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

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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.. Source: Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson: ‘Revising England’s social tables, 1688-1812’, Explorations in Economic History, 19 (1982), 394—9.

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Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson (1982, 394-9) offer a socio-economic breakdown of England’s population at this time based upon Joseph Massie’s social table of 1759 (Table 2). By this date, non-agrarian families, including significant numbers in the countryside, made up just under half of the total and received almost half of all national income. Although rural small-holders, labourers, cottagers, and paupers comprised over a third of total families, they received less than an eighth of total income. Their poverty contrasted with the conspicuous wealth of the landowners.

450 years earlier, on the eve of the Great European Famine of 1315-21, several historians headed the late M. M. Postan have proposed that England may similarly have supported a population of 6.0 million or possibly even more. This, however, is incompatible with what is known about land use, agricultural productivity, and food output at that time. In fact, it is difficult to see how a maximum medieval English population in excess of 4.25 to 4.5 million could have been supported. Such a figure is entirely consistent with the evidence of population size provided by the 1377 Poll Tax and 1327/32 lay subsidies. Moreover, given that evidence of local populations indicates that the population was still growing in the years and decades before 1315, it is improbable that the national total in 1290 had yet exceeded 4 million (an increase from 4.0m. in 1290 to 4.25-4.5m. in 1315 is consistent with a mean annual growth rate of 0.2-0.5%). If the relative distribution of population was the same c.1290 as in 1751/5, extrapolating from an English population of 4.0 million yields the figures for Wales, Scotland, and Ireland given in Table 3.

Overall, this method of estimation suggests a total British and Irish population of 6.9 million c.1290 (i.e. 33% smaller than that in 1751/5). Nevertheless, it is implausible that the relative distribution of population was broadly the same at these two widely separate dates. Indeed, analysis of the distribution of taxpayers in 1327/32 and 1377 indicates a steeper density gradient from east to west within England than in the eighteenth century, with the implication that relative population densities in Wales and Ireland may also have been lower at the earlier date. Relative population densities likewise seem to have been lower in the far north and so, too, by extrapolation in Scotland. Probably, therefore, England’s share of the British and Irish 7

population total was greater in the 1290s than the 1750s. Accordingly, the alternative estimates given in Table 4 are probably to be preferred.

Table 3 Estimated populations of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland in 1290/1, if relative population densities were the same as in 1751/5.

Country Area % of Estimated % of People Relative mile2 British & population British & per mile2 population Irish total in 1290/1 Irish total density

England 50,332 42% 4.00m. 58% 79 1.00 Wales 8,016 7% 0.41m. 6% 51 0.65 Scotland 30,411 25% 0.86m. 12% 28 0.35 Ireland 32,588 27% 1.63m. 24% 50 0.63

Britain & 121,347 100% 6.90m. 100% 57 0.72 Ireland

Sources: Area, %, and relative density: Table 1. Population, England: Bruce M. S. Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture 1250-1450 (Cambridge, 2000), 403; Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, by extrapolation from the English figure using the proportions given in Table 1.

Table 4 Estimated populations of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland in 1290/1, if relative population densities in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were lower than in 1751/5.

Country Area % of Estimated % of People Relative mile2 British & population British & per mile2 population Irish total in 1290/1 Irish total density area population

England 50,332 42% 4.00m. 63% 79 1.00 Wales 8,016 7% 0.32m. 5% 40 0.50 Scotland 30,411 25% 0.79m. 12% 26 0.33 Ireland 32,588 27% 1.29m. 20% 40 0.50

Britain & 121,347 100% 6.40m. 100% 59 0.66 Ireland

Sources: Table 3 and text.

This method of estimation yields a combined British and Irish population of 6.4 million, which may have grown to a peak of just over 7 million 25 years later. The figure of 0.32 million for Wales is remarkably close to the currently accepted estimate 8 of 0.30 million derived from the Edwardian lay subsidy of 1292-3 (Griffiths, 2000, 681). For Scotland, too, the figure of 0.79 million (rising to a pre-plague maximum of perhaps 0.9 million) is broadly consistent with Nicholas Mayhew’s speculation that ‘Scottish population may have peaked at about a million’ (Mayhew, 2003, 109). In contrast, the corresponding figure of 1.29 million for Ireland (increasing to perhaps 1.5 million by 1315) is almost double the maximum of 0.75 million proposed by J. C. Russell (1948) and 0.4—0.8 million hypothesised by Brian Graham (2003), and substantially above the 1.0 million suggested by R. E. Glasscock (1987). It does, however, fall within the range of 1-2 million recently advanced by Richard Britnell (2004). Furthermore, it would have been well within the capacity of the country’s potential agricultural resources, which William Petty, at the end of the 17th century, considered to be capable of supporting a population of 5 million. It suggests that Irish medievalists should revise upwards the estimates with which they have been working.

Certainly, there is nothing to suggest that either Scotland or Ireland was encumbered with an excess of population circa 1290, nor is population pressure an issue that features in the historiographies of either country (Mayhew, 1990, 58). If anything, Scotland and Ireland suffered from a deficit of people. England, in contrast, with 63 per cent of the British and Irish total, does seem to have had a burgeoning problem of rural congestion and land hunger, as is consistent with a great deal of historical evidence. As Table 5 and Figure 1 demonstrate, several counties were already more crowded with people than they would be on the threshold of the industrial revolution when the economy and agricultural technology were both significantly more developed. In Lincolnshire, with an average population density in excess of 100 people per square mile (Figure 2), the population in 1290 was almost twice what it would be in 1756. Population densities were significantly higher in Rutland, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, southern Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk, and attained a peak of almost 170 per square mile in Norfolk (Figure 2), where rural congestion was most pronounced. Here, by the close of the thirteenth century, are all the tell-tale signs of acute and worsening land hunger. Yet, in well over half the country population densities were 50 per cent or less than those 9

Table 5 England: estimated county populations in 1290 and 1756

County Estimated total population in 1290 Estimated Estimated based on: populatio populatio 1290 & 1377 Lay n (C) n 1756 1327/32 poll tax subsidies per mile2 lay & poll tax subsidies B C A

Bedfordshire 53,803 58,841 56,322 119 58,416 Berkshire 51,542 65,738 58,640 78 90,646 Buckinghamshire 108,045 71,376 89,711 121 86,161 Cambridgeshire 115,132 84,626 99,879 115 76,620 Cheshire 30,335 42,816 36,576 38 113,493 Cornwall 29,261 99,155 64,208 46 139,063 Cumberland 50,761 36,217 43,489 28 85,462 Derbyshire 71,113 70,268 70,691 70 106,204 Devon 123,920 137,999 130,959 50 323,168 Dorset 82,227 99,059 90,643 88 93,114 Durham 63,549 39,345 51,447 52 137,155 Essex 140,515 147,303 143,909 94 190,264 Gloucestershire 127,438 131,093 129,266 103 214,023 Hampshire 76,682 113,192 94,937 59 141,432 Herefordshire 60,764 48,374 54,569 65 74,250 Hertfordshire 70,842 57,788 64,315 103 80,609 Huntingdonshire 55,471 40,991 48,231 130 31,901 Kent 137,142 171,992 154,567 99 177,838 Lancashire 51,093 69,085 60,089 31 334,993 Leicestershire 58,965 97,873 78,419 94 96,626 Lincolnshire 323,671 275,179 299,425 112 161,593 London & Middlesex 74,327 99,973 87,150 294 622,211 Norfolk 408,081 282,985 345,533 168 233,269 Northamptonshire 122,009 120,644 121,326 122 117,907 Northumberland 127,499 48,628 88,084 43 146,559 Nottinghamshire 59,101 83,564 71,333 86 89,625 Oxfordshire 76,065 79,089 77,577 105 94,072 Rutland 19,823 17,341 18,582 123 12,380 Shropshire 96,080 77,613 86,847 65 132,918 Somerset 126,555 162,222 144,389 88 234,609 Staffordshire 47,533 65,061 56,297 49 148,195 Suffolk 189,216 180,992 185,104 124 168,242 Surrey 68,412 52,187 60,299 80 140,672 Sussex 103,433 104,712 104,073 71 99,436 Warwickshire 72,771 87,554 80,162 83 131,534 Westmorland 28,308 21,376 24,842 31 37,903 Wiltshire 133,974 132,572 133,273 100 165,742 Worcestershire 50,682 46,574 48,628 69 100,964 Yorkshire, E. Riding 69,804 122,831 96,317 82 77,624 Yorkshire, N. Riding 137,137 116,973 127,055 59 113,363 Yorkshire, W. Riding 106,746 139,295 123,021 43 319,556

