THE BRENNER DEBATE. REDUX

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=THE+BRENNER+DEBATE.

The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe. Edited by T.H. Aston and C.H.E. Philpin (Cambridge, London, New York: Cambridge University Press, ‘Past and Present Publications’, 1985, viii + 341 pp.) PDF

Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe*
ROBERT BRENNER 

This is the accepted version of Anievas, Alexander and Nisancioglu, Kerem (2013)
 What’s at Stake in the Transition Debate? Rethinking the Origins of Capitalism and the ‘Rise of the West’ Millennium: Journal of International Studies Vol. 42 (1), 78-102. Published version available from Sage at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0305829813497823 Accepted version downloaded from SOAS Research Online: http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/20673/

The Transition Debate Today: 

A Review of The Origin of Capitalism in England, 1400–1600 

by Spencer Dimmock
Article (PDF Available) in Historical Materialism 26(2) · September 2018 with 543 Reads 
DOI: 10.1163/1569206X-00001701 Cite this publication

Abstract
Spencer Dimmock has produced a convincing restatement, defence and update of Robert Brenner's influential work on the origin of capitalism in England. The book productively engages with many Marxist and non-Marxist critics of the so-called 'Brenner Thesis', and presents fresh secondary and primary evidence in favour of it. This review sketches the theoretical background of Brenner's intervention, summarises Dimmock's take on Brenner, and comments on a few notable contemporary critiques of Brenner's general framework which are not explicitly engaged with by Dimmock.

Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 2001, pp. 169–241. 
The Low Countries in the Transition to Capitalism
ROBERT P. BRENNER
In the most recent phase of the discussion on the historical conditions for
economic development, or the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the
town-dominated Low Countries have been neglected, because the focus has
been to such a large extent on agrarian conditions and agrarian transformations. This article seeks to make use of the cases of the medieval and early
modern Northern and Southern Netherlands, the most highly urbanized
and commercialized regions in Europe, to show that the rise of towns and the
expansion of exchange cannot in themselves bring about economic development, because they cannot bring about the requisite transformation of agrarian
social-property relations. In the non-maritime Southern Netherlands, a
peasant-based economy led to economic involution. In the maritime Northern
Netherlands, the transformation of peasants into market-dependent farmers
created the basis for economic development.
Keywords: Brenner debate, economic devel


Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 2 No. 1, January 2002, pp. 88–95. 
Charles Post © Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Henry Bernstein and Terence J. Byres 2002.
 Comments on the Brenner–Wood Exchange on the Low Countries 
CHARLES POST The exchange between Brenner and Wood on the Low Countries in the early modern period raises a number of theoretical and historical issues relating to the conditions for the emergence of capitalist social-property relations and their unique historical laws of motion. This contribution focuses on three issues raised in the Brenner–Wood exchange: the conditions under which rural household producers become subject to ‘market coercion’, the potential for ecological crisis to restructure agricultural production, and the relative role of foreign trade and the transformation of domestic, rural class relations to capitalist industrialization.

THE ENGLISH ECONOMY FOLLOWING THE BLACK DEATH

* Judith R. Gelman

July 1979 (revised November 1982) 52pp. PDF

* Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission. 

The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent those of the

Commission, individual Commissioners, or other staff members.

Research for this paper was done while the author was studying at

MIT. 

I. INTRODUCTION

This paper examines evidence from late-Medieval/early Renaissance England

 in order to determine whether the English economy suffered a secular decline after the first outbreak of plague, in 134 8-51. The major conclusion of this analysis is that the plague did not cause an economic depression in England .

Instead, economic data--such as food prices, wages, and trade figures-- indicate that the economic welfare of the surviving English population improved in the post-plague era. The severe and repeated population declines during the post-plague period appear to have been generated wholly exogenously . The economic improvement was not universal. While the peasants and artisans were better off in the post-plague era, the upper class suffered from the rise in wage rates and the fa ll in land rents .

The conclusions reached here contradict those of many other economic historians . The disagreement has two basic sources .

First, when the population level falls drastically, total and percapita economic activity may move in opposite directions . Many economic historians, most notably Miskimin and Lopez , have looked

at trade figures for this period in aggregates, ignoring changes in population (see 19, 20 , 21, 22). Such practices implicitly rely on Malthusian theories of endogenously generated changes in population . The problems with applying the Malthusian population theory to this time period are dis cussed below in greater detail.

