the soil, and could not, except under special circumstances, leave it.

Above all, they felt that they were not free men, and were not even deemed
worthy to fight in the wars of their country. Attempts have been made to
represent the rising as the result of Wickliffe's attack upon the Church,
but there seems to be very small foundation for the assertion. Undoubtedly
many of the lower class of clergy, discontented with their position, did
their best to inflame the minds of the peasants, but as the rising
extended over a very large part of England, and the people were far too
ignorant to understand, and far too much irritated by their own grievances
to care for the condition of the Church, it may be taken that they
murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury and many other priests simply
because they regarded them as being wealthy, and so slew them as they slew
other people of substance. Had it been otherwise, the Church would not
have been wholly ignored in the demands that they set before the king, but
some allusion would have been made for the need of reforms in that
direction.

The troubles in Flanders are of interest to Englishmen, since there was
for many years an alliance, more or less close, between our king and some
of the great Flemish cities. Indeed, from the time when the first Von
Artevelde was murdered because he proposed that the Black Prince should be
accepted as ruler of Flanders, to the day upon which Napoleon's power was
broken forever at Waterloo, Flanders has been the theatre of almost
incessant turmoil and strife, in which Germans and Dutchmen, Spaniards,
Englishmen, and Frenchmen have fought out their quarrels.

G. A. HENTY.