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Boom and Bust: Patterns of Borrowing in Later Medieval England

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Credit and Trade in Later Medieval England, 1353-1532

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance ((PSHF))

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Abstract

The virtually complete record of the certificates of defaulting debtors sent to Chancery and the resulting extents of debt allow an unusually full assessment to be made of changes in the English economy over the 179 years in which the Statute Staple debt registration system was in use, particularly with respect to periods of economic growth and recession. This chapter assesses the patterns of certificate generation resulting from defaulted debt transactions from 14 English Staple and Merchant courts between 1353 and 1532. These Staple defaults act here as a barometer, or guide, to the volume of credit being extended within the English economy. The analysis of these patterns is predicated upon the self-evident maxim that changes in the availability of credit—of which the Staple credit was an integral part—within the economy is a viable measure of the robustness of that economy. The chapter sub-divides the period into four sections divided into (roughly) 50-year terms in order to more closely examine the processes of, and context for, shifts in the availability of credit. It then goes on to consider ways in which theoretical approaches might help to establish wider frames of reference for these chronological movements in terms of a cyclical approach to economic change and the ‘shocks’ that are often considered the mainspring for change.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    J. Hatcher, ‘The great slump of the mid-fifteenth century’, in Progress and Problems in Medieval England, ed. R. Britnell and J. Hatcher (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 237–72.

  2. 2.

    P. Nightingale, ‘Monetary contraction and mercantile credit in later medieval England’, Economic History Review 43 (1990): 560–75. This effect has been clearly demonstrated in the sixteenth century; see C. Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 95–101, 184–5, 225–7, 236–7.

  3. 3.

    P. Nightingale, ‘Money and credit in the economy of late medieval England’, in Medieval Money Matters, ed. D. Wood (Oxford: Oxbow, 2004), 63; Nightingale, ‘Monetary contraction and mercantile credit’, 566. This is discussed in more detail in Chap. 1.

  4. 4.

    Bruce Campbell estimates the population in 1300 to be in the region of 4.25 million and the population in 1377 to be between 2.2 and 3 million. However, population estimates vary wildly. See B. M. S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 403, 405.

  5. 5.

    J. Bolton, ‘“The world turned upside down”. Plague as an agent of economic and social change’, in The Black Death in England, ed. W. M. Ormrod and P. G. Lindley (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1996), 26–32.

  6. 6.

    C 131/186/1.

  7. 7.

    These are discussed in Chap. 1 and exclude non-commercial agreements involving the royal family, penal bonds enforcing good behaviour, marriage or ransoms or transactions concerned with the sale of land.

  8. 8.

    CCR, 1381–85, 123.

  9. 9.

    C 241/148/8; C 241/147/20.

  10. 10.

    C 241/176/50; C 241/176/47; C 241/171/73; C 241/175/83; C 241/175/136; C 241/171/61; C 241/176/49; C 241/184/128; C 241/175/142; C 241/175/144; C 241/176/95; C 241/188/118.

  11. 11.

    C 241/170/80, C 241/173/126, C 241/171/32; C 241/176/82, C 241/176/76, C 241/176/81, C 241/176/89.

  12. 12.

    C 241/192/81; C 241/187/48; Bolton, ‘“World turned upside down”’, 30, 32.

  13. 13.

    A. R. Bridbury, Economic Growth (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962), 25–7, 35–6; A. R. Bridbury, ‘The Black Death’, Economic History Review 26 (1973): 577–92, particularly 584.

  14. 14.

    J. Hatcher, Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348–1530 (London: MacMillan, 1977), 31–5; see also C. Dyer, Making a Living in the Later Middle Ages (London: Penguin, 2002), 293–7; R. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society (Cambridge University Press, 1994), 194–6; R. Britnell, Britain and Ireland, 1050–1530: Economy and Society (Oxford University Press, 2004), 352, 496–8.

  15. 15.

    N. J. Mayhew, ‘Prices in England, 1170–1750’, Past and Present 219 (2013): 19, 31. For an overview of price movements, see S. Broadberry, B. M. S. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton and B. van Leeuwen, British Economic Growth, 1270–1870 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 189–91.

