The Statute of Labourers was an act of the Parliament of England under King Edward III, passed in 1351 in response to the labour shortage that followed the Black Death. It aimed to regulate the labour force by prohibiting the request or offer of a wage higher than pre-plague standards and by limiting workers' movement in search of better conditions. The popular narrative holds that the statute was poorly enforced and did not stop the rise in real wages, though in fact real wages did not rise immediately after the Black Death despite the labour shortage.
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