Commercial activity and population growth in Medieval England

Past and Present

Volumn 190, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 35-81

  Langdon, John ^a   Masschaele, James ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA   (Canada)

^b RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33748307722     PISSN: 00312746     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtj005     Document Type: Article

References (217)

1. See especially Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System, AD 1250-1350 (New York, 1989).
2. The most influential for Europe as a whole is Peter Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1988): See esp. pt 2, 'The Commercial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century'.
3. For England the standard text is R. H. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000-1500 (Cambridge, 1993), esp. pt 2.
4. For example John Hatcher and Mark Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages: The History and Theory of England's Economic Development (Oxford, 2001), ch. 4.
5. Ibid., 123.
6. The distinction was originally made in relation to modern business cycles by Joseph A. Schumpeter, Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, 2 vols. (New York, 193 9), i, 34.
7. For example, see Graeme Donald Snooks, 'The Dynamic Role of the Market in the Anglo-Norman Economy and Beyond, 1086-1300', in Richard H. Britnell and Bruce M. S. Campbell (eds.), A Commercialising Economy: England 1086 to c. 1300 (Manchester, 1995), 52 (fig. 3.2).
8. The Works of Thomas Robert Malthus, ed. E. A. Wrigley and David Souden, 8 vols. (London, 1986),
9. i. For a detailed exposition of the theory, see Hatcher and Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages, ch. 2.
10. Postan's theory is most clearly stated in M. M. Postan, 'Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime: England', in M. M. Postan (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, i, The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1966)
11. but see also M. M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1975), ch. 4.
12. Postan, 'Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime', 569-70.
13. For example E. A. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century, ed. R. H. Hilton, trans. Ruth Kisch (Oxford, 1956)
14. R. H. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (London, 1973).
15. The position is usefully summarized in Nils Hybel, Crisis or Change: The Concept of Crisis in the Light of Agrarian Structural Reorganization in Late Medieval England (Aarhus, 1989), 197-200.
16. For predatory lordship, see n. 10 above
17. for predatory governments, see J. R. Maddicott, 'The English Peasantry and the Demands of the Crown, 1294-1341', in T. H. Aston (ed.), Landlords, Peasants and Politics in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1987), which first appeared as Past and Present Supplement, no. 1 (1975).
18. See also Mark Ormrod, 'The Crown and the English Economy, 1290-1348', in Bruce M. S. Campbell (ed.), Before the Black Death: Studies in the 'Crisis' of the Early Fourteenth Century (Manchester, 1991)
19. Guy Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism: Economy and Society in Eastern Normandy, c. 1300-1550 (Cambridge, 1984), esp. 278-88.
20. Most of this is derived from Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle, trans. Redvers Opie (New York, 1961); Schumpeter's Business Cycles gives a more theoretical elaboration.
21. David L. Farmer, 'Prices and Wages, 1042-1350', in H. E. Hallam (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ii, 1042-1350 (Cambridge, 1988), 778-9.
22. Works of Thomas Robert Malthus, ed. Wrigley and Souden, iii, 449-50.
23. There are some promising approaches that might give us a handle on this. Langdon, for example, is currently engaged upon a project examining the presence of women and other marginal wage workers (for example children and, perhaps, the disabled) on building sites in medieval England, which might help pinpoint times when family income was at its highest (or lowest).
24. e siècles): Essai de synthèse et perspectives de recherches (Paris, 1962), trans. Cynthia Postan as Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West (London, 1968)
25. and Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe.
26. For medieval England the key texts are Britnell, Commercialisation of English Society;
27. Maryanne Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge, 1995)
28. Britnell and Campbell (eds.), Commercialising Economy;
29. James Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150-1350 (New York, 1997)
30. James A. Galloway (ed.), Trade, Urban Hinterlands and Market Integration, c. 1300-1600 (London, 2000).
31. See, for example, R. H. Britnell, 'The Proliferation of Markets in England, 1200-1349', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xxxiv (1981).
