Norman to Late 14Th Century Norwich

:\:OR\XICH

major economic change. The production of consumer goods on a new and the 'Castle MeadO\v' (the eastern bailey) may have been just what scale and the concentration of such production in to\vns in association its name suggests. with the widespread use of sih"er coin, ma\" have been part of a set of The building of the Norman Cathedral transformed another large part economic circumstances which required and produced towns of a size of l\'orwich. Cntil 1072 the seat of the East ,\nglian see was at North unknown since Roman times. These changes may have been more im Elmham. It was then mO\"ed to Thetford. But in about I095 Herbert de portant than an\' which were. to come over the English economy until Losinga moved it again, to 0;orwich. There he began to build a great the eighteenth century. Norwich would have been in a position to profit Cathedral and a Cathedral Priory for sixn- monks in the area immediately greath" from such changes. It had a quite exceptionally populous and to the south and west of the bend in the \'rensum. The monastic build prosperous hinterland and one which probably was, or had recenth' been, ings lay to the south of the Cathedral, to the north de Losinga built a developing greatk The immense, and rich, area of marshland grazing palace for himself, which included a small stone keep, the oldest known in what had been the 'Great Estuary' probably became for the most part in East Anglia. 93 It looks rather as if de Lo~inga was concerned to carve available for agricultural use in the later Anglo-Saxon period. l\'orwich out a cite episcopale of a kind familiar on the Continent since Carolingian was probably also helped by the effectiveness of royal pO\ver in tenth times,94 and the site he acquired was very large. It came from several centurY England, which may have given it advantages over a wider sources. Part already belonged to the see. 95 Tombland with part of the catchment area than it would 'naturalh"' ha\"e had. adjoining area (terra Sancti Michaelis) was obtained from Roger Bigod by exchange. 9lo The eastern part of the site was part of Thorpe and given by NORMAN AJ\D EARLY .\J\"GEVIJ\ ::\ORW'ICH Henn" 1. 97 The remainder, the land 'from the bishop's land to the water and from St Martin's Bridge to the land of St Michael' was obtained, in

The Normans, b\' building the Castle, the Cathedral and the French form, from the king, probably in fact from others. 98 Much of the site was borough did more in fifn- years to change the topograph\- of ="Jorwich meadO\\- but the western part was alread\- built up and at least two than their successors were to accomplish in five hundred..\ castle was churches there had to be demolished: St Michael's (the most important built there before I 07 5. hR It lay, and lies, at the northern end of the ridge in the cit\") and another (probably Christ Church). Not all the urban area along which Ber Street runs, so having the English borough to the east which de Losinga acquired was incorporated into the monastic precinct. and north and the new French borough to the west. The only royal Holme Street, Tombland and Ratten Row formed throughout the Middle castle for the two great counties of Korfolk and Suffolk, it had to be a Ages a built-up fringe to the Close, distinct from the rest of the city big one. Even now it is an impressive sight with its stone keep (probably chiefly in that their inhabitants lived under a different jurisdiction. 99 built c. I I 20-C. I I 30) standing on a partly artificial mound which rises over De Losinga's ambitions were by no means limited to the immediate sixty feet from the surrounding ditch. In the ~1iddle .\ges it was more environs of his new Cathedral. They extended to the new sea-ports of impressive still: the mound was more extensive and was surrounded by a Lynn and Yarmouth; the former he made an episcopal town, in the latter system of great earthworks. These earthworks may nearly all have been he did all he could to gain power. He established cells of the Cathedral made immediately after the Conquest, for Domesday Book implies that Priory in different places in East Anglia. Thus he built not only a great ninety-eight burgages had been taken oyer to make room for the Castle; cathedral but also a very considerable ecclesiastical empire and turned the but it is possible that they were extended in the twelfth century.89 The hitherto poor see of East Anglia into a power in the land. The conse 'Castle Fee', the area within the jurisdiction of the Castle, did not be quences of his success for Norwich were lasting. Besides establishing a come part of the borough in a legal or administrative sense until 1345. 90 powerful monastery with franchisal jurisdiction within the city, he Norwich Castle, like some other Norman castles, enclosed as much acquired the greater part of the rural environment of Norwich for the g.round as a small Roman town, and its size demands some explanation. church. In the Anglo-Saxon period Norwich had only one ecclesiastical In the first generations after the Conquest the permanent garrison was neighbour, the abbot of St Benet's of Holme, who owned Heigham. probably of some size. 91 It is possible that urban castles such as this were Otherwise the lands surrounding the city were mainly either royal a substitute for a town wall and intended to accommodate burgesses and demesne or in the hands of relatively small proprietors. This may have their goods in time of trouble. The Castle was the base for sheriffs and done much to explain the ease with which it seems to have expanded into other royal officials who had to accommodate livestock, collected or dis the surrounding countryside. But de Losinga acquired for the Cathedral trained upon in accordance with, or not infrequently in contravention of, their duties. 92 Space, and perhaps grazing, for many animals was needed 93 B. Dodwell, Trans. RHS 5th ser. vii (I 95 I), 1-18; J. W. Alexander, Studies in "Uedieval and Renaissance History, vi (I 969), 131-8. The plan ofthe Cathedral, palace and Priory is based on A. B. Whittingham's (Arch. Jnl cvi (1949),86), on The Early

8R Gmnta, where, according to \\'iilliam of Poitiers, there \\'as a castle in 1067 has Communar and Pitancer Rolls of NOrJlJich Cathedral Priory, ed. A. B. Whittingham and sometimes, but wrongly, been identified \\,ith ~orwich: F. Barlow, Antiq. Jnl xliy E. C. Fernie (Norf. Rec. Soc. 1972) and on information kindly supplied by (1964), 217-9· 1Ir Whittingham. The abbot of Ely also had a fortified house at Norwich by 89 Dom. Bk ii, f. I 17; D. F. Renn, ",-orman Caities (1968), 3 1,39. The reconstruction of c. 1082: Regesta i, no. 153. the earthworks (whose disposition has long been controyersial) on the map is the 94 J. Hubert, Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi suI!' alto medioevo, vi (1959), work of Col. ] ohns and is based on the eyidence presented in B. Green, Norwich 549-54· Castle (1970); Streets; F. R. Beecheno, '1\!otes on the Ditches of Norwich Castle' 95 First Reg. 37,44; Regesta ii, no. 762, Possibly the site of 14 mansiones given by (1908) (Ms in the Castle Museum); H. Harrod, Gleanings among the Castles and William I to the Bishop of Elmham adprincipalem sedem episcopatus: Dom. Bk ii, Convents ofNorfolk (I 857); XX'. Rye, f'.:orn·ichCastle(Holt, 1921); S. \Yoodward, f. 117. The History and Antiquities of Norwich Castle (I 847); ]. Kirkpatrick, History of the 96 First Reg. 26; T. Martin, Thetford(I779), 36. Religious Orders in NOrJlJich (1845) and ",-otes Concerning Xorwich Castle (1847) 97 First Reg. 30; Regesta ii, 548; above, p. 5 n. 45. together with information on observations and unpublished excavations kindly 48 First Reg. 44-5; Regesta ii, no. 762; First Reg. 24 (a late text stating that part of the provided by :Miss Green, who does not necessarily agree with our conclusions, site came from (the?) citizens of Norwich). Many details ofthe acquisition ofthe which are to a considerable extent based on hypothesis. site are obscure. There is some doubt on how much of the N. part of the area of the 90 See below p. 12. bishop's palace was obtained by de Losinga. In 13 I 8 Bishop Salmon was licensed to

91 Regesta iii, no. 757. acquire land there to extend the palace. Its terms suggest that all or most of the

92 Rot. Hund. i, 448" 45 Ob, 45 I" 466b, 49 1',492b, 5I 2b. In the Norman and early area beyond the '13 I 8 boundary' indicated on map 7 was involved (H. Harrod, Angevin period the County Court was not held (or not invariably held) in the SA vi (1864), 136; Cal. Pat. I J I 7-2I, 573). The boundary is taken from Harrod's Castle, but sometimes in the churches of St Giles or St Stephen and once in the map. On the other hand c. I 272 the precinct was held to include illam vacuam bishop's garden: .It Benet, nos. 120, 178, 2 I 7 and The Pinchbeck Rey,ister, ed. F. Hervey placeam terrae iacentem ante portas palacii episcopi versus aquilonem. (1925),297. 99 See below pp. 14-15.