England 3,999,827 4,000,496 4,000,184 79 5,999,812

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Methods: A: [(taxable wealth per county in 1290) ÷ (taxable wealth per taxpayer in 1327/32)] × 2.292 B: (poll tax payers per county in 1377) × 2.893 C: (Estimate A + Estimate B) ÷ 2 Taxpayer numbers for Cheshire, Durham, and Northumberland by interpolation from taxpayer densities in immediately neighbouring counties. Estimated population in 1756: (population per county in 1751) × 1.054

Sources: Taxable wealth per county in 1290: Stuart Jenks, ‘The lay subsidies and the state of the English economy (1275-1334)’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 85 (1998), 31. Taxable wealth per taxpayer in 1327/32: Bruce M. S. Campbell and Ken Bartley, England on the eve of the Black Death: an atlas of lay lordship, land and wealth, 1300-49 (Manchester, 2005), Table 18.5. Poll tax payers per county: R. B. Dobson, The Peasants’ Revolt, 2nd edition (London, 1983), 55—7. Population per county in 1751: Phyllis Deane and W. A. Cole, British economic growth 1688-1959 (Cambridge, 1969), 103.

England and Wales: population change between 1290 and 1756 Figure 1 11

England and Wales: estimated population density in 1290 Figure 2 prevailing in Norfolk and in much of the north and the north west there were still fewer than 50 people per square mile. In Durham, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, and above all Lancashire, population densities would at least double between the late thirteenth and the mid eighteenth century (Figure 1). They would do so, however, more because of expanding employment opportunities in mining, manufacturing, and commerce than in agriculture.

Mapping this population onto society reinforces the impression that in England by c.1290 occupation of the land was reaching its limits. The country had a potential 12 agricultural area of approximately 25 million acres but less than half of this was suited to tillage and by 1290 the great majority of that was already under cultivation. Given what is known about the extent of post-medieval reclamation and enclosure (offset by the conversion of former tillage to grass) it seems improbable that the medieval arable area at peak can have exceeded the 10.7 million acres under the plough at the height of the Napoleonic War in 1801. Most likely it was less. An absolute maximum of 10.5 million acres seems plausible for England and 11.3

Table 6 A hypothetical socio-economic profile of England and Wales in c.1290

England and Wales Approx. % of Arable % of Mean % of no. of families land arable income total families per area of per GDP of family 11.3m. family £3.67m (acres) acres (£) .

Landowners (spiritual lords, 22,250 2 *96.5 19 26 15.8 aristocracy, gentry, clergy) Substantial tenants 10,000 1 60.0 5 10 2.7

Yardlanders 150,00 15 30.0 40 5 20.4 0 Smallholders 250,00 25 12.5 28 3 20.4 0 Cottagers, labourers, 355,00 36 2.5 8 2 19.4 paupers, & vagrants 0

Agrarian sub-total 787,25 80 14.4 100 4 78.8 0

Lesser clergy, lawyers, professionals, merchants, tradesmen, builders, 194,75 20 0 0 4 21.2 craftsmen, urban labourers, 0 miners, men—at-arms, sailors & fishermen.

Non-agrarian sub-total 194,75 20 0 0 4 21.2 0

Overall total 982,00 100 14.4 100 4 100.0 0

Notes: Total population = 4.32m.; mean family size = 4.4; total arable area = 11.3m. acres; total national income (GDP) = £3.668m.. * assuming two-thirds of demesne arable in hand and one-third leased to tenants. Sources: 13

Bruce M. S. Campbell, ‘The agrarian problem in the early fourteenth century’, Past and Present, forthcoming (2005); N. J. Mayhew, ‘Modelling medieval monetisation’, 55-77 in Richard H. Britnell and Bruce M. S. Campbell (eds.), A commercialising economy: England 1086 to c.1300 (Manchester, 1995), 58; R. C. Allen, Enclosure and the yeoman: the agricultural development of the south midlands 1450-1850 (Oxford, 1992), 62-3. million acres for England and Wales combined. This sets a limit to the numbers of arable holdings and associated farm households that can have existed, as set out in Table 6.

The sizes and numbers of holdings given in Table 6 are derived from those recorded by the 1279-80 Hundred Rolls as summarised by Allen (1992, 62-3) and the estimates advanced by Mayhew (1995, 58). Their combined totals are consistent with a total arable area of 11.3 million acres and total population of 4.32 million. Seigniorial incomes are adapted from Campbell (2005) to include Wales and all other incomes are taken from Mayhew (1995). All the component estimates are undoubtedly subject to wide margins of error but they do at least have the merit of internal consistency. Already there were approximately 95 per cent the number of rural agrarian households there would be in 1759 (Table 2), when the total population was more than 50 per cent greater. Moreover, these agrarian households received approximately four-fifths of all income. The non-agrarian sector was as yet comparatively weakly developed. Within the countryside, small holders, cottagers, labourers, paupers, and vagrants made up over three-quarters of all families and in the vast majority of cases were too deficient in arable land to be able to produce themselves the bread and other basic foodstuffs upon which they subsisted. They can only have satisfied these requirements by exchanging other agricultural products, craft goods, and labour for grain, bread, or ale. If non-agrarian households are included, probably less than a fifth of total households were endowed with sufficient land to produce a net surplus of grain. The effect of further population growth between 1290 and 1315 was to squeeze this proportion still further, since the bulk of the increase in numbers was accommodated by swelling the ranks of the poor, semi- landless, and landless. As a result, by 1315 there were very likely 7 per cent more agrarian households than in 1759 and 40 per cent more poor agrarian households.

This mounting problem of rural congestion appears to have been most acute in those parts of the east and south of England where lax tenurial arrangements most favoured the subdivision and sub-letting of land. In much of the west and north, 14 including Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, tenurial arrangements do not appear to have degenerated to the same extent. Over the course of the next five centuries, however, this pattern would become inverted, as the west and north rather than the east and south became the bastions of small holding. Over time, rural congestion, the circumstances from which it arose, and the profound problems to which it gave rise, were progressively relocated from the English core to the non-English periphery.

Demographically, therefore, the English c.1290 far outnumbered their Welsh, Scottish, and Irish neighbours. In advancing his territorial ambitions against first the Welsh and then the Scots, Edward I enjoyed a massive demographic advantage: there were at least 12 Englishmen to every Welshman and 5 to every Scot. He could also draw upon his Lordship of Ireland – which encompassed the most populous and prosperous two-thirds of that island - for reinforcements. Prior to his military annexation of Wales, Edward was already the acknowledged monarch of four-fifths of all those living in Britain and Ireland. It was extending his rule to the stubborn 12 per cent of the British and Irish population living in Scotland that eventually defeated him, at great and lasting cost to his realm.