32. Ellen Wedemeyer Moore, The Fairs of Medieval England: An Introductor Study (Toronto, 1985)
33. Britnell, Commercialisation of English Society;
34. Edward Miller and John Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts, 1086-1348 (London, 1995).
35. A particularly valuable recent addition to the literature is Samantha Letters et al., Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516 (List and Index Soc., special ser., xxxii-xxxiii, London, 2003).
36. H. C. Darby, Domesday England (Cambridge, 1977), 369-70.
37. Letters et al., Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales, 28.
38. Pipe Roll: 31 Henry II (Pipe Roll Soc., xxxiv, London, 1913), 125.
39. Pipe Roll: 13 Henry II (Pipe Roll Soc., xi, London, 1889), 76.
40. Figures derived from the Pipe Rolls. The figure for 1181-2 is from Pipe Roll: 28 Henry II (Pipe Roll Soc., xxxi, London, 1910), 47.
41. Wedemeyer Moore, Fairs of Medieval England, 18.
42. See Sidney Painter, Studies in the History of the English Feudal Barony (Baltimore, 1943), 170-1
43. K. J. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, 1152-1219: A Study in Anglo-Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1985), 111.
44. James Masschaele, 'The Multiplicity of Medieval Markets Reconsidered', Jl Hist. Geography, xx (1994).
45. Letters et al., Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales, 28.
46. The following details about the chronology of Oxfordshire markets are derived from ibid., 280-5. We assume that places with borough traits had markets.
47. For examples of 10-mark payments, see Pipe Roll: 10 Richard I (Pipe Roll Soc., xlvii [new ser., ix], London, 1932), 75
48. Pipe Roll: 2 John (Pipe Roll Soc., 1 [new ser., xii], London, 1934), 111
49. Pipe Roll: 3 John (Pipe Roll Soc., lii [new ser., xiv], London, 1936), 125.
50. Pipe Roll: 3 John, 249-50
51. Pipe Roll: 6 John (Pipe Roll Soc., lvi [new ser., xviii], London, 1940), 111.
52. Pipe Roll: 3 John, 257.
53. Pipe Roll: 5 John (Pipe Roll Soc., liv [new ser., xvi], London, 1938), 99.
54. Pipe Roll: 2 John, 111.
55. For a recent survey of toll collection in England, see James Masschaele, 'Tolls and Trade in Medieval England', in Lawrin Armstrong, Ivana Elbl and Martin Elbl (eds.), Money, Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe: Essays in Honour of John H. A. Munro, forthcoming.
56. Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066-1154, ed. H. A. Cronne and R. H. C. Davis, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1968), iii, passim.
57. Calculated from British Borough Charters, 1042-1216, ed. Adolphus Ballard (Cambridge, 1913), pp. cxxxviii-cxlv.
58. The charters are printed in K. M. E. Murray, The Constitutional History of the Cinque Ports (Manchester, 1935), 231-9. Murray thought that Henry II granted the charters between 1155 and 1158.
59. Ibid., 232.
60. Pipe Roll: 11 Henry II (Pipe Roll Soc., viii, London, 1887), 6
61. Pipe Roll: 15 Henry II (Pipe Roll Soc., xiii, London, 1890), 94
62. Pipe Roll: 18 Henry II (Pipe Roll Soc., xviii, London, 1894), 25.
63. Pipe Roll: 6 Richard I (Pipe Roll Soc., xliii [new ser., v], London, 1928), 64
64. Pipe Roll: 6 John, p. xliv;
65. British Borough Charters, 1216-1307, ed. Adolphus Ballard and James Tait (Cambridge, 1923), p. xcvii.
66. John Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven, 1999), 277.
67. Pipe Roll: 7 Richard I (Pipe Roll Soc., xliv [new ser., vi], London, 1929), 79.
68. Pipe Roll: 6 John, 218.
69. The document is also printed in Norman Scott Brien Gras, The Early English Customs System: A Documentary Study of the Institutional and Economic History of the Customs from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1918), 221-2.
70. For discussion of its significance, see Pipe Roll: 6 John, pp. xliii xlv;
71. Sidney Painter, The Reign of King John (Baltimore, 1949), 137-9;
72. T. H. Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977), 9-11
73. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts, 195-6
74. Maryanne Kowaleski, 'Port Towns: England and Wales, 1300-1450', in D. M. Palliser (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, i, 600-1540 (Cambridge, 2000), 476-7. The dates covered by the account have been the subject of much debate. We follow Lloyd's suggestion that the most likely dates are those between 20 July 1203 and 7 November 1204.
75. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts, 196.
76. Most of which, such as exemptions and the possibility of smuggling, suggest that the £75,000 cargo value estimate is very much on the low side for maritime trade at this time.
77. Darby, Domesday England, 162-70.
78. Lloyd, English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages, 6-7.
79. David Nicholas, Medieval Flanders (London, 1992), 116-19.
80. Gras, Early English Customs System, 219-20.
81. Rolls of the Fifteenth of the Ninth Year of the Reign of Henry III for Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Wiltshire and Rolls of the Fortieth of the Seventeenth Year of the Reign of Henry III for Kent, ed. Fred A. Cazel Jr and Annarie P. Cazel (Pipe Roll Soc., lxxxiii [new ser., xlv], London, 1983).
82. A. R. Bridbury, Medieval English Clothmaking: An Economic Survey (London, 1982), chs. 1-3. Most other historians describe England's textile industry as declining in the later thirteenth century but still of some importance.
83. For a recent survey, see John H. Munro, 'The "Industrial Crisis" of the English Textile Towns, c. 1290-c.1330', in Michael Prestwich, Richard Britnell and Robin Frame (eds.), Thirteenth-Century England, vii, Proceedings of the Durham Conference, 1997 (Woodbridge, 1999).
84. E. M. Carus-Wilson and Olive Coleman, England's Export Trade, 1275-1547 (Oxford, 1963), 13, 40-1, 122. Carus-Wilson and Coleman estimated that 260 sheep had to be shorn to make up one sack.
85. See, for example, Richard Gem, 'The English Parish Church in the 11th and Early 12th Centuries: A Great Rebuilding?', in John Blair (ed.), Minsters and Parish Churches: The Local Church in Transition, 950-1200 (Oxford, 1988)
86. R. Allen Brown, H. M. Colvin and A. J. Taylor, The History of the King's Works, i, The Middle Ages (London, 1963), chs. 1-2.
87. Richard Morris, Cathedrals and Abbeys of England and Wales: The Building Church, 600-1540 (London, 1979), 180.
88. Darby, Domesday England, 361.
89. John Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy: England, 1300-1540 (Oxford, 2004), 14
90. John Langdon, 'Water-Mills and Windmills in the West Midlands, 1086-1500', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xliv (1991), 430.
91. As in the West Midlands: See Langdon, 'Water-Mills and Windmills in the West Midlands', 430, 434 (tables 1-2).
92. The literature on medieval windmills is large. For some indication of it, see Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy, esp. 108-15.
93. The most judicious survey of the earliest English windmills is in Richard Holt, The Mills of Medieval England (Oxford, 1988), 171-5.
94. Holt, Mills of Medieval England, 21.
95. As counted by Holt: See ibid., appendix 1.
96. Edward J. Kealey, Harvesting the Air: Windmill Pioneers in Twelfth-Century England (Woodbridge, 1987), 211-62, claims to have found evidence for fifty-six windmills before 1200, but many of his examples have suspect dates.
97. Holt, Mills of Medieval England, 22-4.
98. John Langdon, 'The Birth and Demise of a Medieval Windmill', History of Technology, xiv (1992), 55, 72 n. 6.
99. David Harrison, The Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society, 400-1800 (Oxford, 2004), esp. chs. 2-4.
100. For the geographical distribution of windmills in medieval England, see John Langdon, 'Lordship and Peasant Consumerism in the Milling Industry of Early Fourteenth-Century England', Past and Present, no. 145 (Nov. 1994), 11
101. or Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy, 10.
102. Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe, esp. pt 2
103. Martin Allen, 'The Volume of the English Currency, 1158-1470', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., liv (2001)
104. Ian Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy, and Minting in the Middle Ages, ii, Afro-European Supremacy, 1125-1225 (African Gold Production and the First European Silver Production Long-Cycle) (Stuttgart, 2001).
