10 - ‘The World Turned Upside Down’: Rural Society, 1350–1500

Summary

The Lower Orders

The surfeit of land on more attractive terms and tenures, the availability of better-paid employment, and, to a lesser extent, the dissolution of villeinage and serfdom, presented clear opportunities for social and economic advancement among the lower orders of Suffolk society. These opportunities encouraged economic individualism and personal enterprise. Young teenagers now had ample opportunity to leave the family home to work in domestic service, perhaps on a dairy farm or in the house of a textile manufacturer, or to establish their own home while picking up regular work as a labourer. Farmers could expand their holdings or provide their sons with sufficient land to earn a decent livelihood. Many people seized such opportunities readily. The proportion of people who were landless is not knowable, but it must have fallen dramatically after 1349 and remained low. Labourers and petty craft workers acquired modest houses and smallholdings of a few acres, and enjoyed good earnings (over 2d. per day) and enhanced purchasing power. Middling farmers constructed small dairy and pig herds, exploited a dozen or so acres of arable land, and were increasingly described as ‘husbandmen’, while most villages contained half a dozen wealthier farmers (yeomen), who leased components of demesnes and constructed sizeable holdings (above 50 acres) of their own. If we take England as whole, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita probably doubled between 1300 and 1470.

The problem of escalating costs and rising wage bills on demesnes also reflected the improved earning power of the lower orders of society. The wage rates of skilled craftsmen nearly doubled between c. 1340 and c. 1440 in England, and unskilled workers enjoyed rises of more than 50 per cent. The day rate paid to harvest reapers on the Mildenhall demesne rose from 1d. in 1324 to 3d. in 1391, the cash stipends received by ploughmen on the demesne of Hinderclay doubled between 1340 and 1400, and those paid at Chevington increased from 13s. to 18s. between 1420 and 1439. Manorial courts sought to punish those labourers who habitually charged high fees to employers or who refused to work locally because they reckoned to earn more elsewhere.