> If you had managed to survive into the later 14th century, when Piers
> was written, you too would have looked back at the 13th as a pretty
> damn golden age.
>
>
> Shane Mage
Bro - if what you are suggesting is that there was some basis in fact for such a belief - that's not true.
For the *survivors* things were better - MUCH better. The effect of the labor shortages post-Black Death included not only higher wages (despite futile legislation that attempted to stop the process), but the end of serfdom and slavery. In the 13th century most of the English were serfs, in the 15th almost none were.
One result was the entry of the common people into political history. In 1381 they seized London and beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. A true Golden Age.
And the demographic disaster of the mid-late 14th century also resulted in the most marginal land going out of cultivation, with a consequent virtuous cycle of increased pasturage, a greater animal to people ratio, increased manure for the better fields, and increased yields.
In the 15th century the average English diet (measured by calories and amount of meat eaten) reached the highest point in history until well into the 20th century.
Thorold Rogers, of the great _History of Agriculture and Prices_, famously called the 15th century 'the golden age of the English labourer'. The best recent summary is the excellent Christopher Dyer's _Standards of Living in the late Middle Ages_ (Cambridge, 1989).
The "Merry England" of church ales and maypoles, Hocktide, midsummer watches, Corpus Christi pagents, Robin Hood plays and morris dances was almost entirely a development of the post-Black Death late middle ages. See Ronald Hutton's _The Rise and Fall of Merry England_ (Oxford 1994).
Kalecki understood. Labor shortage = Golden Age. :>)
john mage