Economics of English towns and trade in the Middle Ages

By the end of the period, England would have a weak early modern government overseeing an economy involving a thriving community of indigenous English merchants and corporations.

William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, defeating the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings and placing the country under Norman rule.

William's system of government was broadly feudal in that the right to possess land was linked to service to the king, but in many other ways the invasion did little to alter the nature of the English economy.

[3] A large amount of trade came through the Eastern towns, including London, York, Winchester, Lincoln, Norwich, Ipswich and Thetford.

[7] William I brought over wealthy Jews from the Rouen community in Normandy to settle in London, apparently to carry out financial services for the crown.

English economic thinking remained conservative, seeing the economy as consisting of three groups: the ordines, those who fought, or the nobility; laboratores, those who worked, in particular the peasantry; and oratores, those who prayed, or the clerics.

[14] Trade and merchants played little part in this model and were frequently vilified at the start of the period, although increasingly tolerated towards the end of the 13th century.

[17] Many of these new towns were centrally planned—Richard I created Portsmouth, John founded Liverpool, with Harwich, Stony Stratford, Dunstable, Royston, Baldock, Wokingham, Maidenhead and Reigate following under successive monarchs.

The nobility purchased and consumed many luxury goods and services in the capital, and as early as the 1170s the London markets were providing exotic products such as spices, incense, palm oil, gems, silks, furs and foreign weapons.

[21] London was also an important hub for industrial activity; it had many blacksmiths making a wide range of goods, including decorative ironwork and early clocks.

[26] Many towns in this period, including York, Exeter and Lincoln, were linked to the oceans by navigable rivers and could act as seaports, with Bristol's port coming to dominate the lucrative trade in wine with Gascony by the 13th century, but shipbuilding generally remained on a modest scale and economically unimportant to England at this time.

[32] There was a gradual reduction in the number of locations allowed to mint coins in England; under Henry II, only 30 boroughs were still able to use their own moneyers and the tightening of controls continued throughout the 13th century.

[35] The physical implication of this growth was that coins had to be manufactured in large numbers, being moved in barrels and sacks to be stored in local treasuries for royal use as the king travelled.

[37] These guilds were fraternities of craftsmen that set out to manage their local affairs including "prices, workmanship, the welfare of its workers and the suppression of interlopers and sharp practices".

[43] From the 12th century onwards, many English towns acquired a charter from the Crown allowing them to hold an annual fair, usually serving a regional or local customer base and lasting for two or three days.

[49][nb 1] One response to this was the creation of the Company of the Staple, a group of merchants established in English-held Calais in 1314 with royal approval, who were granted a monopoly on wool sales to Europe.

[57] Some Jewish merchants grew extremely wealthy, Aaron of Lincoln so much that upon his death a special royal department had to be established to unpick his financial holdings and affairs.

[58] By the end of Henry's reign the king ceased to borrow from the Jewish community and instead turned to an aggressive campaign of tallage taxation and fines.

[60] After an initially peaceful start to John's reign, the king again began to extort money from the Jewish community, imprisoning the wealthier members, including Isaac of Norwich, until a huge, new taillage was paid.

[66] In the English towns the burgage tenure for urban properties was established early on in the medieval period, being based primarily on tenants paying cash rents rather than providing labour services.

[69] The 12th century also saw a concerted attempt to curtail the remaining rights of unfree peasant workers and to set out their labour rents more explicitly in the form of the English Common Law.

The famine centred on a sequence of harvest failures in 1315, 1316 and 1321, combined with an outbreak of the murrain sickness amongst sheep and oxen between 1319–1321 and the fatal ergotism fungi amongst the remaining stocks of wheat.

[72] In the ensuing famine, many people died and the peasantry were said to have been forced to eat horses, dogs and cats as well to have conducted cannibalism against children, although these last reports are usually considered to be exaggerations.

In the decades after the disaster, the economic and social issues arising from the Black Death combined with the costs of the Hundred Years War to produce the Peasants Revolt of 1381.

[102] One result of the economic and political tensions was the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 in which widespread rural discontent was followed by invasion of London involving thousands of rebels.

[110] Increasingly elaborate road networks were built across England, some involving the construction of up to thirty bridges to cross rivers and other obstacles.

The attempts of English merchants to break through the Hanseatic league directly into the Baltic markets failed in the domestic political chaos of the Wars of the Roses in the 1460s and 1470s.

[118] Indeed, the disruption to both the Baltic and the Gascon trade contributed to a sharp reduction in the consumption of furs and wine by the English gentry and nobility during the 15th century.

[125] The result was a substantial influx of money that in turn encouraged the import of manufactured luxury goods; by 1391 shipments from abroad routinely included "ivory, mirrors, paxes, armour, paper..., painted clothes, spectacles, tin images, razors, calamine, treacle, sugar-candy, marking irons, patens..., ox-horns and quantities of wainscot".

[131] Nonetheless, the great fairs remained of importance well into the 15th century, as illustrated by their role in exchanging money, regional commerce and in providing choice for individual consumers.

A page from a medieval book, with hand writing in brown ink in two columns against on an aged vellum page.
A page of the Domesday Book , capturing the economic condition of England in 1086.
A black and white map, showing a town with a central street, criss-crossed by two adjoining small roads and a small castle on the far right of the map.
The medieval plan for Liverpool , a new English town founded by order of King John in 1207.
A faded silver coin with an indistinct king's head in the centre with long hair, surrounded by faded writing.
An Edward I silver penny from Lincoln ; Edward increased the controls on the minting of coins begun under Henry II , creating the Master of the Mint .
A photograph of a building on a clear summer's day, with a white stone base and a black and white timbered first floor. An archway leads through the middle of the building, apparently located in the middle of a small town.
The market place at Bridgnorth , one of many medieval English towns to be granted the right to hold fairs , in this case annually on the feast of the Translation of St. Leonard .
A photograph of a small castle on top of a green mound; the castle has three circular walls visible. Behind the castle the sky is overcast and dark grey.
Clifford's Tower in the city of York , a major hub for Jewish economic activity and the site of an early Jewish pogrom in 1190.
A photograph of a sandstone carving, broken into two pieces; on the left is the front half of a donkey, in the middle a fat man with a stick and a whip whilst on the right is a stylised windmill.
A medieval carving from Rievaulx Abbey showing of one of the many new windmills established during the 13th century.
A computer generated map of Europe, with bands of colour marking the spread of the Black Death. England appears in amber, showing infection halfway through the epidemic
The Black Death reached England in 1348 from Europe.
A detailed medieval painting showing a group of wealthy men in a wooden boat on the near left, apparently arriving or leaving a large number of armed soldiers on the right. In the background is a large city on the left, and an open area of ground on the right.
Richard II meets the rebels calling for economic and political reform during the Peasants Revolt of 1381.
A photograph of a small wooden ship with white sail traversing an estuary; behind the ship is a wooded shoreline.
Cog ships were increasingly important to English trade as both exports and imports grew.
A photograph of a medieval building with white rendering and plain woodwork; a barrel is hung above the entrance and a small visitor's sign is placed on the street alongside the building.
A medieval merchant's trading house in Southampton , restored to its mid-14th-century appearance.