking his only assistant away from parish duties three evenings a week. Since the pestilence had created a multitude of new souls awaiting assistance in their journey to salvation, there was a fast growing need for chantry priests who were required to do little but sing Masses for inflated stipends. In consequence, many clergy who should have been serving parishes opted instead for this easy life.
Master John heartily condemned all of these developments. What he found most difficult of all to bear was that priests, even the most inexperienced and incompetent chaplains, eagerly followed the example of common laborers by selfishly demanding outrageously high wages. In midsummer, John was at last formally appointed to the benefice of Walsham by the prior of Ixworth on the death of old Robert Shepherd. The stipend the prior decided to pay John was little more than the pittance he had received from Shepherd, and a small part of what young Terwald would enjoy from the tithes at Herringswell. But the prior knew that John was far too devoted to his vocation and his parishioners to be tempted to seek a more lucrative benefice or run off to Bury or London to sing Masses for sweet silver. However, Master John’s asceticism did not make him an attractive superior. In these times of unprecedented opportunity and ambition, all John could offer prospective chaplains considering settling in his parish were the customary low fees, strict discipline, and hard but spiritually rewarding work tending his vulnerable flock. Sadly, but not surprisingly, John found that all that he was offered in return were the services of the illiterate and the uncommitted, the vain and the perverse. Thus far he had refused to allow any of them to serve his parishioners, fearing that they would do more harm than good. But this left the large parish of Walsham with just one priest and a young chaplain to perform the divine services, Masses, matins, vespers, and sacraments essential to save the parishioners from further chastisement by an angry God.
It did not take long for prelates, barons, knights, and lesser lords to turn to the king and the law for a remedy for the ills caused by the pestilence. And so the king and his councilors, mindful of the damage being caused to the realm and the livelihoods of all great people, deliberated in haste on how best to boost the supply of workmen and women and curb their greed and malice. Even before the pestilence had departed from Walsham, stories were circulating that King Edward was going to pass laws that would force the idle to work for their lords and whoever else wished to employ them, and at the accustomed wages. The bishops too, it was rumored, were going to issue edicts to curb the excessive salaries that chaplains and priests were demanding.
It was in the last week of June that a carter returning from carrying grain to Stowmarket confirmed the truth of these rumors. He told a rapt audience in John Lester’s alehouse that he had been present when a squire retained by the sheriff of Suffolk read out a new ordinance from the king in the marketplace of the town making it illegal for any man or woman to refuse to work for anybody who might ask them, and at wages set by the lawyers. The carter reported further to his incredulous audience, “You will all soon find yourselves having to accept any kind of work that is offered, women as well as men, and for whatever pittance the lord or rich farmer chooses to give you. It’ll be less than half what you can now get. What is more, no one will be given dinner at work, on the king’s order. So you can bid farewell to all that lean meat and strong ale. And if you refuse, you will be thrown in jail.”
This was all too much for a number of sturdy laborers in his audience, and they began jeering and laughing, but the carter quickly responded with disconcerting authority, “You can jeer all you like, but I was there when the squire warned us that anyone who refused to accept work on these meager wages and oppressive terms would be immediately hauled off to the stocks or jail, and held there until they changed their minds.”
On hearing this astounding news, a mixture of disbelief, resentment, and anger filled the noisy room, and a host of questions and responses were flung at the carter. “Why should I have to work for someone else when I have plenty to do farming my own land?” said Nicholas Deneys, who had recently inherited more than he ever dreamed of owning. “I am willing to work for anyone who pays me well enough,” said William Warde, a well-known troublemaker, “but I will not sweat for a penny halfpenny or tuppence a day and no dinner. I would rather sit here on my arse drinking, with my only work being pissing the ale out again” (see figure 34). Some laughter greeted this protestation, but soon troubled voices called out, “How can they force us to work? How can they stop the people who are desperate for our work paying us what we ask? Have they got enough soldiers to compel us? How will the work get done if we are all in jail? What if we flee to other places where the king’s writ doesn’t run?” Warde piped up again at this last remark and urged them all to become mobile: “Why stick in one place where your lords can oppress you with the old customs and charges, and the king can find you and fine you for working, and tax you to pay for his wars? The country outside of Walsham is full of opportunities for those who can find them and grab them.”
The carter had no answer to most of these questions and assertions, but he remembered hearing something about lords being fined if they paid wages that were too high, or if they enticed a worker to break their contract with another employer. As an afterthought, he added to the consternation by telling the throng in the alehouse that they would also be imprisoned if they gave alms out of pity to anyone found by the lawyers to be capable of working for their living. This provoked waves of derisive laughter. Even the king could not presume to punish pious folk for following the teachings of Christ by giving money to the poor. Finding himself suddenly transformed from the fount of important news into a teller of tall stories, the carter attempted to explain that the squire in Stowmarket had said that the king was doing this because he was troubled that too many idle people were making the scarcity of laborers worse by feigning handicaps and living off the charity of others. But his words were drowned in a tide of scorn, as well as anger at distant lords who threatened to interfere in their lives.
Soon their worst fears were confirmed. For it was no more than a week later that a copy of the king’s ordinance against rebellious laborers and servants was delivered to Walsham, on the orders of the bishop of Norwich, for Master John to read out in the church. In the letter which accompanied the writ, John was urged to “beseech and persuade his parishioners to labor and to keep the ordinance, as instant necessity demands,” and also to do all he could to constrain the excessive claims of wage-earning chaplains, and to use threats of suspension by the bishop if they refused to take the accustomed pay. John, of course, was fully in agreement with the latter request, and the former caused him only a moment’s hesitation. Until the last few months, John had always urged compassion for the poor, and he had repeatedly instructed those who hired servants and laborers to pay them promptly and fairly for their work. Ever since his arrival in Walsham he had preached from the pulpit of St. Mary’s that lords should not oppress the weak with unjust rents and taxes, and that those who had wealth should be charitable to those who had not. But the world had been tipped upside down, and he was becoming alarmed that the hearts of many of his humble parishioners were waxing stout with greed and defiance. While part of him welcomed the fact that the lords of Walsham had lost some of their power, he was dismayed that lowly peasants and laborers were openly defying their betters, and so soon after God had given them the most terrible warning.
Since the beginning of time, God had ordained a social hierarchy and had allotted to each stratum its own particular duties and responsibilities, so that the world might be well ordered and the needs of the whole community met. This divine system prescribed that the common folk were required to labor diligently to provide the food and other wherewithal to maintain those born into more elevated estates: the clergy, knights, and nobility. If the peasants did not labor, their superiors would have to leave their divinely ordained vocations in order to cultivate the land, and then who would pray for the world and provide the protection, law, and order that it needed? Master John acknowledged that there was much that needed improvement in this sinful world, and that many lords and clergy persistently failed to live up to the highest standards demanded of them, but God had taught that men should live not by turmoil, anger, and defiance but by love and obedience and the fulfilling of obligations. Every man and woman of whatever estate, from the abbot of Bury to the most junior acolyte, from Lady Rose to John Lester, one of the least honest bakers and ale brewers in Walsham, were charged by God to carry out the duties of their calling to the best of their ability. Then and only then would the world be well ordered in its estate. But the world was currently in disorder, and in his heart Master John knew that if the demands of the common people were allowed to rise unabated, contrary to God’s ordinance as well as the king’s, the world would go from bad to worse. And if the rustics should get the upper hand, God’s creation would be entirely ruined (see figure 35).