INTRODUCTION 5 



fifty to a hundred per cent,' or on the persistence of 

 complaints in parliament of the failure of the statutes and 

 on the necessity of their frequent re-enactment/ 



It has seemed to me that the simplest and most ac- 

 curate manner of trying to answer these questions and 

 to discover what actually happened was to examine the 

 available sources dealing with the methods of administra- 

 tion,3 and to attempt to present a detailed account of the 

 efforts of central and local officials to enforce the statutes. 

 For this purpose I have been obliged to confine myself 

 almost entirely to the first ten years after the Black' 

 Death ; my conclusions, therefore, with a few exception^ 

 to be noted in due course, apply only to this limited 

 period, but it is hoped that for a century in which con-' 

 stitutional, political and economic problems have at- 

 tracted by far the largest share of attention a study of 

 any one sphere of administration may be valuable as 

 typical of administrative methods in general, and may 

 therefore serve to increase our knowledge of the life of 

 the times. 



' Rogers, Hist, of Prices, i. 265. 269-270. 292, 298-300; Work and 

 Wages, 237; "England before and after the Black Death," in Fort- 

 nightly Revieiv, iii, 193; "The Peasants' War of 1381," ibid., iv, 92. 

 Rogers does, however, admit a possible effect on agricultural wages in 

 certain districts. Ashley, in an article on Rogers in Political Science 

 Quarterly, iv, 398, points out that the latter was the first to try to esti- 

 mate this rise in wages. Other writers usually follow Rogers; cf. e.g., 

 Gibbins, Industry in England, 153, and Trevelyan, Wycliffe, 187-188. 



'Gasquet, op. cit., 197-198, presents this view with peculiar emphasis; 

 cf. also Rogers, Hist, of Prices, i, 299. 



' For an explanation of my omission of the work of the church in en- 

 forcing the statutes, and of my insufficient treatment of the old local 

 authorities, see app., 3-4, and pt. ii, ch. i. 



