take only the wages liveries, meed or salary
which, in the places where he sought to
serve, were accustomed to be paid in the
twentieth year of our reign of England [King
Edward III came to the throne on January 25,
1327, so the reference here is to 1347] or the
five or six common years next preceding.
The statute in effect tried to fix wages at the levels paid
before the Black Death. Particularly concerning for the
English elite was “enticement,” the attempt by one lord to
attract the scarce peasants of another. The solution was to
make prison the punishment for leaving employment
without permission of the employer:
And if a reaper or mower, or other workman
or servant, of whatever standing or condition
he be, who is retained in the service of any
one, do depart from the said service before
the end of the term agreed, without
permission or reasonable cause, he shall
undergo the penalty of imprisonment, and let
no one … moreover, pay or permit to be paid
to any one more wages, livery, meed or
salary than was customary as has been said.
The attempt by the English state to stop the changes of
institutions and wages that came in the wake of the Black
Death didn’t work. In 1381 the Peasants’ Revolt broke out,
and the rebels, under the leadership of Wat Tyler, even
captured most of London. Though they were ultimately
defeated, and Tyler was executed, there were no more
attempts to enforce the Statute of Laborers. Feudal labor
services dwindled away, an inclusive labor market began to
emerge in England, and wages rose.
The plague seems to have hit most of the world, and
everywhere a similar fraction of the population perished.
Thus the demographic impact in Eastern Europe was the
same as in England and Western Europe. The social and
economic forces at play were also the same. Labor was
scarce and people demanded greater freedoms. But in the
East, a more powerful contradictory logic was at work.
Fewer people meant higher wages in an inclusive labor