freedom.

5. The Scotch and French wars of the English kings gave employment
to hosts of bowmen and of men-at-arms, and to the numerous attendants
required to look after the horses by means of which the army moved.
The greater use of infantry after the reign of Edward I. caused a
greater demand for the peasant; and the use of the cheap long-bow
gave him a value in war. There were five thousand Welsh archers and
spearmen on the field of Cressy. In these and other ways the serf
was becoming free.

You would expect a gradual, almost unconscious struggle, between the
serf and his lord for political power. The struggle came, but it was
conscious and very fierce. It was brought about by a terrible
pestilence, known as the Black Death. This plague came slowly and
steadily from the East; in 1348 it reached Bristol, and it probably
swept away one half of the people of the towns of Wales. It was not
the towns alone that it visited; it came to the mountain glens as
well. It was a most deadly disease. It killed, for one thing,
because people believed that they would die. They saw the dark spots
on the skin before they became feverish; they recognised the black
mark of the Death and they gave themselves up for lost.

Labourers became very scarce. They claimed higher wages. The lords
tried to drag them back into serfdom; they tried to force them by law
to take the old wage. On both sides of the Severn the labourers took
arms, and waged war against their lords. The peasant war in England
is called the Peasant Revolt; the peasant war in Wales is sometimes
called the revolt of Owen Glendower.