England's economy in the 14th and 15th centuries. Richard II and Wat Tyler's rebellion...

For decades historians have disagreed about the impact of the Black Death of 1348-9.

On the eve of the Black Death England was a laggard in European terms, when its economic development was choked by deficient demand and extremely rural poverty.  Yet it already possessed some distinctive institutional features.  A secure market in land existed, together with a sizeable market in hired labor and rudimentary credit facilities: while none of these were dominant influences, and while they were still subject to some non-market and seigniorial interference, they had developed to a greater degree than traditionally assumed, diluting the nature of serfdom and the arbitrary powers of lords in the process.  In particular, the growth of the common law had spawned a loosely-connected framework of private courts throughout England deploying broadly standardized procedures.  

This institutional framework helps to explain the responses to the Black Death in England.  In the early 1350s escalating prices and the sudden shortage of labor posed an urgent threat to the ordained social order, spurring novel attempts to tighten control over serfdom and a raft of ambitious new government legislation.  

Despite the collapse in population, prices of foodstuffs soared then remained high during the third quarter of the fourteenth century, causing the real wages of the mass of the populace to fall below their pre-plague level. A succession of further environmental and epidemiological crises in the 1360s created unprecedented disruption, volatility and uncertainty: the weather was extreme, livestock epidemics struck repeatedly and the plague of people returned in 1369.   

By the mid-1390s a post-plague equilibrium had finally been established.  Gains in GDP per capita flattened, prices sagged and lost their volatility, real wages and earnings leveled, and all sectors of the economy exhibited a tendency towards over-supply.  Government labor and economic policies were now weakly enforced.  In 1400 England was still not at the forefront of European economic development, but responses to the Black Death have changed its institutional framework in important ways.  Land had become more mobile and accessible, and on more commercial tenures; employment levels outside agriculture were very high, even in the countryside; the government had established itself as a standing authority in social policy; the country’s legal framework and culture was unique and accessible; and serfdom had all but disappeared. Peasants’ Revolt, also called Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, (1381), first great popular rebellion in English history. Its immediate cause was the imposition of the unpopular poll tax of 1380, which brought to a head the economic discontent that had been growing since the middle of the century. The rebellion drew support from several sources and included well-to-do artisans and villeins as well as the destitute. Probably the main grievance of the agricultural laborers and urban working classes was the Statute of Laborers (1351), which attempted to fix maximum wages during the labor shortage following the Black Death.

The uprising was centered in the southeastern counties and East Anglia, with minor disturbances in other areas. It began in Essex in May 1381. In June rebels from Essex and Kent marched toward London. During the king’s absence, the Kentish rebels in the city forced the surrender of the Tower of London; the chancellor, Archbishop Simon of Sudbury, and the treasurer, Sir Robert Hales, both of whom were held responsible for the poll tax, were beheaded.

The king met Tyler and the Kentishmen at Smithfield on the following day. Tyler was treacherously cut down in Richard’s presence by the enraged mayor of London. The king, with great presence of mind, appealed to the rebels as their sovereign and, after promising reforms, persuaded them to disperse. The crisis in London was over, but in the provinces the rebellion reached its climax in the following weeks. It finally ended when the rebels in East Anglia under John Litster were crushed by the militant bishop of Norwich, Henry le Despenser, on about June 25.

The rebellion lasted less than a month and failed completely as a social revolution. King Richard’s promises at Mile End and Smithfield were promptly forgotten, and manorial discontent continued to find expression in local riots. The rebellion succeeded, however, as a protest against the taxation of poorer classes insofar as it prevented further levying of the poll tax.