2. The ecclesiastical wealth of England, Wales, and Scotland in 1291 and Ireland in 1303-06.

In 1290 the invasion of Scotland was not yet on Edward I’s immediate military agenda. Rather, he was preoccupied with plans for a promised return crusade to the Holy Land. To finance that great and costly venture in March 1291 Pope Nicholas IV granted Edward one tenth of all ecclesiastical income in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland (Denton, 1993, 232). The assessments of no other medieval tax are as comprehensive in their geographical scope. Because the income that they record included the Church’s substantial receipts from tithes, as well as the revenues generated by donations and offerings and the profits from glebe lands and other property, these assessments partly reflect wider patterns of agrarian and, especially, arable wealth. They also reflect the Church’s own uneven institutional geography, since the revenues from tithes and glebe lands tended to be greatest where a dense network of ecclesiastical parishes was most firmly in place. The Taxatio assessments are therefore far from unproblematic. Nevertheless, they provide the one contemporary 15

measure of the relative wealth of these four economies at this single point in time, both at a national and a diocesan level.

For Scotland, with the exception of the archdeaconry of Lothian within the diocese of St Andrews, the aggregate assessments for each of the 12 dioceses alone have survived, comprising, presumably, the combined value of both ‘spiritualities’ (the income for each benefice) and ‘temporalities’ (the income from ecclesiastical lands). These are enrolled in the Register of John de Halton, bishop of Carlisle. In the view of Professor T. F. Tout (1915, xv), ‘Halton’s taxation of Scotland was exceedingly high …. (the) figures seem almost incredible’. Very likely, the sums actually received were lower. Certainly, in England the receipts were a third lower than the actual assessments (Ormrod, 1991, 160-4). Even so, English Churchmen complained that this tax ‘skinned them to the bones’ (Tout, 1913, xv). For England and Wales the detailed parish-by-parish returns survive and invariably distinguish the spiritualities from the temporalities. The former contributed about two-thirds (64.5 per cent) and the latter about one-third (35.5 per cent) of aggregate ecclesiastical income (McNeill and MacQueen, 1996, 301). Revised totals of the assessed value of the spiritualities for each of the deaneries within the 17 English and 4 Welsh dioceses have recently been published by Professor Jeffrey Denton and his team of researchers at the University of Manchester. These correct and substantially revise the figures tabulated and published by Bishop Stubbs more than a century ago. Unfortunately, there are as yet no equivalent figures – revised or unrevised – for the temporalities. This creates an immediate discrepancy between the English and Welsh and the Scottish and Irish figures, since both the latter record the assessment of total ecclesiastical income from all sources. Moreover, the Irish assessments present a further problem, insofar as they derive from a corresponding tax levied in 1303—06, by which time royal revenues at least had fallen substantially from their level in 1290 (Figure 4). Probably, therefore, these assessments are lower than those that would have been made in 1291. Pending a systematic evaluation of them, the unchecked totals for each of the 34 Irish dioceses have been used, extracted from a transcript of the original returns made by William Reeves, bishop of Down in the 1880s.

It is both surprising and disappointing that the Taxatio assessments from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland have yet to receive the scholarly attention that they so 16 clearly merit. Certainly, the results of a preliminary analysis are telling. Table 7 offers two alternative comparisons of the aggregate ecclesiastical wealth of these four countries. The first makes no allowance either for the exclusion of the temporalities from the value of the English and Welsh assessments published by Denton, or the lapse of time between the British assessments and those that survive for Ireland. Such an un-weighted comparison tends to be particularly flattering to Scotland. The second comparison endeavours to rectify this bias by

Table 7 The ecclesiastical wealth of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland according to the returns to the taxation granted by Pope Nicholas IV in 1291

Country Unweighted Taxatio: Total value % of British Value per mile2 Value per 100 & Irish total persons

England £127,372 69% £2.53 £3.2 Wales £5,234 3% £0.65 £1.6 Scotland £39,380 21% £1.29 £5.0 Ireland (1303-6) £13,044 7% £0.40 £1.0

Britain & Ireland £185,030 100% £1.52 £2.9

Country Weighted Taxatio*: Total value % of British Value per mile2 Value per 100 & Irish total persons

England £127,372 74% £2.53 £3.2 Wales £5,234 3% £0.65 £1.6 Scotland £25,990 15% £0.85 £3.3 Ireland (1303-6) £13,044 8% £0.40 £1.0

Britain & Ireland £171,640 100% £1.44 £2.7

Note: * Scottish assessments reduced by one-third to compensate for the inclusion of temporalities (P. G. B. McNeill and H. L. MacQueen, Atlas of Scottish history to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1996), 300-1). Sources: England and Wales (value of spiritualities only): Sarah Davnall, Jeffrey Denton, Sheila Griffiths, Dorothy Ross, and Beryl Taylor, ‘The Taxatio database’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 74, 3 (1992), 100-08. Scotland (total income): T. F. Tout, ‘Introduction’, Register of John de Halton, bishop of Carlisle A.D. 1292-1324, trans. W. N. Thompson, London, Canterbury and York Society, 1913, xv. Ireland (total income): Taxatio ecclesiastica Hiberniae, Reeves Manuscript KI I 3, Armagh Public Library.

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Table 8

Ecclesiastical wealth per diocese in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland (1303-6) according to the Pope Nicholas IV Taxatio of 1291

Diocese/Province Total tax value £ Diocese/Province Total tax value £

Unweighted Weighted Unweighted Weighted

ENGLAND 128,926 128,926 Whithorn 1,323 886 Lincoln 27,436 27,436 Brechin 1,009 676 SCOTLAND 39,380 25,990 Cashel 660 660 York 18,828 18,828 Connor 629 629 Norwich 15,624 15,624 Bangor 608 608 IRELAND 13,044 13,044 Cloyne 583 583 St Andrews 13,724 9,195 Meath 558 558 Salisbury 7,817 7,817 Leighlin 537 537 Glasgow 11,144 7,466 Ross 682 457 Durham 6,742 6,742 Argyll 661 443 Winchester 6,594 6,594 Down 424 424 Lichfield 6,369 6,369 Kildare 415 415 PROVINCE OF DUBLIN 6,125 6,125 Limerick 392 392 Canterbury 5,308 5,308 Tuam 360 360 London 5,308 5,308 Sodor and Man 536 359 WALES 5,234 5,234 Killaloe 318 318 Worcester 4,829 4,829 Emly 313 313 Chichester 4,718 4,718 Caithness 464 311 Bath & Wells 4,104 4,104 Cork 284 284 Exeter 4,063 4,063 Clonfert 206 206 Hereford 3,857 3,857 Ardfert 179 179 PROVINCE OF CASHEL 3,671 3,671 Waterford 126 126 Ely 2,946 2,946 Killala 96 96 Dublin 2,814 2,814 Derry 76 76 Carlisle 2,557 2,557 Annaghdown 73 73 PROVINCE OF ARMAGH 2,335 2,335 Elphin 69 69 Aberdeen 3,440 2,305 Kilmacduagh 63 63 St Davids 2,135 2,135 Clogher 60 60 Rochester 1,825 1,825 Kilfenora 60 60 Dunkeld 2,526 1,692 Raphoe 59 59 Moray 2,496 1,672 Ross 45 45 St Asaph 1,343 1,343 Dromore 42 42 Ferns 1,311 1,311 Ardagh 39 39 Llandaff 1,148 1,148 Achonry 35 35 Ossory 1,049 1,049 Clonmacnois 25 25 Dunblane 1,377 923 Kilmore 23 23 PROVINCE OF TUAM 912 912 Armagh >11 >11 Lismore 711 711

Weightings: England, Wales, and Ireland x 1.00; Scotland x 0.67. Sources: England and Wales: Sarah Davnall, Jeffrey Denton, Sheila Griffiths, Dorothy Ross, and Beryl Taylor, ‘The Taxatio database’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 74, 3 (1992), 100-08. Scotland: T. F. Tout, ‘Introduction’, Register of John de Halton, bishop of Carlisle A.D. 1292- 18

1324, trans. W. N. Thompson, London, Canterbury and York Society, 1913, xv. Ireland: Taxatio ecclesiastica Hiberniae, Reeves Manuscript KI I 3, Armagh Public Library.

lowering the value of the Scottish assessments by one-third, in accordance with the 35.6 per cent share of the total contributed by the temporalities within the Archdeaconry of Lothian within the Diocese of St Andrews (McNeill and MacQueen, 1996, 300-1)). No correction is made to the Irish figures, since whatever inflation may arise from the inclusion of the temporalities is certainly more than offset by the overall loss in value that had undoubtedly occurred since 1291 due to the rapidly worsening economic and political situation within the Lordship.

