Scarce Hands, Rising Pay
1Prices in a market depend on supply, how much of something is available, and demand, how much of it people want and can pay for. When something becomes scarce while people still want it, its price tends to rise. When there is more of it than buyers want, its price tends to fall. If a village has one baker and many hungry families, for example, the baker can usually charge more for bread than if three bakers compete for the same customers. Work has a price too: a wage is the price an employer pays for someone's labor.
2The Black Death reached England in 1348. Within about two years it had killed perhaps a third to a half of the people, though historians' estimates vary. The fields that survived the plague still had to be plowed, sown and harvested, and the lords who owned them still wanted their crops brought in. In some villages so many people died that houses stood empty and only a few hands were left for land that had once needed a crowd. There were far fewer workers to do the job.
3The king and many landowners did not welcome what followed. In 1349 King Edward III issued the Ordinance of Labourers, and in 1351 Parliament passed a similar law. Workers who asked for more than the old wages, and employers who paid more, could be fined or jailed. Some lords obeyed. Many others quietly offered higher pay rather than watch their crops rot, and some workers left their home villages to find better wages elsewhere.
4The same forces affected goods from far away. In the 1300s, pepper and other spices from Asia reached Europe after a long journey through many traders' hands, and only a limited amount arrived each year. Merchants from Venice, who bought spices in ports such as Alexandria in Egypt, controlled much of the supply that reached western Europe. Wealthy Europeans prized spices for cooking and medicine and paid high prices for them.