105. For an elegant exposition of this notion as it applied to the spread of English influence throughout the British Isles, see R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093-1343 (Oxford, 2000), ch. 5.
106. For the same thing on a larger European scale, see Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (Harmondsworth, 1994), esp. ch. 6.
107. For example Davies, First English Empire, 117.
108. For the 'great rebuilding' of English parish churches in stone, see especially the various contributions by Richard Gem, C. J. Bond and Neil Batcock, in Blair (ed.), Minsters and Parish Churches;
109. for the English impulse to impart a supposedly superior material culture over newly conquered areas within the British Isles, see R. R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1100-1300 (Cambridge, 1990), 7-13.
110. For mills and other elements as necessary parts of feudal authority, see Langdon, 'Birth and Demise of a Medieval Windmill', 68-9.
111. Richard Britnell, 'Pragmatic Literacy in Latin Christendom', in R. H. Britnell (ed.), Pragmatic Literacy: East and West, 1200-1330 (Woodbridge, 1997), 14
112. P. D. A. Harvey, Manorial Records (London, 1984).
113. Langdon, 'Lordship and Peasant Consumerism in the Milling Industry'.
114. Particularly as argued by Kosminsky and Hilton: See n. 10 above.
115. See John Hatcher's well-known graphical representation of 'long-term flows' in medieval English population, which shows the 'ranges' between plausible estimates, in his Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348-1530 (London, 1977), 71.
116. For example Christopher Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain, 850-1520 (New Haven, 2002), 235 (fig. 2).
117. The figure of 300,000 is derived from Darby, Domesday England, 88-91.
118. Josiah Cox Russell, British Medieval Population (Albuquerque, 1948), 34, 54
119. Darby, Domesday England, 88-91
120. Ian Blanchard, The Middle Ages: A Concept Too Many? (Newlees Farm, near Avonbridge, Stirlingshire, 1996), 36-8. Blanchard's preference for the lower end of the scale is inferred from the graph on p. 36.
121. A recent survey of the relevant literature can be found in John S. Moore, '"Quot homines?": The Population of Domesday England', Anglo-Norman Studies, xix, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1997), 307-34.
122. Sally Harvey, 'Domesday England', in Hallam (ed.), Agrarian History of England and Wales, ii, 49.
123. J. F. R. Walmsley, 'The "Censarii" of Burton Abbey and the Domesday Population', North Staffs. Jl Field Studies, viii (1968).
124. As indicated from raw data provided from table 5.3 (pp. 537-84), in H. E. Hallam, 'Population Movements in England, 1086-1350', in Hallam (ed.), Agrarian History of England and Wales, ii, specifically 559, 564, 569-71. We exclude Donhead from the Shaftesbury calculations because the 1106 total is clearly problematic. We also exclude Evesham manors that are not strictly comparable, such as Wickhamford, which was surveyed with Bretforton in 1086 but not in 1106. In the case of Shaftesbury, meaningful comparison for eight manors revealed a population of 442 tenants in 1106 where only 319 were recorded in Domesday. It is conceivable that the abbey undertook major colonization in the late eleventh century, but it seems more likely that the growth in tenants included a number of people not recorded in 1086. Such a conclusion is even harder to resist for Evesham Abbey, where fourteen manors allowed for a direct comparison and yielded 681 tenants in 1106 as against 334 in 1086. If true, this would have represented an annual compound growth rate of 3.6 per cent, entirely out of line with normal patterns of development, either medieval or modern.
125. Darby, Domesday England, 88-91.
126. Postan, 'Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime', 561.
127. Harvey, 'Domesday England', 49;
128. Moore, '"Quot homines?"', 332-4
129. Bruce M. S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250-1450 (Cambridge, 2000), 408.
130. Hallam, 'Population Movements in England', 509.
131. Again, as taken from Hallam: See ibid., 559, 564, 569-71.
132. Ibid., 564.
133. Hallam's figures for these manors are similar to those offered in Russell, British Medieval Population, 74-5.
134. Hallam, 'Population Movements in England', 570-1, 573. We exclude Aldington, Offenham and Church Honeybourne from the analysis because the configuration of the manors was not strictly comparable in the two surveys.