The Taxatio assessments confirm England’s absolute advantage over Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, both individually and collectively. With 42 per cent of the British and Irish land area and an estimated 63 per cent of the population, it accounted for 69-74 per cent of the total ecclesiastical income (Table 7). On this evidence, it was by far the wealthiest country, both in aggregate and per square mile. Moreover, the three wealthiest English dioceses – Lincoln, York, and Norwich - headed the overall diocesan league-table of wealth (Table 8). Nevertheless, the wealthiest Scottish dioceses – St Andrews and Glasgow – ran the wealthiest English dioceses close and were far wealthier than the entire ecclesiastical province of Wales and the four individual Irish provinces of Armagh, Cashel, Dublin, and Tuam. The wealthiest Irish and Welsh dioceses of Dublin and St Davids were poor by comparison (Table 8).

In all four countries ecclesiastical wealth per square mile tended to be higher in the arable-farming lowlands of the south and east than in the pastoral-farming north and west, as is consistent with the significance of grain tithes as a component of revenues. Wealth levels also tended to be highest where the parish system was most fully developed. Indeed, the imperfect development of the parish system in much of Ireland, especially in those parts of the Gaelic north and west where there had been little English settlement in depth, may account for the apparent poverty of the greater part of the land of ‘saints and scholars’. In Ireland, wealth per square mile peaked in the Anglicised diocese of Dublin; in Wales it peaked in the Anglicised diocese of Llandaff; and in Scotland it peaked in the Anglicised diocese of St Andrews. Wealth levels in the diocese of St Andrews were impressive and, 19

unadjusted for the inclusion of temporalities in the total, exceeded those of any English deanery or diocese. They remain impressive even after allowance has been made for the temporalities (Figure 3) and bear witness to the prosperity of the lowlands north and south of the Firth of Forth at the close of the thirteenth century. It was, however, within the English dioceses of Ely, Norwich, Canterbury, and Rochester and part of the large diocese of Lincoln that the spiritual income per square mile of the Church attained its maximum.

Assessed spiritual income of the Church in England, Wales, and Scotland (1291) and Ireland (1303-6) Figure 3

20

To discover that ecclesiastical wealth per square mile was greatest in densely settled, commercialised, arable-farming regions is hardly surprising. More remarkable is the revelation that ecclesiastical wealth per capita was at least as great in Scotland as in England, at least twice as great as in Wales, and more than three times as great as in Ireland. On this criterion, unless Scotland’s population has been massively under-estimated, Scotland was the wealthiest country. The Taxatio evidence emphasises how favourably the most developed parts of eastern and south-eastern Scotland compare with much of lowland England and what an economic catch, therefore, Scotland would have been for Edward I. Ireland, in contrast, which Edward neglected and exploited in order to advance his ambitions in first Wales and then Scotland, was poor. Maybe its poverty is exaggerated by the later date of its extant assessment, certainly the extensive Gaelic areas of the north and west lacked the developed infrastructure of parishes necessary for the allocation of glebe and levying of tithes. In per capita terms, Ireland’s ecclesiastical wealth was only two-thirds that of Wales, a third that of England, and between a third and a fifth that of Scotland. Although more populous than Wales or Scotland, it was a poor country and the many small poor Irish dioceses were all worth less – often much less – than even the poorest Welsh and Scottish dioceses. Even its churches and cathedrals, with a few notable exceptions, were small and architecturally unpretentious. The two most impressive, the twin cathedrals of Christ Church and St Patrick’s, were in the English capital of Dublin. Nevertheless, by English standards they were modest.

3. Money supply:

If the number and magnificence of a nation’s churches are one measure of its wealth, the volume of its money supply is another, revealing how much silver bullion was available within the economy. Mining was one source of that bullion, and in the twelfth century had made a significant contribution. During the thirteenth century, however, net earnings from foreign trade became more important. Nicholas Mayhew and Martin Allen have offered a range of estimates of the volume of currency in circulation in England, Scotland, and Ireland c.1290 based upon mint records and die numbers as revealed by coin finds (Table 9). Inevitably, there are wide margins of 21

error but the overall orders of magnitude are now fairly securely documented and provide an interesting perspective on the three economies. Only for Wales is there no independent information.

As the estimates summarised in Table 9 demonstrate, England had by far the greatest money supply both in aggregate and per capita. Indeed, its command of bullion resources (83 per cent) was even greater than its relative wealth as measured by the Taxatio (69-74 per cent). Nevertheless, in per capita terms Scotland – with three-quarters of the per capita money supply of England - was not far behind and, since 1250, had been catching up fast due to the superior growth of its money supply, especially between c.1250 and 1282. A lower aggregate population estimate for Scotland relative to that for England would further narrow this gap.

Table 9 Estimated volume of currency: England, Scotland, and Ireland, c.1290

Year Estimated volume of currency (£m.)

England Scotland Ireland

c.1250 0.465 ± 0.015 0.055 ± 0.005 c.0.043m. c.1282 0.850 ± 0.050 0.155 ± 0.025 ≤ c.0.060m. c.1290 1.150 ± 0.150 0.175 ± 0.025 ≤ c.0.065m.

% of British & Irish total in c.83% c.13% c.5% c.1290

Growth c.1250-c.1282 +83% +182% +40% Growth c.1282-c.1290 +35% +13% +8% Growth c.1250-c.1290 +147% +218% +51%

Approx. money supply per 69 ± 9 pence 53 ± 8 pence 12 pence capita in c.1290

Sources: England: Martin Allen, ‘The volume and composition of the English silver currency, 1279-1351’, British Numismatic Journal 70 (2000), 43-4; Martin Allen, ‘The volume of English currency, 1158-1470’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, LIV (2001), 603; Martin Allen, ‘The quantity of money in England 1180-1247: new data’, British Numismatic Journal 75 (2005). Scotland: Nicholas Mayhew, ‘Alexander III – a silver age? An essay in Scottish medieval economic history’, 53-73 in Norman H. Reid (ed.), Scotland in the reign of Alexander III 1249—1286 (Edinburgh, 1990), 61-2; N. J. Mayhew, ‘Scotland: economy and society’, 107-24 in S. H. Rigby (ed.), A companion to Britain in the later Middle Ages (Oxford, 2003), 112-13. Ireland: Mayhew, 1990, 61-2; M. Dolley, ‘Coinage to 1534: the sign of the times’, 816-26 in Art Cosgrove (ed.), A new history of Ireland, II, Medieval Ireland 1169- 1534 (Oxford, 1987), 820-1.

22

As with ecclesiastical wealth, by far the poorest of the three economies was Ireland. Its per capita money supply was less than a quarter that of Scotland and a fifth that of England. This disparity remains wide even if the calculation is limited to the estimated two-thirds of the total Irish population living within the Lordship of Ireland. Moreover, after 1250 Ireland’s bullion stocks expanded only modestly. Conceivably, they may even have contracted as the result of the leakage of Irish coins both out of Ireland and out of the monetary system altogether into other objects of value. This is consistent with the continuing role of barter in commercial exchange and the limited contribution of foreign trade earnings to the Irish economy.

