Bearing these factors in mind, it remains to consider whether the Black Death did indeed bring about as fundamental a revolution in land tenure and social organization as has been suggested. There is, of course, much that is incontestably true in the thesis. Among the phenomena which Thorold Rogers noted as being particularly relevant were the rise in the level of wages and of prices and the greatly increased mobility of labour. Though regional variations existed, these were variations of degree and duration rather than kind. In every part of England for which evidence exists the tendencies were to be seen.
‘The immediate effect of the Plague,’ wrote Rogers, ‘was to double the wages of labour; in some districts to raise the rate even beyond this.’{441} In Cuxham, a ploughman paid 2s. per annum before the plague earned 7s. in 1349–50 and as much as 10s. 6d. in 1350–51.{442} (These figures are, in fact, not so conspicuously out of line with those of Rogers as at first appears since they ignore certain variations of payment in kind which, if they could be expressed in monetary terms, would certainly go a long way towards reducing the real figures for 1350–51 to about half the apparent total. Two shillings per annum was, of course, an inconsiderable element in the ploughman’s total remuneration.) In Teddington and Paddington wages were doubled in the first year.{443} Rogers’s own figures show that a thresher who had been paid 2½d. a day in 1348 earned 6d. in 1349 and 4½d. in 1350, while a mower received 5d. an acre in 1348 but increased this to 9d. in 1349 and 1350.{444}
All this supports the thesis that wages more or less doubled. But not all evidence points to so sharp an increase. In her examination of the manors of the Bishop of Winchester, Professor Levett found that in some, though by no means all cases, wages rose by between a quarter and a third{445} while Lord Beveridge was able to detect only minor increases in another group of the Bishop’s manors{446} but a jump of more than 75 per cent in the wages paid on the estate of the Abbot of Westminster{447} But even though Rogers’s estimate may be on the generous side as an average for the whole of England, it is clear that wages rose rapidly and substantially and imposed a heavy burden on any landlord who depended largely on paid labour to farm his demesne.
Professor Rogers and the other proponents of his theories are also undoubtedly right in saying that prices of agricultural products fell steeply during and directly after the Black Death; thus making still more troublesome the life of the landlord. Lack of demand was, of course, the prime cause. Knighton’s complaint that ‘a man could buy for half a mark a horse which formerly had been worth forty shillings’,{448} has already been mentioned. Rogers has shown that oxen which fetched 13s. 7d. in 1347 and 10s. 6d. in 1348, were sold for only 6s. 8d. in 1349. A cow fell in value from 9s. to 6s. 6d. and a sheep from 2s. 2d. in 1347 to 1s. 5d. in 1348, is. 4d. in 1349 and 1s. 3d. in 1350. Poultry seem more or less to have maintained their prices and corn did reasonably well because of a poor harvest in 1349, but the price of wool was lower than at any other time in the fourteenth century. Against this, the cost of manufactured products, many of which the landlord would have had to buy, tended to rise steeply because of difficulties of transport and of the death rate among the skilled artisans who, unlike the agricultural workers, had no pool of surplus labour ready to fill the gaps. Every one knew how to cut hay but few indeed were competent to make a nail. The price of canvas rose from 2s. 3½d. in 1347 to 2s. 9d. in 1349 and 4s. 3d. in 1350; a bushel of salt which cost 4⅝d. in 1347 could not be bought for less than is. 2d. in 1350; iron jumped from 8s. 6d. to over a pound for twenty-five pieces.{449}
The landlord was to some extent sheltered against these difficulties by the extra income which accrued in 1349 and 1350 from the entry fines levied on the estates of the dead before the heir was allowed to take them over and the cattle which were collected as heriots, a form of death duty paid in kind. But this was a once-and-for-all increment and, anyway, often had to be waived in cases where no heir survived or the survivor could not afford to pay the fine. Heriots, indeed, could be an embarrassment. In Farnham where fines rose from under