Priory and for the see Eaton, Newton, and Thorpe with its members Recent excavation has suggested that the low-lying area between West (Arminghall, Lakenham and Catton). Furthermore in about I 146 Stephen wick Street and the \'Vensum and between Cole gate and the Wensum founded the Benedictine nunnery of Carrow actually within the city were not settled to any great extent until the late twelfth or early thir

fields immediately to the south of Norwich. Thereafter it was only in the teenth century. J J north-west that the city was not edged by the lands of a monastery. The Apart from the establishment of the Castle, Cathedral and French Norman period saw Norwich well and truly folded into the bosom of borough little is knmvn of events in Norwich between William 1's time the church. J and Henry Ill's except for those which were sufficiently striking to at At Norwich, as elsewhere, the Normans founded a new French tract the attention of chroniclers. The record is thus mainly one of mis borough beside the English one. Domesday states that it was founded on fortune, interspersed by royal visits. The city was taken or held by rebels land, all or some of which had belonged to Earl Ralf, 'and he granted it in 1075,1088,1136,1174,1216 and 1266: and was sacked on several of to the king in common to make the borough between himself and the these occasions. There were serious attacks on the Jews of Norwich in

king'. This dates the foundation to before 1075. In 1086 there were a I 144, in I 190 and in the middle years of Henry Ill's reign. Probably the hundred and twenty-five French burgesses there: forty-one were 'on the most important event in this period was the city'S acquisition ofa charter demesne of king and earl'; nine Normans 'had' the remainder, led by in 1194. At the time of Domesday Book Norwich was a hundred by Roger Bigod with fifty.2 The French borough lay immediately to the itself and so must have had a hundred court of its own. No more is west of the Castle, in the area which came to be called Neyrport. It in known of the city's jurisdiction for over a century afterwards. Henry II

cluded Norwich marketplace, which was already there by 1096.3 It is not granted Norwich a charter, probably in I I 58; it simply confirms the possible to do more than guess at the reasons for the foundation of the rights enjoyed in his grandfather's time without saying what these were.1 l French borough. The site was an obvious one for expansion; it filled the Richard 1's charter of 1194 marked a very important advance. By it the gap between two areas already built up and included the point at which citizens gained (i) the right to commute their dues to the Crown for a the main road to London left the city.4 The destruction of considerable fixed annual charge (jirma burf,i) , (ii) freedom from toll throughout parts of the Anglo-Saxon town to make room for the Castle may have England, (iii) the liberties and customs of London, (iv) the right to elect created a need for new space. Normans may have wanted houses in their own reeves, and other privileges. 12 Some of these advantages may Norwich and wanted them close together and near the Castle. Possibly already have been enjoyed de facto, but there was no doubt, at least in the many such Normans were merchants. But Norfolk barons and their minds of the city's enemies, that the charter of 1194 gave it a new inde tenants owned property in the French borough (as also in the English)5 pendence. Until then 'the city was governed in the same way as Beccles and it is quite possible that they had town houses for their own use. It and Bungay,' the author of a document drawn up in the interests of the may have been both more convenient and more remunerative to found a prior in about 1273 observes, with obvious nostalgia. 13 new borough with new customs than simply to add to an old one. For In the Norman and Angevin period Norwich was disting.uished, as example, it may have been easier to maintain seigneurial control over William of Malmesbun- said, for its trade and its large population. In churches. The French borough probably had only three churches. All 1086, even though it was claimed that Norwich was impoverished by became rich by Norwich standards. St Peter Mancroft, the earl's property rebellion, fire and geld, its recorded population was higher than for 1066 to begin with, was very remunerative and became easily the most valu and its cash value to the king was exceeded by that of four other cities at able church in Norwich. 6 By contrast, in the English borough churches the most. J4 During Henry II's reign only London and York paid more in could apparently be put up almost at will and were often very poor. 7 aids than did Norwich. ls When the city was sacked by the Disinherited Something is known of another extension to the city made in the time in 1266 their plunder was said to have been worth twenty thousand of Bishop Eborard (I I 21-45). "\ hospital dedicated to St Paul was found marks and to have filled a hundred and forty carts. 16 The wealth of ed on the Priory's land to the north-east of the city. It was accompanied, Norwich was partly due to its position as a governmental centre and as and its endowment increased by, an island of urban development simul the market for the most populous area in England. The Cathedral and its taneously organized beside it, with a new parish church. R A charter lists monastery must in various ways have been a source of prosperity. The those who had received property 'in the croft of the hospital of St Paul', income from their large endowments was to some extent spent there. states their rents, and grants them and their heirs perpetual tenure on They brought large numbers of people to the city on occasion; in the condition of lawful behaviour and of pa\~ing the rent. There were seven twelfth centurY on 'Absolution Day' 'the penitents of the whole diocese teen tenants and they included two priests, a cook, a carpenter, a baker were accustomed to assemble in crowds in the Mother Church at Nor and a tJJaJ!,ister: their rents varied between 6d. and IS. 6d. a year. 9 A wich, and the streets of the whole city were crowded with an unusual certain amount of development is known to have been undertaken on multitude of people walking about.' The households of ecclesiastical the south-west side of the city on land belonging to the Priory and to dignitaries may have been important sources of employment; the Life of Carrow Abbey (Great and Little Newgate) at some time before 1253.10 St William of Norwich shows that an offer of a job in the archdeacon's

1 Trans. RHS 5th ser. vii, 13, 14 (Thorpe); VCH ""\~orj. ii, 351-2, (Carrow). 11 A. Carter and P. Roberts, ",-A xxxv (1 970-73),459,463-4. Kirkpatrick recorded 2 Dom.Bkii,f. ITS. that when a well was dug in a yard in St George's Colegate (? C.1 700) a great deal 3 Regesta ii, p. 410. Mr Alan Carter has pointed out to me that at Lynn and at Great of brushwood '",-as found which ""as presumed to have been laid as a 'fence against Yarmouth the establishment ofa large new church with a market-place beside it the river' (j\;orwich Public Libr., Rye ?>Is <) (2), last item, f. 135 c). This suggests the played an important part in urban development in this period. For the medieval possibility of low-lying areas having been artificially raised or embarked. The Upper and Lower Newport see map 6. The French borough probably included frequent references to 'betmays' and to other (sometimes large) pieces ofland all or most of the parishes of St Giles, St Stephen, and St Peter :\[ancroft. reclaimed from the river in the Hundred Rolls (i, 5 30b-5 32 a ) suggest considerable 4 From the 13th century the principal gate was St Stephen's: ). Ninham, 1"iell's ofthe reclamation, though by the date of the Rolls (1 274-6) water levels may have been Cates ofNorwich (1 861). rising again, cj. below p. 11. Reclamation of land from the river is recorded in the 5 Dom.Bkii,ff. 116b-1Q. 16th century: Kirkpatrick :\[s 'Of the river' (transcript inserted in j\;RO Ms 453) 6 Ibid.,f. 118;NAxvii(1908-ro), 106. f. 3'. It is probable that for much of its course through the city the river was in the 7 There is a little evidence to suggest that the English and the j\;orman boroughs medienl period considerably wider than it had become by the late 18th century. were still distinct in 1140 and even, in some degree, in the early 13th century: 12 Rec. i, pp. xii-xviii; ihid. pp. xix-xxiv, cxxv. 5t William, xvi-xlvii, but cj. Rec. i, p. xix. 13 Dugdale, Alon. iv, 14.

, VCH Norj. ii, 447-8; A. Saltman, Theobald, no. 188. 14 \'V'm of:\[almesbury, Cesta Ponfij. (RS), 151; Tait, AiedievalBorough, 184. 9 First Reg. 64. 15 C. Stephenson, Borough and Town, 225.

