Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:12:11.097Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Urban Decline in Late Medieval England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

R. B. Dobson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

More than four centuries have passed since the famous preambles to the various Tudor acts for the re-edifying of English towns generalized with such unnerving confidence about the lamentable state of provincial urban communities in the early sixteenth century; but no historian today who has the temerity to walk through those still perilous streets can be under any illusion as to the continued hazards of such an expedition. Yet that this journey, despite its dangers and frustrations, deserves to be undertaken more frequently and more urgently than ever before seems very clear. Even the most optimistic historian must occasionally suffer some qualms at a situation in which the single most important issue in pre-industrial English urban history—the exact contribution of the late medieval and early modern town to the society and economy of the nation as a whole—seems to be becoming more rather than less mysterious with every detailed monograph and every new methodological problem. For here of course, much more in 1976 than in 1894, we are in the presence of one of those ‘burning questions in which impetuous economists have outrun the historians, and have not found it pre-mature to set in order by the help of accepted theories the obscure chaos of social history in the Middle Ages’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 27 , December 1977 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Statutes of the Realm (London, 1810–1828), iii, 531–32Google Scholar; cf. ibid., pp. 127, 176–77, 768–69, 875, and the recent discussion of these statutes in Elton, G. R., Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 106–09Google Scholar.

2 Green, A. S., Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1894), i, p. xiiGoogle Scholar. For the I first, and still one of the best, attempts to reconcile what were already ‘strangely conflicting opinions’ on the fortunes of the later medieval English town, see Cunningham, W., The Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages (Cambridge, 4th edn., 1905), pp. 369–80, 452–56, 506–21Google Scholar.

3 Maitland, F. W., Township and Borough (Cambridge, 1898), p. 36Google Scholar; Abrams, P., ‘Towns and economic growth: some theories and problems’, Towns and Economic Growth (Proceedings of Past and Present Society, Annual Conference, 1975), p. 4Google Scholar.

4 Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700, ed. Clark, P. and Slack, P. (London, 1972), PP. 4–5Google Scholar.

5 Russell, J. C., British Medieval Population (Albuquerque, 1948), pp. 140–43Google Scholar. All but seven of these towns figure among the forty wealthiest urban contributors to the Lay Subsidy of 1334; and similarly all but seven (not the same seven) occur among the forty English towns most heavily assessed in the Tudor subsidies of the 1520s: see The Lay Subsidy of 1334, ed. Glasscock, R. E. (London, 1975), passimGoogle Scholar; Hoskins, W. G., Local History in England (London, 1959), pp. 176–77Google Scholar; A New Historical Geography of England, ed. Darby, H. C. (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 179–85, 241–43Google Scholar.

6 Hilton, R. H., The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), pp. 37–38Google Scholar.

7 Statutes of the Realm, iii, 30.

8 Maitland, , Township and Borough, p. 11Google Scholar.

9 England in Henry VIII's Time: A Dialogue between Cardinal Pole and Lupset by Thomas Starkey, ed. Cowper, J. M. (Early English Text Society, Extra Series, xii, 1871), p. 93Google Scholar.

10 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Jones MS. 17 (Thomas Lupton's proposals to ameliorate the conditions of the poor in London, York, Canterbury and Lincoln), fo 6; cf. Jones, W. R. D., The Tudor Commonwealth, 1519–1559 (London, 1970), pp. 108–32Google Scholar.

11 A Relation, or rather a True Account, of the Island of England … about the Tear 1500, ed. Sneyd, C. A. (Camden Society, xxxvii, 1847), p. 41Google Scholar; cf. English Historical Documents, iv, 1485–1558, ed. Williams, C. H. (London, 1967), pp. 188, 200Google Scholar.

12 Polydore Vergil's English History from an Early Translation…containing the first eight books, ed. Ellis, H. (Camden Society, xxxvi, 1846), p. 4Google Scholar; cf. Hay, D., Polydore Vergil (Oxford, 1952), pp. 116,121Google Scholar. Similarly, John Major paid due respects to the distinction of Coventry, Norwich and Bristol but seems to have been well aware of the decline of Lincoln (‘of renown in old days’) and of York (‘In circuit it is great but not in population or in wealth’): A History of Greater Britain…by John Major, trans, and ed. by Constable, A. (Scottish History Society, x, 1892), p. 22Google Scholar.

13 The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535–43, ed. Smith, L. Toulmin (London, 1907–1910), i, p. xxxviiGoogle Scholar.

