The economics of English towns and trade in the Middle Ages is the economic history of English towns and trade from the Norman invasion in 1066, to the death of Henry VII in 1509. Although England's economy was fundamentally agricultural throughout the period, even before the invasion the market economy was important to producers. Norman institutions, including serfdom, were superimposed on a mature network of well-established towns involved in international trade. Over the next five centuries the English economy would at first grow and then suffer an acute crisis, resulting in significant political and economic change. Despite economic dislocation in urban areas, including shifts in the holders of wealth and the location of these economies, the economic output of towns developed and intensified over the period. 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.
Invasion and the early Norman period (1066–1100) 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. This campaign was followed by fierce military operations known as the Harrying of the North between 1069–1070, extending Norman authority across the north of England. 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.Dyer 2009, p.8. Most of the damage done in the invasion was in the north and the west of England, some of it still recorded as "wasteland" in 1086.Cantor 1982a, p.18. Many of the key features of the English trading and financial system remained in place in the decades immediately after the conquest.
Trade, manufacturing and the towns
Although primarily rural, England had a number of old, economically important towns in 1066. A large amount of trade came through the Eastern towns, including London, York, Winchester, Lincoln, Norwich, Ipswich and Thetford.Stenton, p.162, 166. Much of this trade was with France, the Low Countries and Germany, but the North-East of England traded with partners as far away as Sweden.Douglas, p.303. Cloth was already being imported to England before the invasion through the mercery trade.Sutton, p.2.
Some towns, such as York, suffered from Norman sacking during William's northern campaigns.Douglas, p.313. Other towns saw the widespread demolition of houses to make room for new motte and bailey fortifications, as was the case in Lincoln. The Norman invasion also brought significant economic changes with the arrival of the first Jews to English cities.Douglas, p.314. 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.Hillaby, pp. 16–17. In the years immediately after the invasion, a lot of wealth was drawn out of England in various ways by the Norman rulers and reinvested in Normandy, making William immensely wealthy as an individual ruler.Douglas, pp. 303–304.
The minting of coins was decentralised in the Saxon period; every borough was mandated to have a mint and therefore a centre for trading in bullion.Stenton, p.162. Nonetheless, there was strict royal control over these moneyers and coin dies could only be made in London. William retained this arrangement and also maintained a high coin standard, which led to the use of the term sterling for Norman silver coins.
Governance and taxation William I inherited the Anglo-Saxon system in which the king drew his revenues from a mixture of customs; profits from re-minting coinage; fines; profits from his own demesne lands, and the system of English land-based taxation called the geld.Douglas, p.299. William reaffirmed this system, enforcing collection of the geld through his new system of sheriffs and increasing the taxes on trade.Douglas, p.299, 302. William was also famous for commissioning the Domesday Book in 1086, a vast document which attempted to record the economic condition of his new kingdom.
Mid-medieval growth (1100–1290) The 12th and 13th centuries were a period of huge economic growth in England. The population of England rose from around one and a half million in 1086 to around four or five million in 1300, stimulating increased agricultural outputs and the export of raw materials to Europe.Cantor 1982a, p.18 suggests an English population of 4 million; Jordan, p.12, suggests 5 million. In contrast to the previous two centuries, England was relatively secure from invasion. Except for the years of the Anarchy, most military conflicts either had only localised economic impact or proved only temporarily disruptive. 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.Burton, p.8. 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.Wood, p.15.
Trade, manufacturing and the towns
Growth of English towns
After the end of the Anarchy, the number of small towns in England began to increase sharply.Astill, p.46. By 1297 a hundred and twenty new towns had established and in 1350, by when the expansion had effectively ceased, there were around 500 towns in England.Hodgett, p.57; Bailey, p.47; Pounds, p.15. 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.Hodgett, p.57. The new towns were usually located with access to trade routes, rather than defence, in mind.Astill, pp48-49. The streets were laid out to make access to the town's market convenient. A growing percentage of England's population lived in urban areas; estimates suggest that this rose from around 5.5% in 1086 to up to 10% in 1377.Pounds, p.80.
London held a special status within the English economy. 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.Nightingale, p.92; Danziger and Gillingham, p.58. 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.Geddes, pp. 174–175, p.181. Pewter-working, using English tin and lead, was also widespread in London during the period.Homer, pp. 57–58. The provincial towns also had a substantial number of trades by the end of the 13th century—a large town like Coventry, for example, contained over three hundred different specialist occupations, and a smaller town such as Durham could support some sixty different professions.Bailey, p.51. The increasing wealth of the nobility and the church was reflected in the widespread building of cathedrals and other prestigious buildings in the larger towns, in turn making use of lead from English mines for roofing.Bailey, p.46; Homer, p.64.
Land transport remained much more expensive than river or sea transport during the period.Bartlett, p.361. 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.Bartlett, p.361; Bailey, p.52; Pilkinton p.xvi. Transport remained very costly in comparison to the overall price of products.Hodgett, p.109. By the 13th century, groups of common carriers ran carting businesses, with carting brokers existing in London to link traders and carters.Bartlett, p.363; Hodgett p.109. These used the four major land routes crossing England: Ermine Street, the Fosse Way, Icknield Street and Watling Street. A large number of bridges were built during the 12th century to improve the trade network.Bartlett, p.364.
In the 13th century, England was still primarily supplying raw materials for export to Europe, rather than finished or processed goods.Hodgett, p.147. There were some exceptions, such as very high quality cloths from Stamford and Lincoln, including the famous "Lincoln Scarlet" dyed cloth. Despite royal efforts to encourage it, barely any English cloth was being exported by 1347.
Expansion of the money supply
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.Stenton, p.169. By the reign of Edward I there were only nine mints outside London and the king created a new official called the Master of the Mint to oversee these and the thirty furnaces operating in London to meet the supply for new coins.Stenton, pp169-170. The amount of money in circulation hugely increased in this period; before the Norman invasion there had been around £50,000 in circulation as coin, but by 1311 this had risen to more than £1m.Bailey, p.49. 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.Stenton, p.163. During the 13th Century, nominal wages fluctuated, but the overall trend was flat. As a result of the increase in money supply, prices in general increased significantly over the course of the century. As a result of the price inflation, real wages—one of the stickiest of prices—declined steadily.
Rise of the guilds The first English guilds emerged during the early 12th century.Ramsay, p.xx. 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".Myers, p.68. Amongst these early guilds were the "guilds merchants", who ran the local markets in towns and represented the merchant community in discussions with the crown. Other early guilds included the "craft guilds", representing specific trades. By 1130 there were major weavers' guilds in six English towns, as well as a fullers guild in Winchester.Hodgett, p.147; Ramsay, p.xx. Over the coming decades more guilds were created, often becoming increasingly involved in both local and national politics, although the guilds merchants were largely replaced by official groups established by new royal charters.Myers, p.69; Ramsay, p.xx.
The craft guilds required relatively stable markets and a relative equality of income and opportunity amongst their members to function effectively. By the 14th century these conditions were increasingly uncommon.Myers, p.69. The first strains were seen in London, where the old guild system began to collapse – more trade was being conducted at a national level, making it hard for craftsmen to both manufacture goods and trade in them, and there were growing disparities in incomes between the richer and poor craftsmen. As a result, under Edward III many guilds became companies or livery companies, chartered companies focusing on trade and finance (the management of large amounts of money), leaving the guild structures to represent the interests of the smaller, poorer manufacturers.Myers, p.69; Ramsay, p.xxiii.
Merchants and the development of the charter fairs