For now , suffice it to say that population decline may be exogenous or may be affected by economic activity in other than the usually expected ways. Because the issue of aggregate versus per capita data has been mishandled by many writers, it is necessary to define economic depression precisely. 

The Black Death's utter destruction of 14th-century Europe, in one scary GIF

By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Apr 17, 2016

The Black Death was an epidemic of bubonic plague that devastated Europe in the mid-14th century, killing an estimated 60 percent of Europe's entire population. And it spread scarily quickly just over the course of six years — as this stunning GIF demonstrates:

(Andrei Nacu)

The plague originated in China in 1334 and then spread west along trading routes through the Middle East. But Europe was particularly vulnerable to a devastating outbreak. According to University of Oslo historian Ole Benedictow, European society at the time had created the conditions for "the golden age of bacteria." Population density and trade/travel had grown dramatically, but European leaders still had almost no knowledge about how to contain outbreaks.

So when traders unwittingly brought the plague with them into southeastern and southern Europe from the Middle East, it spread quickly, killing huge numbers of people throughout Europe.

And it did, indeed, hit pretty much all of Europe. Though the map suggests the areas around Milan, Krakow, and the Spain-France border were unaffected, that's not actually true. It's just that compared with the staggering devastation suffered by the rest of Europe, those areas experienced hardly any deaths at all.

But that doesn't mean they objectively suffered a small number of deaths: According to Rutgers historian Robert Gottfried, the death rate in Milan was "only" 15 percent, and "only" around 25 percent in modern Poland. In other words, the rest of Europe was hit so badly that losing 15 percent of your population wasn't even enough to put a city on the map.

According to Benedictow, Iceland and Finland are "the only regions that, we know with certainty, avoided the Black Death because they had tiny populations with minimal contact abroad."
How the Black Death created the modern world

While it was certainly a horrific tragedy on a massive scale, the Black Death also spawned many of the foundations of our modern world.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the death of 60 percent of Europe's entire population had profound impacts on European society. In fact, according to Benedictow, it fundamentally changed the course of European history, producing a wave of social and cultural changes that pushed Europe toward modernity. This period of great transformation is known today as the Renaissance (a term typically associated with art but with a much wider meaning among historians).

Prior to the plague, the medieval social model depended on the nobility extracting value from huge numbers of low-paid serfs. After the plague, though, there were a lot fewer serfs to exploit. With labor scarce, the nobility had to start paying workers more, facilitating the emergence of modern wage labor. And once ordinary people had more money to spend, a market emerged for mass consumer goods — setting the stage for modern capitalism.

Moreover, having such a tiny laboring population created incentives for technological innovation. When you only have a small number of people to work in crucial sectors like agriculture, each person needs to be more productive. Suddenly there was a much more pressing need to come up with new labor-saving technologies, which sped up the progress and spread of technology.

"By creating a great deficit of labour, [the plague] speeded up economic, technological, social, and administrative modernization, which especially in the capitalist centers in northern Italy and partly in Flanders found expression in the more secular and urban culture associated with the Renaissance," Benedictow writes. It "hastened the breakdown of feudal economic structures and mentalities and the rise of a prevailing dynamic capitalist market economy."

Of course, it's possible all of this would have happened eventually without the plague. But it would be surprising if a plague as massive and as devastating as the Black Death didn't have wide-reaching social consequences.

---30---

The Black Death and the origins of the 'Great Divergence' across Europe, 1300-1600


ŞEVKET PAMUK

European Review of Economic History

Vol. 11, No. 3 (DECEMBER 2007), pp. 289-317

Published by: Oxford University Press

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41378468

Page Count: 29

Topics: Real wages, Plague, Economic history, Urbanization, Construction workers, Productivity, Interest rates, Depopulation, Agriculture, Modern Era

Abstract

One important recent theme emerging from the literature on early modern Europe is that some of the key structural and institutional changes that are responsible for the increases in incomes may have taken place rather early, in the late medieval period or in the era of the Black Death. This study makes use of the recently compiled real wage evidence for different parts of Europe and the eastern Mediterranean to gain further insights into this period. The era of the Black Death witnessed a series of important long-term changes in demographic behaviour, in agriculture, in manufacturing, trade and technology. Real wage series reflect the productivity increases from these changes. They also suggest the Low Countries and England were able to resist to a greater extent the general tendency for wages to decline during the second leg of the demographic cycle that began with the Black Death. A wage gap thus began to emerge between the northwest and the rest of the continent after 1450. The last section of the article explores the reasons for this divergence.

