The king who prevented a wage increase after the Black Death

The Black Death was the final straw for the lives of 14th century Europeans who, after the prosperity of the previous century, faced starvation, low wages and stratospheric prices. However, when this misfortune ended, the survivors had the opportunity to cultivate more land and, because of the demand for laborers, to demand better pay, but in England this was short-lived.

When one door shuts, another opens

Due to overpopulation and labor competition, English peasants worked hard and for paltry wages. When the Black Death came in the summer of 1348, 30-50% of the population died. Millions of workers died, but labor was still needed, especially agricultural labor to maintain and cultivate the extensive farmland. If it was not worked, there would be no harvest to feed the population. In addition, the lords had lost the profits from both the tenants of these lands and their production, so having them abandoned was not an option. Instead, the survivors were in great demand and could negotiate their payments, facilitating their social mobility. They also gained the freedom to work for whomever they wished and allowed some workers to specialize in jobs previously forbidden to them.

The elites did not see this as a pleasant situation. Their incomes had been drastically reduced and the workers, instead of settling for what they were offered, as they had been doing for generations, were asking for several times more. Fearing that the class difference would disappear because of the peasants' laziness and unbridled greed, they begged King Edward III (1312-1377) to intervene.

All good things must come to an end

This period of splendor for the working classes lasted barely two years and returned to the previous situation for two decades, maintaining wages with hardly any variation from 1352 to 1371. This was thanks to the Ordinance of Labourers of 1349, when the pandemic was still noticeable in the population, which ordered that "laborers shall only take such pay, liveries, bounties, or wages as they were accustomed to receive in the places where they should serve, the twentieth year of our reign of England, or five or six common years before." However, because it depended on local and private enforcement to be implemented, it was not properly or consistently enforced to subdue the peasants to accept it. Therefore, in 1351, the crown enacted the Statute of Labourers to combat their disobedience. This allowed that the workers had to swear twice a year, before the local high officials, to obey the law. If they refused, the king granted permission to search for them and lock them up or fine them until they accepted the conditions. In this way, the king increased his power through the power given to the local authorities.

Faced with the threat to their positions, the symbiotic relationship between the king and the local elites favored both. Without nobles and aristocrats to support him and tax the population, the king could neither control the country's economy nor confront France in the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). To visualize the scope of these measures, we have to take into account that England then had about 2-3 million inhabitants, practically half the population of a few years earlier. Of those, at the end of the 14th century, 70 were noble families, which included earls close to the king and barons, and about 60-70 families per county were aristocrats, who held local offices.

In this give-and-take, the king granted power to enforce the law, collect taxes and, in the case of earls, participate in parliament. For their part, the nobles supported the king's policies, financed his enterprises with taxes and, by having them eating out of his hand, did his bidding, increasing his power. However, this was a very tense balance, for one false step could cause him to lose his supporters. He was dependent on the nobles if he did not want to end up like his father Edward II.

The weaker has the worst

Although wages initially rose, so did food prices. Edward III issued the Free Trade Statute and the Statute of Forestallers in 1351 to prevent this and to punish middlemen who bought food before it reached the market to sell it more expensively, but to no avail. As a result, it was even more expensive for peasants to put a plate in their mouths.

Decades later, in 1381, this tension would result in the Wat Tyler rebellion which, although suppressed, put an end to serfdom.

Source

• DiCiesare, L., & Melleno, D. (2021). Meddling in the Post-Black Death Economy: Edward III’s Policies to Repress the Peasantry. University of Denver Undergraduate Research Journal, 2(2).