The implementation of national labour legislation in England after the Black Death, 1349–1400

Mark Bailey
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Abstract

The responses of labour markets to global pandemics are attracting renewed interest, although the English labour laws in response to the Black Death of 1348/9 – capping wages, imposing annual contracts, and restricting mobility – have a long and established scholarship. The conventional wisdom is that the legislation represented an extension of existing local practices and created common cause among all categories of employer. Yet this view is hard to reconcile with the fact that, despite subsequent revisions, the legislation soon failed. These arguments are tested through original research into how the legislation was actually enforced in a variety of legal tribunals (manorial, borough, and royal). A clear distinction is maintained between public presentments and private litigation, and a robust methodology is pursued to record their absence as well as quantifying their presence. This casts new light on the novelty of the labour laws, the reasons for their failure, and their influence on contract law. The analysis exemplifies the potential for short‐term legal responses to infectious diseases to have unintended and unanticipated long‐term consequences.
1349-1400 年黑死病之后英格兰国家劳动立法的实施情况
尽管英国应对 1348/9 年黑死病的劳动法--规定工资上限、实行年度合同和限制流动性--具有悠久的学术史,但劳动力市场对全球流行病的反应再次引起人们的关注。传统观点认为,这些法律是对当地现有做法的延伸,为各类雇主创造了共同的事业。然而,这种观点很难与事实相协调,尽管后来进行了修订,但立法很快就失败了。通过对各种法庭(庄园法庭、自治市法庭和皇家法庭)实际执行立法的情况进行原创性研究,这些论点得到了验证。研究明确区分了公开陈述和私人诉讼,并采用可靠的方法来记录它们的缺失以及量化它们的存在。这为劳动法的新颖性、失败原因及其对合同法的影响提供了新的视角。该分析体现了针对传染病的短期法律应对措施有可能产生意想不到的长期后果。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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