The historical claim of this section is that the ordinance commanded the labour of survivors by fixing a standard from the past, the wages of a named year in each place, and by distributing the work of detecting breaches among local officers, neighbours, aggrieved parties and any willing prosecutor, while its preamble and its last provision describe those it bound as idle and inclined to crime. For the debate between Putnam and Cohn, the text shows an instrument designed for enforcement and an expression of contempt in one document; it cannot say which mattered more.
4.1The address and the reason
The text begins with a greeting from king to prelate: "Edward by the grace of God etc. to the reverend father in Christ William, by the same grace archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, greeting." The command reaches the archbishop as one copy among others. Henderson's translation stops before the end of the document, so the instruction to the archbishop, whatever it was, is missing. What remains is the body of the ordinance as the archbishop received it.
The reason follows at once, in a single sentence that does three things. It states a fact: "Because a great part of the people and especially of the workmen and servants has now died in that pestilence". It states a behaviour that followed: "some, seeing the straights of the masters and the scarcity of servants, are not willing to serve unless they receive excessive wages". And it adds a second behaviour: "others, rather than through labour to gain their living, prefer to beg in idleness". Only after these does the king speak in his own person: "We, considering the grave inconveniences which might come from the lack especially of ploughmen and such labourers, have held deliberation and treaty concerning this with the prelates and nobles and other learned men sitting by us; by whose consentient counsel we have seen fit to ordain:".
The order of the sentence is the order of the argument. The pestilence comes first, in a subordinate clause; the ordinance neither counts the dead nor names the disease. Its subject is the consequence for masters and servants: survivors have seen the masters' difficulty and used it. The word "excessive" carries the judgment and is not defined until the standard is set. The reason for acting is a future harm, "the grave inconveniences which might come", located in agriculture, in the lack of ploughmen; who would bear it, the text does not say.
Sorted as Neustadt and May propose, the preamble states as known that many workers have died and that some survivors demand more or beg; it states as feared the inconveniences that might come; and it presumes, without saying so, that the wages paid before the pestilence were the right ones. The counsel it records is of prelates, nobles and learned men; no one speaks for the servants.
4.2Who must serve
The first command defines its subject with care. It applies to "every man and woman of our kingdom of England, of whatever condition, whether bond or free, who is able bodied and below the age of sixty years, not living from trade nor carrying on a fixed craft, nor having of his own the means of living, or land of his own with regard to the cultivation of which he might occupy himself, and not serving another". Each clause narrows the class. Neither sex nor legal status excludes; the body and age do; and four economic exclusions define the bound person as one with nothing else to live by: no trade or fixed craft, no means, no land to work, no present master.
The command itself follows: "if he, considering his station, be sought after to serve in a suitable service, he shall be bound to serve him who has seen fit so to seek after him". The initiative lies with the one who seeks. The servant does not offer labour; the servant is "sought after", and once sought is "bound". Two qualifications soften the command on its face, "considering his station" and "a suitable service", and neither is defined. Like "excessive", they leave a judgment to whoever applies the text.
The classification is a convention of equivalence in Desrosières's sense: it counts no one, but it makes a category that can be acted upon, and a justice would have to decide of a particular person whether that person's land or craft was enough to count.
4.3The standard of the twentieth year
The wage command sets the standard that gives "excessive" its meaning: "and he shall take only the wages, liveries, meed or salary which, in the places where he sought to serve, were accustomed to be paid in the twentieth year of our reign of England, or the five or six common years next preceding."
The standard has two coordinates. Time is fixed for the whole realm; place is "the places where he sought to serve". The ordinance states no wage, only a rule for finding one.
Here the ordinance meets Scott's argument most directly. Its measure is uniform in time and local in content: the crown could not know what a reaper was paid in a given village in the twentieth year, but someone in that village could. The standard is therefore legible only through local memory. In this article's reading, the ordinance simplifies by freezing time, not by erasing place; it makes wages legible by asking what was remembered, not by imposing a new scale. Scott's account of the state overriding local knowledge fits badly here, because the ordinance needs local knowledge to function at all.
The record states the same standard more briefly, in a sentence it repeats in its Scenario and in its answer to the second question:
Exceptions were placed for one's own livelihood, land, occupation, and so on, possible labour was required from those under 60, and wages were restricted on the basis of customary existing practice.
The record's "customary existing practice" omits the named year. The ordinance does not ask for the customary wage in general; it asks for the wage customary in a particular past, before the pestilence. The difference matters for any later comparison, since a wage fixed to a remembered year is a different standard from one fixed to whatever custom happens to be at the time of a hearing.
4.4Lords first, and not more than necessary
A proviso follows: "Provided, that in thus retaining their service, the lords are preferred before others of their bondsmen or their land tenants: so, nevertheless that such lords thus retain as many as shall be necessary and not more;". Two rules sit in one sentence. The first gives lords a prior claim on the labour of their own bondsmen and tenants. The second limits that claim to as many as are necessary. The second rule has no measure. Who decides what number is necessary is not said.
Among those who might seek labour, lords came first with their own people; and since a lord who kept more than necessary would deprive a neighbour, the proviso leaves a conflict among employers that only the word "necessary" governs.