10 See below pp. 12-13. 16 Annal. ,\fonast. iv, 193-4; Bury Chron. ed. A. Gransden (1964), 37.

kitchen was regarded as particularly alluring.!7 The city was probably, at of some importance at Norwich in this period. Among the twenty-nine

least in the earlier part of the period, the chief sea port of its region, and towns whose men paid fines in 120 I -2 so that they might buy and sell there is a little evidence for its overseas connexions: a reference to a mer dyed cloth as they used to under Henry II (i.e. free from Richard 1's chant of Cologne who had brought wine to Norwich (c. 1144) ;!8 another assize establishing a standard of width and of quality) Norwich pays the to one Humphrey ofNorwich, in peril ofthe sea off Scarborough C.(1 16o); ninth highest sum, £ 5. 25 There is a possible reference to tenters - frames stray indications of relations with Scandinavia, and of the presence of a on which cloth was stretched for drying - being in use in Norwich before Lorrainer. There is archaeological evidence for the import of pottery 12 I 0. 26 In short, the sources are just good enough to indicate the ele from France, from Holland and perhaps also from the Rhineland. 19 The ments ofthe city's economy, but not to permit quantification. most bulky import was stone. Much of the Cathedral was built of Caen stone and the channel which, until the late eighteenth century, ran from NORWICH FROM ABOUT 1270 TO THE the Wensum into the Close may have been dug to enable stone to be car MID-FOURTEENTH CENTURY ried by water almost to the building site. 20 The records of the tax of one fifteenth levied on seaborne trade with foreign countries between 1203 In the last generation of the thirteenth century records become more and 1205 suggest that Norwich, as a seaport, was already overshadowed abundant and permit a more detailed account of the city. In the first by Yarmouth. Of the thirt"-five east and south coast ports for which place they provide a basis for guessing the population. Two such guesses there are figures twent\'-nine are recorded as having more such trade have been made, four to five thousand and thirteen thousand.27 The first

than Norwich. The figure for Yarmouth is the twelfth highest. 21 depends on the unproven assumption that there were only four hundred The best documented businessmen of early medieval Norwich are the non-citizen households and is likely to be too low. The second depends Jews. They were established there before 1144, when they were accused on the unlikely assumptions that males on tithing lists were all heads of of the ritual murder of the subsequently sainted William, and attacked. households and that because Mancroft leet contained three-sixteenths of /\. generation later the Norwich community seems to have been second in the tithings it also contained three-sixteenths of the population. 28 It is wealth only to that of London. It probably declined in the late twelfth likely to be too high. It does not seem possible to make a nearer estimate century, revived somewhat in the earlier thirteenth and thereafter de than of from five to ten thousand. The surnames of the inhabitants indi clined again until the expulsion of 1290. There are unlikely to have ever cate extensive immigration from the countryside. Hudson reckoned that been more than two hundred Jews in Korwich, or, by 1290, more than those in use in the city in the late thirteenth century indicated connexions sixty. But, however few, the,' were important. Extensive records of their with some three hundred places in Norfolk and fifty in Suffolk. 29 loans between 1225 and 1227 show them lending to gentlemen, peasants, The great municipal enterprise of the period was the fortification of and craftsmen over a large part of East Anglia. One family, that ofJurnet the city, first with a ditch, then with a stone wall. Little enough is known

(before I 167-? I 197), was outstanding. J urnet's son Isaac (?c. I 170-?1235) of the fortifications before 1253, simply that Conesford Gates were there was probably the richest English Jew of his da,'. The community at bv I 186,30 defended, one may guess, by a timber gatehouse, and that in Norwich was easily the most important in East Anglia and must have Stephen's time the burgesses constructed 'a new ditch outside the town been of considerable, perhaps of great, significance in the East Anglian ofNorwich'.31 The references to this ditch prove its existence only in the economy. Its presence is an example of how Norwich's roles as a com Westwick area. There is reason to suppose that its line may have been mercial and as a governmental centre reinforced one another. Large that of the later wall. 32 It is curious that this line is one which left an area Jewish communities rarely settled where there was no royal castle with which had been considerably built up for over a century outside the royal officers to protect or try to protect them. Most Norwich Jews lived fortification. 33 That this was so suggests that the ditch was not one built close together in the SaddlegatejHaymarket area, that is to say in the simply to defend Westwick, but that it was part of a more extensive French borough and very near to both the Castle and the market. The fortification whose line elsewhere was such as to dictate a course at great Jurnet, however, probably lived in a large stone house in Conesford Westwick which was not the best one in terms of more local considera considerable parts of which survive (the present 'Wensum Lodge', tions. 34 In 1235 a city ditch (jossatum civitatis) is mentioned as marking the formerly the Music House, King Street).22 There are references to boundary of the city, but there is no indication of where it ran or how Gentiles in twelfth-century Norwich in occupations which suggest wealth: two moneyers and a money-changer (c. 1144); a goldsmith (before 2' PipeR. I202(PRSN.S.xv(1937»,xx, 115. I 176).23 It is not possible to do more than guess at the manufactures of 26 S t Benet, no. 282 (I I 86-12 I 0). (An alleged reference by Fantosme to weavers of Norwich before the later thirteenth centun'. The leather trades were Norwich in 1174 is derived from a misunderstanding of the text: Chron. Stephen, Henry II, Richard I (RS) iii, 289.) probably important, then as later; St William of Norwich was appren 27 Rec. ii, p. cxix; J. C. Russell, A1edieval Population, 285, 292-3. ticed to a skinner there in about I 132.24 William is the first known 28 Contrast Leet Jurisdiction in NOrll'ich (Selden Soc. V, 1892), ed. W. Hudson, lxiii, English apprentice. There is a little evidence to suggest that textiles were lxvi, liii-v. zq \'C Hudson, i\" A xii (1893-95)' 66-86.

30 St Benet, no. 105. Evidence frequently cited from Dugdale, Mon. iv, 70 to show that 17 5t William, 26; ibid. 17. Ber St gates were in existence in 1146 does not appear to be contemporary, but

18 Ibid, 235-6. DCM, Charter no. 1741 describes an agreement of 1200 or 1201 rather to be a later expansion of or commentary on the Carrow foundation charter. involving a rent to be paid in wine per mensuram l\'orwich. Archaeological evidence could indicate an early stone gate here but has been 19 st William, 278 (Humphrey); Rec. ii, p. vii (Scandinavia); Chron. Stephen, Henry II, otherwise explained: i\'A xxx (I 947-52), 294; xxxi (195 5-57), 14. It is also Richard I (RS) iii, 279 (Lorrainer); N A xxxiii (I 962-5), 147-9, xxxiv (1966-9), 402 frequently stated that Heigham Gates existed by 122 I on the strength of R. Fitch's (pottery). introduction to J. l'iinham, Vim's of tbe Gates, 2I; but his source has not been traced 20 NA xxi (192 1-23), p. I. There were two or three other channels which in the and his description ofit as an 'assembly record' suggests he misdated it. Middle Ages and later extended westwards from the river towards King St; one at 31St Benet, no. 17; if. no. 282. least of.those was navigable in the early 14th century: Hudson, SA x (I 884-87), 32 There seems no doubt that the bulk of the pottery found in the bank accords with a I I 5-2 I, 131-5. These watercourses may have enabled ships, in an early period, to mid-12th century date; there are, however, some sherds thought to be ofthe late come through the marshy ground and up to the built-up area. 12th or early 13th century, but for which an earlier date may not, perhaps, be

21 A. L. Poole, Domesday Book to Magna Carta (195 5),96. altogether excluded: N A xxx (1947-52), 297; xxxi (1955-57), 12; xxxiii (1962-65), 22 V. D. Lipman, The Jews of J[edieval SOrl~'ich (Je\dsh Hist. Soc. 1967), 50-57 139-40.

(establishment); 4 (wealth); ;, 38, 47-8 (numbers); 88-94, app. nos. i-iv (loans); 33 See above p. 4, and n. 33. The area of Heigham which lay immediately outside the chapt. vi (Jurnet); 16-17, chapt. vii (residences); 27-8, I I 1-12 (\'\'ensum Lodge). city wall was the onlv extra-mural suburb which in later centuries was always 23 5t William, 154, 168, 182,223; St Benet, no. 256. conceded to lie within the city's jurisdiction: Appendix I.

