Popular Unrest and the Rise of a Labour Class-Consciousness in Late Medieval England (1300’s-1500’s)

Abstract

Most historians attribute the founding of modern England and the rise of labour class-consciousness to the period after the Industrial Revolution when workers started to call for the improvement of their conditions and for appropriate wages in an organized way under the leadership of their respective trade unions. This work aims to demonstrate that the roots of modern England as it is known today are even deeper in the history of this country. Following the Great Famine and the Black Death (1348), a severe labour shortage occurred, and the labourers in towns and villages saw it as their legitimate right to ask for higher wages and lower rents of land. The lords responded with an Ordinance and Statute of Labourers (1351) to keep wages to their pre-plague level. In the fourteenth century, the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) had taken a different course; around 1360, English victories and plunder of the French lands turned into defeats and humiliation. Most of the blame was put on the government of the period. To finance such an unrewarding war, Parliament decided that the commons had to contribute to this enterprise; hence three successive poll taxes were imposed on all the English population whatever their status or wealth. The combination of all such elements as increasing demand for labour and low wages after the Black Death, excessive war taxation, and the government’s corruption that led to defeats in the Hundred Years’ War against France, led to a common feeling of oppression and discontent among the common people. This explains the calls for revolt in 1381 and 1450, to mention but a few, and the full-scale response to them. The important number of facts about social unrest in fourteenth and fifteenth century England provided in this work, and the sources used to support these facts make it possible to assume that the late medieval class was fully aware of its strength and the importance of its role in society as a homogenous class having the same sufferings and goals. Hence, the idea of labour class-consciousness in this period is fully justified.