Featured Their Plagues, and Maybe Ours

Great. My knowledge concerns the British scene and - as always with history - it seems to me when we delve we learn as much about the present as we do about the past. First a bit on the history of the idea that c. 1400 was a great time to be a peasant in England.

Back around 1800 popular writers like Tom Paine and William Cobbett had big criticisms of the contemporary political economy. Actually, I think they were only repeating what Adam Smith had said (more tactfully!), and they were right. Around 1820 Cobbett however propagandised for his position by saying farm workers were much better off back in the old Catholic days before Henry VIII. That became a very popular idea during the later 19th century, and Thorold Rogers rolled out a lot of historical statistics to back it up around 1884. To the best of my recollection that thesis was what I was taught as a schoolboy in the 1960’s – that plague killed so many workers the remainder could bargain for high wages (appealing because simple and logical).

As I got into coins I started to get worries about this. My main question was – if the peasant were getting great wages – what were they being paid with? Silver pennies seem to be common but much earlier – for Henry III and especially Ed I. By the later 14th and 15th centuries the circulating silver was getting sparse and junky - gold was replacing it, and I could not believe the peasants got to handle much gold. This seemed to tie in with contemporary comment - say Langland’s “Piers Ploughman” – which directly contradicts the Thorold Rogers idea, being one long moan about the ill treatment of poor Piers by that dratted Lady Fee (who perhaps was the gold noble personified).

Anyhow that was where I had got to when an extraordinary series of event happened at a big Leeds medievalist conference I attended a few years back. Am no expert on this stuff – but went along mostly just to ask my one question which was

“OK – but if the wages were so high - what were the labourers paid with?”

There were maybe 60 people in the room, and three speakers on the stage, two of them eminent Oxbridge numismatists, the other a youngster from a Business College. There was an old fellow sitting next to me, so I struck up conversation, and put my question – and got rebuffed. When I came to the Q&A at the end I put my question to the numismatists on the stage. They batted it around between the pair of them and ducked it – (did not say I was wrong though). Just as I though that was it, the young guy on the stage piped up that I should read a guy called Hatcher. I tracked the young guy down in the bar afterwards and discovered that the grumpy old guy I happened to sit next to was a very very eminent expert on historical demography, and so I surmise the numismatists ducked my question so as to avoid a row with him (just my guess). Also got this citation for Hatcher

You can download the Hatcher paper here:

https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/ehswpaper/11012.htm

As best I recall he takes on the Thorold Rodgers argument that later medieval labour got 4d a day in two ways (my simplification)

1) the account books that Thorold Rogers worked from for building workers were for Cathedrals and Palaces etc. They were not typical and in particular, would not represent wages for labourers but rather payments to gang-masters for labour provision, a big slice of which would not trickle down.

2) Yes – as shown by the Labour Statute, farm workers did ask and get 4d a day. But Thorold Rogers worked that up to 4d a day for 300 days a year. In fact free labour was only needed at harvest time – so yes they could now get 4d a day – but only for a maximum 40 days a year.

Actually I have doubts these sort of folk handled coin at all, much of the time. More likely I think they ran up debts at the local store, which were cleared in gold by direct payments from employer to shop keeper. But that is just my guess.

Rob T

PS - Italy and England probably differed - at least in fine details. Interesting to compare the Peasant's Revolt with the Ciompi affair on that I feel............

 

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"Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. Excellent book. Won a Pulitzer, and deservedly so.

My personal observation: Flu's, plagues, etc. probably originated in Southeast China. I have probably traveled to China (all over that country), over 50 times during my career. In the SE China area, there is Sub-Tropical to Tropical weather (lots and lots of rain with flooding), huge land mass with a lot of slow moving rivers, canals, and standing water, and very dense populations (several cities that Westerners may not be able to name over 10million population each). Additionally, a lot of rice farming (using flooded patties and oxen), make an environment perfect for disease germination. Sanitary conditions are not always the best, and I am sure it has been the same there for thousands of years.


China Southern Dyn After Zhou Cash Coins -Zhou Yuan

 

Perhaps if the coinage had been debased from the high fineness of Angevin silver their real wages had not gone up except on paper, that is it might take 4 of the mid 14th Century pennies to equal the silver of a fine earlier minting and therefore no real increase in wages. Which raises the question, why had the English penny become debased

Do they still employ "night earth" for fertilizer?
.

 

LOL, perhaps. I will say, that I have been in many rural, as well as urban areas. Unless you have a “trained” nose ( I grew up farming large animals), the stench would be overpowering for many Westerners. I would speculate, yeah, there is a lotta human sewage and refuse in many of those waterways.

This is not the only country I have been. Perhaps 35 in my career, many were “Third World”. There are problems, as well as wonderful people EVERYWHERE. However, with tropical conditions, coupled with high populations, lotsa slow moving waters, etc. colliding, the conditions for bacteria and viruses arising are greater.