24 5t William, 14-15. 34 Alternative explanations in terms of water-courses in the area are possible.

extensive it was. 35 It is unlikely to have enclosed so much ground as the probably generally so in such an area as this.39 The areas in the south later enceinte, for, when a new ditch was constructed in the mid-thirteenth west of the city known as Great and Little Newgate (roughly modern century, it was alleged to have included lands outside the city's juris Surrey Street and the medieval parish of St Catherine respectively) may diction. This new ditch was one which, according to a source of about never have been more than thinly built up in the medieval period. In IZ72 the citizens gained a licence to build in 1252-3. This licence has not Edward 1's reign a deed referred to property 'in the street (or quarter) been found but there is no doubt that a ditch was dug at about this time; and in the fields of Great Newgate' (in vico et in campis de Magna Newe probably its course was mainly or wholly the same as that of the later ,f!,ate).4O There appears to have a been a number of open sites elsewhere in stone wall.3 6 It had nine gates (presumably then of timber) as the later Norwich.41 It seems to have been fairly common in many parts ofthe city wall did. 37 for houses to have closes or orchards attached to them.42 The liability to The first grant of murage for building the stone wall was made in flooding oflow-lying parts, especially in the east, seems to have increased IZ97. Completing these fortifications was a long job. Those south of the in the late thirteenth century. Considerable areas in the loop of the river were probably built first. In the north the stretch between Barre Wensum must have been on this account unsuitable for habitation.43

Gates and Magdalen Gates was completed in about 133 I. A few years The settlement of the friars in Norwich created large new open spaces later a wealthy citizen paid for the construction of the stretch between St in Norwich in this period. The Dominicans and Franciscans both arrived Augustine's and Magdalen Gates and for the Boom Towers. This work in Norwich in 1226, the Carmelites in about 1256, and the Austins about was completed by 1344. The only major additions after this were the wall the' beginning of the reign of Edward 1. Each started with a small site between Barre Gates and the river (completed after c. 1377 ?), the Cow and soon began to expand it by acquiring neighbouring properties, in the Tower, isolated in the bend of the Wensum, and much of the ditch. process demolishing buildings, sometimes getting permission to close Although the river was regarded as affording sufficient protection on common lanes. The Franciscans, Carmelites and Austins each had a most ofthe east side and on a little ofthe west, there were some two and a large site; the Dominicans had two; they started with one north of the half miles of stone walls in the rest of the circuit, with nine main gates river which was extended to a considerable size but in about 1308 they and numerous towers and bastions. The ditch before the walls was, moved to the site which had formerly belonged to the Friars of the Sack, where it has been measured, over sixty feet wide and up to twenty-seven south of the river; this too was or became a large one. They retained feet deep. The threat of French invasion was, no doubt, the impulse for their old site, which they returned to from 1413 to 1449, and which starting construction in the 1290S and for the bursts of activity in the seems to have remained open and used by them as a garden until the 1340S and 13 70S. But the wall also had ;value for police purposes, as a Dissolution.44 The territorial expansion of the Friars was accomplished customs barrier, and in plague times. It was presumably such secondary not in the period of decline which followed the Black Death, but in the usefulness, as well as conservatism and considerations of safety, which more prosperous earlier period. Two other religious establishments of made the municipality concerned to maintain the wall until well into the recent foundation had large sites, the important collegiate church of eighteenth century.38 St Mary (the Chapel in the Fields), founded not long before 1248; and The fbrtifications enclosed about a square mile. The line of the walls St Giles' Hospital, founded c. I 246 ;45 but these were on what had pre does not appear to have corresponded to any legal boundary, but to have viously been almost entirely open ground. been determined by tactical considerations. The sprawling city was so The manufacturers of the city required considerable open spaces, for shaped that defences designed to protect very nearly the whole inhabited example for tenting frames on which cloth was dried - and medieval area had also to include large uninhabited areas if awkward salients were cloths were up to twenty-four yards long. There are references, from the to be avoided. The extent of the open spaces within the walls was one of later thirteenth century on, to tenting·grounds in the Chapel Field area the most striking features of medieval Norwich, which was as big as (inside the walls) and elsewhere. 46 Norwich was a city of numerous London and probably did not have more than a quarter of London's craftsmen who needed working as well as living space. Some of their population. The widest of these were the meadows to the east of the occupations, for example the important leather trades, were such' as to Cathedral, the Gildencroft in the north, Chapel Field Croft in the west require access to water and a considerable amount ofspace. Thus tanners and the Butter (Butler) Hills area in the south. The density of building are found in Conesford, where water and space were abundant.47 in some of the built-up areas was not great. By about 13°° there were The most densely populated areas by the late-thirteenth century and only seventy-four pieces of property, of various sizes, in the (post for long afterwards were those around the market and on either bank of

Reformation) parish of St Peter Parmentergate, in the declining area of the central stretch of the W ensum. 48 The business of the river-side areas Conesford. It cannot be assumed that a single piece of property neces sarily accommodated only a single dwelling or household. But this was 39 Permountergate,passim.

40 NCM Enrolled Deeds, Roll 2, m. 33 V • C! above p. 9 and below pp. 12-13. 35 See below p. 13 and n. 38. 41 DCM, charter no. 990 (1) for a peciam vac1!am terre in St Peter Hungate parish (late 36 Dugdale, Mon. iv, 14-15, if. below p. 13; Rec. i, pp. xxix-xxx; NA xxx, 295; xxxi, 13th century) cj. DCl\I Registrum Secundum, f. 28 V (cj. Cal. Inq. Misc. ii, no. 1260) 5-7,12. and 28 v for a grant ofland(placeam terre vacuam), 120 ft by 20 ft in All Saints' parish 37 Rec. i, p. 59. (not stated which). 38 The plan ofthe wall and towers on the map is based on the surviving remains and 42 E.g. Rec. i, no.lxvi; Nor! iv, 166. on J. Kirkpatrick, 'A Walk round the walls ofNorwich (1711)', Eastern Counties 43 A flood in 1273 is said to have done more harm in Norwich than either the Collectanea (1872-3),7-8; A. E. Collins, Report . .. as to the City Walls ofNorwich Disinherited (cj. above p. 9) or the royal officials after the 1272 affair: Chron. Bury, (Norwich, 1910); Report ofthe City Walls by the Nor! and Norwich Arch. Soc. (1964); ed. Gransden, 54. H. L. Turner, Town Defences in England and Wales (197 I); Ninham, Views (above, .. For the friars and their acquisitions see VCH Nor! ii, 428-32; Rot. Hund. i, 530; p. 9 n. 4); H. Ninham, Views ofthe Ancient City Gates of Norwich (1864); P. Browne, Nor! iv, 106-11 (Franciscans); 414-23 (Carmelites); 85-91 (Austins); 335-42 History ofNorwich, n.d. [1814]159,217; NA xxx(1947-F), 289; NA XXXi(195 5-57), (Dominicans). Also for the Franciscans, M. Grace, 'The Greyfriars in Norwich' 23; Med Arch. viii, 267. For the murage grants see Turner, 136-7; for the stages in (typescript, Norwich Public Lib.) and for the Austins, Permountergate, 48. which the wall was completed, Rec. ii, nos. cccxciii-iv; Nor! iii, 86-8; Cal. Pat. 45 VCH Nor! ii, 45 5-7; Nor! iv, 169-84. For the buildings see below p. 17. For the I 343-J, 149; for the Cow Tower, Rec. ii, no. lviii, correcting Nor! iv, 402. The Hospital: VCH Nor! ii, 442-6; C. B. Jewson, The Greal Hospita/(1949). ditch from St Benedict's Gates to the Wensum is thought to have been wet: NA 46 Streets, 2 I (1293-5 tentorium 120 ft X 15ft in St Giles's paris.h), 55; Rec. ii, nos. xix, xxxi (1955-57),7-8,46-8. A French plan ofc.1650 shows this stretch as dry, but xxiv; NA vii(1872), 82; 'Norwich Domesday' (NCM), ff.IV,!iV. that from N. ofBer St Gates to S. ofSt Benedict's Gates as wet: BM Add Ms 11, 47 Permountergate, 28-39. 564 art. 5. This is implausible. Part ofthe ditch S. ofBarre Gates may have been 48 Mrs H. Dunn has pointed out to me that there is considerable evidence to suggest wet: Ninham, op., cit. 30-3 I. For nomenclature see Appendix III. For the a shift ofwealth and population from the market area to that N. ofthe river from mounting ofcannon in Richard Irs reign, see N A xvi, 46-75. C.1470.

