Two Wiltshire Manors and Their Markets
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Fwo Wiltshire Manors and their Markets By D L FARMER Abstract The accounts of the Glastonbury Abbey manors of Longbridge Deverill and Monkton Deverill provide unusually detailed information of the places where, and the persons with whom, the manors traded. Most of their grain went to markets within ten miles, though more distant markets were used more in years when grain fetched higher prices. Livestock was purchased at fairs further away than most of the grain markets. The majority of wool buyers came from towns within about twenty miles of the manors. Lengthy journeys were sometimes necessary to fetch items like millstones. Much of the manors' trading was informal, and with their own tenants. 'ITmN what geographical range nearest markets, others to any markets did medieval English manors buy within the county, whereas others must W their necessities and sell their go to Winchester itself or to London. 3 The produce? The evidence is fragmentary and custumals certainly suggest an extensive often contradictory. Many years ago Nor- long-distance trade in grain, not only to man Gras drew attention to the long- London but also to major regional centres. distance grain trade suggested by the Some elements of this trade were indeed carrying-services listed in the surveys of in place before the earliest of the manorial manors belonging to the abbeys of Ramsey accounts, as the arrangements for provi- and Bury St Edmunds, and Professor Mil- sioning Henry II's Irish campaigns testify; ler's study of the Ely estates revealed an other elements persisted after the last series even more comprehensive network ofaver- of manorial accounts fell silent, as the agia and summagia linking the bishop's accounts of the Peterborough Abbey manors to London, to regional centres officials confirm. 4 Among other commodi- like Cambridge, Norwich and Bury St ties, there is ample evidence of a long- Edmunds, and to King's Lynn, the great distance trade in livestock, to towns such entrep6t from which grain was shipped to as Gloucester as well as to London, and of London or to northern ports like New- heroic journeys to fetch millstones from castle and Berwick. I Gras also noticed in the ports, and one hardly needs to com- the early bishopric of Winchester pipe rolls ment on the travels of English and Welsh the records of the bishop's manors in the wool to the collecting points at Boston, Thames valley and the Chilterns sending London or Southampton before shipment hundreds of quarters of grain each year to Flanders or even the Mediterranean.S to his manor-cure-palace at Southwark, Yet the long-distance traffic may have which then sold the bulk of what it had been only a minor aspect of grain market- received - presumably to the Londoners ing, and may not have been the major across the river.'- A mid-I25OS survey of characteristic of the livestock trade or even most of the Winchester manors prescribes of the wool trade. London held under 2 the obligations of their customary tenants to carry the lord's corn and malt, or drive ' BL, MS Egerton 24x8. his livestock, to a variety of destinations: 4 Pipe P,oll 17 Henry II, pp 84, 88-9, 113, 131; D L Farmer, 'Some Price Fluctuations in Angevin England', Econ Hist Rev, znd some tenants had to go only to the four ser, IX, 1956, pp 34-4o; J Greatrex, (cd), Accoum Rolls qf the Obedientiaries of Peterborough, Northampton Record Society ' N S B Gras, The Evolutioll of the English Corn Mark,:t, Cambridge, XXXIlI, 1984, pp 165, 179, 193. Mass., 1926, p 21; E Miller, The Abbey aml Bi.;hopric of Ell,, H P R Finberg, 'An early reference to the Welsh cattle trade', Cambridge, I951, p 85. Professor Miller kindly supplied me Ag Hist Rev 2, 1954, pp 12-13; Merton College Moniments 4496 with additional information. (for millstones carted from Southampton to Oxford); R A ' Gras, Ioe cir. Donkin, The Cistercians, Toronto, 19"/8, pp 144-54. Ag Hist Rev, 37, I, pp i-II I THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW per cent of England's population, and there more distant markets within range. '~ Even were only a few regional centres which within the manorial community there were could not be fed from their immediate many who had to buy food, sometimes hinterlands. By I220 the trade Gras under the duress of the lord (like the bishop reported had ceased: Southwark - at least of Winchester's customary tenants on his according to the surviving Winchester pipe manors near Taunton), but more often rolls - never again sold off surplus grain because they held no land, or held too little despatched by the bishop's manors up the to support their families. Did the demesnes