Though I agree that s edits make the text worse and I think starting the sentence with but is in principle a good stylistic choice I believe there are still two minor substantive issues in the first sentence of the paragraph that may have misled  The first issue could perhaps be addressed by substituting an em dash for the comma preceding and ultimately With this sentence any choice will doubtless have advantages and disadvantages but this commapresumably intended to reduce the cognitive load on the reader by indicating that what follows is not part of the phrase beginning with by but is a supplementary addition to the nonrestictive relative clause Unfortunately the comma may also signal the end of a relative clause leading to problems in parsing the sentenceand increasing the cognitive load resulting from temporary ambiguity I think an em dash would reduce this ambiguity since it does not by default indicate the end of a relative clause  I also wonder if the writer really meant to use and rather than but to join  attempted to address the labour shortages following the Black Death in England by restricting the movement of labourers and   ultimately led to the state becoming responsible for the support of the poor I would surmise that there is an intended contrast between the intent of the legislation and its actual effect Of course changing and to but would probably mean changing the but at the beinning of the following sentence