Slide 1
The Black Death disrupted English labour from 1348
The Black Death caused devastating loss of life across much of fourteenth-century Europe. In England, its arrival in 1348 sharply disrupted households and labour arrangements.
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Economic changes after mass mortality cannot be separated from the destruction of families and communities. A surviving worker’s greater room to negotiate was one consequence of catastrophe, not evidence that the event improved everyone’s life.
Slide 2
Fewer workers could gain bargaining power
Labour shortages could improve the bargaining position of surviving workers. Employers needing harvests gathered or tasks completed faced competition for a smaller workforce.
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An alternative employer matters only if a worker can reach that employer and accept the offer. Legal restrictions, local obligations and household needs could limit the practical value of scarcity. The demographic change did not remove existing power relations.
Slide 3
The 1349 and 1351 laws tried to restrain wages
England’s Ordinance of Labourers in 1349 and Statute of Labourers in 1351 sought to regulate employment and hold wages near earlier levels.
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The legislation also addressed mobility and compulsory service. That combination shows that authorities were concerned with controlling access to labour, not only the size of a payment. Regulations reveal the response of powerful groups to changing conditions.
Slide 4
A law records an aim, not every actual wage
Rules against higher wages show what authorities wanted to prevent. They do not by themselves establish what every worker received or how consistently rules were enforced.
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Court cases, accounts and contracts can help test the difference between prescription and practice. A recorded prosecution proves that enforcement occurred in that instance, but it does not measure all agreements that escaped attention or never reached a court.
Slide 5
Change varied by region and did not instantly end serfdom
Post-plague changes in work and landholding varied by region and unfolded over time. The Black Death did not instantly end serfdom or create equal conditions.
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Comparing wages alone can miss changes in prices, rents or access to land. A household’s position depends on several relationships together. Historians therefore ask which group, which place and which period a claim about improvement describes.
Sources
- Plague: The Statute of Labourers
The National Archives
- The Long-Term Effects of Global Transformation
OpenStax
- The implementation of national labour legislation in England after the Black Death, 1349–1400
Economic History Review