The Economic History of England
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Please do not assume that a book's appearance in 'The Builder' library means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. The Webmaster The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://archive.org/details/cu31924095120964 BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH WOOLLEN AND WORSTED INDUSTRIES EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY , THIRD EDITION. PUBLISHED BY A. & C. BLACK, 4 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. i AGENTS The Macmii.lan Company 60 Fifth Avenue, New York Australasia . Oxford University Pkess 205 Flinders Lane, Melbourne Canada The Macmillan Co. of Canada, Ltd. St. Martin's House, 70 Bond Street, Toronto, 2 India Macmillan & Company, Ltd. 276 Hornby Road, Bombay 294 Bow Bazar Street, Calcutta North Beach Road, Madras THE ECONOMIC HISTORY OF ENGLAND BY E. JJPSON, M.A. NEW^OLLEGE, OXFORD READE]^ IN ECONOMIC HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD I* E\\t Jlttitile Sges FIFTH EDITION A. & C. BLACK, LTD. LONDON, W, 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, 1929 'I First Edition 1915 Second Edition 1920 Third Edition igzj Fourth Edition 1926 Fifth Edition 1929 IN MEMORY OF MY FATHER AND MOTHER Printed in Great Britain hy R. & R. Cr,ARK, Limited, Edinburgh. PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION The opportunity has been taken of this new edition to make a number of corrections. I have given an account of the sources from which the materials for this volume have been drawn in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. X. I hope very shortly to complete a further instalment of this History, covering the age of Mercantilism. Meanwhile I have endeavoured to treat of some of the more important aspects of Modern Economic History—such as the Domestic System, the Factory System, the Inventions, and the Indus- trial and Commercial Policy of the State—in The History of the English Woollen and Worsted Industries, the purpose of which is to illustrate the main features of English economic development from the standpoint of what was England's greatest industry down to the nineteenth century. E. LIPSON New College, Oxford, July 1929. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION Within recent years there has been a large and welcome accession of printed materials for the study of EngUsh Economic History. The Patent Rolls and similar publica- tions, as well as an invaluable series of town records, including the Letter-Books of London and the Records of Bristol, Colchester, Coventry, Leicester, Northampton, Norwich, and York, have now become available. The importance of these publications, which present what is largely a virgin field for the investigator, will be readily recognized. The purpose of the present volume is to utilize both the older sources of evidence and the new material which has so extensively accumulated. My thanks are due to Mr. W. F. W. Mortlock, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Mr. F. P. Wilson, Lincoln College, Oxford, for their assistance in reading the proofs. E. LIPSON. Oxford, June 191 5. CONTENTS v/ CHAPTER I PASB The Origin of the Manor . , i CHAPTER n Z' The Manor and the Open Field System . 30 CHAPTER HI (/ L^HE Break-up of the Manor . '77 CHAPTER IV y .The Agrarian Revolution . .115 CHAPTER V . , The Growth of Towns .163 CHAPTER VI Fairs and Markets . .196 CHAPTER VII The Gild Merchant ..... 238 vii viii ECONOMIC HISTORY CHAPTER VIII PAGE Craft Gilds ...... S79 CHAPTER IX ' >^Phe . Woollen Industry . .391 CHAPTER X •-'Foreign Trade ...... 444 CHAPTER XI Revenue and Exchequer . ^ .509 AUTHORITIES . ... 532 INDEX ....... 545 ECONOMIC HISTORY CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF THE MANOR The term manor came in with the Norman Conquest ^ but the The manorial system itself was not the work of the Normans. ^°^'^' It was already in full growth when William first set foot on manor. English soil, although continental ideas profoundly modified its later development. Beyond this point, however, cer- tainty ends, and it is still disputed among historians whether on the eve of the Conquest the manor was comparatively a recent institution, or whether it was the original basis of English society. The problem of the manor has accordingly given rise to two schools, the Manorial and the Teutonic. The former connect the manor with the Roman system of land-holding which, they assert, was adopted by the Enghsh invaders as the basis of their settlement. The latter main- tain that the Saxons settled on the soil in free village com- munities of peasant proprietors, who gradually lost their freedom and developed into the villeins of Domesday Book. The issue between the two schools is not a barren specu- lation, but a matter of the greatest historical importance. It involves the fundamental question whether the starting- point of our history is the freedom or the servitude of the great mass of the nation. The Roman theory of the ^ manor impUes that from the first the rural population '" of England consisted, not of a race of free peasants tilHng 1 " This name Mannor began with the Normans ... for I finde noe " (Harleian suche name with the Saxons : A Mannor and Court Baron MS. 6714), ed. N. J. Hone (1909). P- "• z 2 ECONOMIC HISTORY their own lands, but of dependent serfs in a condition of legal and economic subjection to their lord, the doctrine of ' original Teutonic freedom ' being replaced by one of aristo- cratic domination. The alternative theory holds that the village community in its primitive stages was entirely free from any manorial lordship, and was composed of independent landowners owning the land they occupied. Upon the view adopted depends our interpretation of the economic history of England for a thousand years after the coming of the Enghsh. If the foundations of English Ufe rested from the outset upon serfdom, then the course of English social development has been from slavery to freedom. But if the fabric of English society was based on freedom, then the course of evolution was in the direction of legal and economic dependency. Thus the problem of the manor runs Uke a thread throughout the mediaeval half of English history. The The position of the manorial school is expressed in the "^^^ *^^* " ^^""^ things went to the ' making of England wS?"' ', than were imported in the keels of the English invaders of Britain " ^. The English manor is regarded as the outcome of two elements, the Roman villa and the Teutonic tribal system. The Roman villa—the prevailing type of estate under the later Roman Empire—was a large private estate worked originally by slaves imder the control of a villicus or steward, but tending to become increasingly like a manor owing to the addition of coloni ^. These coloni were semi -servile tenants, who had each his own homestead and land but paid tribute to the lord, thus bearing a close resemblance to serfs. They were recruited from barbarians settled within the Empire, or from free tenants whom the burden of taxation had driven to abandon their Uberty. Besides this marked similarity between the villa and the manor, proof is advanced of actual historical connexion between them, the evidence for this being drawn chiefly from GauP. In fact, in all the Roman provinces which passed under Teutonic sway the villa continued to survive, and the result of the Conquest is therefore represented as * F. Seebohm, The English Village Community (1883), p. xv. * Ibid. 263. a Ibid. 269. THE ORIGIN OF THE MANOR 3 mainly a change of lordship ^. The Roman lord of the villa gave place to the Teutonic lord of the manor, while the servile cultivators of the soil remained unchanged.