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Revising the Conomic History of Late ENGLAND CIRCA 1290 A VIEW FROM THE PERIPHERY Bruce M. S. Campbell Professor of Medieval Economic History School of Geography, The Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN e-mail <[email protected]> February 2005 ‘If one makes a leap of the imagination, numbers come alive. They do so both in what they allow us to know and in how they help us to think. Numbers make it possible for us to put the pieces together. They allow us to compare events that are otherwise incomparable. They tell us which way the world is moving. They help us to think in general terms about particular events, and then to test our generalizations against the evidence of empirical indicators.’ David Hackett Fischer, The great wave: price revolutions and the rhythm of history (Oxford, 1996), xiii. ‘historians should be encouraged to look beyond narrow boundaries, to test theories and estimates against other periods or regions.’ N. J. Mayhew, ‘Coinage and money in England, 1086-c.1500’, 72-86 in Diana Wood (ed.), Medieval money matters (Oxford, 2004), 81. © the author. Not to be quoted, cited, or reproduced in any way without the author’s permission. The fourteenth-century Gough Map offers a characteristically Anglo-centric view of Britain. Whereas England is represented in sharp and detailed focus, Wales is distorted and Scotland distended. Ireland, an English colony since 1171, appears only as a dim coastline on the western horizon. According to Dan Birkholz (2004) the Gough Map is probably a mid to late fourteenth-century copy or version of a now lost late thirteenth-century original, created perhaps in the 1280s or 90s either for Edward I or his administration. This makes the invisibility of Ireland all the more remarkable, for Edward had received the Lordship of Ireland as a wedding gift from his father, Henry III, in 1254. But Edward I was one of the most Anglo-centric of monarchs, spending much of his reign and the resources of his realm in the effort to subordinate the Welsh and the Scots to English rule. The Gough Map may, in part, be a map of his imperial aspirations. Such Anglo-centrism continues to prevail among medieval historians, as exemplified by the frequency with which the Gough Map is reproduced minus the coasts of Ireland and Europe and omitting most of Scotland. Significantly, the portion of the Gough Map featured on the cover of Richard Britnell’s recent (2004) economic history of Britain and Ireland lies south of Hadrian’s Wall and east of Offa’s Dyke. Christopher Dyer – himself the author of a recent social and economic history of “Britain” (2002) – has even criticised Steve Rigby’s Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages (2003) for devoting as much space to Wales, Scotland, and Ireland as to England, complaining that ‘this imbalance gives rise to the fear that the full inclusion of the non-English parts of Britain has led to a neglect of the English regions’ (Dyer, 2003, 152). Such views fail to recognise that the experience of individual regions and countries cannot be understood in isolation. Indeed, historians of medieval England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland all grapple with the same problems of population, economic organisation, institutional arrangements, and urban and commercial development, and all four countries were caught up in wider, pan-British and pan- European, processes of change. Widening the geographical scope of historical enquiry may therefore help to resolve or at least clarify some of these issues while providing a firmer framework for analysis. Accordingly, this paper offers a comparative economic analysis England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland at the climax of medieval economic expansion c.1290, at about 3 the time when the first version of the Gough Map may have been made. Probably this is the earliest date for which there are sufficient data to enable such an exercise to be attempted. Thus, the assessments of and returns to the Pope Nicholas IV Taxatio of 1291 alone among medieval tax records enable the ecclesiastical wealth of England, Wales, and Scotland to be measured and compared at a single point in time. Moreover, the equivalent Irish returns for 1303—06 allow Ireland to be included in the picture. In England the 1290 lay subsidy yielded a bumper harvest of wealth that no subsequent lay subsidy would better. To the benefit of an overwhelmingly agrarian economy, the stable weather and dry summers of the medieval climatic optimum still prevailed. This was when royal receipts peaked. The Lordship of Ireland, too, was at its revenue-yielding maximum, both in terms of royal receipts and customs duties (Figure 4). It was still a small but profitable Crown asset – a source of men, money, and provisions. By 1290 Wales had been conquered, re-conquered, and annexed and was in the process of being planted, so that it is possible