  16. 16.

    D. L. Farmer, ‘Prices and wages, 1350–1500’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 3, 1348–1500, ed. E. Miller (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

  17. 17.

    Farmer, ‘Prices and wages’, 437; Dyer, Standards of Living, 207, 210–33; Dyer, Age of Transition, 126–72, 173–210; M. Mate, ‘Work and leisure’, M. Kowaleski, ‘A consumer economy’ and B. M. S. Campbell, ‘The land’, in A Social History of England, 1200–1500, ed. R. Horrox and M. W. Ormrod (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 216, 238–59, 276–92.

  18. 18.

    Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, 60, 249, 258–9, 261, 313, 320–22.

  19. 19.

    Dyer, Age of Transition, 171.

  20. 20.

    Britnell, Commercialisation, 326–30.

  21. 21.

    Carus-Wilson and Coleman, England’s Export Trade; Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, ed. E. Power and M. M. Postan (London: Routledge, 1966), 330–61; M. Kowaleski, ‘Port towns: England and Wales’, in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. I, 600–1540, ed. D. Palliser (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 467–94. For a discussion of the value of these sources, see Carus-Wilson and Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 18–33, 201–7; Britnell, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Britain and Ireland, 329, 332, 417.

  22. 22.

    Britnell, Britain and Ireland, 417–18.

  23. 23.

    M. Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 306–7; J. Hatcher, English Tin Production and Trade before 1550 (Oxford University Press, 1973), 90–6, 116–17, 126–7.

  24. 24.

    M. F. Stevens, ‘Londoners and the Court of Common Pleas in the fifteenth century’, in London and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Derek Keene, ed. M. Davies and J. A. Galloway (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012), 226–7; the data is calendared in J. Mackman and M. Stevens, ‘Court of Common Pleas: The National Archives, CP 40 – 1399–1500’, www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=1272 (date accessed 26 January 2016) ; M.F. Stevens, ‘London creditors and the fifteenth-century depression’, Economic History Review (forthcoming, 2016).

  25. 25.

    CCR, 1389–92; CCR, 1392–96; CCR, 1396–99; CCR, 1399–1402; CCR, 1402–05; CCR, 1405–09; CCR, 1409–13; CCR, 1413–22.

  26. 26.

    CCR, 1413–22; CCR, 1422–29; CCR, 1429–35; CCR, 1435–41.

  27. 27.

    C 241/228/30; C 241/226/12.

  28. 28.

    C 241/228/62; C 241/228/72; C 241/228/87.

  29. 29.

    C 241/225/30.

  30. 30.

    CCR, 1435–41, 417.

  31. 31.

    CCR, 1429–35, 360

  32. 32.

    C 241/228/15.

  33. 33.

    C 241/230/101.

  34. 34.

    C 241/235/40; C 241/235/42.

  35. 35.

    J. Kermode, Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 239–40.

  36. 36.

    My thanks to Dr Tony Moore for his expertise and advice on forbearance.

  37. 37.

    C 241/246/105.

  38. 38.

    C 241/238/7; C 241/239/14; C 241/240/5; C 241/253/4.

  39. 39.

    C 241/239/7.

  40. 40.

    Britnell, Britain and Ireland, 327, 329, 330, 332.

  41. 41.

    J. Kermode, ‘Money and credit in the fifteenth century: some lessons from Yorkshire’, Business History Review 65 (1991): 499; J. L. Bolton, The Medieval English Economy, 1150–1500 (London: Dent,1980), 251; A. R. Bridbury, Medieval English Clothmaking: An Economic Survey (London: Heinemann Educational,1982), 67, 69; R. H. Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge University Press, 1986), 181; R. Goddard, ‘Commercial contraction and urban decline in fifteenth-century Coventry’ (Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 46, 2006), 21; R. Goddard, ‘The built environment and the later medieval economy: Coventry, 1200–1540’, in Coventry: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in the City and its Vicinity, ed. L. Monckton and R. K. Morris (British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, 33, Leeds, 2011), 42.

