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Home The Black Death and the Peasant Revolt The Black Death and the Peasant Revolt; Part 3 |
The Black Death and the Peasant Revolt; Part 3In the series of laws called the Statutes of Labourers (Issued by proclamation in 1349; enacted as a Statute in 1351; repeated with additional penalties in 1357 and 1360.), labourers were ordered to take the " old " rate of wages - that is to say, the rate current in 1347. It was one thing to make the order, and another to enforce it. The task proved too big. The authority of Parliament was not very active over all England at the best of times in the fourteenth century; but when, owing to the Black Death, all local courts were paralysed, laws were easily evaded. The rise in prices went on; and so long as prices did not fall, men could not live on the old wages. Yet the lords could not afford to see their estates left uncultivated: it were better to lose half than lose all; better to give higher wages than have no labourers. Thus many lords were tempted to break the very laws which were intended to protect them, by offering the higher wages which Parliament prohibited. Parliament truly showed no lack of vigour or courage in its opinions. It reinforced the Statute of Labourers by threats of imprisonment, branding with a hot iron, slavery, and even death. But even ferocious penalties will not make men obey impossible laws. If it was a choice between the certainty of starvation and the chance of punishment, none could doubt what the choice would be.Here stood revealed the class interest of Parliament We may find a justification in theory for their action: it may be allowed that they meant no wrong. But when their remedy failed, the selfishness of the landowners - and the landowners meant Parliament under another name - is betrayed in the obstinate savageness which added penalty to penalty to drive men into suffering. England was on the threshold of the first great struggle between labour and capital: the struggle between "we cannot" and "we will make you". The policy of trying to put the clock back failed: it was bound to fail. Some landowners, untaught by the first failure, tried to go further back and compel the serfs to pay their services again. This was hopeless. Men who have nearly gained freedom will not tamely consent to lose what they have won. Other landowners took to sheep-farming instead of corn-growing, and throve on that, just when their old enemies the serfs were looking forward to their ruin. In fact all the hopes which the serfs were cherishing seemed to be fading, and things becoming worse instead of better. This infuriated them; so did the Statutes of Labourers, which hindered them from getting a fair wage at home or from moving away to get work where wages were better. Discontented men clamoured against the lords. A Kentish priest, named John Ball, preached to the serfs, "Things will never go right in England so long as there be villeins and gentlemen; by what right are they whom we call lords greater than we?" and his teaching was echoed in the rhyme that ran through England - "When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then the gentleman?" |
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