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The Black Death and the Peasant Revolt

The Black Death and the Peasant Revolt

In following the Hundred Years' War to its end the domestic history of England has been passed by. We must return to the reign of Edward III to trace the outcome of three important historical events. The first of these is the Black Death, which left so deep a mark on the condition of the labourers and their dealings with the landowners; the second is the work of John Wyclif and the Lollards; and the third is that development of Parliament, which promised well, and yet proved premature, leading in its breakdown to the Wars of the Roses. We leave military history, and take up questions first of social history, then of religion, and finally turn to genealogy and those complicated matters of family relations and family ambition which are at the root of the trouble between the Red Rose and the White.

The Norman Conquest left the class who cultivated the land in the position of serfs. They were "bound to the land" (glebae ascriptf) and had to give to their lords so many days' work each week ("week work") and certain extra days' work at the busy season of haymaking, harvest, and ploughing ("boon work"). Besides these they paid small "dues" of eggs, fowls, and so on. So long as these services and dues were paid, they might expect to remain in possession of the small plots of ground on the produce of which they lived, for although it was by no means clear that the law gave them any security of tenure, or would interfere at all between them and their masters, no lord would be tempted to drive off a well-behaved serf, since to do so would be to lose his labour. As time went on, however, many of the serfs commuted their services; that is to say, they had come to an arrangement with their lords to pay money instead of service; for example, if a man's labour was reckoned at two pence a day, he would pay sixpence a week if he had owed three days' work, and further amounts for extra days. The plan was convenient for both parties: the serf got more time to work on his own plot of land; the lord got money with which he could hire labourers, and was saved the trouble of continually striving to compel unwilling or lazy serfs to do their work for him.

This plan of "commuting" services for money was spreading gradually over the country, but it was not complete, when it was interrupted by a disaster. This was the Black Death, a fearful plague which ravaged our island from 1347 to 1350. At least one-third of the whole population perished. It is literally true that often the living could scarce bury the dead. In the diocese of Norwich two-thirds of the parish clergy died: in a religious house at Heveringland prior and canons died to a man: of the sixty monks at St. Albans only thirteen survived. From what befell the ecclesiastics we can judge the mortality of laymen. Indeed, high and low, rich and poor, town and country fell before the pestilence. The manor rolls, which record changes among the tenants on an estate, show that often whole families were swept off, leaving none to inherit the land.

The Black Death and the Peasant Revolt

Chronology