  42. 42.

    Farmer. ‘Prices and wages’, 437.

  43. 43.

    For the famine, see D. Keene, ‘Crisis management in London’s food supply, 1250–1500’, in Commercial Activity, Markets and Entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Richard Britnell, ed. B. Dodds and C. Liddy (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011), 45, 60–1.

  44. 44.

    Mayhew, ‘Prices in England’, 31. For the association of price falls and recession in history, see F. Capie, T. Mills and G. E. Wood, ‘Money, interest rates and the great depression: Britain, 1870–1913’, in New Perspectives on the Late Victorian Economy: Essays in Quantitative Economic History, 1860–1914, ed. J. Foreman-Peck (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 263.

  45. 45.

    Capie et al., ‘Money, interest rates and the great depression’, 262.

  46. 46.

    S. Homer, A History of Interest Rates (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 100, 106–7, 116; S. R. Epstein, Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300–1750 (London: Routledge, 2000), 60–1. Interest rates are discussed in more detail in Chap. 1.

  47. 47.

    G. Clark, ‘The cost of capital and medieval agricultural technique’, Explorations in Economic History 25 (1988): 265.

  48. 48.

    A. R. Bell, C. Brooks and P. Dryburgh, The English Wool Market, c. 1230–1327 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 138–42; Epstein, Freedom and Growth, 61.

  49. 49.

    J. Hatcher, ‘The great slump of the mid-fifteenth century’, in Progress and Problems in Medieval England, ed. R. Britnell and J. Hatcher (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 237–72.

  50. 50.

    Hatcher, ‘The great slump’, 237–72; M. M. Postan, ‘The fifteenth century’, Economic History Review 9 (1939), 160–7; R. Britnell, ‘Postan’s fifteenth century’, in Survival and Discord in Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of Christopher Dyer, ed. R. Goddard, J. Langdon and M. Müller (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 49–68.

  51. 51.

    Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, 191.

  52. 52.

    Mayhew, ‘Prices in England’, 5.

  53. 53.

    Farmer, ‘Prices and wages’.

  54. 54.

    See, for example, C 241/254/75; C 241/256/24; C 241/246/17; C 241/249/19.

  55. 55.

    CP 40/813, rot. 448; Stevens, ‘London creditors and the fifteenth-century depression’, table 2.

  56. 56.

    C 152/65/2/452.

  57. 57.

    C 241/282/120; C 241/281/132; C 241/282/167.

  58. 58.

    C 152/65/2/675; C 152/65/2/93

  59. 59.

    For two examples, see C 152/65/2/89 and C 241/280/160. In the absence of complete data, the actual proportion is difficult to estimate.

  60. 60.

    S Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 3–4.

  61. 61.

    See, for example, C 241/277/6; C 241/282/82; C 152/65/2/779; M. Davies and A. Saunders, The History of the Merchant Taylors’ Company (Leeds: Maney Publishing, 2004).

  62. 62.

    C 152/65/2/756; C 152/65/2/99; C 152/65/2/706; C 152/65/2/92; C 152/65/2/761; C 241/279/85; C 241/280/50; C 152/65/2/622; C 241/282/105; C 241/278/78; C 241/277/38.

  63. 63.

    Dyer, Standards of Living, 15.

  64. 64.

    C 152/65/2/654; C 152/65/2/36; C 241/277/82.

  65. 65.

    C 241/277/84. For other yeomen/skinner partnerships, see C 241/277/38; C 241/278/18.

  66. 66.

    C. Dyer, Everyday Life in Medieval England (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 323–4.

  67. 67.

    C 241/276/8; C 241/277/50; C 241/279/103.

  68. 68.

    C 241/280/108.

  69. 69.

    C 241/279/100; C 241/279/107; C 241/280/108.

  70. 70.

    C 241/269/32; C 241/275/312; C 152/65/2/74.

  71. 71.

    Carus-Wilson and Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 194–6.

  72. 72.

