transubstantiation, upon which ultimately was based the claim of the
priesthood to special privileges and estimation. But his association
with the extreme forms of social agitation, which accompanied the
Lollard movement, is less clear.

Before the end of Edward III's reign the French war had produced a crop
of disgrace, disorder, and discontent. Heavy taxation had not availed
to retain the provinces ceded to England at the Treaty of Bretigny in
1360, and hordes of disbanded soldiery exploited the social
disorganization produced by the Black Death; a third of the population
was swept away, and many villeins deserted their land to take up the
more attractive labour provided in towns by growing crafts and
manufactures. The lords tried by drastic measures to exact the services
from villeins which there were not enough villeins to perform; and the
imposition of a poll-tax was the signal for a comprehensive revolt of
town artisans and agricultural labourers in 1381. Its failure did not
long impede their emancipation, and the process of commuting services
for rent seems to have gone on more rapidly in the first half of the
fifteenth than in the fourteenth century. But the passionate preaching
of social equality which inflamed the minds of the insurgents produced
no further results; in their existing condition of political education,
the peasant and artisan had perforce to be content with watching the
struggles of higher classes for power.

Richard II, who had succeeded his grandfather in 1377, reaped the
whirlwind of Edward's sowing, not so much in the consequences of the
war as in the fruits of his peerage policy. The fourteenth century
which nationalized the Commons, isolated the Lords; and the baronage
shrank into the peerage. The word "peer" is not of English origin, nor
has it any real English meaning. Its etymological meaning of "equal"