14 Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, ed. Chapman, R. W. (Oxford, 1924), p.8Google Scholar.

15 Itinerary of Ireland, v, 39; i, 227–28; ii, 96–97; iv, 114, 181–82; v, 52–53; ii, 106–08.

16 Ibid., iv, 59; i, 61–62; v, 147.

17 ‘What we do know is that, by about 1640, the 1,500 or 2,000 medieval markets of England had shrunk to fewer than 800’: Everitt, A., New Avenues in English Local History (Leicester, 1970) p. 10Google Scholar. For an especially illuminating regional study of this decline see Palliser, D. M. and Pinnock, A. C., ‘The markets of medieval Stafford-shire’, North Staffordshire Journal of Field Studies, 11 (1971), pp. 49–59Google Scholar.

18 Itinerary of Leland, i, 7, 15; ii, 64, 105; iv, 25; v, 19.

19 Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1485–94 (London, 1914), p. 298Google Scholar; Lobel, M. D. and Carus-Wilson, E. M., ‘Bristol’ (Atlas of Historic Towns, ed. Lobel, M. D., ii, London, 1975), p. 13Google Scholar; York City Archives, House Book 6, fo 83; An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of York, ii: The Defences (Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, 1972), pp. 19, 67Google Scholar.

20 Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, p. 93. It needs no urging that a high proportion of successful sixteenth-century merchants were, like their medieval predecessors, of gentry origin; but the direct evidence for the alleged ‘return to the towns’ of the Tudor gentry themselves still seems much less than conclusive: see, for example, MacCaflrey, W. T., Exeter, 1540–1640, The Growth of an English County Town (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 247–63Google Scholar; Dyer, A. D., The City of Worcester in the Sixteenth Century (Leicester, 1973), pp. 181–88Google Scholar; Platt, C., The English Medieval Town (London, 1976), pp. 188–90Google Scholar.

21 Turner, H. L., Town Defences in England and Wales (London, 1971), pp. 13–16, 25, 30–44, 90–91Google Scholar; Barley, M. W., ‘Town defences in England and Wales after 1066’, The Plans and Topography of Medieval Towns in England and Wales, ed. Barley, M. W. (Council for British Archaeology, Research Report No. 14, 1976) pp. 57–71Google Scholar.

22 Tate, G., The History of the Borough, Castle and Barony of Alnwick (Alnwick, 1866–1869), PP. 238–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The stone wall of Coventry is perhaps the major exception to prove the rule: built at erratic intervals during the long period from 1356 to 1534, ‘it is perhaps remarkable that the campaign was eventually completed’ (Barley, , ‘Town Defences’, p. 68Google Scholar; Gooder, E., Coventry's Town Wall (Coventry and North Warwickshire History Pamphlet, No. 4), 1971, pp. 3–37)Google Scholar.

23 E.g. Calendar of Patent Rolls 1377–81 (London, 1895), p. 76Google Scholar; Itinerary of Leland, i, 79; v, 147; Barley, M. W. and Straw, I. F., ‘Nottingham’ (Atlas of Historic Towns, i, 1969), p. 5Google Scholar; Victoria History of the County of Warwick, viii (London, 1969), p. 420Google Scholar.

24 Platt, C., Medieval Southampton (London, 1973), p. 172Google Scholar; Wilson, K. P., ‘The port of Chester in the fifteenth century’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lanca-shire and Cheshire, cxvii (1966), p. 2Google Scholar; Cooper, T. P., York: The Story of its Walls, Bars and Castles (London, 1904), pp. 291–304, 328–30Google Scholar; Inventory of Historical Monuments in York, The Defences, pp. 19–20, 139–40, 142–49.

25 E.g. at Cambridge, Canterbury, Coventry, Hull, Ipswich, King's Lynn and Norwich as well as York and London: see Harvey, J., English Medieval Architects (London, 1954), pp. 260, 299Google Scholar; Lobel, M. D., ‘Cambridge’ (Atlas of Historic Towns, ii), PP. 15–16Google Scholar; V.C.H., Warwickshire, viii (1969), pp. 141–42Google Scholar; V.C.H., Yorkshire, East Riding, i (1969), p. 398Google Scholar; Parker, V., The Making of King's Lynn (London, 1971), pp. 140–48Google Scholar; Campbell, J., ‘Norwich’ (Atlas of Historic Towns, ii), p. 15Google Scholar.