Compassionate capitalism in the Middle Ages: Profit and philanthropy in medieval Cambridge

Catherine Casson, Mark Casson, John Lee, Katie Phillips 07 May 2017

Contemporary businesses are frequently challenged to invest the profits from their commercial successes into projects that benefit society. Yet this is not a new concept – this column reports that it began as early as the medieval period. Profits from property speculation in the Middle Ages were re-invested into local communities. Compassionate capitalism involved high levels of charitable giving to hospitals, monasteries, churches, and colleges, which helped to disseminate the economic benefits of investments from individuals to the wider community. 

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Community engagement and responsible use of profits are issues of increasing concern to contemporary businesses. While interest in these issues is often seen as a recent phenomenon, in fact it has medieval origins.

Profit and community were reconciled in the Middle Ages in a way that we can learn from today. Medieval merchants believed that their pursuit of profit should promote the common good of the communities where they lived and worked. They re-invested profits from their business activities into philanthropic projects.

England in the late 13th century

England in the late 13th century had a dynamic economy (Britnell 1993). Manufacturing and service sectors existed alongside agriculture (Hatcher and Bailey 2001). National and international trade was conducted by enterprising merchants, aided by new institutions that lowered transaction costs. Legal advances created a lively property market and commodity trade while improvements in water management and bridge-building aided transport and infrastructure.

Towns grew dramatically, both in number and size. The period from around 1200 to around 1350 is now recognised as a period of commercial growth that was as significant as the later Industrial Revolution (Britnell and Campbell 1995).

Individualistic capitalism was not the basis for this 13th century expansion, however. In contrast, family ties and community loyalty were strong. Successful entrepreneurs used their new-found wealth to support their local community. They invested in new infrastructure to improve transport links and security and financed hospitals to care for the poor and infirm (Casson and Casson 2013, 2014).

New evidence on medieval Cambridge

Using recently discovered documents on medieval Cambridge, we have investigated how money was made through property speculation and how the profits of successful speculation were spent. Our analysis is based on over one thousand properties recorded in the so-called ‘Second Domesday’ – the Hundred Rolls of 1279 (Maitland 1898, Raban 2004).

Property markets developed in medieval England as burgage plots were laid out in new or expanding towns by local landowners (‘lords’), with the king’s permission. To acquire a plot, a burgess had to pay a perpetual rent and erect a building conforming to local plans. He could bequeath or sell his plot. Capital gains could be taken as lump sum payments or as an additional perpetual rent paid to the seller (Goddard 2004). Plots returned to the rent-recipient (e.g. the lord) if rent was not paid (Holt 2010, Keene 1985).

While the operation of commodity markets and local trade during the commercial expansion of the 13th century has been explored by economic historians, the operation of the property market has been under-researched in comparison. Our research combines statistical analysis of medieval records with detailed analysis of the backgrounds of the individuals and institutions that developed property portfolios. We identify patterns in rents, highlight strategies used to assemble property portfolios and examine how the profits of property speculation were spent (Rubin 1987).

Cambridge in the 13th century was not yet a famous university town, but rather an inland port whose merchants specialised in wholesale agricultural trade (Lee 2005). The town had origins dating from at least the 10th century, and in 1068 a castle was constructed there, followed by three religious houses in around 1092, 1133, and 1203. The River Cam provided a navigable network of waterways to Ely, Peterborough, and Huntingdon, and to ports at Wisbech and Lynn.

At the time of the Hundred Rolls, visitors from London would enter through the Trumpington Gate, with the King’s Mill to the left and the King’s Ditch on the right. Heading north, the visitor would enter the business district, with the market to the right, just behind Great St Mary’s church – one of 14 churches in the town. On the left would be buildings later demolished to make way for King’s College Chapel.

Continuing up the High Street past the Jewry would bring the visitor to the Round Church. On the left would be Hospital of St John the Evangelist, later re-founded as St John’s College (Lineham 2011). Continuing to the Great Bridge (now Magdalene Bridge) the visitor would pass St Clement’s Church, through the area where the wealthiest people resided. Passing over the bridge would provide a view up the River Cam of the great stone house (now called the School of Pythagoras) where the influential Dunning family lived.

