The Black Death


In the years following the plague, property and food prices fell dramatically and in many places landlords were forced to reduce or waive services in order to attract tenants. The Abbot of Halesowen faced organised opposition from tenants no longer willing to work the Abbey farmland as well as their own. Although the Abbot's right to demand labour services was
upheld at an official enquiry into the customs of the manor in 1386, he eventually gave up cultivating his own land and in 1396 leased all his strips in the three common fields of Romsley to a group of tenants led by Thomas Squire.