BLACK DEATH

Population change.

Black death arrived in Malcolm Dorset June 13 48. Next line the population was around 4 million
Bad harvest and food shortages during the 14th century including the famine of 1315/16 reduce the population a little. But there were still many people living in Britain

The high population meant that before the black death Lords did not have to pay their peasants very much. Many peasants worked on the Lords land for no money at all in return they were allowed to farm a small pot of land and provide their own for food.

The black death saw a huge decrease in the population. The plague reappeared in 1369, 1379-83 and 1389-93, but it was never as bad as before.

The population fell from 4 million to just 2.5 million and it wasn’t until the 17th century that the population got up to the same level as it was before the black death.

Labour shortage
There are now less people to farm stripfeilds and so the Lords are short of workers.

The people who survived demanded higher wages because the Lord can’t turn them away.

There were not enough people to employ.

If the Lord did not pay a wage that was good to the peasants they moved to another village. This was against the law but they could make a better life themselves.

The Lords and nobles did not like this. To help them King Edward issued the ordinances of labour.
These are a set of rules saying that peasants had to work for the same wages as before the black death However the only worked in some places.

There were still many lords who are happy to pay higher wages because it attracted workers

Even if they did not pay more wages, they would get around the laws by giving presents food or clothes or renting land to them cheaply.

This meant that some peasants actually did very well out of the new world that many of them were able to rent land of a landlords cheaply and become quite important farmers.


Farming techniques
Land owners responded to the shortage of workers in other ways.

Realise they could no longer farm crops as this required a lot of people.

They moved into sheep farming which is much easier and only needed a few peasants to look after the animals.

The landowners got rid of the old land system introduced by the Normans and enclosed large fields with hedges or walls to keep sheep.


Religion
Religion was greatly affected by The Black Death.

It had been estimated that 40% of England’s priest died.
This left a large gap which was hastily filled with underqualified and poorly trained new priests. They were called clergy men. They were not good at their job and some people lost respect for them. Some people who weren’t press decided they should be able to read the Bible and share’s message. These men were called Lollards.

The Church did not like this because they thought only priests should be able to have that power. Many survivors of the plague were disillusioned by the Church inability to explain with the outbreak the church said that God was punishing them for their sins but many people saw that innocent children and babies had been killed so questioned the Church’s reasons.

As a result of the Black Death, much of the social, political and economic fabric of British society had been undermined.