The visitor would then ascend the Huntingdon Road, with the castle (now a mound near Shire Hall) to the right and views over the grounds of St Radegund’s Nunnery (now Jesus College) towards Barnwell Priory. A walk up the Newmarket Road would lead to hospital of St Mary Magdalene with its chapel (still standing today), and the site of Stourbridge Fair (Zutshi 1993).

Property hotspots in medieval Cambridge

Property was a desirable asset in medieval Cambridge, much as it is today. Medieval speculators invested in a variety of properties (Figure 1). Land was popular, including fields, curtilages (the area of land around a building), vacant urban land and crofts (land adjoining dwellings, often used for agricultural purposes).

Buildings were also invested in, both residential (messuages – houses with land and often outbuildings – and houses) and commercial (shops and stalls – usually temporary structures in marketplaces). Statistical analysis of the levels of rent shows that messuages and shops were the most valuable properties.

Figure 1 Types or property

Property hotspots with high-rents can be identified in three parts of medieval Cambridge: at the road junction by the hospital; west of the market; and near the river just south of the hospital (Figure 2). Areas of notably low rents were near the castle, the area of Trumpington Street, and the suburb of Barnwell.

Figure 2 Map of medieval Cambridge showing property hotspots

Source: Adapted from Lee (2005).

Individuals and institutions both owned property (Table 1). Family bonds often underpinned ownership. Cambridge was home to several families who had acquired property through the military service of their Norman ancestors, including the Dunning family who owned 12 plots in 1279. Property was passed down through generations. The Wombe family benefitted in 1279 from a portfolio amassed by an ancestor (Hundred Rolls, Roll 1, folio 3). The commercial revolution posed some challenges for this ‘old money’. The Dunnings mismanaged their assets and eventually left Cambridge (Gray 1932).

Table 1 Types of (rent-paying) owners

Profits from the property market were recycled back into the community through donations to religious houses, hospitals and churches. Owners allocated more rental income to charitable giving (51%) than to private individuals (Figure 3). The Barton family, for example, were important patrons of The Crutched Friars and the Nuns of St Radegund’s while the Dunnings gave land to Barnwell Priory, the Hospital of St John and St Radegund (Gray 1898; Miller 1948; Underwood 2008).

Figure 3 Types of recipients of rental income

The Black Death and its aftermath

The 14th and 15th centuries brought new challenges. The catastrophic outbreak of plague in 1348-9, known as the Black Death, probably halved the population. Major Cambridge landowners, including Barnwell Priory and Corpus Christi College, were attacked during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Properties were cleared and streets obliterated to create a new site for King’s College Chapel during the 1440s.

Yet the townspeople continued to make gifts to the monasteries, friaries, and the hospital of St John, and increasingly to new institutions, the religious guilds and the colleges. New academic colleges were founded and the university grew in size and stature, helping Cambridge to weather the economic storms of the later Middle Ages, and laying the foundations for the town’s later prosperity (Lee 2005).

Profits from property speculation benefitted individuals, family dynasties and the urban community as a whole. Compassionate capitalism involved high levels of charitable giving to hospitals, monasteries, churches, and colleges, which helped to disseminate the economic benefits of the ‘winners’ of the commercial revolution.

This self-sustaining system, however, faced challenges due to social upheaval after the Black Death, and the increased financial burdens placed on merchants and towns in order to fund warfare in France. When prosperity returned in the Tudor period a more ruthless form of capitalism took root, whose legacy remains with us today.

References

Britnell, R H (1993), The Commercialisation of English Society 1000-1500, Cambridge University Press.

Britnell, R H and B M S Campbell  (1995), A Commercialising Economy: England 1096 to c. 1300, Manchester University Press.

Cambridge Hundred Rolls (1279) TNA SC5/CAMBS/TOWER/1-3.

Casson, M and C Casson (2013), The Entrepreneur in History: From Medieval Merchant to Modern Business Leader, Palgrave Macmillan.

Casson, M and C Casson (2014), “The history of entrepreneurship: Medieval origins to a modern phenomenon?”, Business History 56(8): 1223-1242.

Goddard, R (2004), Lordship and Medieval Urbanisation: Coventry, 1043-1355, Boydell Press.

Gray, J M (1932), The School of Pythagoras (Merton Hall), Cambridge Antiquarian Society.

