spiritual or temporal, claiming suzerainty over the territory in which
they were situated. The claims of the Feudal Magnates seem ever to have
been somewhat vague and arbitrary. At first they were comparatively
light, and may well have been regarded and excused as a return for
services rendered. The general tendency, however, was for the individual
power of the lords to extend itself at the cost and to the detriment of
the rural communities, and for their claims steadily to increase and to
become more burdensome. During the fourteenth century many causes had
combined to improve the condition of the industrial classes; and during
the end of the fourteenth and the early part of the fifteenth century the
condition of the peasantry and artisans of Northern Europe was better
than it had ever been before or has ever been since: wages were
comparatively high, employment plentiful, food and other necessaries of
life both abundant and cheap.[7:1] At the beginning of the sixteenth
century, however, the prices of the necessaries of life had risen
enormously, and there had been no corresponding increase in the earnings
of the industrial classes. Moreover, the Feudal Magnates had commenced to
exercise their oppressive power in a hitherto unparalleled manner: old
rights of pasture, of gathering wood and cutting timber, of hunting and
fishing, and so on, had been greatly curtailed, in many cases entirely
abolished, tithes and other manorial dues had been doubled and trebled,
and many new and onerous burdens, some of them entirely opposed to
ancient use and wont, had been imposed. In short, the peasantry and
labouring classes generally were oppressed and impoverished in countless
different ways.

In Germany, as indeed in most other parts of Feudal Europe, the
peasantry of the period were of three different kinds. Serfs
(_Leibeigener_), who were little better than slaves, and who were bought
and sold with the land they cultivated; villeins (_Höriger_), whose