Note 40 — Chapter III
Reading edition
The great uprising was the first serious demonstration of the English people for personal liberty. "It taught the King's officers and gentle folks that they must treat the peasants like men if they wished them to behave quietly, and it led most landlords to set free their bondsmen, and to take fixed money payments instead of uncertain services from their customary tenants, so that in a hundred years' time there were very few bondsmen left in England."[40]