26 Maitland, , Township and Borough, p. 85Google Scholar; cf. Weinbaum, M., The Incorporation of Boroughs (Manchester, 1937), pp. 45–96Google Scholar.

27 Calendar of Close Rolls 1389–92 (London, 1922), p. 135Google Scholar; Hill, J. W. F., Medieval Lincoln (Cambridge, 1948), pp. 254, 270–71Google Scholar.

28 Of the various exceptions, perhaps the most significant is the Guildhall at Exeter which was substantially rebuilt from a ruinous state in 1468, on the eve (as Professor Joyce Youings kindly informs me) of that late fifteenth-century period of expansion ‘which made Exeter one of the wealthiest and most populous cities in the land’: Carus-Wilson, E. M., The Expansion of Exeter at the Close of the Middle Ages (University of Exeter, 1963), p. 31Google Scholar.

29 Postan, M. M., Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of the Medieval Economy (Cambridge, 1973), p. 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cunningham, , Growth of English Industry and Commerce, p. 294Google Scholar.

30 ‘Parliamentary Petitions relating to Oxford’, ed. Smith, L. Toulmin, Collectanea iii (Oxford Historical Society, xxxii, 1896), pp. 139–59Google Scholar; Salter, H. E., Medieval Oxford (Oxford Historical Society, 1936), pp. 87–89Google Scholar; Davis, R. H. C., ‘The Ford, the River and the City’, Oxoniensia, xxxviii (1973), pp. 258–68Google Scholar; Rotuli Parliamentorum (Record Commission, 1783), iii, 185, 254, 260, 515Google Scholar; v, 432; vi, 436; Lobel, M. D.,‘Cambridge’; (Atlas of Historic Towns, ii), p. 13Google Scholar.

31 Kidson, P., Murray, P. and Thompson, P., A History of English Architecture (revised edition, London, 1965), pp. 128–32Google Scholar; An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of Oxford (R.C.H.M., 1939), pp. 125–47Google Scholar; An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of York, iii: South-West of the Ouse(R.C.H.M., 1972), pp. xlii–xlvGoogle Scholar, 3–5, 10–11, 16–17, 20–22, 26–27.

32 Dobson, R. B., ‘The Foundation of Perpetual Chantries by the Citizens of Medieval York’, Studies in Church History, iv, ed. Cuming, G. J. (Leiden, 1967), pp. 22–38Google Scholar; cf. Dickens, A. G., ‘A Municipal Dissolution of Chantries, 1536’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, xxxvi (1944–1947), PP. 164–73Google Scholar.

33 ‘A petition of the City of Winchester to Henry VI, 1450’, Archaeologia, i (1770), p. 94Google Scholar; cf. Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1436–41, p. 400; ibid., 1441–46, p. 84.

34 Grimsby Borough Archives, Petition of Citizens of Lincoln; Historical Manuscripts Commission, 14th Report, Appendix viii (1895), PP. 263–65Google Scholar.

35 Rotuli Parliamentorum, iv, 425; v, 5, 37, 68–69, 142, 228, 497; vi, 40 (usefully calendared in Cunningham, , Growth of English Industry, pp. 454–55)Google Scholar.

36 Historical Manuscripts Commission, 14th Report, p. 264, and cf. pp. 10–12; Hill, , Medieval Lincoln, pp. 285–88Google Scholar.

37 Public Record Office, Patent Roll 17 Henry VI, ii (C.66/444), memb. 11d; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1436–41, pp. 317–18.

38 ‘Petition of the City of Winchester, 1450’, op. cit., pp. 94–95.

39 Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1436–41, p. 400; 1446–52, p. 80; Calendar of Records of the Corporation of Gloucester, ed. Stevenson, W. H. (Gloucester, 1893), nos. 58–59Google Scholar.

40 P.R.O., Patent Roll 49 Henry VI (C.66/491), memb. 17d; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1467–77, pp. 250, 393; cf. Materials for the Reign of Henry VII, i (Rolls Series, 1873), pp. 326–27, 330Google Scholar; Scammell, G. V., ‘English Merchant Shipping at the end of the Middle Ages: some east coast evidence’, Economic History Review, 2nd series xiii (1961), pp. 327–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Wilson, , ‘The Port of Chester’, op. cit., p. 10Google Scholar.