4. Dutiable trade:

In England and Wales, Scotland, and, to a far lesser extent, Ireland, the per capita growth in money supply underpinned a process of commercialisation characterised by the absolute and relative expansion of domestic and overseas trade. Only the latter is amenable to direct measurement; or, at least, only that component of the latter which was subject to customs duty, namely exports of wool, woolfells, and hides. For England and Ireland extant customs receipts allow the volume of dutiable exports to be quantified from 1275. For Scotland equivalent information is not available until 1327-33, by which time 30 years of major warfare and a general contraction in European commerce had both taken their toll upon the country’s trade. Scottish historians are adamant that prior to the Anglo-Scottish War the level of exports was well above that revealed by the 1327-33 customs records and that Berwick was even more prominent in Scottish trade. Certainly, the incomplete and intermittent Irish customs receipts point to a major downturn in Irish overseas trade between c.1290 and c.1330 (Figure 4). Some statistical manipulation is therefore necessary in order to generate comparable estimates of the dutiable trade of all three countries at the climax of its thirteenth-century growth, c.1290, taking the more securely documented English trade as a base (Table 10). Since neither the data nor the methods are precise, the results should be treated as no more than an approximate guide to relative and absolute orders of magnitude. They are none the less revealing for that.

23

Table 10 Estimated gross value of dutiable exports of wool, woolfells, and hides: England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1290—94 and 1307—33

Year England & Scotland Ireland Britain & Wales Ireland

Estimated gross value of dutiable exports (interpolated values in brackets)

1290-94 £187,340 ≥ (£33,160) £18,340 (£238,840)

1307-08 £202,500 (£35,840) *£14,170 (£252,510) 1321-24 £129,600 (£22,940) *£7,140 (£159,680) 1327-33 £163,620 £28,980 *(£10,470) (£203,070)

Mean 1307-33 £165,240 (£29,253) *(£10,593) (£205,086)

Estimated share of British & Irish dutiable exports (interpolated values in brackets)

1290-94 ≤ 78% ≥ (14%) ≤ 8% 100%

1307—33 81% 14% 5% 100%

Estimated per capita value of British & Irish dutiable exports (interpolated values in brackets)

1290-94 10.4d. ≥ (10.1d.) 3.4d. (9.0d.) (Lordship) 5.1d.

Notes: * Discounted by 10 per cent to adjust for the inclusion of revenues from the New Custom on all goods imported and exported by alien merchants. Values for England and Wales and for Scotland are for the Ancient Custom on wool, woolfells, and hides only. Method: Estimated gross value of dutiable exports = £(customs revenue) x 16.2. Multiplier established by valuing exported commodities at current prices. Interpolated values (given in Italics in brackets) derived from the ratio of known values to recorded English & Welsh revenues. Sources: England (actual cash receipts from the Ancient Custom): E. M. Carus-Wilson and Olive Coleman, England’s export trade 1275—1547 (Oxford, 1963), 38; W. M. Ormrod, ‘The crown and the English economy, 1290—1348’, in Bruce M. S. Campbell, Before the Black Death: studies in the ‘crisis’ of the early fourteenth century (Manchester, 1991), 168-9. Scotland (actual quantities of wool, woolfells, and hides exported costed at current English prices - wool @ £5.2 per sack; woolfells @ £1.77 per 100; hides @ £10 per 100): raw quantities of wool, woolfells, and hides from data kindly supplied by Martin Rorke; prices from David L. Farmer, ‘Prices and wages’, 716-817 in H. E. Hallam (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales, II, 1042-1350 (Cambridge, 1988), 810; James E. Thorold Rogers, A history of agriculture and prices in England, I, 1259-1400 (Oxford, 1866), 451. Ireland: calculated from cash receipts per port given in T. E. McNeill, Anglo-Norman Ulster: the history and archaeology of an Irish barony, 1177-1400 (Edinburgh, 1980), 132-5.

24

In 1290 England and Wales accounted for three-quarters of all British and Irish dutiable exports of wool, woolfells, and hides. England also contributed three- quarters of all exported fleeces. At this time the superior quality of English wool placed it at an increasing premium, since, as Professor John Munro (1991) has demonstrated, continental cloth manufacturers were in the process of shifting towards the production of fine woollens in response to rising transaction costs in international trade. Scotland also conducted an active overseas trade, although the aggregate value and volume of that trade were much smaller than England’s and smaller, too, than their level had been in the 1290s (Table 10). Its overseas trade was nevertheless two to three times greater than that of the more populous Lordship of Ireland. Irish dutiable exports had suffered a significant reduction from their peak in the 1280s, when they had a mean gross value in excess of £24,000, to the early 1330s, when they yielded less than a quarter fifth of their former revenues. It is evident that the bankruptcy in 1294 of the Riccardi who had been charged with collecting the customs, administrative corruption, repeated purveyancing to provision English armies in Wales and Scotland, declining Flemish demand for cheap, coarse, Irish wools, a general breakdown of security, a deliberately destructive Scottish invasion, worsening weather and devastating outbreaks of livestock disease, had all exacted their toll on both the Irish economy and its overseas trade. Even in good times it was geographically remote from major European markets for its wool and hides and its location on Europe’s Atlantic seaboard was as yet of next to no strategic advantage. Consequently, Ireland’s trade was never worth more than a tenth that of England and rarely as much as a half that of Scotland. Its small share of total trade was broadly consistent with its similarly small share of ecclesiastical wealth. Commercially, it remained very much the poor relation of its two British neighbours.

Per capita exports from Ireland were between a third and a half those from England and Wales and Scotland, depending upon whether they are calculated upon the estimated population of the entire island or that two-thirds of it living within the English Lordship. If Wales is excluded, per capita exports for England exceeded those for Scotland, but not by a wide margin and only if the ratio of Scottish to English exports was no better in 1290 than it was in 1327-33, which seems

25

Table 11 Estimated value and share of dutiable exports of wool, woolfells, and hides for English and Irish ports, 1290, and Scottish ports, 1327—33.

English ports 1289-90 Irish ports 1289-90

Port Gross % share Port Gross % share value of of value of of exports exports exports exports

Boston £65,389 32% New Ross £7,997 29% London £62,951 31% Waterford £7,028 25% Hull £25,256 12% Cork £5,202 19% Southampton £23,524 11% Drogheda £3,154 11% King’s Lynn £10,303 5% Dublin £2,656 10% Newcastle £8,270 4% Chichester £4,873 2% Youghal Ipswich £1,945 1% Ulster ports Sandwich £1,733 1% Dingle £1,410 5% Limerick Weymouth Wexford Yarmouth > £1,653 1% Galway Exeter Bristol

Total £205,897 100% Total £27,447 100%

Scottish ports 1327-33

Port Gross % share value of of exports exports

Berwick £9,583 33% Aberdeen £6,427 22% Edinburgh £6,288 22% Dundee £4,263 15% Perth £1,475 5%

Linlithgow Inverkeithling Cupar £941 3% Montrose Stirling Ayr

Total £28,977 100%

Sources: England: E. M. Carus-Wilson and Olive Coleman, England’s export trade 1275-1547 (Oxford, 1963), 40-1 (pricing wool @ £6.47 per sack); R. A. Pelham, ‘Medieval foreign trade: eastern ports’, 298-329 in H. C. Darby (ed.), Historical geography of England before 1800: fourteen studies (Cambridge, 1936), 315 (pricing hides @ £7.92 per 100). Scotland: data kindly supplied by Martin Rorke (see Table 26

10). Ireland: T. E. McNeill, Anglo-Norman Ulster: the history and archaeology of an Irish barony, 1177-1400 (Edinburgh, 1980), 132-5.

Table 12 Rank order of British and Irish ports in 1290 by estimated gross value of dutiable exports.