 

But surely there was no debasement of mid fourteenth pennies? The penny was sterling, just like Angevin issues, was it not?

That's really my line of argument with all the current positions coming from economists. They bend historical fact to suit modern preconception.

There were rather minor weight reductions of the sterling penny in the mid 14th century penny - but they began before the plague.

Major changes to the English/British silver coins age found under William III, George III, George V and George VI. All seem, like Edward III, to be tied to ideology and war rather than plagues

Rob T

PS "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. I agree, great book

 

I am no expert in English coinage, but was there not also a considerable debasement of the silver coinage during the reign of Elizabeth I?

 

The AV coinage at the time was almost 24 carat finess. Under Charles VII the AV coinages where at .999.

 

You are right that I missed a major event from my list – the debasement of the silver coinage, during 9 years, 1544-53, so begun by Henry VIII and terminated by Mary.

Like all the other events I mention it seems closely associated with war funding – but that does not really explain it – since surely about half of England’s kings got involved in continental wars, and before the 20th century none the others much debased. I checked in the Challis book “The Tudor Coinage” – I guess that is still the go-to place – but he seems to say very little on why that debasement happened – just lots of details on who was responsible for the policy. (Actually I knew Challis somewhat, and he seemed to me to generally put a damper on speculation about big issues - even more than other top academics).

I guess he, like me, thought really it was a lot to do with the impetuous nature (or perhaps pig-headed recklessness?) of Henry VIII. If so I am going to count ‘having an impetuous nature’ as a sort of ideology, and score that one too - not as plague, bad harvest, physical shortage of silver, etc - but as prominently an ideological matter.

Rob T

 

Speaking of "plagues" I wonder if anyone buying coins from the countries affected by the coronavirus outbreak worries that they might catch the infection from the packaging. Is that even possible?

I would think that with the amount of mail circulating between countries, if the virus would survive on package surfaces (or even inside of parcels and envelopes) the number of people infected would be exponentially higher.

Quite curious about your thoughts on this matter.

 

Viruses will die right away, no worries.....I just got a coin from Italy last Friday

 

Well, at least some good news, considering that numismatic fairs will likely be banned in parts of Europe this spring. Northern Italy is already under severe travel restrictions, possibly the most draconic employed by a free democratic govt in the last 50 years or so.

 

My advice, don't use Fedex.

https://www.sciencealert.com/study-shows-just-how-long-coronaviruses-can-stick-around-on-a-surface

 

I never have stuff sent via FEDEX, just causes problems with customs/ brokers/
Plus, registered letter post is cheaper and better for health reasons too.

 

First the coronavirus survive outside on any surface no more than 2 days it was stated by a medical expert, other medical experts say only few hours no more than 5 hours. More and more employees have surgical gloves in shops and postal services.

Actually in Europe particularly in France, Germany the new meetings restrictions is now about all 1000 people in the same spot so I think all big or international numismatic fairs in Europe could be cancelled.

All is canceled in Italy and in bars, shops, restaurants... people must be at leat 1 meter from each other so forget about Italian coins show.

Smaller meetings with less than 1000 people are still ok except in North Italy , and some coronavirus clusters city in Europe. However there are now a very strong panic here in Europe particularly from older people, many small events are empty and even people avoid professional meetings working from home or using conference call.

Hope it will help. This can change in worst including travel restrictions at any time.

 

The cruise ship carrying 24 cases of Covid 19 is docking in Oakland at noon. Two cases so far in the town where I live. My house is about 7 miles from the port of Oakland. All of the passengers are disembarking whilst the crew is to stay in quarantine on the ship.

 

All news I got seems to point that packages and mail are safe and that the virus does not survive for long neither on the package nor inside a normal package. So basically direct contact seems to be mandatory, which is why gatherings and events have restrictions and/or have been cancelled.

FEDEX takes usually 3-4 days and if the employees sorting and manipulating the mail wear protection and the basic transport conditions are not conducive of the virus, the time would be enough for the virus to crumble (?) -- here are some conflicting views, as the virus could become inactive in the first hours on a basic plastic surface (or even earlier on paper), or it could still be active 7 to 9 days. Which is somewhat strange considering that there is no declared infection related to packages and mail until now.

Not sure what to make of this as I have no knowledge in microbiology and virology.

 

I wonder if the reaction to the virus is doing more damage than the virus itself.

 

BINGO! you nailed it. I have not let it affect me. But, its the lead news story adfinitum. Stock market collapse this morning/ endless panic mongering. We now have 100 cases in Canada/ no fatalities.....you would think the worlds ending. I would be more worried that this overeaction causes a worldwide recession.

 

One of the economic dangers is everything slowing down, less commerce, less spending, stock market damage, less aggregations of people such as canceled conventions/sporting events/schools. If it keeps tanking it might take awhile for consumer confidence to be regained. An external market shock.

 

I am also quite worried about the stock market. And I'm wondering if we would have to contend with this virus being a seasonal recurrence like the flu from now on.