Thames. The city of Winchester itself, sell their surpluses to distant markets or to according to the evidence presented in its buyers close at hand? civic court, normally got its corn from In fact, the manorial accounts, surviving less than seven miles away - despite the in their thousands and so informative on carrying services available on the bishop's many aspects of the medieval economy, manors all over Hampshire. ~ David Postles are usually reticent on what happened to has concluded that 'carrying services were the marketable harvest surpluses. It may essentially local in the thirteenth and four- even be hard to tell what was marketed teenth centuries'.V Most of the non-resident and what was not. Accounting practices traders appearing before Exeter's courts allowed the reeve or bailiff to claim fair lived within five miles of the city; early market value for the corn, malt and live- fourteenth-century Colchester, in a stock supplied to the lord's household, and countryside of woodland, marsh and soil often one cannot be sure which 'sales' were fit mainly for rye, obtained its wheat from of this fictitious nature. Some accounts 'villages up to about eight miles away by describe other transactions as made in foro road'. 8 As Dr Brimell has demonstrated, or i1.1 nundinis, but without naming the the thirteenth century saw a remarkable market or the fair; others state the place, multiplication of markets in most parts of but do not say whether the deal occurred England. `) Some of these served as collect- in the town's market, or at its annual fair, ing points for supplying cities - as Henley or was entirely private and informal. It is and Marlow did for London, and Sherston rare, though, for a compotus to give any and Hawkesbury for Bristol - but most information at all about the purchaser or were centres of consumption by the arti- the destination to which produce was car- sans and craftsmen who settled in the new ried or driven. There are a few well-known market towns and villages. '° More mar- exceptions: Professor Harvey has shown kets, surely, shortened the distance prod- how the Merton College manor of Cux- uce need travel from manor to customer; ham, whose tenants had sworn in I279 on the other hand, the almost-universal that they were not obliged by manorial adoption of the horse to haul carts brought custom to carry to any destination except Wallingford, Henley and the neighbouring manor of Ibstone, almost always sent its wheat the nine miles or so over the Chil- " D Keeue, Survey qfMedieval lVillchestrr, O×ford, sgl~5, p -'7o. tern escarpment to Henley, the great inland v D Postles. 'Customary carrying services', .J~tl Tran.q, ort Hist. 3rd series 5 (No 2), 1984, p 15. port where much of London's grain was x M Kowaleski, 'Local Markets and Merchants in late Fourteenth- bulked before shipment down the Century Exeter', unpublished Phl) thesis, Univ of Toronto, 1982, p 329; R H Britnell, Growth alld declim' in Colchester, Thames.'2 In contrast, Merton's manor of 13oo-1525, Cambridge, 1986, p 44. '~ R H Brimell, 'Tile proliferation of markets in England, 12oo-q349', Econ Hist Rev, 2nd ser, XXXIV, z981, pp 2ot,~2h "j Langdon, Horses, O.veJ~and Tedu~olo,qical lnnavalian, Cambridge, '° Gras, op tit, p 165; A Harding, (ed), Roll qt'tl~e SImv~shi,'t' E),re 1986, p 96. aflz56, Selden Society 96, 198o, pp 16~-2; R H Hilton, 'Medieval '; P D A Harvey, (cd), Mam,'ial Records of Cuxham, O.x:lbrdshire, Market Tow~s', PP Io9, ~985, pp 7-~ ~. c.1200-1349, London, 1976, p 607 and p,lssinl. TWO WILTSHIRE MANORS AND THEIR MARKETS 3 Holywell had an obvious market hard by, chamberlain therefore ran them for the among the bakers and brewers of Oxford, maximum cash income they would yield, and it almost never sent its produce to a and kept them in hand long after Glaston- more distant market. The reeve of Combe bury and other estates had leased out virtu- (Hants) in the summer of 13o7 made seven- ally all their other manors. For some fifty teen journeys to the markets of Newbury years before the Black Death the manorial and Andover (respectively eight and ten accounts frequently state the destinations miles away) to. sell the manor's grain; Ken- to which the Deverills sent their grain, and net (Cambs) in the Iz7os sent wheat and occasionally name the buyers; for a shorter large quantities of barley to Bury St period the compoti also name the buyers Edmunds, ten miles distant. '3 In I35z/3 the of wool, and intermittently over a much bishop of Winchester's Wiltshire manors longer period they record the fairs at which carted large amounts of wheat to Sou- the manors bought and sold livestock and thampton for sale (at a high price) to the the places where they obtained hay and king.