The Black Death полностью

What of the other economic and social effects of the Black Death which Thorold Rogers maintained did so much radically to change the manorial system and lead towards the Peasants’ Revolt? Wages and prices of manufactured goods certainly rose sharply after the Black Death but this rise was not maintained. Nor was the fall in the value of agricultural products. Almost all the examples cited earlier to illustrate the dramatic effects of the plague can also be used to show how quickly the effects passed. But for the most part they did not pass altogether. Particularly in the case of wages a very real advantage was won and retained by the labourer in almost every part of England. The ploughman of Cuxham whose pay had risen from 2s. to 10s. 6d. was still earning 6s. 3d. in 1351–2 and 7s. 6d. over the period 1353–9. In Teddington and Paddington, wages fell back sharply in 1351–2 but remained well above the figure for before the plague.^{467} Thorold Rogers’s thresher, whose wage averaged 3⅛d. in the first half of the century, earned 4⅛d. in the second half while the carpenter’s wages rose from 3⅛d. to 4⅝d.^{468} The rise in the cost of living took away some of the wage earner’s advantage but his rent, probably the most important item in his budget, if it increased at all, certainly did not do so as substantially as his income. His net advantage was almost always considerable. Post hoc is not necessarily propter hoc, but it would be ultra-cautious not to admit that the Black Death was a major factor in the process.

Prices of agricultural produce seem on the whole to have more than regained their level within a year or two of the end of the plague, though they lagged behind the index for wages. Taking the two ten-year periods of 1341 to 1350 and 1351 to 1360, wheat, barley and other grains rose by up to 30 per cent, but the price of wool dropped slightly and live-stock varied so wildly as to make any deduction virtually impossible. Oxen fetched about 15 per cent more but cows about 3 per cent less; sheep substantially more, pigs and cart-horses slightly less; pullets and ducks more but hens, geese and cocks less. The price of manufactured goods, on the other hand, dropped back a little from the abnormally high level of the years of the Black Death and immediately after but still remained well above the pre-plague average. Salt, which cost 6¼d. the bushel the decade before the plague, cost 10½d. between 1351 and 1360. Iron varied according to type but all types cost more and some increased threefold. Clouts almost doubled in price while canvas leapt from 2s. 5d. for the dozen ells to 6s. 5d.

In so far then as it can be assumed that the Black Death was primarily responsible for the altogether exceptional trend of wages and prices between 1340 and 1360 – and such an assumption can surely be safely made – then it is clear that it did the landlord little good and much harm. Even if he managed to maintain agricultural production at its previous level, he could expect to receive little more 2nd perhaps even less for his produce while having to pay substantially more for his labour and his imported articles. Wool, by far the most important crop produced for sale rather than consumption, actually brought the farmer a smaller return in the decades after the plague than before 1349. The blow was not economically devastating except, perhaps, in 1350 and 1351 and, during these years there was usually extra income from other sources to sustain the landlord. But it was certainly painful enough to provide a powerful disincentive to anyone wondering whether or not to carry on the farming of his demesne.

Thorold Rogers’s argument rested above all on the hypothesis that the Black Death so far reduced the population that those who remained were placed in an immeasurably stronger position when it came to bargaining with an employer. In the short term – that is to say in 1349, 1350 and 1351 – this was of course true. If a third of the peasants of a given area disappeared within a few months then, whatever the reserves in labour, there was bound to be serious dislocation. But provided the labour reserve was great enough – and it has already been argued that it was substantial^{469} – then an adjustment of resources to needs was bound, in time, to put the matter right. In some areas the process of adjustment would be relatively simple; in others, where the Black Death did its worst damage, it would be painful and protracted. But in the end it would be done.