Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Richard Britnell: An Appreciation
- 1 Unreal Wages: Long-Run Living Standards and the ‘Golden Age’ of the Fifteenth Century
- 2 Minimum Wages and Unemployment Rates in Medieval England: The Case of Old Woodstock, Oxfordshire, 1256–1357
- 3 Crisis Management in London's Food Supply, 1250–1500
- 4 Grain Shortages in Late Medieval Towns
- 5 Market Regulation in Fifteenth-Century England
- 6 Self-Government in the Small Towns of Late Medieval England
- 7 Marketing and Trading Networks in Medieval Durham
- 8 Peasant Opportunities in Rural Durham: Land, Vills and Mills, 1400–1500
- 9 The Shipmaster as Entrepreneur in Medieval England
- 10 Cheating the Boss: Robert Carpenter's Embezzlement Instructions (1261×1268) and Employee Fraud in Medieval England
- 11 The Public Life of the Private Charter in Thirteenth-Century England
- 12 Luxury Goods in Medieval England
- Index of People and Places
- Bibliography of the Writings of Richard Britnell
- Tabula Gratulatoria
7 - Marketing and Trading Networks in Medieval Durham
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Richard Britnell: An Appreciation
- 1 Unreal Wages: Long-Run Living Standards and the ‘Golden Age’ of the Fifteenth Century
- 2 Minimum Wages and Unemployment Rates in Medieval England: The Case of Old Woodstock, Oxfordshire, 1256–1357
- 3 Crisis Management in London's Food Supply, 1250–1500
- 4 Grain Shortages in Late Medieval Towns
- 5 Market Regulation in Fifteenth-Century England
- 6 Self-Government in the Small Towns of Late Medieval England
- 7 Marketing and Trading Networks in Medieval Durham
- 8 Peasant Opportunities in Rural Durham: Land, Vills and Mills, 1400–1500
- 9 The Shipmaster as Entrepreneur in Medieval England
- 10 Cheating the Boss: Robert Carpenter's Embezzlement Instructions (1261×1268) and Employee Fraud in Medieval England
- 11 The Public Life of the Private Charter in Thirteenth-Century England
- 12 Luxury Goods in Medieval England
- Index of People and Places
- Bibliography of the Writings of Richard Britnell
- Tabula Gratulatoria
Summary
Almost one hundred years after the publication of Madeleine Hope Dodds's meticulously detailed essay on the subject, the history of the Durham ‘bishop's boroughs’ continues to attract historians. There is little doubt that research into these small marketing centres is rewarding for it can serve to reveal much about the administrative, political, social and economic structures of the society in which these institutions operated. Of the six Durham boroughs over which the bishop enjoyed unmediated lordship, charters have survived for three: Durham, Gateshead and Wearmouth (Sunderland). These were all granted by Bishop Hugh du Puiset (1154–95) at various times in the later twelfth century. Darlington, too, was designated a borough by 1196 and had, almost certainly, received a similar grant of liberties, but no evidence of its charter has survived. The aim of this discussion is to explore the nature and raison d'être of these early boroughs, in terms of their marketing and trading functions.
It is clear that the provisions of each charter served a different purpose. That granted to the borough of Durham provided a confirmation of existing rights rather than a conferral of new privileges since this was already an established town, which acted, predominantly, as the service centre for its twin ‘ecclesiastical overlords’, the bishop and prior of Durham, and their respective administrations. Margaret Bonney has made the point that, whilst in many respects medieval Durham was a typical, relatively small market town, it nevertheless possessed ‘a significance and uniqueness unrelated to economic factors’, purely because of its relationship with these two ecclesiastical institutions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Commercial Activity, Markets and Entrepreneurs in the Middle AgesEssays in Honour of Richard Britnell, pp. 129 - 140Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011