Gray, A (1898), The Priory of St. Radegund, Deighton Bell for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society.

Hatcher, J and M Bailey (2011), Modelling the Middle Ages: The History and Theory of England’s Economic Development, Oxford University Press.

Holt, R (2010), “The urban transformation in England, 900-1100”, in C Lewis (ed.), Anglo-Norman Studies 32, Boydell and Brewer, pp. 57-78.

Keene, D (1985), Survey of Medieval Winchester, Volume 2, Part I, Clarendon Press.

Lee, J S (2005), Cambridge and its Economic Region 1450-1560, University of Hertfordshire Press.

Lineham, P (ed.) (2011), St John's College Cambridge: A History, Boydell and Brewer.

Maitland, F W (1898), Township and Borough, Cambridge University Press.

Miller, E (1948), “Baldwin Blancgernun and his family: Early benefactors of the Hospital of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge”, The Eagle 324(53): 73-79.

Raban, S (2004), A Second Domesday: The Hundred Rolls of 1279-80, Oxford University Press.

Rubin, M (1987), Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Underwood, M (ed.) (2008), Cartulary of the Hospital of St. John the Evangelist, Cambridge Records Society.

Zutshi, P. (ed.) (1993), Medieval Cambridge: Essays on the Pre-Reformation University (Woodbridge, Boydell and Brewer).

Topics:  Economic history Industrial organisation

Tags:  compassionate capitalism, Middle Ages, corporate responsibility

• Spartacus Educational  
• The Economic Consequences of the Black Death

The Economic Consequences of the Black Death

• Black Death in Europe
• Arrives in England
• Preventive Measures
• Consequences of the Black Death
• References

Death from disease was a constant fear of people living in the Middle Ages. Probably the disease that worried them most was leprosy. Although it did not always kill its victims, the consequences of leprosy were horrifying. Extremities and facial features slowly rotted away and the face eventually becoming terribly disfigured. People suffering from the disease were treated very badly. "They were forbidden all normal social contacts and became targets of shocking rites of exclusion. They could not marry, they were forced to dress distinctively and to sound a bell warning of their approach." (1)

In the early part of the 14th century there were outbreaks of typhoid fever, dysentery and diphtheria. It has been estimated that in 1316 about 10% of the population died from these three diseases. These deaths often reflected social conditions, especially poor sanitation and became and became an increasing problem with the growth of towns during this period. (2)

Two other diseases, smallpox and measles caused a great deal of suffering. The number of people dying from measles and smallpox gradually declined during the Middle Ages. People developed an immunity to these infections and by the 14th century, it was mainly children who died from measles and smallpox. (3)

Black Death in Europe

It was a new disease, against which people had no immunity, that led to what has been described as the "worst disaster in the history of the world." This disease, which was later to become known as the Black Death first broke out in Asia. In October, 1347, a ship, returning from China, sailed into Messina harbour in Sicily. Most of its crew were dead and the survivors talked about a mysterious disease that had killed them on the journey. The harbour master ordered the men and the ship quarantined. The rest of the crew died over the next couple of days. So did people living in Messina. "It was not men but rats that spread the disease and they had scurried ashore as the first ropes were tied to the docks." (4)

According to one eyewitness account: "The sailors brought in their bones a disease so violent that whoever spoke a word to them was infected and could in no way save himself from death... Those to whom the disease was transmitted by infection of the breath were stricken with pains all over the body and felt a terrible lassitude. There then appeared, on a thigh or an arm, a pustule like a lentil. From this the infection penentrated the body and violent bloody vomiting began. It lasted for a period of three days and there was no way of preventing its ending in death." (5)

Arrives in England

The disease quickly spread across Europe and reached England on 1st August 1348. The first case was at the port of Melcombe Regis in August, 1348. From Dorset it spread west to Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. The port of Bristol, England's second largest town, was very badly hit. It has been estimated that approximately 40% of the town's population died from the disease. It then started moving east. Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey and by the end of September it was in London. (6)

The first symptoms of the Black Death included a high temperature, tiredness, shivering and pains all over the body. The next stage was the appearance of small red boils on the neck, in the armpit or groin. These lumps, called buboes, grew larger and darker in colour. Eyewitness accounts talk of these buboes growing to the size of apples. (7) The final stage of the illness was the appearance of small, red spots on the stomach and other parts of the body. This was caused by internal bleeding, and death followed soon after. (8)

