The Geography of Recession: Provincial Credit in Later Medieval England

Goddard, Richard

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-48987-6_4

Richard Goddard⁶

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Abstract

Chapter 3 argued for a reduction in Staple lending in the early to mid-fifteenth century. This chapter examines the same Staple certificate data from a regional perspective by examining the patterns of lending undertaken at provincial Staple courts in order to assess if there was a regional component to the trends of borrowing and lending in the fifteenth century. There has long been an understanding amongst historians of the British economy that regional disparities exist and often subtle variations between the economic performances of different English regions need to be factored into any analysis. This regional analytical approach is seen most often in studies of later medieval agriculture, but historians have also examined regional economic inequality through the lens of urban decline. This is undertaken here by comparing the Staple evidence with debt evidence from borough courts, where it exists, along with other commercial evidence located within English provincial towns in order to gain a coherent understanding of the use of credit in England in this period.

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Notes

1.
B. M. S. Campbell, ‘North–south dichotomies 1066–1560’, in Geographies of England: The North–south Divide, Material and Imagined, ed. A. R. H. Baker and M. Billinge (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 145–74.
2.
See, for example, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 3: 1348–1500, ed. E. Miller (1991); Agriculture and Rural Society after the Black Death, ed. B. Dodds and R. Britnell (Cambridge University Press, 2008); A. Dyer, Decline and Growth in English Towns, 1400–1640 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 29–42.
3.
R. H. Hilton, Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism (London: Hambledon Press, 1990), 22; City Government of Winchester from the Records of the XIV and XV Centuries, ed. J. S. Furley (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1923), 189.
4.
Selected rolls of the Chester city courts: late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, ed. A. Hopkins (Chetham Society, 2, 1950), xlviii.
5.
Hilton, Class Conflict, 22; <Emphasis Type="Italic">City Government of Winchester, ed. Furley, 189.
6.
M. Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 202–5; R. Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge University Press, 1986), 98–9, 107–8.
7.
N[ottingham] A[rchives] CA 1281–85; The Court Rolls of Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury, 1268–1600, ed. E. B. Dewindt (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1990), 51–3.
8.
Kowaleski, Exeter, 89–90, 202–3.
9.
Britnell, Colchester, 98–9, 107–8.
10.
Court Rolls of Ramsey, ed. Dewindt, 51–3.
11.
R. Hilton, ‘Low-level urbanisation: the seigneurial borough of Thornbury in the Middle Ages’, in Medieval Society and the Manor Court, ed. Z. Razi and R. Smith (Oxford University Press, 1996), 499.
12.
J. S. Beckerman, ‘The forty shilling jurisdictional limit in medieval English personal actions’, in Legal History Studies 1972, ed. D. Jenkins (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1975), 110–17.
13.
NA CA 1270, fol. 3.
14.
NA CA 1316, fol. 16d.
15.
Debt pleas in borough courts were also used for other purposes, such as to claim redress for unpaid wages or unpaid rent; see Kowaleski, Exeter, 203, 207. Another use of debt pleas, particularly in the fifteenth century, was to recover court-awarded amercements and damages from court officers or mainpernors; see, for example, NA CA 1333, fol. 6.
16.
For the legal aspects of debt law in borough and other courts, see P. Brand, ‘Aspects of the law of debt, 1189–1307’, in Credit and Debt in Medieval England c. 1180–1350, ed. P. R. Schofield and N. J. Mayhew (Oxford University Press, 2002), 19–41.
17.
City Government of Winchester, ed. Furley, 137.
18.
Records of the Borough of Leicester, vol. 2, ed. M. Bateson (London: C.J. Clay and Sons, 1901), 171–2.
19.
City Government of Winchester, ed. Furley, 137.
20.
NA CA 1305/8.
21.
