The next salvo came from Dr H. L. Gray{461} whose techniques have been much criticized but whose signally useful if modest contribution was to rationalize and codify the doctrine that any generalization was futile if it professed to apply to the whole of England. Based on his study of inquisitions post-mortem he claimed that, in the North and West of England, services had nearly always been commuted before the Black Death; in the South and East full or, at least, a large number of services were still exacted in about half the manors while in Kent, serfdom had died out at a much earlier date. It is hardly necessary to point out how quickly examples were forthcoming to show that generalizations were hardly more valid when applied to areas such as the North or the South, than to the country as a whole. But as a rough and ready rule, the value of Gray’s analysis remains considerable.
Dr Levett has provided the weightiest evidence against the presentation of the Black Death as a watershed in English social history. She has shown that, on many of the manors of the Bishop of Winchester, commutation was hardly known before the Black Death and that there was remarkably little change introduced in the years immediately afterwards. When William of Wykeham did begin to indulge in substantial commutation of services against money payments it was more to raise money for his projects at New College and Winchester than because of pressures generated by the Black Death.{462} Her statistics are impressive but against them it can be contended that the experience of manors belonging to rich, powerful and conservative churchmen need not necessarily be applicable even to other manors in the same neighbourhood, let alone to the country as a whole.
Nor did her findings apply even to all the manors of the Bishop. A companion study of the Manor of Witney reaches remarkably different conclusions.{463} In that manor, two thirds of the population died, much land was thrown on to the lord’s hands and had to be let on new terms and for a money rent, the landlord gradually abandoned the struggle to farm the demesne and, having no further use for labour services, willingly commuted them for cash. The number of villeins employed at harvest-time dwindled from one hundred and twenty-one in 1348 to twenty-eight in 1350, rose again to forty-two in 1352, but by 1354 had only reached forty-eight. All new tenants were excused tenurial labour and the whole system quickly withered away. Similarly, on the estates of Ramsey Abbey, the Black Death heralded the introduction of a new style of rent involving a larger cash payment, but the disappearance of all, or virtually all villein services.{464}
To take another example in which the landlord similarly enjoyed enough wealth and influence to ride almost any economic storm; at Cuxham, a manor of the College of Merton, prior to the Black Death well over half the work on the demesne was done by the famuli, labour attached to the manor and living within its compound. Two thirds of the rest was done by customary labour and only a third by hired labour. The proportion of work done by the wage-earner actually dropped in the seventy years between 1276 and 1347 – the period during which, according to Thorold Rogers, commutation was rapidly gaining ground all over England. After the Black Death labour services virtually ceased and work done by the famuli was halved. Total work done on the demesne was reduced but the cost of hired labour nevertheless trebled. In 1361, Merton College decided to lease the manor rather than continue to run it at a loss.{465}
In some parts of England, therefore, the Black Death was a sharp stimulus towards rapid and lasting commutation of manorial services, in others it gave rise to much commutation but the landlords were able to check the process and more or less restore the status quo ante, in yet others it had little perceptible effect on the manorial structure and, finally, in a few it impelled the landlords into a reaction which sought to resurrect labour services that had long been suffered to fall into disuse. The more prosperous and stable manors were the least affected; where the land was poor, the landlord ineffective, or the disease raged with especial violence, then the consequence was likely to be a rapid growth in commutation. It would be impossible to estimate in how many cases this development was something entirely new and in how many the process was already under way. Professor Postan has argued in favour of a rapid move towards commutation in the twelfth century which slackened or even went into reverse in the course of the thirteenth.{466} However that may be, it is reasonable to contend that commutation was well known in most parts of England before 1348, and that the Black Death did no more than accelerate, though often violently accelerate, an established and, in the long run, inevitable progress.
What of the other economic and social effects of the Black Death which Thorold Rogers maintained did so much radically to change the manorial system and lead towards the Peasants’ Revolt? Wages and prices of manufactured goods certainly rose sharply after the Black Death but this rise was not maintained. Nor was the fall in the value of agricultural products. Almost all the examples cited earlier to illustrate the dramatic effects of the plague can also be used to show how quickly the effects passed. But for the most part they did not pass altogether. Particularly in the case of wages a very real advantage was won and retained by the labourer in almost every part of England. The ploughman of Cuxham whose pay had risen from 2s. to 10s. 6d. was still earning 6s. 3d. in 1351–2 and 7s. 6d. over the period 1353–9. In Teddington and Paddington, wages fell back sharply in 1351–2 but remained well above the figure for before the plague.{467} Thorold Rogers’s thresher, whose wage averaged 3⅛d. in the first half of the century, earned 4⅛d. in the second half while the carpenter’s wages rose from 3⅛d. to 4⅝d.{468} The rise in the cost of living took away some of the wage earner’s advantage but his rent, probably the most important item in his budget, if it increased at all, certainly did not do so as substantially as his income. His net advantage was almost always considerable. Post hoc is not necessarily propter hoc, but it would be ultra-cautious not to admit that the Black Death was a major factor in the process.
Prices of agricultural produce seem on the whole to have more than regained their level within a year or two of the end of the plague, though they lagged behind the index for wages. Taking the two ten-year periods of 1341 to 1350 and 1351 to 1360, wheat, barley and other grains rose by up to 30 per cent, but the price of wool dropped slightly and live-stock varied so wildly as to make any deduction virtually impossible. Oxen fetched about 15 per cent more but cows about 3 per cent less; sheep substantially more, pigs and cart-horses slightly less; pullets and ducks more but hens, geese and cocks less. The price of manufactured goods, on the other hand, dropped back a little from the abnormally high level of the years of the Black Death and immediately after but still remained well above the pre-plague average. Salt, which cost 6¼d. the bushel the decade before the plague, cost 10½d. between 1351 and 1360. Iron varied according to type but all types cost more and some increased threefold. Clouts almost doubled in price while canvas leapt from 2s. 5d. for the dozen ells to 6s. 5d.
In so far then as it can be assumed that the Black Death was primarily responsible for the altogether exceptional trend of wages and prices between 1340 and 1360 – and such an assumption can surely be safely made – then it is clear that it did the landlord little good and much harm. Even if he managed to maintain agricultural production at its previous level, he could expect to receive little more 2nd perhaps even less for his produce while having to pay substantially more for his labour and his imported articles. Wool, by far the most important crop produced for sale rather than consumption, actually brought the farmer a smaller return in the decades after the plague than before 1349. The blow was not economically devastating except, perhaps, in 1350 and 1351 and, during these years there was usually extra income from other sources to sustain the landlord. But it was certainly painful enough to provide a powerful disincentive to anyone wondering whether or not to carry on the farming of his demesne.