135. The marked increase in tenants at Ombersley may be connected to the 15 marks of rents acquired by Richard de Spakeston, dean of Wells, and reserved for works at Ombersley church sometime between 1160 and 1174: Chronicon abbatiae de Evesham, ed. William Dunn Macray (Rerum britannicarum medii aevi scriptores, xxix, London, 1863), 102.
136. Hallam, 'Population Movements in England', 541, 552, 554.
137. For an independent count of the tenants and a discussion of the dates of the extents, see J. Ambrose Raftis, The Estates of Ramsey Abbey (Toronto, 1957), 67, 305-8. The only significant difference in the two sets of figures involves the manor of Broughton, where Hallam counted 83 tenants in 1252 and Raftis counted 59. The discrepancy appears to be due to the presence of a large number of holdings shared by two people. Our reading of the extent suggests a population of 82 tenants.
138. See Cartularium monasterii de Rameseia, ed. William Henry Hart and Ponsonby A. Lyons, 3 vols. (Rerum britannicarum medii aevi scriptores, lxxix, London, 1884-93), i, 330-40.
139. Hallam, 'Population Movements in England', 540-2, 553.
140. Russell advanced similar tenant numbers for three Ely manors in 1221: see his British Medieval Population, 76.
141. Edward Miller, The Abbey and Bishopric of Ely (Cambridge, 1951), 119-20.
142. Hallam dates the middle set of extents to 1235×1252, but the editor of the Glastonbury cartulary dated them to 1234: Rentalia et Custumaria Michaelis de Ambresbury, 1235-1252, et Rogeri de Ford, 1252-1261..., ed. C. J. Elton (Somerset Record Soc., v, London, 1891), p. xxiii. We have accepted the 1234 date and used it as the basis of our calculations. Analysis of the extents is further complicated by the fact that the latest extents were made at different points in time, ranging from 1307-8 to 1326. Fortunately, though, we know the precise dates for each of these late extents, so the problem is essentially one of generalizing and summarizing.
143. For example Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century, trans. Howard B. Clarke (Ithaca, 1974).
144. See also P. H. Sawyer, From Roman Britain to Norman England, 2nd edn (London, 1998)
145. Richard Hodges, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement: Archaeology and the Beginnings of English Society (Ithaca, 1989)
146. Della Hooke, The Landscape of Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1998)
147. Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages.
148. Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages, 235.
149. Edward Miller and John Hatcher, Medieval England: Rural Society and Economic Change, 1086-1348 (London and New York, 1978), 29. We use the midpoint of the estimated range advocated by Miller and Hatcher in our calculations.
150. Alan Macfarlane, The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap (Oxford, 1997), 18-19.
151. Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution: The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia (Berkeley, 1963), p. xii.
152. E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541-1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1981), 209-10.
153. J. Z. Titow, 'Some Evidence of the Thirteenth Century Population Increase', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xiv (1961), 218-24.
154. A histogram of the Taunton hundred-penny payments is in Richard Britnell, Britain and Ireland, 1050-1530: Economy and Society (Oxford, 2004), 78 (fig. 4.2).
155. Postan, 'Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime', 563.
156. Zvi Razi, Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish: Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen, 1270-1400 (Cambridge, 1980), 27-32.
157. Bruce M. S. Campbell, 'Population Pressure, Inheritance and the Land Market in a Fourteenth-Century Peasant Community', in Richard M. Smith (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle (Cambridge, 1984), esp. 96.
158. Assuming this likelihood, then the real question becomes: Why did the abbey not simply continue to record the total wages under the first miller, as titular head of the household? Perhaps the second miller (the son?) wanted some direct access to the wages rather than receiving them through his father.
159. In at least two years, 1312-13 and 1313-14, either the millers or the manorial reeve seemingly tried to shortchange the abbey in its share of multure grains: Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy, 240.
160. For the suspect actions of millers as a whole, see ibid., 244-8
161. Holt, Mills of Medieval England, ch. 6.
162. The entire case is described in Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy, 238-40. It is unfortunate that there is no accompanying series of court rolls for Feering, which would have helped flesh out the individual personalities of this putative miller family.