See, for example, Records of the Borough of Leicester, ed. Bateson, 180–1; NA CA 1305/19. For tallies, see L. F. Salzman, English Trade in the Middle Ages (Oxford University Press, 1931), 25–6; Hopkins, Chester, 121–2. Tallies were rarely used for private debt agreements after 1350.
22.
NA CA 1279, fol. 26; CA 1276, fol. 24.
23.
See, for example, Records of the Borough of Leicester, ed. Bateson, 175.
24.
The Common and Piepower Courts of Southampton, 1426–1483, ed. T. Olding and P. Tucker (Southampton Record Series, 45, 2011), part 1, xxx–xxxi; C. Muldrew, The economy of obligation: the culture of credit and social relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1998), 257–8.
25.
Because of the enormous number of debt pleas recorded in these rolls, between one and three courts were sampled every decade and the number of debt suits therein counted in order to estimate the average number of debt pleas in each court over a ten-year period. This sampling allows a general impression of changes in the volume of borough court credit pleas over the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to be discerned. In places, such as Chester’s borough court in the later fifteenth century, the rolls were too fragmentary to provide meaningful figures.
26.
CRO BA/E/C/7/1–34; Statute Merchant Roll of Coventry, 1392–1416, ed. A. Beardwood (Dugdale Society Publications, 17, 1939). For details of the enrolment of Staple and Merchant debts, and the role of recognisances within that, see Chap. 1.
27.
P. Nightingale, ‘Money and credit in the economy of late medieval England’, in Medieval Money Matters, ed. D. Wood (Oxford: Oxbow, 2004), 63; P. Nightingale, ‘Monetary contraction and mercantile credit in later medieval England’, Economic History Review 43 (1990): 560–75, 566.
28.
Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 281; Court rolls of the Borough of Colchester, vols. 2 and 3, 1353–79, ed. I. H. Jeayes (Colchester: Colchester Town Council, 1938–41).
29.
Somerset Record Office D/B/bw.
30.
A. F. Butcher, ‘Freeman admissions and urban occupations’, paper delivered at the Urban History Conference, Canterbury, 1983. The original data is found in the Canterbury City Account Books (CCAL FA/1–9); The Rolls of the Freemen of the City of Chester, Part I: 1392–1700, ed. J. H. E. Bennett (Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, 51, 1906), xii–xiii, 1–20; The Oath Book or Red Parchment Book of Colchester, ed. W. Gurney Benham (Colchester: Colchester Town Council, 1907), 59–154; Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 279–80; Exeter Freemen 1266–1967, ed. M. M. Rowe and A. M. Jackson (Devon and Cornwall Record Society, extra ser, 1, 1973), 30–74; Records of the Borough of Nottingham, ed. W. H. Stevenson, 3 vols (Nottingham: Thomas Forman, 1882–5), vol. 2, 426–32; vol. 3, 459–65; Calendar of Norwich Freemen, 1317–1603, ed. W. Rye (London: Eliot and Stock, 1888), 1–155. In all cases except Chester, because of gaps in the records, and Norwich because of the slightly eccentric presentation of the edition, all of the freemen and burgess admissions were analysed and converted into decennial trends. In Chester, where this was not possible, the evidence was analysed annually; the Norwich evidence was sampled and analysed decennially. Approximately 5 per cent (271) of the later medieval freemen were included as a guide to freemen entry: Norwich Freemen, ed. Rye, 1, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120, 140.
31.
P. Dunn, ‘Trade’, in Medieval Norwich, ed. C. Rawcliffe and C. Wilson (London: Hambledon Press, 2004), 231; R. Frost, ‘The urban elite’, in Medieval Norwich, ed. Rawcliffe and Wilson, 236.
32.
M. Hemmeon, Burgage Tenure in Medieval England (Cambridge University Press, 1914), 5.
33.
R. B. Dobson, ‘Admissions to the freedom of the City of York in the later Middle Ages’, Economic History Review 26 (1973): 1–22. For a contrasting view, see Exeter Freemen, ed. Rowe and Jackson, viii; J. Patten, English Towns, 1500–1700 (Folkestone: Dawson, 1978), 157–8, 161.
34.
J. Kermode, Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
35.
C 241/134/159.
36.
C 241/231/21; C 152/65/2/452.
37.
J. W. F. Hill, Medieval Lincoln (Cambridge University Press, 1948), 253–4, 272–4, 281, 286–8, 326.
38.
A. Kissane, Late Medieval Lincoln, 1289–1409: Civic Community in the Age of the Black Death (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, forthcoming), Chapters 3 and 4.