partly accounts for Norwich's having five bridges: more than any other later Middle l\ges, and more at the Reformation. 55 B,' about 139 I two of city in medieval England. 49 Another sign of lively activity is that the the 'petty leets' of Conesford had been merged, suggesting that by then churches of St John :Vladdermarket and St Gregory are so built that neither ofthem could produce tweh'e tithings b,' itself. 56 lanes run under the tower of the one and the chancel of the other. In the The government of the cit" \,'as largeh' in the hands of four bailiffs, ordinary wa\" means, fair or foul, could often be found of building on a elected annuall:,. (The bailiffs had succeeded two reeves as the principal lane. But in the areas where these churches stood land was valuable and officers c. I 223). Decisions on important matters were the responsibility, circulation active. So, when they were extended it had so to be done as to at least in principle, of an assembh' of all the citizens. This assembh' preserve the rights of way. In short, in this period the distribution of probabh' formed the court referred to in 1235 as the '1!!I5teJ~gelllot'. 57 The population and building in Norwich was much as it was to remain until bailiffs were assisted b,' a body of twent,,-four 'of the better and more the nineteenth century. In parts of the central area there was consider prudent' with important, but to us uncertain, powers. The jurisdiction of able density of settlement. But much of the city consisted of open spaces the municipal authorities presumabh' derived from the charter of 1194 or fairly widely scattered houses. In appearance it would have resembled with such advantages as had been added by later grants, the most Oxford or Cambridge rather than any other modern city, for there were important of these being Return of Writs, granted in 1256. 'Their most big open spaces running very near to the centre and large enclosed important civil jurisdiction was that over pleas involving property private gardens or grounds scattered about. within the cin,..\8 In criminal matters their powers amounted to those of In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centun' the municipal view of frankpledge with certain additions. The leet roll of 1288 shows authorities were anxious to get control of pieces of unused ground, that the cit" was divided into four leets: Conesford, i\1ancroft, Wymer disused lanes and the like, which in principle belonged to the Crown. (\'('estwick) and Ultra Aquam. 59 There are indications that these divisions Rents from properties on such 'waste' land panble to the cit" rose from were of some antiquity.60 The leets were divided into smaller units, of 95. 2d. in 1307 to £9. I IS. 8d. in 1329. "\ Yen' large acquisition of land of which there were eleven all told, each consisting of a parish or.parishes this kind was made in 1345 when the cit" obtained from the Crown the and apparently so devised as to ensure that each should contain at least whole of the Castle Fee, apart from the mound, keep, and shire house. ,,) twelve tithings and so be able to produce a jun' of twelve capital pledges. Although a considerable amount of mone,' had been spent on the The orderly organi:zation of the cin"s government and the even tenor Castle in the previous century, a curtain wall for the mound and elabor of its ways were disrupted by there being areas not under its own ate entrance defences having been built,51 it seems to have come to be jurisdiction but under that of the prior of Norwich. These were (i) the regarded by the Crown as a military white elephant. The city started to Cathedral Precinct, (ii) Holmestreet, Ratten Rowand Tombland,61 (iii) use the land so acquired for building, though much of the Castle area Spiteland (Normansland), viZ. the (pre-Reformation) parish of St Paul,62 remained open for several hundred years and much of it is open stillY (iv) Great Newgate (the area of Surrey Street).63 The Priory's claims This building activity is one of several indications hinting at increasing were based on charters from William II and his successors, which en population and prosperity in early fourteenth-century :-.Jorwich. 53 abled it to claim view offrankpledge and exemption from taxation within On the other hand it appears that Conesford was losing population the lands concerned, and on the assertion, quite likely justified, that in and that it had been doing so for some time. The large number of the past large parts of them had been part, not of the city, but ofadjacent churches of Anglo-Saxon origin in the area suggests that it was fairl~' hundreds. The city seems usually to have accepted that the prior had densely settled before the Conquest. It may be that the decline of the area view of frankpledge. The numerous disputes were usually about the began with the building of the Ca!;tie and of the new market-place which liability of the inhabitants of his fee to contribute to taxes and tallages would have left Conesford awkwardly placed in relation to the main owed by the city and about the rights of the city bailiffs and coroners to centres of commercial activity. By 1300 lower Conesford (the area take distresses and to hold inquests. 04 The quarrel reached a climax in between King Street and the river, east ofthe Castle) was relatively thinly 1272 when the citizens broke into the Close, burned part of the Cathedral inhabited. There were virtually no shops there. The main commercial and killed some of the prior's servants. A tremendous furore followed activity was tanning, and even that may have been tending to leave the which reached as far as Rome. The city was both taken into the King's area. Much of the area was residential, with, so it seems, relatively large hand and put under interdict. In 1276 a settlement was reached, the main sites occupied by the dwellings of substantial citizens whose business provision being that the citizens should pay three thousand marks to activities mav. have been carried on elsewhere in the city.. 54 The Austin repair the damage they had done.I)5 In spite of this riot and of recurrent and Franciscan Friars came to occupy large sites in Conesford. One of the early parish churches, St John Conesford, went out of use and had been replaced by a tavern by about the end of the thirteenth century. 55 l\'A xyii (1908-10),107. For mergers see Appendix II. Other Conesford parishes were merged with one another during the ;6 Rec. i, p. cxxxvii. ;, Select Cases of Procedure u'ithol/t [Writ, ed. H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles (Selden Soc. Ix (194 I», 22. Cj. Rec. i, p. cxxiy. ;8 Rec. i, pp. xxvi-xxxviii; Tait, Medieval Borough, 306. 59 \X. Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction and [Wards ofthe City of NOT1vich (189 I).

49 For St l\Iartin's Bridge see Reguta ii, no. 762; for Fye Bridge, ibid. no. 1735, cj. ,0 One such is the name \'\'ymer. Although this Anglo-Norman name was borne by a above p. 2; for Coslany Bridge (which was really two bridges linked by an island) man who held property in Norwich at the time of Domesday it is more likely that St Benet, no. 284, Rec. ii, no. vii; for New Bridge (Blackfriars Bridge) Rec. ii, p. 361. he who gave his name to the leet was the 'Wymer de \'\'estwick' mentioned in a Bishop Bridge is perhaps mentioned in 1236 (\\'. R. Supple, Thorpe, 65) and in 1249 charter of I I 5 3-1 I 56, who may have been the same as the \'Vymer who was sheriff (Norj. iv, 402, cf, 384 and 400 n. 7). In 1276 provision was made for a bridge as part ofl\'orfolk and Suffolk, I 170-87: St Benet's, no. 128; P.R.O. Lists and Indexes ix, 86. ofa scheme to safeguard the Priory: Cal. Close 1272-9, 300-1; Cal. Pat. 1272-8, 157. 61 For the boundary of the Prior's Fee see Appendix III.

It has been suggested that this was Bishop Bridge but for arguments to the con 62 I.e. as it was before All Saints' and St ~Iargaret's parishes were added: Norj. iv, trary see E. M. Goulburn and H. Symonds, The Ancient SCtllptures ofthe Roofof 432n; .\'A ii(1849), 7·

Norwich Cathedral (I 876), 388. For the bridges in general see also below pp. 13-14. 63 See above p. 8. Great l\'ewgate (sometimes simply 0Jewgate) is to be 50 Norj. iii, 80; Rec. i, p. xlii. distinguished from Little Newgate (the area of what in 1789 was called 51 King's Works, ed. Colvin, i, I I 8. No written evidence for the construction of the St Catherine's Lane) and from a lane called ~e\\'gate (alias Bewgate) running into entrance fortifications has been found. Parallels elsewhere suggest a 13th-century King St from the E: Streets, 14, 15 16; Dugdale, Mon. iv, 13-15. date. "' See above pp. 4, 8; Rec. i, no. I; ii, 319-23; ~'orf. iii, 46-8,64-7; iv, 426n.; H. 52 Norf. iv, 124. Harrod, SA ii, (1849),270-1. 53 Rec. ii, p. cxx. 6S \'\. Rye, Norf. Antiq. l'viisc. ii (1885), 17-89; Rec. i, xxx-xxxi; Bury Cbron., ed. 54 Shape, 47; Permountergate, esp. 74-5. Gransden,5 0-52·

" ..___00______00 NOR \'('ICH

lesser clashes some progress was made towards a modus I'il,elzdi. The leet walls lay in two parts, in the south-west approximately in the area between (frankpledge jurisdiction) of Great I\:ewgate was recovered by the St Giles' Gates and Lakenham, and in the north-west approximately

