Abstract
As a means toward understanding the genesis of the English labor laws, this paper assesses the attitudes behind and arising from their enforcement in the later Middle Ages. It emphasizes that in spite of national legislation and governmental enforcement, many individuals initiated suits and sought private law remedies. It also highlights how problems of labor were acknowledged and accomodated both formally within the legal system and through more informal methods of dispute resolution.
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Notes
W.M. Ormrod, “The Politics of Pestilence: Government in England after the Black Death,” in The Black Death in England, ed. W.M. Ormrod and P.G. Lindley (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 155–57; R.C. Palmer, English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348–1381. A Transformation of Governance and Law (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), pp. 14–17. The plague was a Europe-wide phenomenon and other states similarly issued ordinances regulating labor: R.S. Gottfried, The Black Death (London: Free Press, 1983), p. 95; J.N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms 1250–1516, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976–78), vol. 2, pp. 4–5.
B.H. Putnam, “Maximum Wage-Laws for Priests after the Black Death,” American Historical Review 21 (1915–16): 12–32.
For an interdisciplinary consideration of some of the issues see the collection of papers in The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. J. Bothwell, PJ.P. Goldberg and W.M. Ormrod (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2000).
For some recent views, see R.H. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000–1500 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993); B.M.S. Campbell, ed., Before the Black Death: Studies in the “Crisis” of the Early Fourteenth Century (Manchester, 1991); C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages, C. 1200–1520, rev. edn. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
B.H. Putnam, The Enforcement of the Statute of Labourers during the First Decade after the Black Death, 1349–59, Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law 32 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908); Palmer, English Law in the Age of the Black Death (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), pp. 23–24; A. Musson and W.M. Ormrod, The Evolution of English Justice: Law Politics and Society in the Fourteenth Century (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 52–53, 90–96.
S.A.C. Penn and C. Dyer, “Wages and Earnings in Late Medieval England: Evidence from the Enforcement of the Labour Laws,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 43 (1990): 356–76; J. Hatcher, “England in the Aftermath of the Black Death,” Past and Present 144 (1994): 3–35.
L.R. Poos, “The Social Context of Statute of Labourers Enforcement,” Law and History Review 1 (1983): 27–52; M.K. Mcintosh, Controlling Misbehaviour in England, 1310–1600 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
W.M. Ormrod, “The English Government and the Black Death of 1348–49,” in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W.M. Ormrod (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1986), pp. 175–88; Ormrod, “Politics of Pestilence,” pp. 147–67; C. Dyer, “Work Ethics in the Fourteenth Century,” in Problem of Labour, ed. Bothwell, Goldberg, and Ormrod (York: University of York/York Medieval Press, 2000), pp. 21–41; S. Knight, “The Voice of Labour in Fourteenth-Century English Literature,” in Problem of Labour, pp. 101–22.
Modern historical scholarship is circumspect about the extent of the economic crisis in the 1350s, suggesting that in fact it was in the 1370s, two decades later (following harvest failures and further bouts of plague), that the economic and social problems began to bite. See A.R. Bridbury, “The Black Death,” Economic History Review, 2nd series 26 (1973): 577–92 and Hatcher, “Aftermath of the Black Death.”
For example: Calendar of Early Mayors’ Court Rolls, 1298–1307, ed. A.H. Thomas (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1924), pp. 59–64; M. Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 183–90; S. Rees-Jones, “York’s Civic Administration, 1354–1464,” in The Government of Medieval York: Essays in Commemoration of the 1396 Royal Charter, ed. S. Rees-Jones, Borthwick Studies in History, 3 (York: Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, 1997), pp. 126–27; Putnam, Enforcement, p. 156.
W.O. Ault, “Some Early Village By-laws,” English Historical Review 45 (1930): 209, 211–12; W.O. Ault, “Open Field Husbandry,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 55 (1965).
For more detailed discussion see A. Musson, “New Labor Laws, New Remedies? Legal Reaction to the Black Death ‘Crisis’,” in Fourteenth Century England I, ed. N. Saul (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), pp. 75–79.
B.H. Putnam, “Chief Justice Shareshull and the Economic and Legal Codes of 1351–52,” University of Toronto Law Journal 5 (1943–4): 251–81.
B.H. Putnam, The Place in Legal History of Sir William Shareshull (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), p. 54; Musson and Ormrod, Evolution, pp. 153–54. For Shareshull’s speech to parliament see RP, vol. 2, p. 225.
J.A. Doig, “Political Propaganda and Royal Proclamations in Late Medieval England,” Historical Research 71 (1998): 259–60; A. Musson, Medieval Law in Context: The Growth of Legal Consciousness from Magna Carta to the Peasants’ Revolt (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 225–30.
E. Powell, “The Administration of Criminal Justice in Late-Medieval England: Peace Sessions and Assizes,” in The Political Context of Law, ed. R. Eales and D. Sullivan (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), pp. 52, 56.
Some Sessions of the Peace in Lincolnshire, 1360–75, ed. R. Sillem, Lincoln Record Society, 30 (Hereford: Lincoln Record Society, 1936), pp. xlv–xlvii; Yorkshire Sessions of the Peace, 1361–64, ed. B.H. Putnam, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 100 (Leeds: Yorkshire Record Society, 1939), p. xiv; Powell, “Criminal Justice,” pp. 52–53. The peace commissions of 1361–62 did not formally include the assize justices.
