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Landlords and tenants: housing and the rented property market in early fourteenth-century Norwich
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2009
Abstract
Most evidence for leasing in medieval towns is episodic and unquantifiable. An exceptional Norwich source has been used to estimate the scale of demand for rented accommodation and to assess the resulting multiple occupation of freehold properties. The way in which a growing population was housed at Norwich and the physical and social consequences is examined. Much of the demand for rented property was met by landlords who were both secular and private, suggesting that in this respect fourteenth-century Norwich resembled Bristol rather than Oxford. Finally, the response of institutional landlords to an apparently growing demand and the behaviour of rents is considered. Falling rent receipts from the late 1330s may be an indicator of economic rather than population decline.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995
Footnotes
I am indebted to Dr Derek Keene, to all those who have commented on various drafts of this paper and to the staff of the Norfolk Record Office for their help.
References
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2 Most surveys and enrolments of private urban documents at this date were primarily concerned with freehold interests. Generally urban freeholders were in a similar position to a modern property owner, able to buy, sell, let out or leave their property by will. Life tenants were also freeholders but so few leases for life were enrolled at Norwich at this time that they should not affect the conclusions reached in this paper. See Rutledge, E., ‘Property transfer and enrolment in Norwich 1285–1311’, in Priestley, U. (ed.), Men of Property, An Analysis of the Norwich Enrolled Deeds, 1285–1311 (Norwich, 1983), 41–69Google Scholar; Martin, G.H. (ed.), The Ipswich Recognizance Rolls, 1294–1327, A Calendar (Suffolk Record Society, 16, 1973).Google Scholar
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9 NRO, MC 146/52 684X5, maps 9,118. The total excludes four rows later transferred as a messuage or tenement but includes another four referred to subsequently as messuages in abuttals.
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11 Elsewhere the increased use of leases in the early fourteenth century has been partly attributed to the statute of Quia emptores (1290). This in effect abolished assize rents (p. 15) reserved to a seller of property, thereby depriving both the seller of a regular rent and the purchaser of the opportunity of paying out of income, a situation which a move towards leasing might re-establish (Keene, , Survey, 188ff.Google Scholar and Keene, D., ‘The property market in English towns A.D. 1100–1600’Google Scholar) in Vigeur, J.-C. M. (ed.), D'une ville à l'autre: structures matérielles et organisation de l'espace dans les villes européennes (Collection de l'école française de Rome, 122, 1989), 213Google Scholar. At Norwich, however, most assize rents reserved by deeds enrolled 1285–90 were purely nominal while even after 1290 payment out of income could still be assured, where required, by the creation of a new assize rent (a rentcharge) (Rutledge, , ‘Property transfer’, 59, 63Google Scholar). Moreover, while some former purchasers may have switched to leases for life or longer terms of years, this would not have affected the demand from the less well-off for yearly, monthly and weekly tenancies.
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38 NRO, NCR, case 3/4, private deeds box 10.
39 NRO, DCN 1/5/4–12.
40 NRO, DCN 1/6/9–12.
41 There is no sign at Norwich of the stake prosecutions used to recover non-paying properties at Winchester (Keene, , Survey, 19–20).Google Scholar
42 NRO, DCN 1/7/7–11.
43 NRO, DCN 1/4/, 1/6/, 1/8/, 1/12/.
44 Keene, , Survey, 243Google Scholar; Keene, D., Cheapside Before the Great Fire (ESRC, 1985), 19Google Scholar; Mate, M., ‘Property investment by Canterbury cathedral priory, 1250–1400’, Journal of British Studies, XXIII, 2 (1984), 6–7.Google Scholar
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