Crown from the prior in 1291 and in 13°5 granted to the city. 66 In 1306 between Magdalen Gates and the river. These fields appear to have been the city acknowledged the prior's claim to view of frankpledge in the divided into many small holdings some of which were made up of many remainder of his fee, but it was agreed that the city coroners should have scattered pieces and some of which were, at least by the sixteenth cen the right to enter it and that residents in Holmstrete and Spiteland trading tury, enclosed. It is not clear how far these fields extended, how many of

in the city should pay dues and customs. 67 The nunnery of Carrow also them there were, or on what system, if any, they were divided. 76 Beyond held view of frankpledge for its tenants in Little Kewgate, but aban the south-western fields la," lands extending to Lakenham and Eaton over

doned this jurisdiction to the city in about 1290. hI< which the citizens had grazing rights apparently in connexion with a fold There were clashes with the Priory outside as well as inside the walls, course system. These had been recognized b," a fine made with the prior for it owned most of the countryside round about and the boundaries of in 1205 b,' which the citizens' rights over the common pasture in 'the

the city were disputed. ('9 The expansion of the city since its foundation suburb of T\orwich which extends towards Lakenham' and 'towards had inevitabh" caused boundan" problems which were complicated by Harford Bridge up to Eaton' in return for annual payments according

there being different boundaries for different purposes. Thus, the boun to the number of animals grazed. 77 The prior was allowed to enclose two dary of the city's grazing rights on the south-west side was not the sam~ areas, one of fort," 'acres' and one of thirty-three. A perambulation of as that of its jurisdiction; 711 and while in 1429 the prior was willing to 15 19 shows the area in which these grazing rights applied, either all the admit the jurisdiction of the city justices of the peace and coroners in ,"ear round or in 'shack time' (from after han"est to Lady Day), to have some of his suburban lands he was not willing to allow the city courts been ,'err large; something of the order of two square miles was involved jurisdiction over real and personal pleas or view of frankpledge in the and these rights must haye been important to the citizens. same areas. 71 The boundaries of the Domesda,' Hundred of I'\orwich are The economic life of Korwich must ha\"e depended in the maitLon the uncertain but it is clear that the," included none of the suburban ,"illages, city's three related functions as a great market, as a centre of long-dis for these are all listed under other hundreds. We have no further infor tance trade and as a manufacturing to\vn. The importance of the markets mation on the boundaries of the city until a case brought before the in Korwich is indicated b," the amount of space devoted to them. In the King in 1235 shows them to have been by then disputed. 72 The bailiffs thirteenth century the market-place was as it is shown on the map of 1789 claimed that a windmill standing in campo was part of the city and they except that it had lost two rows of stalls to St Peter ~Iancroft churchyard had distrained upon its owner for landgavel. The owner maintained that in 1368 7 il and the range of permanent buildings which in 1789 ran across it was outside the city and part of a royal hundred. The citizens subse the market-place from north to south was not there. Other open spaces quently admitted that the mill was in an outside hundred and outside the nearby were also used for market purposes. Cattle, sheep poultry and ditch of the city (infra hundredullJ forinsecullJ e/ extra fossa/lm/ cillitatis). It is cheese were sold in the space southwards of St Peter Mancroft, horses in not clear exactly what was at issue. But it appears that the cit,"'s juris the eastern part of what is now Rampant Horse Street. From Edward 1's diction in one area at least did not stretch bnond its ditch. After the ne\.\! time the swine market was on ()rford Hill (then Hog Hill). It had pre or extended ditch was dug in 1253 it was alleged that it included lands on viously been held on All Saints Green, which subsequently became the both the north and the south-west sides which were rightly part of other timber market. 79 Tombland was used for the principal Norwich fair, that hundreds; the areas in question were among those into which the built of the prior, which was held for nine days at Whitsun, and a small weekly up area of the city had started to spread before 1100. How far these market was also held there (the main city one was daily).80 The size of allegations were justified is unknown; but it is likely that there was a con the areas devoted to market purposes shows the populousness and wealth siderable element of truth in them. 73 If they were completely true then of the rural environment of Norwich. The Poll Tax returnS of 1377 the city fields both to the north and to the south west were outside the demonstrate that Norfolk was still the most densely populated county in original hundred of Norwich. It was even alleged that the city had not England. s1 claimed grazing rights towards Eaton and Lakenham until after it had The number of bridges over the Yare to the south of Norwich are an gained the charter of 1194. But the fine made with the prior about these indication of the importance of its relations with the countryside. rights in 1205 and the Domesdav reference to land held by burgesses (or Trowse Bridge was there by I I 19, Harford Bridge by 1205, Earlham and the burgesses) in Humbleyard Hundred suggest that the city's claims in Cringleford Bridges by 1272.82 That is to say there were four bridges in this direction were of greater antiquity. Disputes about the extent of the boundaries continued until a permanent settlement was reached in 1556.74 The question of the city's boundaries is involved with that of its 76 TOIl'll Close, 5, 7,47; """or(. iv, 146,436, 49 I ; Rec. ii, no. xxxiii. That some of the agricultural lands and grazing rights. :\ considerable amount of agricul holdings were small and scattered is demonstrated by e.g. the grant of 5 'acres' of turalland lay within the walls. 75 The cit~" fields immediately outside the arable land in 6 pieces in the tields of the suburb of Norwich against Magdalen in St Clements of Fybridgegate: 1':0\1 Enrolled Deeds Roll 9, m. 20 (I 5 Edw. II). The open field outside ~lagdalen Gates was called 11agdalen field: DCM, charter no. 1045 (42 Edw. III). It is possible that the city fields in the 1':\V. were coterminous 66 Nor! iii, 64-68; Rec. i, no. lxxx; ii, no. ccccxxvii; Streets, 15-16. with the area of St Clement's parish outside the walls. For the difficulties in the way 67 Nor! iii, 71-3. ofassuming that the lands in the l\iW. had been associated with the city from a very 68 Nor! iii, 64; Streets, 14; \X'. Rye, Carroll" Abbry (1889), 2. remote date see p. 4 above. The perambulation of I 519 gives some indication of 69 The boundary indicated on Map 4 is that indicated in the I 556 charter (Rec. i, 45-7). hbw the fields on the SW. lay: [\'A ii (I 849),7-10. There is a reference to the Divergencies with that in Plans ofthe Cities and BorollJ!bs ofEnRland and IPales, i (1832), 'fields of Great Ne,,"gate' in 1256 : Streets, 15-16.

121 are indicated. The jurisdiction of the citv over the river extended before the 77 Sorfolk Fines [20[-[J, ed. B. Dodwell (PRS, ".s. xxxii (I 95 6», no. 68. end of the Middle Ages to Hardley Cross about 15 miles E.: Rec. i, 47, 142. 7' See below pp. 15, I G. The rows of stalls as shown on the map approximately repre 70C! belowpp. 13, 15-16. sent the arrangements of the late 13th and earlV 14th centuries. They are based on 71 Nor! iii, 143-4. C! \X·. L. Sachse, Mililites o( the l\"or7l1ch COllr! of Mayoralty (Norf. Streets, 31-8, 93-8. There was considerable re-arrangement later; and the distri Rec. Soc. 1942), 14-16. bution of specialized areas in the market was probably al,,"ays to a degree in flux. 72 Select Cases of Procedure without If"rit, p. 22. 7' ')treets, 13- I 4, 19-20, 23-42, 93-8; Rec. ii, p. xx\" ; ;\orj. iv, 166. 73 See above pp. 2-5, 10-11. The Prion" seems to ha,"e maintained on different occa '" First Reg., 34; Reges!a ii, no. 762; Rec. ii, pp. cxxx\"-cxl; cj. 1\'orj. iii, 71-3. For other sic)f1s that Great l\iewgate was in Bloticld Hundred and, more plausibh', in Humble minor fairs see Rec. ii, p. cxxxv. yard Hundred: i"·or(. iii, 66; Dugdale, Mon. iv, 13-15. 81]. C. Russell, Medieval Population, 313.