Port Estimated Estimated gross value % share of of dutiable British & exports Irish dutiable exports

1. Boston £65,389 24% 2. London £62,951 23% 3. Hull £25,256 9% 4. Southampton £23,524 9% 5. Berwick £12,030 4% 6. King’s Lynn £10,303 4% 7. Newcastle £8,270 3% 8. Aberdeen £8,020 3% 9. Edinburgh £8,000 3% 10. New Ross £7,997 3% 11. Waterford £7,028 3% 12. Dundee £5,470 2% 13. Cork £5,202 2% 14. Chichester £4,873 2% 15. Drogheda £3,154 1% 16. Dublin £2,656 1% 17. Ipswich £1,945 1% 18. Perth £1,820 1% 19. Sandwich £1,733 1% 20. Weymouth, Yarmouth, Exeter, Bristol > £1,653 1% 21. Youghal, Ulster ports, Dingle, Limerick, Wexford, £1,410 1% Galway 22. Linlithgow, Inverkeithling, Cupar, Montrose, Stirling, £1,060 < 1% Ayr

Total £269,744 100%

Source and method: Table 11. Value of Scottish trade in 1290 derived from index of Scottish versus English trade 1327— 33. The relative shares of individual ports in that Scottish trade are those of 1327-33.

unlikely. Judged on this criterion, Scotland’s export performance looks as good as or possibly even better than England’s. It even sent abroad more wool per capita than England, although that wool was coarser in quality and therefore lower in value. 27

Remarkably, Scottish per capita exports compare favourably with those of its southern neighbour even after the damage inflicted by successive English military campaigns. Probably this was because England’s larger and more urbanised population created a more substantial domestic market for wool and hides with the result that there was a smaller surplus available for export. Even so, Scotland’s export performance was impressive and it undoubtedly underpinned the rapid growth of the country’s money supply and its taxable economic resources.

In the case of all three countries, exports of wool, woolfells, and hides flowed outwards from ports that faced east and south east towards the markets of continental Europe (Table 11). Export of these commodities from western ports was negligible. Obviously, these ports were not without trade but the goods in which they dealt were not yet dutiable. In 1290 Ireland’s leading port was New Ross, Scotland’s undoubtedly Berwick, and England’s Boston. Each was a town devoted to trade and little else and, as towns, all were comparatively new. The Lordship of Ireland’s administrative capital of Dublin was functionally far more complex but its share of Irish exports was only a third that of New Ross and its overseas trade was also eclipsed by that of Waterford, Cork, and Drogheda. In Scotland, too, Edinburgh’s trade was significantly less in 1327-33 than Berwick’s and marginally less than that of Aberdeen. There is a clear impression that ties were closer between individual Irish and Scottish ports and their overseas trading partners than with each other. Neither Dublin nor Edinburgh was as yet a mercantile capital, nor would either become so for a long time to come: the former ranked sixteenth and the latter ninth in the rank order of British and Irish ports (Table 12). London, in contrast, ranked second and far eclipsed Dublin and Edinburgh in the volume and share of its trade. Its dutiable exports were worth more than twice those of the Lordship of Ireland and half those of the Kingdom of Scotland. In 1290 Boston still handled more wool than London but within a decade it would lose that pre-eminent position to the metropolis. Unlike Ireland and Scotland, once Boston’s fortunes faltered, no other English port commanded a sufficiently large share of trade to pose a significant threat to London. By the close of the thirteenth century its imminent commercial hegemony was assured. This was symptomatic of the superior articulation of the English urban hierarchy, of which London was the primate city. 28

5. Numbers and sizes of towns and levels of urbanisation:

Of late, medieval towns have attracted a disproportionate amount of historical attention. Identifying, counting, and ranking them appears to have been as much a preoccupation of historians of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, as of England. Opinions and judgements between historians naturally differ, especially when dealing with places at the bottom of the urban hierarchy. For instance, in Ireland the archaeologist, John Bradley (1985), reckons on essentially morphological criteria that there were 56 boroughs performing genuine urban functions and thereby meriting the designation ‘town’. In contrast, the historical geographer, Brian Graham (1993), estimates that the Lordship of Ireland had approximately 100 functioning towns, 80 of them small towns and 25 of them mercantile towns. Historians are also divided on the sizes of towns, both individually and collectively. Nicholas Mayhew (2003, 109), for instance, has ventured that ‘the top ten Scottish burghs c.1300 may have ranged from about 10,000 down to about 5,000’. Whereas Patricia Dennison and Grant Simpson (2000, 731) take the view that ‘only a few major towns, such as Edinburgh, Perth, Dundee, and Aberdeen would have had more than 2,000 people; and, since small burghs were numerous, the average town must have held less than 1,000’. A generation earlier G. W. S. Barrow (1981, 94) opined ‘The population even of Berwick upon Tweed, the largest town in Scotland, or of Perth and Aberdeen, which may have ranked next in order of size, would have been numbered in hundreds rather than thousands’. The problem with such a view is that English towns of equivalent trade and socio-economic status are thought, on sounder documentary evidence (Table 14) to have been larger.

As with aggregate population, in gauging the size distribution of British and Irish towns circa 1290, the more securely documented situation in 1751 may usefully be taken as a yardstick (Table 13). At that later date 14 per cent of the British and Irish population lived in towns of at least 5,000 inhabitants, of which there were still only 48 with an average size of 30,000 (a figure greatly inflated by the inclusion of 675,000 Londoners). The population of England and Wales was significantly more urbanised than that of Scotland and both countries were substantially more urbanised than Ireland, notwithstanding that Dublin and Cork were both of an 29

Table 13 British and Irish towns with at least 5,000 inhabitants in 1751

Urban England & Scotland Ireland Britain & population Wales Ireland No. of ∑ popn No. of ∑ popn No. of ∑ popn No. of ∑ popn (‘000s) towns (‘000s) towns (‘000s) towns (‘000s) towns (‘000s)

100 + 1 675 1 675 50 - <100 0 0 157 2 148 3 205 20 - <50 5 156 124 00 6 180 10 - <20 15 190 338 2 ≥20 21 248 5 - <10 12 86 216 4 ≥24 18 126

Total 33 1,107 7 135 8 92 48 1,434

% urban 17% 11% ≥4% 14%

Proportion living in the 1 in 10 1 in 22 1 in 27 1 in 13 capital

100 + London 675

50 - <100 Dublin 90 Edinburgh 57 Cork 58

20 - <50 Bristol 45 Norwich 36 Newcastle 29 Birmingham 24 Glasgow 24 Liverpool 22

10 - <20 Manchester 18 Exeter 16 Aberdeen 16 Leeds 16 Plymouth 15 Chester 13 Shrewsbury 13 Coventry 12 Dundee 12 Ipswich 12 Nottingham 12 Sheffield 12 York 11 Portsmouth 10 Inverness 10 Limerick ≥10 Sunderland 10 Waterford ≥10 Worcester 10 Yarmouth 10

5 - <10 Bath 9 Perth 9 Belfast 9 Colchester 9 Kings Lynn 9 Leicester 8 Oxford 8 Reading 7 Paisley 7 Wolverhampton 7 Cambridge 6 Derby 6 Hull 6 Galway ≥5 Preston 6 Kilkenny ≥5 Chatham 5 Newry ≥5

Source: Jan de Vries, European urbanization 1500-1800 (London, 1984), 270-1. 30

31

Table 14 The largest English towns c.1290

Possible rank Town Rank Estimated Population c.1290 Estimated size c.1290 order population implied by Poll Tax population c.1330 c.1290 payers 1377 1751

50,000 + 1. London & Southwark 1 60-80,000 72,000 675,000

20 - <50,000: 2. York 2 21,000 11,000 3. Bristol 4 18,400 45,000

10 - <20,000: 4. Lincoln 3 10,400 5. Newcastle 5 7,700 29,000 6. Norwich 7 14,000 11,500 36,000 7. Salisbury 14 9,800 8. Coventry 16 14,000 12,000 9. Boston 19 8,300 10. Kings Lynn 21 9,100 9,000 11. Colchester ? 8,600 9,000 12. Beverley ? 7,700

