Society in flux
'No longer were they prepared to endure the burdens they once had.'
In England, as elsewhere in Europe in the late 14th century, authority was under challenge. The ordinary people of the land were growing restive. In June 1381, in southern England, peasant anger at their low status in society spilled over into violent rebellion, and for a few days London lay at the mercy of the mob.
Surprisingly, this discontent did not spring from poverty or hardship. As the foreign-born writer Jean Froissart observed, it was the product of affluence. No longer were the peasants of England prepared to endure the burdens they once had. In the late 1370s, when Richard II became king, living standards were rising, and rising rapidly. In 1348 the Black Death had struck England, reducing the population by between a third and a half. Labour, once plentiful, became in short supply. Wages shot up.
The wage-control laws imposed in 1351 had little effect on this, and skilled labourers drew twice or three times what they once had. At the same time, land in the fields could now be obtained cheaply. Those who had once had no land gained some for the first time, while others who already had some obtained more. Everyone moved a step or two up the economic ladder.
The effect of rapidly improving living standards was to raise people's expectations. They looked to a higher status in life. No longer were they prepared to endure the burdens they once had. In particular, they rejected villeinage - the condition of hereditary unfreedom - which bore down on them in a variety of ways. Typically, villeins were required to work on their lord's lands at harvest time and to carry his produce to the market.
These burdens were bitterly resented. Not only were they inconvenient, for they distracted the tenant from tilling his own land but they were seen as a way in which the lords provided themselves with cheap labour. To the lords, however, they represented a means of control. There is evidence that, on some manors, long defunct villein dues were brought back to counter the effects of the labour shortage. Such insensitivity provoked the withdrawal of services - strikes, in other words - by those afflicted.
Published: 2001-07-01
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