Mortality, Trade, Money and Credit in Late Medieval England (1285-1531)

303 Pages·2020·5.122 MB·English

by  Pamela Nightingale

Mortality, Trade, Money and Credit in
Late Medieval England (1285–1531)
T he eleven articles in this volume examine controversial subjects of central
importance to medieval economic historians. Topics include the relative roles
played by money and credit in financing the economy, whether credit could
compensate for shortages of coin, and whether it could counteract the devastating
mortality of the Black Death. Drawing on a detailed analysis of the Statute
Merchant and Staple records, the articles chart the chronological and geographical
changes in the economy from the late-thirteenth to the early-sixteenth centuries.
This period started with the triumph of English merchants over alien exporters in
the early 1300s, and concluded in the early 1500s with cloth exports overtaking
wool in value. The articles assess how these changes came about, as well as the
degree to which both political and economic forces altered the pattern of regional
wealth and enterprise in ways which saw the northern towns decline, and London
rise to be the undisputed financial as well as the political capital of England.
P amela Nightingale was a scholar of Newnham College, Cambridge, where, for
her Ph.D., she worked on the history of the East India Company in the eighteenth
century. Her thesis was published in 1970 as T rade and Empire in Western India,
1784–1806, by Cambridge University Press. While her three children were young
she taught for the Open University and subsequently published further books
on British India and Kashgar in Chinese Central Asia, before making the major
change of subject involved in writing A Medieval Mercantile Community. This
focused on the Grocers’ Company of London and its part in the economic and
political developments of the city and of the medieval English economy. In 1999
she was elected a member of Oxford University’s History Faculty, and in 2010 she
was awarded an Oxford D. Litt degree. She is also a fellow of the Royal Historical
Society.
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www.routledge.com/Variorum-Collected-Studies/book-series/VARIORUM
VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES
Mortality, Trade, Money and Credit
in Late Medieval England
(1285–1531)

Pamela Nightingale
Mortality, Trade, Money and Credit
in Late Medieval England
(1285–1531)
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition © 2021 Pamela Nightingale
The right of Pamela Nightingale to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Nightingale, Pamela, author.
Title: Mortality, trade, money and credit in late medieval England
(1285–1531) / Pamela Nightingale.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2020. | Series: Variorum collected studies | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020009755 (print) | LCCN 2020009756 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367260194 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429291081 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Finance—England—History—To 1500. | Monetary
policy—England—History—To 1500. | England—Economic
conditions—1066–1485. | Mortality—England—History—To 1500.
Classification: LCC HC254 .N53 2020 (print) | LCC HC254 (ebook) |
DDC 330.942/04—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009755
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009756
ISBN: 978-0-367-26019-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-29108-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS1091
CONTENTS
List of illustrations ix
List of abbreviations x
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xii
1 Some new evidence of crises and trends of mortality
in late medieval England 1
P ast & Present, 2005, vol. 187, issue 1, pp. 33–68. Re-printed by
permission of The Past and Present Society, Oxford University Press
2 Alien finance and the development of the medieval English
economy, 1285–1511 30
T he Economic History Review, 2012, vol. 66, issue 2, pp. 477–496.
Re-printed by permission of the Economic History Society,
John Wiley & Sons
3 The impact of crises on credit in the late medieval
English economy 52
A .T. Brown, A. Burn and R. Doherty (eds), Crises in Economic
and Social History: A Comparative Perspective, Boydell Press,
2015. Re-printed with the permission of the Boydell Press
4 English medieval weight standards revisited 71
B ritish Numismatic Journal, vol. 78, British Numismatic Society,
London, 2008. Re-printed with the permission of the Society
vii
CONTENTS
5 Finance on the frontier: money and credit in Northumberland,
Westmorland and Cumberland, in the later middle ages 94
M . Allen & D’M. Coffman (eds), Money, Prices, and Wages:
Essays in Honour of Professor Nicholas Mayhew, 2015.
Reprinted with permission of Palgrave Macmillan
6 The intervention of the crown and the effectiveness of
the sheriff in the execution of judicial writs, c. 1355–1530 114
T he English Historical Review, 2008, vol. CXXIII, issue 500,
pp. 1–34. By permission of Oxford University Press
7 The rise and decline of medieval York: a reassessment 145
P ast & Present, 2010, vol. 206, issue 1, pp. 3–42. By permission
of The Past and Present Society, Oxford University Press
8 The rise of London as a financial capital in late
medieval England 176
M . Lorenzini, C. Lorandini and D’M. Coffman (eds), Financing
in Europe: Evolution, Coexistence and Complementarity of
Lending Practices from the Middle Ages to Modern Times,
2018. Reprinted by permission from Palgrave Macmillan
9 Gold, credit, and mortality: distinguishing deflationary
pressures on the late medieval English economy 195
T he Economic History Review, 2010, vol. 63, issue 4,
pp. 1081–1104, Re-printed with the permission of
The Economic History Society, John Wiley & Sons
1 0 Credit and the effect of the Black Death on regional
commercial economies, 1350–1369 219
Previously unpublished
1 1 A crisis of credit in the fifteenth century, or of historical
interpretation? 239
B ritish Numismatic Journal, vol. 83, British Numismatic Society,
London, 2013. Re-printed with the permission of the society
Bibliography 260
Index 280
viii
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
I.1 Map of the Statute Merchant registries in the period 1285–1349 xiii
1.1 Mortality of the creditors, 1305–1529 (in percentages averaged
over 5-year periods) 19
2.1 Imports of foreign bullion and totals of alien and denizen
credit (x5), 1285–1310 36
2.2 Alien and denizen credit in the Statute Merchant certificates
of debt, 1285–1311 40
2.3 Exports of wool and imports of foreign bullion, 1284–1309 46
7.1 York creditors and debtors, 1285–1529 148
9.1 Credit and population as decadal percentages of 1300–1309 totals 197
Tables
1.1 Quinquennial death rates of the creditors, 1305–1529 17
2.1 Alien and denizen credit in the Statute Merchant certificates,
1285–1311 37
6.1 The sheriffs’ returns to Statute Staple writs, 1355–1529 123
6 .2 Social class of debtors in the Statute Staple writs, 1415–1529 141
8 .1 National and London Credit in the Statute Merchant and
Staple Registries, 1290–1529, with London’s total calculated
as a percentage of the national one 184
ix