4.5Proof, prison and surety
The penalty for refusal is set out with procedure: "and if any man or woman, being thus sought after in service, will not do this, the fact being proven by two faithful men before the sheriffs or the bailiffs of our lord the king, or the constables of the town where this happens to be done,—straightway through them, or some one of them, he shall be taken and sent to the next jail, and there he shall remain in strict custody until he shall find surety for serving in the aforesaid form."
Two local men testify; a sheriff, bailiff or constable takes the refuser to the next jail; the custody has no fixed term and ends when someone in the refuser's world stands surety that the refuser will serve. The crown does not inspect. Its command reaches the person it binds through the people around that person.
The next paragraph extends the penalty to those who leave service early: "if a reaper or mower, or other workman or servant, of whatever standing or condition he be, who is retained in the service of any one, do depart from the said service before the end of the term agreed, without permission or reasonable cause, he shall undergo the penalty of imprisonment". The sentence continues: "and let no one, under the same penalty, presume to receive or retain such a one in his service." The second clause binds employers too, so the market is closed from both sides: the servant may not leave, and no one may hire the servant who does. What counts as "permission" or "reasonable cause" the text does not say.
4.6The payer, the taker and the informer
The wage rule binds both sides of the bargain: "Let no one, moreover, pay or permit to be paid to anyone more wages, livery, meed or salary than was customary as has been said; nor let any one in any other manner exact or receive them, under penalty of paying to him who feels himself aggrieved from this, double the sum that has thus been paid or promised, exacted or received;".
The double penalty goes not to the crown but to the aggrieved, whom the text does not identify, and failing them to "any one of the people" who will prosecute, in the local court of the lord of the place. Enforcement is local twice over: brought by someone on the spot and heard where the breach happened.
The lords themselves are not exempt: "And if the lords of the towns or manors presume of themselves or through their servants in any way to act contrary to this our present ordinance, then in the Counties, Wapentakes and Trithings suit shall be brought against them in the aforesaid form for the triple penalty (of the sum) thus promised or paid by them or their servants ;". A lord who pays above the standard pays three times the sum, not two, and is sued in the courts of the county and its subdivisions, not in his own court.
The penalties are not symmetrical. Refusal and early departure are punished by custody; paying or taking too much, by double the sum; a lord's overpayment, by triple. The labourer's body is held, the employer's purse charged. The text gives no reason for the difference, and this article supplies none.
One further clause addresses contracts made before the ordinance: a person who had agreed to pay more "shall not be bound by reason of the said covenant to pay more than at another time was wont to be paid to such person ;". The ordinance reaches backwards. Agreements made in the months after the mortality, at the higher wages servants could then demand, are cut down to the old standard.
4.7Artisans and victuallers: two standards in one text
The next paragraph extends the wage rule to named trades: "Likewise saddlers, skinners, white-tawers, cordwainers, tailors, smiths, carpenters, masons, tilers, shipwrights, carters and all other artisans and labourers shall not take for their labour and handiwork more than what, in the places where they happen to labour, was customarily paid to such persons in the said twentieth year and in the other common years preceding, as has been said ; and if any man take more, he shall be committed to the nearest jail in the manner aforesaid."
Those with a fixed craft, excluded from the duty to serve whoever sought them, are not excluded from the wage standard: the same year applies, and the same jail.
The paragraph on sellers of food sets a different standard. Butchers, fishmongers, hostlers, brewers, bakers, poulterers and others are to "be bound to sell such victuals for a reasonable price, having regard for the price at which such victuals are sold in the adjoining places : so that such vendors may have moderate gains, not excessive,". The text goes on to allow for the distance from which the food is carried. There is no named year here. The standard is the price in "the adjoining places" now, and the allowance for transport. Its key words are "reasonable" and "moderate", and both require judgment.
Two standards thus stand in one text: labour is paid as in a remembered year, food sold at present neighbouring prices and what is reasonable. Cohn's argument, as its note gives it, concerns contradictions between the labour laws of different places, so a difference inside one English text is not the kind his comparison addresses. It does show that the ordinance's makers applied no single principle, and the text gives no reason for treating labour and food differently.
4.8Mayors, bailiffs and justices to be assigned
The enforcement of the food prices brings in a new layer of officers. The mayor and bailiffs of cities, boroughs, market towns, ports and other places "shall have power to enquire concerning each and every one who shall in any way err against this, and to levy the aforesaid penalty for the benefit of those at whose suit such delinquents shall have been convicted;". This is a power of inquiry, not only of hearing complaints. The town officers may look for breaches.
The ordinance then turns on its own officers: "and in case that the same mayor and bailiffs shall neglect to carry out the aforesaid, and shall be convicted of this before justices to be assigned by us, then the same mayor and bailiffs shall be compelled through the same justices, to pay to such wronged person or to another prosecuting in his place, the treble of the thing thus sold, and nevertheless, on our part too, they shall be grievously punished."