39.
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40.
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41.
NA CA 1306, fols 1 and 2.
42.
Records of the Borough of Nottingham, ed. Stevenson, vol. 2, 426–32; vol. 3, 459–65.
43.
R. Goddard, ‘Commercial contraction and urban decline in fifteenth-century Coventry’ (Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 46, 2006), 9–37; Goddard, ‘The built environment’, 42–4.
44.
Freemen of the City of Chester, ed. Bennett, xii–xiii, 1–20.
45.
Freemen of the City of Chester, ed. Bennett, 1–20.
46.
CRO BA/E/C/7/32.
47.
C. Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1979), 51–68; Coventry and its People in the 1520s, ed. M. H. M. Hulton (Dugdale Society Publications, 38, 1999).
48.
J. Kermode, ‘Northern towns’, in The Cambridge urban history of Britain, vol. 1, 600-1540, ed. D. M. Palliser (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 669–70; C. M. Fraser, ‘The economic growth of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1150–1536’, in Newcastle and Gateshead before 1700, ed. D. Newton and A. J. Pollard (Chichester: Phillimore, 2009), 42–3, 54.
49.
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50.
C 241/180/11.
51.
S. H. Rigby, ‘“Sore decay” and “fair dwellings”: Boston and urban decline in the later Middle Ages’, Midland History X (1985): 47–61.
52.
C 241/180/6; C 241/173/126; C 241/178/51.
53.
Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 281.
54.
Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 279–80.
55.
Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 64–7, 72–3, 80–1.
56.
L. R. Poos, A Rural Society after the Black Death: Essex 1350–1525 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 58–62, 64–5; Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 81.
57.
See, for example, C 241/145/16; C 241/147/9; C 241/157/68: C 241/164/99.
58.
This evidence has been sampled and exact numbers are therefore unavailable. Calendar of Norwich Freemen, 1317–1603, ed. J. L’Estrange (London: Eliot and Stock, 1888), 1–155.
59.
Calendar of Norwich Freemen, ed. L’Estrange, 1–155.
60.
England’s Export Trade, ed. Carus-Wilson and Coleman, 75–7, 93–5, 112–13.
61.
A. F. Butcher, ‘Rent, population and economic change in late medieval Newcastle’, Northern History 14 (1978): 67–77.
62.
S. H. Rigby, ‘“Sore decay” and “fair dwellings”’, 47–61.
63.
R. H. Britnell, The Closing of the Middle Ages? England, 1471–1529 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 217.
64.
Dyer, Decline and Growth in English Towns, 6; B. Brodt, ‘East Anglia’, in Palliser, Cambridge Urban History, 655–6.
65.
Brodt, ‘East Anglia’, 655–6.
66.
See, for example, C 241/138/180; C 241/133/18.
67.
C 241/230/20.
68.
Devon Record Office MCR/; ED/; Kowaleski, Exeter, 202–5.
69.
See, for example, C 241/158/37; C 241/158/38.
70.
C 241/168/40; C 241/168/55.
71.
Dyer, Decline and Growth in English Towns, 26.
72.
C 152/65/148–9; C 152/65/151–60.
73.
The Staple Court Book of Bristol, ed. E. E. Rich (Bristol Record Society, 5, 1934).
74.
See, for example, Staple Court Book, ed. Rich, 111, 165.
75.
Staple Court Book, ed. Rich, 112, 125, 165.
76.
C 241/213/31;
77.
Exeter Freemen, ed. Rowe and Jackson, 30–74.
78.
Exeter Freemen, ed. Rowe and Jackson, 30–74.
79.
See, for example, Devon Record Office, ECA/MCR 43–44 Ed III fols 1–1r, 3.3r; ECA/MCR 13–14 Richard II, fols 3–3r, 4–4r; MCR 12 Henry IV, fol. 2; MCR 8–9 Henry V, fol. 4; MCR 8–9 Henry VI, fols 2, 4; MCR 18–19 Henry VI, fols 47–47r; MCR 29–30 Henry VI, fols 49–49r; ECA/MCR 2–3 Henry VIII, fols 4–4r; Kowaleski, Exeter, 89–90.
80.
MCR 8–9 Henry VI, fol. 4; ECA/MCR 13–14 Richard II, fols 3–3r; MCR 37–38 Henry VI, fols 52–52r; Kowaleski, Exeter, 202–3.
81.
MCR 8–9 Henry V, fol. 1.
82.
During the early fifteenth century, the mean value of Staple debts enrolled at Exeter increased from £42 (1353–99) to £52 (1400–49).
83.
See, for example, Bridgwater Borough Archives, 1468—1485, ed. R. W. Dunning, and T. D. Tremlett (Somerset Record Society, 70, 1971), 21, 28, 30.
84.
C 241/158/53.
85.
Agrarian History, ed. Miller, 42–92.
86.
See, for example, the decline of Plymouth (Devon), which has been blamed upon the port’s lack of engagement with the local cloth industry. See T. R. Slater, ‘The South-West of England’, in Palliser, Cambridge Urban History, 606–7.
