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ToolsBailey, Mark (2024) The implementation of national labour legislation in England after the Black Death, 1349–1400. Economic History Review. ISSN 0013-0117
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
The responses of labour markets to global pandemics are attracting renewed interest, although the English labour laws in response to the Black Death of 1348/9 – capping wages, imposing annual contracts, and restricting mobility – have a long and established scholarship. The conventional wisdom is that the legislation represented an extension of existing local practices and created common cause among all categories of employer. Yet this view is hard to reconcile with the fact that, despite subsequent revisions, the legislation soon failed. These arguments are tested through original research into how the legislation was actually enforced in a variety of legal tribunals (manorial, borough, and royal). A clear distinction is maintained between public presentments and private litigation, and a robust methodology is pursued to record their absence as well as quantifying their presence. This casts new light on the novelty of the labour laws, the reasons for their failure, and their influence on contract law. The analysis exemplifies the potential for short-term legal responses to infectious diseases to have unintended and unanticipated long-term consequences.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | black death,england,labour laws,statute of labourers,history,economics and econometrics ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200/1202 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Medieval History |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 09 May 2024 11:30 |
| Last Modified: | 31 May 2024 12:31 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/95111 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/ehr.13355 |
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