Here a royal officer appears who is not yet in place: "justices to be assigned by us", unnamed, uncounted, their jurisdiction not described beyond this clause. The ordinance foresees that local enforcement may fail and creates, in a phrase, a royal check on it.
Putnam's study, by its note, follows the records of the justices who enforced the ordinance and the statute of 1351 and shows that enforcement grew into the work of the justices of the peace (Putnam 1908). The phrase "justices to be assigned by us" is where, in the text, that growth could begin; the text cannot show that it did.
4.9The alms clause
The text in Henderson's translation ends with a prohibition aimed not at labourers but at those who might help them: "And because many sound beggars do refuse to labour so long as they can live from begging alms, giving themselves up to idleness and sins, and, at times, to robbery and other crimes—let no one, under the aforesaid pain of imprisonment presume, under colour of piety or alms to give anything to such as can very well labour, or to cherish them in their sloth,—so that thus they may be compelled to labour for the necessaries of life."
The clause gives its reason first, as the preamble did, and the reason is a description: the beggars are "sound", that is, able bodied; they "refuse to labour"; they give themselves to "idleness and sins" and sometimes to "robbery and other crimes". The prohibition follows. No one may give alms to those who can work, and the penalty is imprisonment. The purpose is stated at the end: "so that thus they may be compelled to labour for the necessaries of life."
The clause reaches into charity, which in 1349 was a religious duty, and the copy translated here was addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury. The text does not say what the archbishop was to do about it; the instruction to him is missing from the translation. What the clause does is redefine a gift to an able-bodied beggar as an offence, by calling it, in advance, something done "under colour of piety". Piety becomes a possible pretext.
4.10What the text shows about attitude
Cohn's argument, by its note, is that the labour laws expressed elites' fear and contempt of labourers as much as any economic calculation (Cohn 2007). The ordinance gives material for both halves of that sentence. Its economic calculation is visible: a shortage of ploughmen, a fixed wage, a closed market for servants, penalties on overpaying employers. Its contempt is visible too. The preamble describes those who demand more as taking advantage of the masters' difficulty, and those who beg as preferring idleness. The alms clause describes the able-bodied poor as given to sins and crimes. Its fear is visible in the phrase "the grave inconveniences which might come".
The text does not weigh these. A reader who comes to it with Putnam's question finds a detailed machinery of proof, custody, money penalties, private prosecution and royal oversight, all of which is consistent with a law meant to be enforced and enforceable. A reader who comes with Cohn's finds a description of labourers that is moral before it is economic. Both are on the same page.
4.11The record beside the text
The platform record's Scenario sets out the case in a few sentences. Its second sentence, already quoted, reduces the persons and the standard to a line. Its next sentences classify the law:
It is a historical coercive provision restricting the refusal of employment and high wages.
It must not be reinterpreted as having the function of a guarantee of minimum living.
The same two sentences answer the record's third question, which asks:
May this law be classified as a modern minimum wage system that guaranteed worker income?
The record's caution is well placed. The ordinance sets a maximum, not a minimum, and guarantees no one employment or pay; it guarantees only that those who are sought will serve, and not for more than before.
The record leaves out the named year, the witnesses, the custody until surety, the graded penalties, the private prosecutor, the courts, the justices to be assigned, the alms clause and the reason the ordinance gives for itself. Its decision window describes the platform's procedure, not the ordinance's:
After-the-fact review · store separately the facts present in the source text and the reproduction check currently executed
The fifth question asks what must be observed for a comparison with a present issue of labour and reward to be kept or withdrawn, and the record answers:
What must be observed is the delay and the distribution of burden between the agreed payment and the actual payment.
Where the payment unit, scope of labour, and coercive conditions differ, it is not interpreted as the same wage structure.
The first sentence points at a clause the record does not quote. In the ordinance, the difference between an agreed and an actual payment was not a delay to be observed but a cut the law itself made, voiding covenants above the customary wage. And coercion, which the second sentence lists as a condition that might differ, is the ordinance's substance.
The parent study's ledger, reading the record, finds that it shows a public act, a restriction of movement, work or assembly; that it does not say whether the act came before its cause or effect was established; that it names no gap in time between the event and its record; that it gives no count; that it does not name who bore the cost while the act waited; and that, apart from the platform's recurring sentences, it names no later finding that would change how the act should be read. Those readings are accurate for the record. The source text says more on one of them. It names a feared cost, "the grave inconveniences which might come from the lack especially of ploughmen", even if it does not say who would bear it, and it names those who were made to bear the act itself: the able bodied under sixty with no land or craft, the servants who wished to leave, the beggars. The record names the category of worker but not the cost.
4.12What this case adds
For the debate between Putnam and Cohn, the two readings do not compete for the same evidence in the text: the machinery Putnam's justices worked is there in detail, the contempt Cohn describes is there in the preamble and the alms clause. Which counted for more in practice the text cannot say; that needs the enforcement records Putnam used and the European comparison Cohn made.
For Scott's argument, the ordinance set a uniform standard it could not apply without local knowledge. The year was the same everywhere; the wage paid in it was not; and the crown saw through neighbours, witnesses, informers and local courts. The simplification depended on local knowledge rather than overriding it.