5 - <10,000 13. Oxford 6 6,800 8,000 14. Yarmouth 8 5,600 10,000 15. Canterbury 9 7,500 16. Shrewsbury 11 5,600 13,000 17. Gloucester 12 6,500 18. Ipswich 13 4,400 12,000 19. Cambridge 15 5,500 6,000 20. Winchester 17 9,500 ? 7,300 21. Hereford 18 5,500 22. Stamford 23 3,900 23. Bury St Edmunds 24 7,100 24. Nottingham 26 4,200 12,000 25. Kingston upon Hull 32 4,500 6,000 26. Exeter 33 4,800 16,000 27. Worcester 35 4,500 10,000 28. Leicester ? 6,700 8,000 29. Plymouth ? 4,500 15,000 30. Northampton ? 4,300 31. Ely ? 4,000 32. Scarborough ? 4,000 33. Chester ? ? 3,800 13,000

<5,000: 34. Spalding 20 ? 35. Southampton 22 3,300 36. Penrith 25 ? 37. Peterborough 28 ? 2,500 38. Sudbury 29 ? 39. Luton 30 ? 40. Reading 34 ? 2,300 7,000 41. Derby 36 3,000 6,000 42. Newark 37 3,400 43. Bedford 38 ? 44. Ludlow ? 3,400 45. Pontefract ? 3,100 46. Lichfield ? 3,000

Notes: Rank order c.1330 is based upon the number of taxpayers in 1327/1332 and the amount of assessed taxable wealth in 1334: Bruce M. S. Campbell and Ken Bartley, England on the eve of the Black 32

Death: an atlas of lay lordship, land and wealth, 1300-49 (Manchester, 2005), Table 18.6. The population c.1290 implied by the number of Poll Tax payers in 1377 = (number of taxpayers) x 2.9. In 1327/32 the 40 largest English towns contained approximately 3.5% of the total tax-paying population; in 1377 the same 40 towns contained approximately 9% of the total poll-tax paying population. Sources: London, Winchester, and other large towns: Bruce M. S. Campbell, James A. Galloway, Derek J. Keene, and Margaret Murphy, A medieval capital and its grain supply: agrarian production and its distribution in the London region c.1300, Historical Geography Research Series, 30 (1993), 9-11. Norwich: Elizabeth Rutledge, ‘Norwich before the Black Death’/‘Economic life’, 157-88 in Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson (eds.), Medieval Norwich (London, 2004), 157-8. All towns: Alan Dyer, ‘Ranking lists of English medieval towns’, 747-70 in D. M. Palliser (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, I, 600-1540 (Cambridge, 2000), 758—60; Jan de Vries, European urbanization 1500-1800 (London, 1984), 270-1.

Table 15 British and Irish towns and urban populations in c.1290

Urban England & Wales Scotland Ireland Britain & Ireland population

(‘000s) No. of ∑ popn No. of ∑ popn No. of ∑ popn No. of ∑ popn towns (‘000s) towns (‘000s) towns (‘000s) towns (‘000s)

100 + 0 0 50 - <100 1 80 1 80 20 - <50 2 50 2 50 10 - <20 9 115 112 1 15 11 142 5 - <10 21 130 424 5 31 30 185

Total 33 375 536 6 46 44 457

4% % urban 9% 5% 7% 5% (Lordship) Proportion living in the 1 in c.50 1 in c.110 1 in c.60 1 in c.60 capital (Lordship)

All other 786 c.425 45 c.24 99 c.50 930 499 towns

Overall total 819 c.800 50 c.60 105 c.96 974 c.956

7% % urban 19% 8% 15% 11% (Lordship)

Small town popn as % 53 40 52 52 ∑ town popn

Towns per 81 190 63 152 m. people 120 (Lordship)

Notes and sources: England and Wales: Table 14; Christopher Dyer, ‘Small towns 1270-1540’ and Ralph A. Griffiths, ‘Wales and the Marches’ 505-40 and 681-714 in D. M. Palliser (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, I, 600-1540 (Cambridge, 2000), 506-8, 681. Scottish towns with possibly 5,000+ inhabitants = Berwick (1), Edinburgh (2), Aberdeen (3), Perth (4), Dundee (4): N. J. Mayhew, ‘Scotland: economy and society’, 107-24 in S. H. Rigby, (ed.), A companion to Britain in the later Middle Ages (Manchester, 2003), 109. Irish towns with possibly 5,000+ inhabitants = Dublin (1), Waterford (2), Cork (3), Limerick 33

(4), Kilkenny (5), Drogheda (6): Brian Graham, ‘Ireland: economy and society’, 142-62 in Rigby, 2003, 156-7; S. J. Connolly (ed.), The Oxford companion to Irish History, 2nd edition (Oxford, 2002), 169. impressive size. Only ten towns had at least 20,000 inhabitants, two were Irish (Dublin and Cork), two Scottish (Edinburgh and Glasgow), and six English, of which London far outshone all others, containing almost half of the total population of these 48 substantial British and Irish towns. By this date the urban hierarchies of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were headed by their respective capital cities, of which London was by far the largest, with 675,000 inhabitants, and Edinburgh the smallest, with 57,000 (Table 13).

460 years earlier, on realistic but generous assumptions (especially in the case of Scotland and Ireland, where there is little hard evidence to go on), the population of Britain and Ireland was only half as urbanised, even though the number of towns with at least 5,000 inhabitants – 44 – was little different. Self evidently, these towns themselves were on average far smaller, especially the most important of them all. London, already the single largest city, contained 600,000 fewer inhabitants than in 1751. Only two other towns – York and Bristol – may have had populations of at least 20,000. The top of the urban league table was now comprised exclusively of English towns. The population of England and Wales was again the most urbanised, although Wales itself could boast no town of more than 5,000 inhabitants. Scotland and Ireland were both more weakly urbanised, with, seemingly, little difference at this date between them, especially if comparison is limited to the English Lordship of Ireland within which virtually all Irish towns were located. Although Dublin, the seat of English administration in Ireland, seems to have become a city of some size by 1290, neither it nor any Scottish town seems, as yet, to have contained more than 20,000 inhabitants. Indeed, Edinburgh very probably had fewer than 10,000 and may have been eclipsed in size by Berwick, whose overseas trade at this date probably exceeded that of King’s Lynn and Newcastle (each of which probably had populations of at least 7,500 – Table 14)

Adding in the far greater number of small towns with less than 5,000, and, in the case of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, often less than 500, inhabitants, amplifies but does not fundamentally alter this picture (Table 15). England is confirmed as the most urbanised country, with the densest network and most fully articulated hierarchy of 34 towns. Perhaps 19 per cent of its population lived in towns of one sort or another, although, as Jim Masschaele has demonstrated (Masschaele, 1997, 83-103), a significant number of these ‘townsmen’ undoubtedly pursued agrarian occupations. Already urban populations were becoming swollen by an influx of landless and unemployed people from the countryside, who were attracted by the opportunities that towns provided for casual labouring, begging, borrowing, and stealing. Over the next few decades such rural to urban migration would inflate the populations and burden the economies of cities such as Norwich (Rutledge, 2004, 157-8, 187-8). By 1290, therefore, the difficulties that were mounting in the more congested parts of the English countryside were beginning to come home to roost in the towns. This was much less of a problem in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, whose urban profiles – at least on currently available evidence – were less developed and mature.