7+ Dugdale Mon. iv, 13-15; see Appendix I. R2 First Reg., 48 (Trowse); ~""or! Fines, ed Dodwell, no. 68 (Harford); Rec. ii, 361 7S See above p. I I. (Earlham and Cringleford).

about five miles. The remarkable number of bridges within the city 83 l\:orwich and Yarmouth were closely, though not always happily, may be a similar indication, for the roads from the villages to the north related. In the later Anglo-Saxon and early Norman period Norwich of the city ran in such a way that to get to the market it was necessary to was probably the great port for northern East Anglia. Great Yarmouth enter the city north of the Wensum and numerous bridges may have been was a small place at the time of Domesday Book, but it rose rapidly in necessarv if the carts from the country laden with, for example, fish, the twelfth centun' and acquired a charter in 1204. Yarmouth controlled earthen pots, and firewood 84 were to reach the market without creating the mouth of the Yare and hence Norwich's access to the sea. By 1200 it intolerable traffic problems. had probably deprived l\:orwich of most of its maritime trade. In the An important aspect of the relationship with the countryside was, of thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Norwich complained repeatedly of course, the provisioning of the city. Provision stalls were numerous in Yarmouth's preventing ships and merchants coming up the Yare and the market: in 1397 there were forty-eight for butchers, forty-four for preventing merchants of Norwich trading at Yarmouth. By the late fishmongers, and twenty-eight for poulterers. 85 The city in turn supplied thirteenth centurv Yarmouth seems to have become the richer of the two the countryside with services and manufactured goods. The number of towns (though this situation is unlikelv to have outlasted the fourteenth crafts and sub-divisions of crafts in Norwich (Hudson estimated that century).93 In this period foreign building materials for the Cathedral there were over a hundred and twenty-five) suggests a high degree of were either bought at Yarmouth or imported directly from overseas and specialization and is presumably a reflection of the wealth of the rural transhipped there. 94 Inconvenient and distasteful though the existence of hinterland. 86 Textiles and leather goods were of outstanding importance, Yarmouth was to l\;orwich, the two towns were complementary. but the supply, if not perhaps the manufacture, of small metal goods was Norwich was a collecting centre for rural produce and a manufacturing also significant. Needler Row was one of the most important parts of the town. Yarmouth needed foodstuffs, exported rural products and manu market: in 1286 the Tombland shops (there were numerous shops in factures, provided any quantity of fish, and imported the raw materials, central Norwich besides the market stalls) seem chiefly to have been ale probably above all building materials and coal, which Norwich needed. houses, butchers' shops, and ironmongers' shops.87 Fish was of great It may be that Norwich and Yarmouth were so far complementary that importance in the economic relationship between cit" and countryside. they should be regarded almost as together constituting one town. Because it was a staple foodstuff of the greatest importance no inland In a list of the attributes of the towns of England (? mid-thirteenth village could be self-sufficient even in food. In a list of the trades of N or century) it is for its haven that Norwich is said to be notable. 95 Though wich of about 1274 piscatores comes first, and an early fourteenth-century this was by then a somewhat anachronistic choice, the city was neverthe list of tolls at Norwich begins with those levied on fish. 88 There were less largely dependent upon water transport. Its trade with and via numerous fishmongers' stalls on Norwich market. Rural manors obtained Yarmouth along the Yare was probably vital. The boats in which this fish from Norwich and, from the late thirteenth-century at latest fish was conducted were of some size; one which sank at Cantley on its way processing was carried on in the city. 89 upstream in 1343 was laden, indeed overladen, with forty people, three How wide the area which used Norwich as a local market was is at barrels of Osmund iron, sea coal worth lOS., a quatern of Riga board, present uncertain. In the later thirteenth century men certainly came to herrings, salt and onions. 96 The immense quantities of peat used as fuel market there from as far as Forncett (ten miles) and Ditchingham in Norwich must have come from the Broads area by water. 97 It is likely (twelve). The abbey of Sibton, about twenty-five miles away, on occasion that one reason for the development of the worsted industry in the bought leather goods there. Some commodities were distributed even Worstead area was that this lay near the heads of navigation of the Bure further afield. For example, Norwich was one of the places from which and Ant and so had communications with Norwich by water. The Leicester Abbey obtained fish. 90 The city was not a major centre of the sources contain numerous references to staithes (quays) in Norwich. It is wool trade, but there were wool merchants there; Norwich was a staple likely that in the early Middle Ages the principal quay was that running on three of the four occasions when home staples were set up in the eastwards from Fye Bridge on the south side of the river and which was fourteenth century; and it is likely that the fairly considerable wool sometimes called 'Norwich Quay'. Later the main quays lay further exports ofYarmouth were collected largely at Norwich. 91 Large amounts downstream in the area south of St Anne's Lane. 98 When in Richard II's of grain seem sometimes to have passed through Norwich market; and reign the city established a Common Staithe it was in Conesford, where it is likely that the grain which was exported from Yarmouth in the later many houses had quays attached.99 fourteenth centurv. was collected at Norwich. Norwich mal'. also have At the beginning of the fourteenth century the most important manu played an important part in victualling Yarmouth itself. 92 factures of Norwich appear to have been leather goods and textiles. Tanners and leather-workers were numerous.! The textile industry was 83 See above pp. II-I2.

S< Carts thus laden are mentioned in 1286: Rec. ii, 324-5. Hellesdon Bridge does not appear to be early; the earliest reference found refers to 1549 (Alexander Nevyll,

De Furoribus Norfolkiensis(I 575),29), and says the bridge was very narro\\'. 93 See above pp. 9-10; Rec. i, no. xxxvii; ii, nos. ccclxxiv, ccccxxviii, ccccxxix; Rot. 85 Rec. ii, 237-42. Hlind. i, 5 30b-53 I '. For its wealth see Rec. i, xl; S. K. :\!itchell, Taxation in Medieval R6 Rec. ii, pp. xxv-xxvii; cj. F. S. Davenport, Economic De1'elopment ofa j\'orj. Afanor England(I95 I), 359. (1906),49-5 o. 9' Saunders, Rolls, 87-8. This reference is to the importation of timber from the 87 Streets, 95-97; Rec. ii, 324-5. Baltic. The Cathedral also made use of large quantities of other foreign building 88 Rot. HI/nd. i, 53 I ab (whether these were sea fishermen, freshwater fishermen or materials, Caen stone especially, but also iron from Kormandy and from Sweden: even fishmongers is uncertain); Rec. ii, 199-200; cj. ibid., 324-5. L. F. Salzman, Building in England(I967),'I 55,288; Early Communar and Pitancer 89 Rec. ii, nos. xvi, xxiii; Streets, 83; PermOlll1tergate, 28; Davenport, op. cit. Ixv. Rolls, ed. Fernie and Whittingham, e.g. 13-14. b 90 Davenport, op. cit., xxxvii, xli, 29, 36-7 (Forncctt); Rot. HIlIJd. i, 477 (Ditchingham, Q5 E:HR xv (1900),502; cj. E. M. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Ven!lIrers(1967), cf. 468 b, 500", 534 b); S ibton Abbey Estates, cd. A. H. Denney (1960), 124; 2I2andn·5· R. H. Hilton, Economic Development ofsome Leics. Estates (I 947), 32. 96 Rec. i, no. Ixxxviii.

91 Permountergate, 7 I ; G. Unwin, Finance and Trade linder Edll'ard III (19 18), 202; Rec. ii, q; J . .\1. Lambert, A1aking of the Broads, 84-5 ; e.g. in 1326 the Cathedral Priory used pp. xxx, lix; E. l\f. Carus-Wilson and O. Coleman, England's Export Trade (I 963), 410,000 turves. (It stopped using peat as its main fuel in about the I380s.)

136-7. Almost no wool was exported from Yarmouth before 1290 or after 1395. 9R Sbape, 56; Rec. ii, xxxv-vi; A1ed. Arcb. viii (1964), 267; DCI\f no. 1753 (Cayum de The highest export figure recorded is that for 1296-7 (3,762 sacks), In the period ""\'oru'ich); Norj. iv, 355; Streets, 67; Permozmterf!.ate, 16,41,5°; Aled. Arch. xii, 127-9. 1350-1367 the export averaged over 1,000 sacks annuallv. Thereafter it tailed off, It appears that the 'common quay' between Fye Bridge and \'V'hitefrairs Bridge was There was a special wool-market in Norwich by 1397: Rec. ii, 242. bv the late 13th centurv being obstructed bv new building : Streets, 69.

92 \'V'. Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction, 62-4; cj. l\f.l\!. 110rgan, Enf!.lish Lands ofBec(I 946), 49, 99 See below p. 15; Rec. i, no. cxxvi; Streets, 6-8.

