STATUTES OF LABOUR 41 



holdings, of establishing the principle of competitive rents. The 

 " Great Death " in fact produced the natural results. There was 

 a fall in rents and a rise in wages, because the supply of land exceeded 

 the demand, and the demand for labour was greater than the 

 supply. 



Legislation came to the aid of landowners by endeavouring to 

 maintain the supply of labour and to regulate the rise both of wages 

 and of prices. The statutes clearly illustrate the difficulties of 

 landlords and consumers. The crisis was so abnormal that unusual 

 action seemed justifiable. In the plague years of 1348-9 agricultural 

 labour was so scarce that panic wages were asked and paid. A 

 similar rise in prices took place simultaneously. So exorbitant did 

 the demands both of labourers and producers appear, following as 

 they did on a previous rise in both wages and prices, that a royal 

 proclamation was issued in 1349. It ordered all men and women, 

 " bond or free," — unless living on their own resources, tilling their^ 

 own land, employed in merchandise, or exercising some craft, — 

 to work on the land where they hved at the rate of wages current 

 in 1346. Those who gave or took higher wages were fined treble 

 or double the sums so given or received. The claim of lords of 

 manors to the services of their own men was acknowledged. But 

 their claim was no longer exclusive ; they were not to employ more 

 labour than they absolutely required. The king's proclamation 

 was not universally obeyed. Employers had either to lose their 

 crops or yield to " the proud and covetuous desires " of the men. 

 They were indeed placed in a difficulty. On the one hand, men 

 could not be hired under threepence to perform the same services 

 which had been recently commuted for a half-penny. On the 

 other hand, the strike was well-aimed and well-timed. It hit the 

 most vulnerable points. The classes of agricultural labourers 

 against whom the proclamation was specially directed were ser- 

 vants in husbandry, mowers, reapers, and harvesters. Servants in 

 husbandry, boarding at the home-farm or the houses of the larger 

 tenants, were the ploughmen, carters, cowherds, shepherds, milk- 

 maids, and swmeherds, who had the care of the live-stock. They, 

 like the harvesters, were indispensable. If the crops were not 

 harvested when ripe, they spoiled ; if the live-stock were neglected, 

 they died. To solve the difficulty ParHament itself intervened. 

 The provisions of the proclamation were supplemented by the 

 first Statute of Labourers (1349, 23 Ed. III.), and expanded by a 



