Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [382]
“It’s outrageous, what labourers are being paid,” Walter stormed.
“But that’s how we made so much money,” Edward protested.
“Not any more, fool,” his father reminded him curtly. “We’re the ones who pay, now.”
All over the country, not only feudal landlords like Godefroi, but those acquiring lands at cheap prices – merchants, freemen, or former serfs – were in the same position, and they naturally came to the same simple conclusion: those working on the land were asking too much. There were protests about labour costs by 1349. By 1351 the Statute of Labourers was passed in Parliament, regulating wages through the courts.
It was armed with this new weapon that Walter, accompanied by his son, faced Agnes and her children at their cottage and told her curtly:
“I’m cutting your wages.”
To his surprise she only shrugged.
“Then I’ll work for someone else.”
“I can take you to the shire court for that,” he warned her. The Statute forbade desertion for higher wages. But Agnes was not impressed.
“And what does Elias get paid?” she demanded.
“None of your business,” he snarled. His own little workforce was of course being paid the highest wages in the area.
“You’ll pay me the same, and from now on you’ll pay the two elder children full wages too,” she retorted calmly. “Take me to court if you like.” With a brisk nod she closed the door and left him standing there.
Although it was against the Wilson interest, Edward could not help admiring the stubborn woman who stood up to his father so firmly; and he knew very well that Agnes was right. For the Statute of Labourers, in practice, could only be enforced where local landlords wanted it to be; if farmers were anxious to employ labourers on any terms they would simply disregard it. Walter was in no position to take Agnes to court, but before he left Avonsford that day he swore to his son:
“Damn that woman. I’ll get even with her. You’ll see.”
It was in any case only a minor irritation. In the next few years Walter not only sold his grain, but drove an ever-increasing flock of sheep up on the high ground, and here again he took advantage of Gilbert de Godefroi’s conservatism and drove them on to pastures, out to the old sheep house beyond, that the knight had not used for years.
One other measure from Parliament was directly useful to them at this point. For years, the king had given a monopoly of wool exports to the merchants of the Staple – the oligarchy of rich traders who operated only through a single mart or Staple, usually across the Channel. This made it easy for the king to levy customs duties and also put at his disposal a small group of monopolists who would make him large loans. But this system angered the smaller wool traders who managed in 1353 to obtain a new Ordinance of the Staple which allowed local trading.
“Now we can sell our wool through Winchester or Bristol,” Walter exulted, and by expert trading, and occasionally misrepresenting the quality of his wool, he soon increased his profits still further.
But then, in 1355, came his greatest chance of all. For in 1355, Thomas de Godefroi went to war.
Few campaigns in history have been more glorious than that of the Black Prince in 1355. Even Edward Wilson was moved to admiration by the splendour of it. As for Thomas de Godefroi, it seemed to the young knight that his hour had finally come.
“Thinks he’s one of King Arthur’s knights,” Walter remarked scornfully.
It was true. But it was not surprising. For the whole proceedings were bathed in the golden light of chivalry. Some ten years before, Edward III had vowed to establish a round table at Windsor, and both the huge table itself and a building to house it had been begun. Of still more significance,