ABSTRACT
The consequences of the fall in the population in the fourteenth century were far-reaching: there was profound despair as the epidemics became endemic and men either turned their faces to the wall or looked for salvation in arcane cults like millenarianism or astrology, neither of which was conducive to the return to normal life. Nevertheless, as the survivors took up the threads of life again there were a number of gains. Since the twelfth century there had been a tendency to commute rents in kind for money services, landlords found paid labour cheaper and more efficient and now the process was accelerated and villein holdings increased. At the same time instead of over-population, the demand for labour exceeded supply, and by the operation of the market mechanism, labourers claimed higher wages and in some cases these doubled. Attempts were made to curb the wage-price spiral but the Statute of Labourers 1349 and similar medieval efforts at prices and incomes control were unsuccessful because of the competition for labour. But the peasants’ gain was often the landlords’ loss. In order to make good the losses many made their farms less labour-intensive, or, taking advantage of the new purchasing power of the peasants, diversified and grew crops like hops, which caused the chroniclers to inveigh against the fact that the labourers would now only drink ‘the best brown ale’. 1 However, the landlords who turned to sheep-farming were the most likely to recoup their fortunes for, as the crisis receded, the demand for clothing increased and, thanks to royal encouragement, there was an improvement in English cloth and more labour was attracted away from the land—never to return. The woolsack had become the symbol of wealth.