Matthias Grünewald, detail from The Temptation of St Anthony (c. 1512)

When the disease hit an area there was a strong temptation for people to flee. This created hostility from people living in other towns and villages who feared that the new arrivals would bring the disease with them. Henry Knighton pointed out: "Many villages and hamlets became deserted... Sheep and cattle went wandering over fields and through crops and there was no one to go and look after them... In the following autumn no one could get a reaper for less than 8d. with his food, a mower for less than 12d. with his food. Therefore, many crops perished in the fields for want of someone to gather them." (9)

The Black Death is, in fact, not one but two related diseases. The most common form is bubonic plague. This disease is spread when infected fleas that normally live on black rats land on people and bite them. A person suffering from bubonic plague in the Middle Ages had a 60% chance of dying within two to five days of being infected.

In some cases bubonic plague becomes concentrated in the lungs and causes symptoms similar to pneumonia. This pneumonic version is even worse than bubonic plague. People with pneumonic plague usually die within a couple of hours of catching the disease. It is also highly infectious, as people can catch it by breathing in bacilli coughed out by the person suffering from the disease. (10)

Doctors could do little to help those suffering from the Black Death. The most common form of treatment was to lance the buboes, expelling a foulsmelling, blackish liquid. Other methods involved bleeding and washing the body with vinegar.

Preventive Measures

People also took preventive measures. As they believed that God was all powerful, they assumed that praying would help. They also looked very carefully at their behaviour to see if they could discover why God was so angry with them. The priests gave several reasons for the Black Death. They claimed that peasants did not show enough respect for the clergy, drank and swore too much, and did not spend enough time praying. Some priests even put the Black Death down to too much dancing and having long hair. (11)

It was believed that one way of avoiding the plague was to punish yourself for your sins before you caught the disease. People took part in what became known as "flagellant processions". This involved people whipping each other in public. "Encouraged by a papal statement, bands of men up to 500 strong, dressed in identical robes and singing hymns, would march to a town, where they would form a circle and set about beating their own backs rhythmically with iron spikes embedded in leather belts until they were covered with bleeding wounds." (12)

Woodcut (c. 1480)

Some priests claimed that the Black Death was a sign from God that the world was coming to an end. It was therefore people's last chance to change their behaviour if they wanted to obtain a place in heaven. Other people took the opposite view. If death was likely to occur soon, why not enjoy yourself while you were still alive? The moral behaviour of people who took this view declined rather than improved during this period.

Consequences of the Black Death

The first outbreak of the Black Death lasted from 1348 to 1350. Historians have found it difficult to calculate the number of people who died from the disease because of a lack of documentary sources. The Church was the main institution that kept accurate records. John F. Harrison has pointed out that those studying these figures have "produced death rates of beneficed clergy for the year of the plague of about 40 per cent; and other figures for monastic clergy are as high as 45 per cent." (13)

John Hatcher, the author of Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348-1530 (1977) argues that the death-rate of the clergy was lower than that of those who had to endure bad living conditions. Hatcher studied the payment of death duties (heriots) during this period. From these records it has been calculated that two-thirds of the customary tenants on four manors in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire died; and between 50 and 60 per cent on seven manors in Cambridgeshire, Essex and Cornwall. (14)

Henry Knighton, a canon of St Mary's Abbey, during the 14th century, wrote: "This cruel death spread on all sides, following the course of the sun. And there died at Leicester, in the small parish of St. Leonard's more than 300 persons, in the parish of Holy Cross, 400, in the parish of St. Margaret's Leicester, 700; and so in every parish, in the great multitude. Then the bishop of Lincoln sent notice throughout his whole diocese giving general power to all priests, both regulars and seculars, to hear confessions and give absolution with full episcopal authority to all persons, except only in case of debt." Knighton calculated that over 50 per cent of the people living in Leicester died of the disease. (15)

Traditionally, historians have tended to believe that about one-third of the population died during this period. (16) However, recent research suggest that this was a low-estimate. It has been claimed that the Domesday Survey in 1086 shows a population of about 1.5 to 1.8 million. This was followed by a rapid growth and that by 1348 it had reached about 5 million. Yet by 1377, when returns for the Poll-Tax was made, the population had fallen to about 2 million. (17)