N. S. B. Gras, English Corn Markrt (1915), 280. For victualling Yarmouth see Leet 1 Permountfrf!.ate, 28-39; Rec, ii, pp. xii-xiii, xxii; ,"\A xii (1893-95),59-61; Rot. Hund. Jurisdiction, 65. i, 53 I.

of some importance from at least the twelfth centun,2. The heaths in the and late fourteenth century show that the 'Twenty Four', a body of the immediate vicinity of the city carried large numbers of sheep.3 When more eminent citizens, apparentlv elected annually, were of increasing records become abundant in the late thirteenth centun' thev contain importance. They probably consolidated their power by the charter of numerous references to those engaged in the manufacture and sale of 1380 which gave the bailiffs and Twenty Four the power to establish textiles. 4 Few weavers are mentioned, either because Norwich was at this ordinances and remedies. ll The charters of 1404 and 1417 established period a centre for cloth-finishing but not of weaving (this being pre what was to prove a lasting basis for the city's constitution which, by the sumably done in the country) or because weavers were generally of too end of the century, was much as it was to remain until 1835: the city was lowly a status to get into the records. 5 a county by itself with a mayor, two sheriffs, twenty-four aldermen, It is impossible to make any quantitative estimate of the scale of N"or elected six from each of the great wards and de facto holding office for life, wich textile manufacture at this time. However, it seems probable that the and sixty common councillors unequally divided between the wards; late thirteenth and earh' fourteenth centuries saw an increase in cloth the ma\'or, sheriffs and aldermen having the predominant power. 12 manufacture in eastern Korfolk and in the city of 0lorwich. This was The development of new methods of municipal government in the largely associated with the rise of worsted, which is first mentioned as a fourteenth centurY seems to have been accompanied by a great increase cloth in 1295, when it was apparentl\' fairly well-known in Dublin. 6 The in municipal activit\,. The municipalin- of 1400 was a very different name is that of Worstead, some twelve miles north-east ofl\;orwich and a animal from the municipality of 125 o. That of 1250 was de facto not very group ofvillages in this area was probably the original home of the cloth. much more than a specialh- privileged court and tax-collecting authority, The importance ofNorfolk cloth is reflected in the predominance of Nor in a ven general sense of the same kind as a county court. That of 1400 folk men among the mercers of London. 'From 1280 to about 13 50 at was a corporation comparable in mam" ways to other corporate bodies least one hundred city mercers were men of immediate or recent 0;orfolk such as monasteries and colleges. The change is most easily seen in the origin; at least fifty-nine of them were immigrants in their own lifetime. increase in the number and size of municipal buildings and in the amount Working through the London mercers from 1300 to 1340 is like thumb of propert\" owned by the municipalit\-. Cntil the late thirteenth century ing a Norfolk directory'. 7 'Worsted ofNorwich' is mentioned in 1314 and the only municipal buildings in ~orwich were the small Tollhouse in the the city soon became an important centre of worsted weaving. \veavers market-place and a 'Common House', of which little is known, standing are found taking up the freedom ofthe city from 1327 and those doing so on the south side of Tombland. 13 In the two generations after 1297 the become very numerous in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. The cit\, wall was built - in a sense the largest building the city has ever city was also the centre for the sale and control of the cloth.S The number owned. The building of the 'murage loft' in the market-place as an office of fullers in the city (worsted was not fulled) in the later thirteenth and for the collection of the murage tolls followed in about 1300.14 The earlier fourteenth centun' and the existence in the city of two fulling mills establishment of municipal control over waste spaces in the city and, (disused by C.1410) suggests that broadcloth was also of some import from 1345, over most of the Castle Fee increased the amount of property ance. 9 In the late thirteenth centur~' and for long afterwards the cloth owned. Earh' in Richard IT's reign a poliC\- was adopted of bringing im processing in Norwich seems to have been concentrated in the areas on portant elements in the city's econom\- under municipal control. The either side of the Wensum upstream of Newbridge. Fullers and dyers stalls from which meat, poultn', fish and wool were sold were bought up seem to have been particularly thick on the ground in the area immedi and the sale of these commodities from stalls other than those the city ately south of the river. The street names of the area reflect this regional owned forbidden. The municipality acquired a 'Common Staithe' in concentration of trades. For example, Fullers' and Blexters' (~'iZ Fullers) Conesford, and all ships and boats were required to load and unload at Holes were lanes running northwards to the river, and modern Charing it. ll In 1397 a large site was acquired on the north side of the market. Cross is by origin 'Shearhill Cross' where the shearers (tunders) lived. lo Half of it was used as the Common Inn at which all strangers to the city were supposed to stay; half became the Worsted Seld where all worsted NORWICH FROM THE MID-FOURTEENTH CEi\TCRY for sale had to be displayed. ln In 1407-12 the municipality built itself a TO THE REFORMATIO~ handsome Guildhall on the site ofthe old Tollhouse. In 14 I I came a new ~1arket Cross. ~1unicipal mills, the New Mills, were completed in 1430.17 The history of the government of the city in the later ~liddle :\ges is one For all these apparent indications of success the corporation of Nor of the establishment of the constitution in the quasi-oligarchical form wich met with severe reverses. Although the charter of 1404 granted count\' status to the cit\- 'with hamlets and suburbs' it was unable to which it was to retain until the nineteenth century, and of the extension , , of the powers and activities of the municipalit~,. The rpcords of the mid make its authority good over the suburban villages, except in so far as the jurisdiction of the city justices of the peace and coroners may have been accepted. 18 Its failure was partly a consequence of bad luck or bad

2 See above p. 10. management in the troubles of Henry VI's reign. Korwich had come well 3 K. J. Allison, 'The Wool Supply and the Worsted Cloth Industry in ~orfolk in the out of the previous crisis, that of 1399; the charter of 1404 was in a sense Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries' (Leeds Ph.D. thesis, 1955),24°. Cf. ab(we the city's share of the spoils of the Lancastrian revolution. 19 But things pp. 1-2, 13. • Rec. i, no. xcv; ii, p. xxii; nos. ccclxxxix, ccccxlv; \'V'. Hudson l'-:A xii (I 893-95), 61-6; W. Rye, Calendar of i"\Torwich Deeds I2SJ-I J06, passim; Rot. Hund. i, 530 (factoribus pannorum second in a list of trades c. 1273); St John Maddermarket was

known by that name by 1263-3 indicating that the trade in dyestuffs was by then 11 Rec. i, xlii-lix; Tait, Medieval Borough, 285; M.Weinbaum, Borough Charters (1943),84; important: Streets, 58; cj. Cal. Deeds I28J-I J06, passim. Sachse (as above p. 13 n. 71) 12.

5 Carus-W'ilson, Aledieval,\1ercbant Venturers, 224-38. Th ere was at least one important 12 Rec. i, pp. lviii-lxxiii, xciii-cviii; Tait, op. cit. 316-7.

weaver in Norwich: Rec. ii, p. Ixiii. The sale of yarn in the market suggests that 13 Rec. ii, p. xviii; Streets, 3In.

weaving did go on in the city: Leet Jurisdiction, ed. Hudson, 49. 14 Rec. ii, p. xviii; Streets, 36.

6 G. H. Orpen, Ireland under tbe "\'ormans, iv (1920),274. 15 Rec. ii, pp. xxxv-\-i; 233-6; "\'orf. iv, 70, 77. The Old Common Staithe and New

7 G. A. Williams, Aledieval London (1963), 136-4°. Common Staithe nearby \\'erc acquired in 1379. The city had the quay at the New R K. J. Allison, Yorks. Bull. Joc. Ecoli. Research xii (1960),73-9 and Rec. ii, pp. lxiii-vi Staithe rebuilt in 1432: Salzman, Building ill England, 501-3. provide the best surveys of the Norfolk cloth industry. Cf. E. :'liller, Ec HR ,-".5. 16 Rec. ii, pp. xxxvi-xxxviii; L. G. Bolingbroke, l\'A xX(19I7-19), 232-4. xviii, (1965),78-79. 17 R. Howlett, "\-A xv (19°2-4), 164-89 (Guildhall); Rec. ii, p. xxxix (cross); Rec. i,

q E.g. Rec. pp. ii, liv, lxiv, Ixviii; ""orf. iii, 147-8; l\:orwich Domesdav (~C:'I) ff. I', p.lxxxviii; "'orj. iii, 147; 1\A i(1847), 141 (mills).

Iii', liii'" (fullers mentioned 1397) ;·/I.llison '\'\"001 Supplv', 390--J. 18 TOll'lI Close, 33-7; see above p. 13 and Appendix I.

JO Streets, H-7. 19 Norf. iii, 114 20.