87.
Agrarian History, ed. Miller, 136–52.
88.
J. Hatcher, Rural Economy and Society in the Duchy of Cornwall, 1300–1500 (Cambridge University Press, 1970), 155–72; J. Hatcher, English Tin Production and Trade before 1550 (Oxford University Press, 1973), 59–74; J. Hatcher, ‘A diversified economy: later medieval Cornwall’, Economic History Review 22 (1969): 208–27; The Cornish Lands of the Arundells of Lanherne, Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries, H. S. A. Fox and O. J. Padel (Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 41, 2000), ci–cxxii; M. Kowaleski, ‘The expansion of South-Western fisheries in late medieval England’, Economic History Review 53 (2000): 436–52.
89.
Slater, ‘The South-West of England’, 605–7.
90.
‘Salisbury: economic history to 1612’, <Emphasis Type="Italic">in A History of the County of Wiltshire: Vol. 6, ed. Elizabeth Crittall (London: Victoria County History, 1962), 124–9.
91.
<Emphasis Type="Italic">A History of the County of Wiltshire: Vol. 4, ed. Elizabeth Crittall (London: Victoria County History, 1959), vol. 4, 124–8; Slater, ‘The South-West of England’, 605–6.
92.
E. Nevill, ‘Salisbury in 1455’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 37 (1911): 66–92.
93.
C. Briggs, ‘The availability of credit in the English countryside, 1400–1480’, Agricultural History Review 56 (2008): 20.
94.
Butcher, ‘Freeman admissions’, Figure 1; Canterbury Cathedral Archive CCAL FA/1–9.
95.
C 241/166/87; C 241/141/101; C 241/201/11; C 241/184/51.
96.
Hampshire Record Office, W/D1/133/16; W/D1/134/1; W/D1/133/1.
97.
Keene, Winchester, vol. II, 472–3.
98.
Keene, Winchester, vol. I, 81.
99.
R. Goddard, ‘Surviving recession: English borough courts and commercial contraction, 1350–1500’, in Survival and Discord in Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of Christopher Dyer, ed. R. Goddard, J. Langdon and M. Müller (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 69–87.
100.
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101.
R. S. Schofield, ‘The geographical distribution of wealth in England, 1334–1649’, Economic History Review 18 (1965), 483–510, 508–9.
102.
Agrarian History, ed. Miller, 106–18.
103.
D. Keene, ‘The South East of England’, in Palliser, Cambridge Urban History, 577–80.
104.
D. Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester (Oxford University Press, 1985), vol. 1, 21–2, 92, 299; Goddard, ‘Surviving recession’, 77–87.
105.
A. F. Butcher, ‘Rent and the urban economy: Oxford and Canterbury in the later Middle Ages’, Southern History 1 (1979): 11–43; Butcher, ‘Freeman admissions’, Table 1.
106.
Kermode, Medieval Merchants, 266–8.
107.
Kermode, ‘Merchants, overseas trade and urban decline’, xxx; Bartlett, ‘The expansion and decline of York’, 31.
108.
Kermode, Medieval Merchants, 266–73.
109.
Kermode, Medieval Merchants, 266–8.
110.
M. Bailey, ‘A tale of two towns: Buntingford and Standon in the later Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval History 19 (1993): 351–77; C. Dyer, ‘Small towns, 1270–1540’, in Cambridge Urban History ed. Palliser, 505–37; J. Lee, ‘Trade in fifteenth-century Cambridge and its region’, in Revolution and Consumption in Late Medieval England, ed. M. Hicks (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2001), 129.
111.
C 241/280/15.
112.
C 241/285/16.
113.
C 241/235/51; C 241/256/15; C 241/256/21; C 241/275/113.
114.
C 241/184/141.
115.
C 241/138/49; C 241/157/134; C 241/192/12.
116.
C 152/65/2/11; C 152/65/2/679.
117.
For example, C 241/219/24; C 241/248/63.
118.
Dyer, Decline and Growth in English Towns, 26, 30.
119.
For a study of very similar economic circumstances in Holland in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, see J. L. van Zanden, J. Zuijerduijn and R. de Moor, ‘Small is beautiful: the efficiency of credit markets in later medieval Holland’, European Review of Economic History 16 (2012): 3–22.

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Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Richard Goddard

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Goddard, R. (2016). The Geography of Recession: Provincial Credit 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_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48987-6_4
Published: 22 June 2016
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