George M. Trevelyan has pointed out that in the early years of the 14th century there had been a surplus of labour and this enabled the lord's bailiff's to treat the peasants more harshly. The Black Death dramatically changed this situation: "Obviously the survvors among the peasantry had the whip-hand of the lord and his bailiff. Instead of the recent hunger for land there was a sortage of men to till it.... The lord of the manor could no longer cultivate his demesne land with the reduced number of serfs, while many of the strip-holdings in the open fields were thrown back on his hands, because the families that farmed them had died of plague." (18)

This dramatic fall in population led to great changes taking place in England. Fields were left unsown and unreaped. Those who had not died of the plague were in danger of dying from starvation. Food shortages also resulted in much higher prices. The peasants, needing the money to feed their families, demanded higher wages. The landowners, desperately short of labour, often agreed to these wage demands. If the landlord refused, the peasant was likely to search out another employer. (19)

John Gower, a farmer from Kent, wrote about the problems caused by the shortage of labour: "The shepherd and the cowherd demand more wages now than the master-bailiff... labourers are now such a price that, when we must use them, where we were wont to spend two shillings we must now spend five or six... They work little, dress and feed like their betters, and ruin stares us in the face." (20)

Edward III became concerned about the increase in wages and the peasants roaming the country searching for better job opportunities. In 1350 he decided to pass the Statute of Labourers' Act. This law made it illegal for employers to pay wages above the level offered in 1346. It states: "That every man and woman of our kingdom of England... who is able bodied and below the age of sixty years, not living by trade nor carrying on a fixed craft or land of his own... shall be bound to take only the wages... that were paid in the twentieth year of our reign of King Edward III". (21)

However, both the employers and the peasants tended to ignore the law, and although Parliament increased the penalties for the offence people continued to disregard the act. (22) Villeins became bitter as they watched the wages of freemen go higher and higher. Although the punishments were severe, more and more villeins became willing to run away from their lords. In the past, landowners would have returned these villeins to their masters. However, because they needed labour so badly, they did not ask any awkward questions and instead treated them as freemen. This upset local villeins who saw "immigrants" given higher wages without "no questions asked as to whence they came". (23)

Even when villeins who ran away from their masters were caught, it was difficult to punish them too harshly. Execution, imprisonment or mutilation only made the labour shortage worse. Therefore the courts tended to punish the villeins by branding the letter 'F' on their forehead when they were caught. William Langland, a poor man living in England during this period wrote: "Nowadays the labourer is angry unless he gets high wages, and he curses the day that he was ever born a workman... he blames God, and murmurs against reason, and curses the king and his Council for making Statutes on purpose to plague the workman." (24)

In some areas labourers began to organise themselves into groups and there were examples of strikes for higher wages took place. For hundreds of years peasants had accepted the way they were treated by their lords as being natural and unchangeable. They now knew that if they were willing to take risks, either by running away or by joining up with others to demand better treatment, they could improve their situation. This change in consciousness meant that the lords' power over their peasants was not as strong as it was before the outbreak of the Black Death.

By John Simkin (john@spartacus-educational.com) © September 1997 (updated January 2020).

References

(1) Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (1997) page 121

(2) Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death (1983) page 3

(3) George Rosen, A History of Public Health (2015) page 24

(4) Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death (1983) page xiii

(5) Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (1997) page 123

(6) John F. Harrison, The Common People (1984) page 79

(7) Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron (c. 1360) pages 5-6

(8) John Simkin, Medieval Realms (1991) page 52

(9) Henry Knighton, Chronicle (c. 1398)

(10) Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (1997) page 124

(11) Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death (1983) page 113

(12) Chris Harman, A People's History of the World (2008) page 152

(13) John F. Harrison, The Common People (1984) page 79

(14) John Hatcher, Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348-1530 (1977) pages 21-23

(15) Henry Knighton, Chronicle (c. 1398)

(16) A. L. Morton, A People's History of England (1938) page 95

(17) John Hatcher, Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348-1530 (1977) pages 68-71

(18) George M. Trevelyan, English Social History (1942) page 22

(19) Winston Churchill, The Island Race (1964) page 73

(20) John Gower, letter (c. 1350)

(21) The Statute of Labourers' Act (1351)

(22) John F. Harrison, The Common People (1984) page 85

(23) George M. Trevelyan, English Social History (1942) page 22

(24) William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman (c. 1365)