42 York City Archives, MS. A/Y, appendix fo 14; cf. York Civic Records, ed. Raine, A. (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series, 1939–1953), i, 65–66, 71, 73, 82, 135–37, 165–67Google Scholar; ii, 36–37, 70, 81, 83; and cf. British Library, Harley MS 433, fos 38, 81.

43 Green, , Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, ii, 216–17, 332, 406, 410–11Google Scholar; Bridbury, A. R., Economic Growth: England in the later Middle Ages (London, 1962), pp. 75–76Google Scholar. By contrast, the discussion of these issues in Wright, A. P. M., ‘The Relations between the King's Government and the English Cities and Boroughs in the Fifteenth Century' (University of Oxford, D.Phil, thesis, 1965), pp. 173–230Google Scholar, suggests that even when urban claims for tax exemption on grounds of insufficiency were specious in detail they were often well founded in substance.

44 E.g., York City Archives, Chamberlains' Accounts, 1397–1502 (C.1–C.5); V.C.H., Torkshire, City of York (1961), pp. 72–73; V.C.H., Yorkshire, East Riding, i, 40–42; Gillett, E., A History of Grimsby (London, 1970), pp. 55–56, 66–67Google Scholar; Lobel, M. D. and Tann, J., ‘Gloucester’ (Atlas of Historic Towns, i), pp. 10–11Google Scholar.

45 Statutes of the Realm, ii, 359; York Civic Records, i, 135–37; V.C.H., Yorkshire, City of York, pp. 74–75, 139. The refusal of civic office in early sixteenth-century York is to be discussed at length in Dr David Palliser's forthcoming history of the Tudor city: I am most grateful to him for his generous assistance on these and other issues.

46 Select cases before the King's Council in the Star Chamber, ii, ed. Leadam, I. S. (Selden Society, xxv, 1911), pp. cii–cxviii, 142–65Google Scholar.

47 Historical Manuscripts Commission, 14th Report, Appendix viii, p. 264.

48 The Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, J. (London, 1904), i. 152Google Scholar; iii, 53–55; McKisack, M., The Parliamentary Representation of English Boroughs during the Midde Ages (Oxford, 1932), pp. 60–64, 100–18Google Scholar; cf. Jalland, P., ‘The Revolution in Northern Borough Representation in Mid-Fifteenth-Century England', Northern History, xi (1976 for 1975), pp. 27–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Grimsby Borough Archives, HMC. OL 2/21; Historical Manuscripts Commission, 14th Report, Appendix viii, p. 252; cf. Rogers, A., ‘Parliamentary Elections in Grimsby in the Fifteenth Century’, Bulletin of Institute of Historical Research, xlii (1969), pp. 212–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Clark, and Slack, , Crisis and Order in English Towns, pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

50 Rogers, A., ‘Late Medieval Stamford: A Study of the Town Council, 1465–92’, Perspectives in English Urban History, ed. Everitt, A. (London, 1973), pp. 28–29Google Scholar.

51 Reading Records: Diary of the Corporation, 1431–1654, ed. Guilding, J. M. (London, 1892–1896), i, 52Google Scholar; Coventry Leet Book, 1420–1555, ed. Harris, M. D. (Early English Text Society, 1907–1913), pp. 313–19, 353–58Google Scholar; Records of the Borough of Leicester, 1103–1603, ed. Bateson, M. (Cambridge, 1899–1905), ii, 279, 315–16Google Scholar; Records of the Borough of Nottingham, ed. Stevenson, W. H. (London, 1882–1900), ii, 257Google Scholar; English Historical Documents, 1327–1485, ed. Myers, A. R. (London, 1969), pp. 507–508Google Scholar; Storey, R. L., The End of the House of Lancaster (London, 1966) pp. 125–32, 142Google Scholar.

52 York Civic Records, i, 135–37.

53 Postan, , Medieval Agriculture and General Problems, p. 274Google Scholar.

54 Ibid., pp. 44–46; Postan, M. M., ‘Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime: England’, Cambridge Economic History, i (1966 edn), p. 568Google Scholar; Bridbury, , Economic Growth, pp. 56–64Google Scholar.

55 Dobson, R. B., ‘Admissions to the Freedom of the City of York in the Later Middle Ages’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xxvi (1973), pp. 1–22Google Scholar; cf. Woodward, D. M., ‘Freemen's Rolls’, The Local Historian, ix (1970), pp. 89–95Google Scholar.

