The heavy mortality left many country districts bereft of labour, and landowners were compelled to offer higher wages if agriculture was to go on.

In vain Parliament passed Statutes of Labourers to prevent the peasant from securing an advance.

These Acts of Parliament expressly forbade a rise in wages; the landless man or woman was "to serve the employer who shall require him to do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the neighbourhood two years before the pestilence." The scarcity of labour drove landowners to compete for the services of the labourer, in spite of Parliament.
Discontent was rife in those years of social change.

The Statutes of Labourers were ineffectual; but they galled the labourers and kept serfdom alive.

The tenants had their grievance because they were obliged to give labour-service to their lords.