¹ I am grateful to an anonymous referee, Margaret Bonney, and to a number of people who have commented on various drafts of this paper. For an urban hierarchy in relationship to its ‘region’, see Dyer, C., ‘The hidden trade of the Middle Ages: evidence from the West Midlands of England’, Journal of Historical Geography, 18 (1992), 141–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar and see also Hilton, R.H., A Medieval Society. The West Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1966), 167–216Google Scholar. For the ‘social location’ of towns see Abrams, P., ‘Towns and economic growth: theories and problems’, in Abrams, P. and Wrigley, E.A. (eds), Towns in Societies (Cambridge, 1978), 9–33.Google Scholar

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²⁸ Clark, , ‘Debt litigation’, 263Google Scholar (Table 8.7). See also Kowaleski, M., The commercial dominance of a late medieval provincial oligarchy: Exeter in the late fourteenth century’Google Scholar, in Holt, and Rosser, , The Medieval Town, 199–209Google Scholar, and Britnell, , Colchester, 98–108.Google Scholar

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³² Britnell, , Colchester, 106Google Scholar. The general issue of specialties was mentioned in one case in 1398: ‘et petit iudicium si teneatur respondere sine speciali an non …’ (in a case of debt brought about the dyeing of cloth).

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