rdingly Edward and his council at
once strove to remedy the lack of labourers by ordinances that
harvesters and other workmen should not demand more wages than they had
been in the habit of receiving, while the bishops, following the royal
example, ordered chaplains and vicars to be content with their
accustomed salaries. As soon as parliament ventured to assemble, the
royal orders were embodied in the famous statute of labourers of 1351.
This measure has been condemned as an attempt of a capitalist
parliament to force poor men to work for their masters at wages far
below the market rates. But it was no new thing to fix wages by
authority, and the medieval conception was that a just and living wage
should be settled by law, rather than left to accident. The statute
provided that prices, like wages, should remain as they had been before
the pestilence, so that, far from only regarding the interests of the
employer, it attempted to maintain the old ratio between the rate of
wages and the price of commodities. Moreover it sought to provide for
the cultivation of the soil by enacting that the sturdy beggar, who,
though able, refused to work, should be forced to put his hand to the
plough. Futile as the statute of labourers was, it was not much more
ineffective than most laws of the time. Though real efforts were made
to carry it out, the chronic weakness of a medieval executive soon
recoiled before the hopeless task of enforcing impossible laws on an
unwilling population. Class prejudices only showed themselves in the
stipulation that, while the employer was forbidden to pay the new rate
of wages under pain of heavy fines, the labourers who refused, to work
on the old terms were imprisoned and only released upon taking oath to
accept their ancient wages. In effect, however, the king's arm was not
long enough to reach either class. The labourers, says a chronicler,
were so puffed up and quarrelsome that they would not observe the new
enactment, and the master's alternative was either to see his crops
perish unharvested, or to gratify the greedy desires of the workmen by
violating the statute. While labourers could escape punishment through
their numbers, the employer was more accessible to the royal officers.

Thus the labourers enjoyed the benefits of the scarcity of labour,
while the employers suffered the full inconveniences of the change.
Producers were to some extent recompensed by a great rise in prices,
more especiall