163. National Archives, London, Public Record Office, E 101/462/14. The tower windmill is discussed in more detail in John Langdon and Martin Watts, 'Tower Windmills in Medieval England: A Case of Arrested Development?', Technology and Culture, xlvi (2005).
164. For example, if the women had been paid 2d. per day, as in the case of their male general labourer colleagues, the total wage bill for these labourers would have been 110s. 4d. In fact, since the women were only paid 1d. per day, the wage bill was 96s. 11d. or 1.76d. per day per person, a reduction of 12 per cent in the average labourer's wage. We do not intend here to get into the recent debate between Bardsley and Hatcher as to whether the 1d. per day the women received was a fair day's wage given what women could carry relative to men, but we would simply point out that their presence in the workforce tended to reduce - in a statistical sense - average real wages: Sandy Bardsley, 'Women's Work Reconsidered: Gender and Wage Differentiation in Late Medieval England', Past and Present, no. 165 (Nov. 1999)
165. John Hatcher, 'Debate: Women's Work Reconsidered: Gender and Wage Differentiation in Late Medieval England', Past and Present, no. 173 (Nov. 2001)
166. Sandy Bardsley, 'Reply', ibid.
167. Although a less benign interpretation, given that 1294-5 was a year when conflicts engaged the English in Wales, Scotland and France, is that some may also have been substituting as single-income family heads while their husbands were elsewhere serving the king.
168. For example, see Farmer, 'Prices and Wages, 1042-1350', 767, 770 (figs. 7.9, 7.10).
169. For a useful discussion of this, see Richard Smith, 'Plagues and Peoples: The Long Demographic Cycle, 1250-1670', in Paul Slack and Ryk Ward (eds.), The Peopling of Britain: The Shaping of a Human Landscape (Oxford, 2002), 194-6.
170. Judging from recent, very pessimistic views of the situation for most people in England during the early fourteenth century: See, for example, Mark Bailey, 'Peasant Welfare in England, 1290-1348', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., li (1998)
171. Bruce M. S. Campbell, 'The Agrarian Problem in the Early Fourteenth Century', Past and Present, no. 188 (Aug. 2005), esp. 60-70.
172. John Langdon, 'Horse Hauling: A Revolution in Vehicle Transport in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century England?', Past and Present, no. 103 (May 1984).
173. Judith M. Bennett, 'Writing Fornication: Medieval Leyrwite and its Historians', Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., 6th ser., xiii (2003).
174. To these deterrents to fertility should be added the fact that various contraceptive measures were not unknown in medieval society: See P. P. A. Biller, 'Birth Control in the West in the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries', Past and Present, no. 94 (Feb. 1982)
175. John M. Riddle, 'Oral Contraceptives and Early-Term Abortifacients during Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages', Past and Present, no. 132 (Aug. 1991).
176. Campbell, 'Agrarian Problem in the Early Fourteenth Century'.
177. Farmer, 'Prices and Wages, 1042-1350', 739-40.
178. As in Britnell, Britain and Ireland, 160-1 (figs. 8.1, 8.2)
179. see also Britnell, 'Proliferation of Markets in England'.
180. For examples of this, see Morris, Cathedrals and Abbeys of England and Wales, 180.
181. Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy, esp. 26-7
182. Langdon, 'Water-Mills and Windmills in the West Midlands', esp. 430.
183. E. B. Fryde, Studies in Medieval Trade and Finance (London, 1983), chs. 1-2.
184. Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy, 180.
185. For example, the gradual rise of English cloth exports from the 1340s onwards: See Britnell, Britain and Ireland, 332 (fig. 16.3).
186. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts, 61-6.
187. Henry Cleere and David Crossley, The Iron Industry of the Weald, 2nd edn, ed. Jeremy Hodgkinson (Cardiff, 1995), ch. 6.
188. Brown, Colvin and Taylor, History of the King's Works, i, 228-34, 293-404, 409-19.
189. As argued in John Langdon, Jill Walker and John R. Falconer, 'Boom and Bust: Building Investment on the Bishop of Winchester's Estate in the Early Fourteenth Century', in R. H. Britnell (ed.), The Winchester Pipe Rolls and Medieval English Society (Woodbridge, 2003).