58 The Records of the City of Norwich, ed. Hudson, W. and Tingey, J. G. (Norwich, 1906–1910), ii, pp. xxx–xxxii, cxviii–cxxiiGoogle Scholar; A Calendar of the Freemen of Lynn, 1292–1836 (Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society, 1913), pp. 1–42Google Scholar; V.C.H., Yorkshire, East Riding, i, 56; Register of the Freemen of the City of York, i (Surtees Society, xcvi, 1897), pp. 213–52Google Scholar; Bridbury, , Economic Growth, pp. 65–69Google Scholar; Exeter Freemen, 1266–1967, ed. Rowe, M. M. and Jackson, A. M. (Devon an d Cornwall Record Society, Extra Series i, 1973), pp. xiv, 54–69Google Scholar.

57 Coleman, O., ‘Trade and Prosperity in the Fifteenth Century: Some Aspects of the Trade of Southampton’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xvi (1963),p. 21Google Scholar; cf. the less melancholy verdict of Platt, Medieval Southampton, pp. 141–63.

58 Campbell, J., ‘Norwich’ (Atlas of Historic Towns, ii), p. 16Google Scholar.

59 Scammell, , op. cit., p. 339Google Scholar.

60 Hilton, R. H., ‘Some Problems of Urban Real Property in the Middle Ages’, Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth, ed. Feinstein, C. H. (Cambridge, 1967), P. 337Google Scholar; cf. Platt, , English Medieval Town, pp. 181–82Google Scholar.

61 Bartlett, N., ‘The Lay Poll Tax Returns for the city of York in 1381’, Trans-actions of the East Riding of Yorkshire Antiquarian Society, xxx, p. 7Google Scholar. Dr Bartlett's edition of these returns remains, most regrettably, unpublished; but an offprint is included in his ‘Some Aspects of the Economy of York in the Later Middle Ages, 1300–1550’ (University of London, Ph.D. thesis, 1958)Google Scholar. Cf. Leggett's, J. I. ‘The 1377 Poll Tax Return for the City of York’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, xliii (1971), pp. 128–46Google Scholar.

62 Schofield, R. S., ‘The geographical distribution of wealth in England, 1334–1649’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xviii (1965), pp. 483–510Google Scholar; Bridbury, , Economic Growth, pp. 78–82Google Scholar; andcf. Keene, D. J., ‘Suburban Growth’, Plans and Topography of Medieval Towns (1976), pp. 71–82Google Scholar.

63 V.C.H., Yorkshire, City of York, p. 121.

64 Beresford, M. W., The Lay Subsidies and the Poll Taxes (Canterbury, 1963), p. 3Google Scholar; cf. the differentiated lists of items exempted from taxation as summarized in Willard, J. F., ‘The Taxes upon Movables of the Reign of Edward I’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xxviii; (1913), PP. 517–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Carus-Wilson, E. M., The Expansion of Exeter at the Close of the Middle Ages, P. 5Google Scholar.

66 York Civic Records, i, 32; Wedgwood, J. C., History of Parliament: Biographies Members of the Commons House, 1439–1509 (London, 1936), p. 389Google Scholar; Testamenta Eboracensia (Surtees Society, 1836–1902), iv, 134–37Google Scholar; Palliser, D. M., The Reformation in Tork, 1534–1553 (Borthwick Paper No. 40, York, 1971), pp. 1–2, 5Google Scholar; V.C.H., Yorkshire, City of York, pp. 89–91, 105–06, 110–13, 117, 122–26.

67 York Civic Records, ii, 9.

68 See C. Phythian-Adams's forthcomingCoventry in Crisis, 1518–25; cf. V.C.H., Warwickshire, viii, 4–5; Lancaster, J. C., ‘Coventry’ (Atlas of Historic Towns, ii), p. 9Google Scholar. I am most grateful to Mr Phythian-Adams for permission to consult two unpublished papers which argue the case for the persistence of general urban decline in early sixteenth-century England at considerable length.

69 Statutes of the Realm, ii, 577; York Civic Records, i, 158; Seyer, S., Memoirs, historical and topographical, of Bristol and its Neighbourhood (Bristol, 1821–1823), ii, 206Google Scholar.

70 Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, op. cit., p. 76; cf. Blanchard, I., ‘Population change, enclosure, and the Early Tudor economy’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd series, xxiii (1970), p. 435Google Scholar.

71 I am heavily indebted to Professor Joyce Youings, Dr David Palliser and Dr Paul Slack for their invaluable criticisms and comments on an earlier version of this paper.