The Black Death in England * The Black Death introduced “a complete revolution in the occupation of the land” * Shaped the social and economic development from the scale of deaths it caused * England’s late medieval development was impacted by a variety of political and constitutional forces as well as by independent changes in social and economic structures * Black Death “undoubtedly accentuated the tendencies in course of development, but it neither originated them nor has it materially affected their course” * The world was already changing, and Black Death only gave it a slight push to the direction * It is widely believed that the English society and economy were already in the throes of major change, aka crisis * Before the onset of the plague, there was already equivalent consensus that the Black Death did relatively little to speed the process thereafter * Despite the enormous death rate many aspects of life have been shown to have reverted swiftly and powerfully towards normality * The generation after the first plague the gap between richer and poorer members of village communities widened as the upper and middle strata prospered disproportionately * - primarily because the great majority of the numerically dominant smallholders, cottagers and landless lacked the resources to take full adv. of the opportunities for advancement which were created * Any improvements which took place in the material welfare of wage-earners were decidedly muted * Money wages rose in the generation after 1348-1349 so too did the prices of almost all basic goods * The real rewards of laborers, servants and artisans improved only marginally if at all * Black Death resulted in only modest improvements in the standards of living of laborers and artisans, despite the difficulty of producing satisfactory explanations of why this