WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -During the Black Death, when surviving serfs asked for higher wages, how did manor lords respond? They agreed to increase the serfs’ wages.

Detailed explanation-2: -Serfs were the poorest of the peasant class, and were a type of slave. Lords owned the serfs who lived on their lands. In exchange for a place to live, serfs worked the land to grow crops for themselves and their lord. In addition, serfs were expected to work the farms for the lord and pay rent.

Detailed explanation-3: -In such conditions, small farmers and landless labourers exchanged their land or their freedom and pledged their services in return for the protection of powerful landowners who had the military strength to defend them.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Black Death left in its wake a period of defiance and turmoil between the upper classes and the peasantry. The dispute regarding wages led to the peasants’ triumph over the manorial economic system and ultimately ended in the breakdown of feudalism in England.

Detailed explanation-5: -Farm work was peasant work, whether performed by serfs bound to a particular manor, tenant farmers or wage laborers hired by the year or the season. But the staggering mortality of the Black Death reduced this previously sufficient peasant population sharply enough to create a severe labor shortage.