to speak for the first time of “England and Wales”. North of the border, although the direct line of Scottish succession had been broken with the death, in the autumn of 1290, of Margaret, the maid of Norway, Scottish independence was not yet under direct and immediate military threat from England. On the contrary, in 1292, Edward ruled in favour of John Balliol as the rightful king of Scotland and the latter was duly crowned. For the time being, in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, a fragile peace still prevailed, to the benefit of economic life. By 1295-6 everything had altered and the irreversible downward economic slide had begun. Bad weather had caused serious harvest failure in 1294 and 1295 and brought much of England to the brink of famine (an augury, as it proved, of worse to come). In Ireland the king’s agents and bankers, the Riccardi, had been bankrupted, royal revenues had slumped never to recover, and the finances of the Lordship of Ireland had begun to implode. In 1294 the Welsh had revolted and, more ominously, war had broken out with France over Gascony. In 1296 an alliance had been concluded between the French and the Scots against their common enemy, the English. The same year, Edward I resolved upon a full-scale invasion of Scotland, thereby terminating the peace which had long prevailed between the two countries and committing England to a war, the adverse ramifications of which would endure 4 until the 1560s (unfortunately, Edward under-estimated the determination of the opposition, failed to win the hearts and minds of the Scots, and lacked an exit strategy). From this point, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, economic conditions progressively deteriorated and the lot of a growing proportion of their respective populations steadily worsened. 1290/1 therefore constitutes a benchmark point in time. On the basis of available evidence, five criteria are available from which a comparative economic profile of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland can be constructed: population, taxable wealth, money supply, dutiable exports, the number and size of towns and associated urbanisation rate. 1. The populations of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland c.1290: The earliest date at which it is possible to make a reasonably well-documented and reliable estimate of the respective populations of England and Wales, Table 1 The estimated populations of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland in 1751/5 Country Area % of Estimated % of People Relative mile2 British & population British & per mile2 population Irish total in 1751/5 Irish total density England 50,332 42% 6.0m. 58% 119 1.00 Wales 8,016 7% 0.6m. 6% 75 0.63 Scotland 30,411 25% 1.3m. 12% 42 0.35 Ireland 32,588 27% 2.4m. 23% 74 0.62 Britain & 121,347 100% 10.3m. 100% 84 0.71 Ireland Sources: Phyllis Deane and W. A. Cole, British economic growth 1688-1959 (Cambridge, 1969), 103; E. A. Wrigley, and R. S. Schofield, The population history of England 1541-1871: a reconstruction, 2nd edition (Cambridge, 1989), 208-9; L. Kennedy and L. A. Clarkson, ‘Birth, death, and exile: Irish population history, 1700-1921’, pp. 158-84 in B. J. Graham, and L. J. Proudfoot (eds.), An historical geography of Ireland (London, 1993), 160-1. Scotland, and Ireland is the early 1750s (Table 1). This provides a useful guide to the likely relative size and density of populations on the threshold of the industrial period. 5 Significantly, for estimates of medieval population, England had a population of 6.0 million, while Britain and Ireland between them supported a population of approximately 10.3 million. Scotland was by far the least densely populated country and England the most. Table 2 A socio-economic profile of England and Wales in 1759 England and Wales No. of % of total Mean Total % of total families families family income GDP income (£) (£m.) Landowners (spiritual lords, aristocracy, gentry, 20,070 1.3 595 11.943 17.9 clergy) Large & substantial 30,186 2.0 140 4.233 6.3 freeholders & tenants Middling freeholders & 53,666 3.5 75 3.998 6.0 tenants Lesser freeholders & 160,996 10.5 39 6.279 9.4 tenants Small holders & rural 334,160 21.7 16 5.397 8.1 labourers Cottagers, paupers, & 232,310 15.1 11 2.495 3.7 vagrants Rural agrarian total 831,388 54.1 41 34.345 51.4 Rural manufacturers & 248,335 16.1 25 6.208 9.3 builders Rural total 1,079,723 70.2 38 40.553 60.7 Clergy, lawyers, & 55,000 3.6 89 4.890 7.3 professionals Merchants, tradesmen, 180,500 11.7 73 13.210 19.8 innkeepers Manufacturers, builders, 137,917 9.0 44 6.053 9.1 labourers, & miners Military & maritime 86,000 5.6 25 2.132 3.2 Non-rural total 459,417 29.9 57.2 26.285 39.4 Non-agrarian total 707,752 46.0 45.9 32.493 48.6 Overall total 1,539,140 100.0 43 66.838 100.0 Notes: Total population = 6.7m.; mean family size = 4.33; total national income (GDP) = £66.838m.
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