    J. Oldland, ‘The expansion of London’s overseas trade from 1475–1520’, in The Medieval Merchant, ed. C. Barron and A. F. Sutton (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2014), 59–67.

  73. 73.

    Oldland, ‘The expansion of London’s overseas trade’, 77, 83; The Overseas Trade of London Exchequer Customs Accounts, 1480–1, ed. H. S. Cobb (London Record Society, 1990), xxxv–xxxvii.

  74. 74.

    Oldland, ‘The expansion of London’s overseas trade’, 87.

  75. 75.

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  76. 76.

    B. M. S. Campbell, ‘Grain yields on English demesnes after the Black Death’, in Town and countryside in the Age of the Black Death: Essays in Honour of John Hatcher, ed. M. Bailey and S. H. Rigby (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 121-74.

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  78. 78.

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  79. 79.

    Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, 15–17, 20–1, 27.

  80. 80.

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  81. 81.

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  82. 82.

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  83. 83.

    R. H. Britnell, ‘English agricultural output and prices, 1350–1450: national trends and regional divergences’, in Agriculture and Rural Society after the Black Death, ed. B. Dodds and R. Britnell (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2008), 20.

  84. 84.

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  85. 85.

    J. Hatcher and M. Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages: The History and Theory of England’s Economic Development (Oxford University Press, 2001), 24–7.

  86. 86.

    Korotayev and Tsirel, ‘A spectral analysis of world GDP dynamics’, 24. An attempt to apply Kondratieff waves to the seventeenth-century economy was made by Daniel Šmihula The Waves of the Technological Innovations of the Modern Age and the Present Crisis as the End of the Wave of the Informational Technological Revolution, Studia Politica Slovaca, 1 (2009): 32–47. For the application of Schumpeterian cycles to the medieval period, see J. Langdon, ‘The long thirteenth century: an era of Schumpeterian growth?’, in Crisis in the Later Middle Ages: Beyond the Postan-Duby Paradigm, ed. J. Drendel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 53–71.

  87. 87.

    For medieval innovation, see Britnell, Britain and Ireland, 82–4.

  88. 88.

    Schumpeter, Business Cycles, vol. 1, 224; Schumpeter, ‘Analysis of economic change’, 145.

  89. 89.

    Langdon, ‘The long thirteenth century’, 56. For market integration and disintegration cycles between 1350 and 1800, see V. N. Bateman, ‘The evolution of markets in early modern Europe, 1350–1800: a study of wheat prices’, Economic History Review 64(2) (2011): 447–71, 465.

  90. 90.

    R. H. Britnell, ‘The economic context’, in The Wars of the Roses, ed. A. J. Pollard (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1995), 44–6.

  91. 91.

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  92. 92.

    Bolton, Medieval English Economy, 290.

  93. 93.

    The Wars of the Roses, ed. Pollard, 90.

  94. 94.

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  95. 95.

    R. H. Britnell, The Closing of the Middle Ages? England, 1471–1529 (Oxford University Press, 1997), 114–16.

  96. 96.

    Hatcher and Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages: 24–7.

  97. 97.

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  98. 98.

    Hatcher, ‘Mortality in the fifteenth century’, 33.

  99. 99.

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  100. 100.

    Hatcher, ‘Mortality in the fifteenth century’, 26, 28.

  101. 101.

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  102. 102.

    J. Kermode, ‘Money and credit in the fifteenth century: some lessons from Yorkshire’, Business History Review 65 (1991): 475–501, 499.

  103. 103.

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  104. 104.

    Butcher, ‘Freemen admissions’, Figure 1.

  105. 105.

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  106. 106.

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  107. 107.

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  108. 108.

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  109. 109.

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  110. 110.

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  112. 112.

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  113. 113.

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  121. 121.

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  1. Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Richard Goddard

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  1. Richard Goddard
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Goddard, R. (2016). Boom and Bust: Patterns of Borrowing in Later Medieval England. In: Credit and Trade in Later Medieval England, 1353-1532. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48987-6_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48987-6_3

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-48985-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-48987-6

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