ABSTRACT
The fundamental cause of the agricultural malaise following the Black Death in 1348 was demographic. The tremendous fall in population resulted in severe dislocation of the regional economy. The severe mortality was followed by further cut-backs in the population from the plagues that followed in 1361-2, 1387 and 1396 and for most of the fifteenth century the demographic picture seems to be one of falling population or at best stagnation. The effects of the Black Death cannot be assessed solely by the state of the agrarian economy even as late as the 1380s: long-term effects have to be taken into account which did not surface prominently until after the 1390s. Consequently, agriculture in the fifteenth century was a far more risky venture than fifty and more years earlier. With falling prices and rising costs lords were ‘very unsure of what path to take and switched back and forth between farming out their manors and keeping them in hand, before finally moving over to wholesale leasing in the 1390s’ (Mate 1983: 352). Thereafter the general policy of lords was to shore up increases by settling for low, fixed rents. Moreover, in addition to the serious drop in income and mounting debts resulting directly from the Black Death and later pestilences, estates suffered from other setbacks damaging their economy, such as runs of bad harvests and disease in sheep and cattle, which appear at least in part to be due to a deterioration in weather.