190. See, for example, Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England: Rural Society and Economic Change, 61-2
191. Farmer, 'Prices and Wages, 1042-1350', 767, 770.
192. Langdon, 'Lordship and Peasant Consumerism in the Milling Industry', 26-7.
193. L. R. Poos, A Rural Society after the Black Death: Essex, 1350-1525 (Cambridge, 1991), 96.
194. A histogram of the Kibworth Harcourt data is reproduced in Smith, 'Plagues and Peoples', 182 (fig. 6.2).
195. Razi, Life, Marriage and Death, esp. 25, 31 (tables 1-2, fig. 3).
196. Campbell, 'Population Pressure, Inheritance and the Land Market', esp. 129-34.
197. John Hatcher, 'Understanding the Population History of England, 1450-1750', Past and Present, no. 180 (Aug. 2003).
198. Note, too, the convolutions that Wrigley and Schofield resorted to in order to reconcile the Phelps Brown and Hopkins real wage index with their own fertility figures: Wrigley and Schofield, Population History of England, 407-35.
199. John Hatcher, 'Mortality in the Fifteenth Century: Some New Evidence', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xxxix (1986)
200. Barbara Harvey, Living and Dying in England, 1100-1540: The Monastic Experience (Oxford, 1993), ch. 4, esp. p. 128 (fig. 4.3)
201. Hatcher, 'Understanding the Population History of England', esp. 95-9.
202. The difficulties that milling faced in the later Middle Ages in finding a group equivalent to lords in order to finance the expansion of milling into the early modern period is outlined in Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy, ch. 5 ('Entrepreneurs')
203. Britnell, Britain and Ireland, 513-14, also comments on entrepreneurial difficulties in the early sixteenth century.
204. We are aware that the demographic recovery of England in the late Middle Ages was delayed longer than in many other parts of Europe, which may make its experience atypical: See, for example, Christopher Dyer, 'Rural Europe', in Christopher Allmand (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vii, c.1415-1500 (Cambridge, 1998), 111. We think, however, that the psychological processes in spurring entrepreneurial activity and consequent demographic growth were probably much the same everywhere, the differences in timing depending upon the circumstances or 'externals' in which particular societies found themselves - an issue clearly worthy of further exploration. We are grateful to Alexander Grant for encouraging us to consider this point.
205. For example Liah Greenfeld, The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), esp. ch. 1.
206. Britnell, Britain and Ireland, 85.
207. This 'resuscitation' is well attested in the literature: See J. L. Bolton, The Medieval English Economy, 1150-1500 (London, 1980), 209-13
208. Britnell, Britain and Ireland, 496-7.
209. For mills specifically, see Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy, 28-9.
210. See, for example, Liam Kennedy, 'Marriage and Economic Conditions at the West European Periphery: Ireland, 1600-2000', in Isabelle Devos and Liam Kennedy (eds.), Marriage and Rural Economy: Western Europe since 1400 (Turnhout, 1999), esp. 86-8.
211. Campbell makes the same comment in relation to Coltishall and later Colyton in Devon about long-term stagnation not entirely explained by continuing mortality: Campbell, 'Population Pressure, Inheritance and the Land Market', 128.
212. Campbell, 'Agrarian Problem in the Early Fourteenth Century', 60, 66.
213. As one example among a number: 'We should not therefore be too ready to make inferences against the internal economy of a country from the appearance of uncultivated heaths, without other evidence. But the fact is, that, as no country has ever reached, or probably ever will reach, its highest possible acme of produce, it appears always as if the want of industry, or the ill direction of that industry, was the actual limit of produce and population, and not the absolute refusal of nature to yield any more': Works of Thomas Robert Malthus, ed. Wrigley and Souden, iii, 460.
214. For other similar statements by Malthus, see ibid., 455-6
215. Oswald St. Clair, A Key to Ricardo (London, 1957), 239-40.
216. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, esp. 424-30.
217. Wrigley and Schofield, Population History of England, 234-6.