Neither Wales, nor Scotland, or Ireland displayed as wide an array of towns of different sizes as England, their urban networks were looser, and virtually all their most substantial towns were coastal in location. On generous estimates, perhaps 8 per cent of Scotland’s population lived in towns of one sort or another, with an average size of perhaps 1,200 inhabitants and a maximum size of possibly 12,000. The equivalent proportion in Ireland is 7 per cent, although this rises to 11 per cent if the calculation is limited to the Lordship of Ireland (Table 15). These towns had an average size of about 900 inhabitants and a maximum size of maybe 15,000. Either Scottish historians have been more cautious than Irish in counting towns, or the Scots were thriftier than the Irish in founding them, with the result that Scottish towns were, possibly, larger than Irish towns on average. By implication they also handled a larger volume of trade (Table 12). In the latter respect, however, they enjoyed the considerable geographical advantage of direct access to the North Sea and the active commerce that plied it. Most of the larger Scottish towns are represented on the Gough Map but the creator of that map leaves little doubt that he considered English towns to be more numerous and important, and names the two he considered to outshine all others in letters of gold – London and York. Both conducted an active trade but both were also important in their own right as political, administrative, military, and ecclesiastical centres. Each supported a wide array of crafts and occupations and served as a major centre of concentrated urban demand. 35

Scotland and Ireland would have to wait until the seventeenth century before cities of like scale, importance, and influence began to develop.

Implications and conclusions:

It was the English historian F. W. Maitland who coined the phrase ‘Celtic fringe’ as a collective descriptor for Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Its pejorative connotations are self evident. Recently, the Irish medieval historian, Seán Duffy, has countered that the ‘fringe was larger than the fringed’ (Duffy, 2003, 165). He is right as far as land surface area is concerned but wrong on just about every other criterion. At the

Table 16 Some comparative measures of the economies of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, c.1290

Variable England & Scotland Ireland Wales

Share of British & Irish total

Land area 49% 25% 27%

Population 1751/5 64% 12% 23%

Population c.1290 c.68% c.12% c.20%

Ecclesiastical wealth (spiritualities) 1291 77% 15% c.8%

Currency c.1290 c.83% c.13% c.5%

Dutiable exports 1290 78% ≥ 14% 8%

Number of towns 84% 5% 11%

Urban population c.1290 c.84% c.6% c.10%

Some absolute and relative measures

Population c.1290 c.4.32m. c.0.79m. c.1.29m.

Hypothesised people per mile2 c.1290 c.74 c.26 c.40

Per capita ecclesiastical wealth 1291 7.4d. 7.9d. c.2.4d.

Per capita money supply c.1290 c.64d. c.53d. c.12d.

Per capita exports 1303—33 10.4d. ≥ 10.1d. 3.4d.

Towns per million people c.190 c.63 c.81

% urbanised c.19% c.8% c.7%

% living in towns of 5,000+ c.1290 c.9% c.5% c.4%

Proportion living in the capital 1 in c.50 1 in c.110 1 in c.60

Sources: Tables 1, 4, 7, 9, 10, 15. 36

climax of medieval economic development c.1290, as Table 16 summarises, England had more people, wealth, money, trade, and towns than Wales, Scotland, and Ireland put together. The task of assembling and aligning the estimates necessary to quantify each of these variables highlights key lacunae and inconsistencies within the historical literature. Self evidently, measures of economic activity need to be internally consistent between variables, between countries, and across time. For example, population estimates for England have clear implications for the corresponding population totals advanced for Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and vice versa. Here it is worth noting that historians of Scotland and Ireland are almost unanimous in assuming lower population densities and smaller population totals in 1290 compared with 1750. Whereas, not all historians of England necessarily accept that there was such a clear disparity. Those who continue to argue for an English medieval population in excess of 4.5 million nevertheless face a considerable problem of accounting for how such a large population could have been accommodated on the land. Here, aggregate estimates are only plausible if they can be convincingly disaggregated and tested against such specific evidence as exists. Whether the number and size of land holdings or of towns is at issue, the devil is very much in the detail.

The various estimates advanced here are mutually compatible within their specified parameters. As such they provide a benchmark of the varying scale and nature of economic progress in England (and Wales), Ireland, and Scotland during the preceding century and more of expansion and growth.

Ireland comes out of this analysis least well and on all the available measures – per capita ecclesiastical wealth, money supply, dutiable exports, and towns – was the poorest and least developed economy and the first to display conspicuous signs of contraction (Figure 4). Progress there had been since the advent of English rule in 1171. Under the English it had been colonised and planted; fairs, markets, and boroughs had been established and chartered; a coinage had been established and commercial property rights defined and defended. For much of the thirteenth century it had been a modest financial asset to the Crown. Nevertheless, by English and Welsh standards, economic progress was unimpressive. Progress had been 37

hampered by endemic political instability, a disadvantageous location on Europe’s Atlantic periphery, and an absent, arbitrary, and exploitative kingship which took only a spasmodic interest in its Irish lordship and treated it principally as a source of revenues and resources.

Sources: H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, ‘Irish revenue, 1278-1384’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 62 (1961-63), 99-100; T. E. McNeill, Anglo-Norman Ulster: the history and archaeology of an Irish barony, 1177-1400 (Edinburgh, 1980), 132-5.

Irish customs revenues and government revenues, 1275-1345 Figure 4

Scotland, an independent self-governing kingdom, offers an altogether more positive economic profile c.1290. Demographically it was a small country. Like Ireland, population pressure does not by 1290 appear to have been a general problem: there was a relative plenitude of agricultural resources. Direct access to North Sea trade also helped it to develop its agricultural and wilderness resources to commercial advantage. This is reflected in per capita exports on a par with those of England and higher per capita ecclesiastical wealth. During the thirteenth century its economy had 38 clearly been developing strongly, ‘catching up’ on its more advanced southern neighbour and this had brought a significant net inflow of bullion making the thirteenth century a veritable ‘silver age’. Nevertheless, like many small, export orientated producers of primary products, Scotland would doubtless have found it difficult to maintain such progress once the international terms of trade and environmental conditions both took a turn for the worse in the early fourteenth century. In the event, however, it was direct military intervention by England from 1296 that brought this hitherto happy course of development to a close and initiated a new, more hazardous, and far less prosperous era. England brought war to Scotland and the Scots thence spread it to Ireland, where, between 1315 and 1318, it proved far more ruinous in its effects.

England, the exploiter of Ireland and aggressor of Scotland, in aggregate terms had more land, population, wealth, bullion, trade, and towns than either (and by 1290 it had annexed those of Wales). In the 1280s and 1290s the military, financial, and economic resources upon which Edward I could draw were far greater than those that could be marshalled by either his Welsh or Scottish opponents. Nevertheless, war – prolonged, expensive, and destructive – was not something that predominantly agrarian England could easily afford. In the more populous parts of Edward’s realm, rural congestion was already creating an intractable problem of structural poverty that acted as a dead weight upon further economic progress. The size of England’s population deprived it of a clear per capita economic advantage over its northern neighbour. Small wonder, therefore, that England experienced mounting economic difficulties after 1291. Problems were particularly pronounced in those northern districts directly exposed to the depredations of the Scots and marauding English armies, in those eastern districts most repeatedly subjected to purveyance, and within the wider hinterland of London whose waning fortunes mirrored those of the metropolis.

Imperfect though the estimates assembled here may be, they do serve to highlight the unevenness of economic development before 1290. The varied experience of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland cannot be accommodated within a simple Malthusian, Ricardian, Marxist, or Institutional explanatory framework. From the late thirteenth century the economy began to unravel at both the periphery and the core, 39

in areas of low as well as of high population pressure, and on the political and military much more than the environmental margins. Self-evidently, the forces and processes of change mapped themselves out very differently on different regions, as also on different socio-economic groups. Only by widening the geographical scope of economic analysis is it possible to appreciate the full complexity of this watershed era in European economic development and formulate explanations that do it full justice.

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