See the comment to this effect made during a judgment by Robert Thorpe in 1367 (Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, La graunde abridgement…dernierment conferre avesque la copy escript, et per ceo correct [London: Richard Tottell, 1565], vol. l, fol.89pl.30).
Select Cases of Trespass from the King’s Courts, 1307–1399, ed. M.S. Arnold, Selden Society 100 (London: Selden Society, 1985), vol. 1, pp. xl, xliv (see footnotes for references); C. Dyer, Everyday Life in Medieval England (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), pp. 230–31. For the king’s bench in the 1350s, see Putnam, “Shareshull and Economic Legal Codes,” pp. 262–64.
E. Clark, “Medieval Labor Law and English Local Courts,” American Journal of Legal History 27 (1983): 332–37 (quotation at p. 335).
B.H. Putnam, “Transformation of the Keepers of the Peace into the Justices of the Peace, 1327–1380,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser. 12 (1329): 19–48; R.W Kaeuper, War, Justice and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 174–83, 386–87; Palmer, English Law, pp. 9–27, 54–56; Ormrod, “Politics of Pestilence,” p. 157.
See for example in 1352: JUST 1/1018 (printed in E.M. Thompson, “Offenders against the Statute of Laborers in Wiltshire, A.D. 1349,” Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 33 [1903–1904]: 384–409) and 1355: PRO, Court of King’s Bench, Ancient Indictments, KB 9/131.
CPR 1354–58, pp. 59–62, 125; The Order of Serjeants at Law, ed. J. H. Baker, Selden Society Supplementary Series 5 (London: Selden Society, 1984), pp. 156–57, 159. Moriz and Cavendish were called in 1362.
13 Richard II, st. 1, c.8; B.H. Putnam, Proceedings before the Justices of the Peace in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London: Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd., 1938), pp. cviii–cix; Poos, “Social Context,” p. 30.
D.J. Ibbetson, A Historical Introduction to the Law of Obligations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 38; Putnam, Enforcement, pp. 187–89.
R.B. Pugh, Imprisonment in Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 38–39, 169, 208–209, 366–67.
Sessions of the Peace for Bedfordshire, 1355–1359, 1363–1364, ed. E.G. Kimball, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 48 (London: H.M.S.O., 1969), pp. 34, 47–48, 73–75; Poos, “Social Context,” pp. 31–33.
For a more general discussion, see A. Musson, “Sub-keepers and Constables: the Role of Local Officials in Keeping the Peace in Fourteenth-Century England,” English Historical Review 117 (2002): 1–24.
C. Dyer, “The Social and Economic Background to the Rural Revolt of 1381,” in The English Rising of 1381, ed. R.H. Hilton and T. Aston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 17–19; M.J. Hettinger, “The Role of the Statute of Laborers in the Social and Economic Background to the Great Revolt in East Anglia,” unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Indiana, 1987, pp. 154–58, 192.
G.H. Jones, “Per Quod Servitium Amisit,” Law Quarterly Review 44 (1958): 39–45; Ibbetson, Law of Obligations, p. 66; Arnold, Select Cases of Trespass, vol. 1, p. xliv.
Palmer, English Law, p. 228. See generally A. Kirafly, The Action on the Case (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1951).
S.EC. Milsom, Historical Foundations of the Common Law, 2nd. edn. (London: Butterworths, 1981), pp. 289–95, 305, 318–20; Palmer, English Law, pp. 164–227, 296–300.
CM. Barron, “Lay Solidarities: the Wards of Medieval London,” in Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds, ed. P. Safford, J.L. Nelson and J. Martindale (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 218–25; S. Rees Jones, “The Regulation of Labor in Medieval English Towns,” in Problem of Labor, ed. Bothwell, Goldberg, and Ormrod, pp. 132–42.
Rees Jones, “Regulation of Labour,” pp. 138–39; Barron, “Wards of Medieval London,” pp. 223–24; see for example: Liber Albus, ed. H.T. Riley, Rolls Series (London: R. Griffin, 1861), pp. 334, 338.
P. Nightingale, A Medieval Merchant Community. The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London, 1000–1485 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 179. See also B.R. McRee, “Religious Gilds and Regulation of Behaviour in Medieval Towns,” in People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages, ed. J. Rosenthal and C. Richmond (Gloucester: A. Suttton, 1987), pp. 108–22.
A. Harding, “Early Trailbaston Proceedings from the Lincoln Roll of 1305,” in Medieval Legal Records Edited in Memory of C.A.F. Meekings, ed. R.F. Hunnisett and J.B. Post (London: HMSO, 1978), pp. 143–68; Given-Wilson, “Labour in the Context of English Government,” pp. 88–94, 97.
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© 2004 Kellie Robertson and Michael Uebel
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Musson, A. (2004). Reconstructing English Labor Laws: A Medieval Perspective. In: Robertson, K., Uebel, M. (eds) The Middle Ages at Work. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07552-9_6
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