<P> The rapid development of the use was probably one of the consequences of the Black Death, during which many landowning nobility died, leaving their realty to their widows and minor orphans . </P> <P> In the wake of the drastic population decline brought on by the plague, wages shot up and labourers could move to new localities in response to wage offers . Local and royal authorities in Western Europe instituted wage controls . These governmental controls sought to freeze wages at the old levels before the Black Death . Within England, for example, the Ordinance of Labourers, enacted in 1349, and the Statute of Labourers, enacted in 1351, restricted both wage increases and the relocation of workers . If workers attempted to leave their current post, employers were given the right to have them imprisoned . The Statute was poorly enforced in most areas, and farm wages in England on average doubled between 1350 and 1450, although they were static thereafter until the end of the 19th century . </P> <P> Cohn, comparing numerous countries, argues that these laws were not primarily designed to freeze wages . Instead, he says the energetic local and royal measures to control labor and artisans' prices was a response to elite fears of the greed and possible new powers of lesser classes that had gained new freedom . Cohn says the laws reflect the anxiety that followed the Black Death's new horrors of mass mortality and destruction, and from elite anxiety about manifestations such as the flagellant movement and the persecution of Jews, Catalans, and beggars . </P> <P> By 1200, virtually all of the Mediterranean basin and most of northern Germany had been deforested and cultivated . Indigenous flora and fauna were replaced by domestic grasses and animals and domestic woodlands were lost . With depopulation, this process was reversed . Much of the primeval vegetation returned, and abandoned fields and pastures were reforested . </P>

How did the plague alter the society of europe