... Black Death, high infant mortality rates and the destructive effects of the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses radically reduced the population from 6 million in 1300 to 1.5 million in the 1480´s. (Many of the hundreds of deserted medieval villages that have been identified by archeologists were the direct result of the Black Death. The picture on page 130 of Cambridge Perspectives in History, Lancastrians and Tudors by Andrew Pickering illustrates one of such villages.) Consequently there was an economic decline in landowners that forced some to sell or lease parts of their land hence creating a market that made land available to a much larger range of society. As a result in the reduction of the economic power of the landowners, the feudal system was beginning to collapse, so by the start of the sixteenth century everyone had the right to move around the country ...

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