Continuity and Change: The town, people and administration of Nottingham between c.1400 and c.1600 Judith Anne Mills, BA (Hons), MA Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy JULY 2010 Abstract This work is a study of continuity and change in Nottingham between 1400 and 1600. It looks first at the property, market, streets and common lands of the town before examining population trends. It investigates the social structure of the town, the wealth (or otherwise) of the people and the occupations they followed. The administration of Nottingham is also considered, in particular its institutions: the Council, the courts and presentment juries, and the networks and relationships which bind them together. It also looks at real and potential challenges to the authority of these institutions and incidents of social unrest. Finally, the research also identifies some of the stimuli to change, such as national economic and demographic trends and the mid-sixteenth century imposition of the Reformation. Acknowledgements Many people have played an, often intangible, part in the completion of the research for this thesis. First I want to thank staff and fellow research students in the School of History at the University of Nottingham for their friendship and support. I also want to thank the staff and regular visitors at the Nottinghamshire Archive for their interest in my work. Special mention must be made here of Dr Trevor Foulds who kindly gave me access to his work on the Borough court rolls in advance of their on-line publication. Thanks must also go to some individuals, and the first of these has to be Dr Richard Goddard whose guidance and encouragement have been so important over the last three and a half years. I should also mention my son, Ed, for making my life interesting. Finally, I must, of course, thank my husband, Chris, for his patience, tolerance, moral support and practical assistance, particularly with complicated databases, which has made this work possible. Continuity and Change: The town, people and administration of Nottingham between c.1400 and c.1600 Table of Contents page Charts Maps and Tables iii Abbreviations v Introduction Continuity and Change 1 Sources and Methods 21 Documents 21 Methodology 26 Research questions 32 Part I THE TOWN AND PEOPLE Chapter One The town – boundaries, buildings and spaces 36 Living space: boundaries and buildings 36 Trading places: markets and shops 45 Other trading places 59 The Guild Hall 61 Common Land 64 Conclusion 71 Chapter Two Population and wealth 74 Population trends 75 National and local rankings by population 80 size Wealth 82 Late fifteenth century taxes 83 The 1523-27 lay subsidy 87 Local and national comparisons of urban 92 wealth Tudor tax avoidance and under assessment 96 The Lay Subsidies of 1571, 1593 and 1597 99 The social fabric of Nottingham 104 Conclusion 108 Chapter Three The craftsmen and tradesmen of Nottingham 111 The range of trades and crafts 112 Occupations and office holding 116 The major crafts and trades 119 Distribution 119 Cloth production, clothing and accessories 127 Food and Drink 131 Leather production and leather products 138 i The minor crafts and trades 142 Agriculture 151 Conclusion 153 Chapter Four Conclusion to Part I 155 Part II ADMINISTRATION Chapter Five Local Government 163 Local administration before 1449 163 The 1449 Charter of Incorporation 171 Local administration after 1449 176 The mayor and aldermen 177 The common council 181 The chamberlains and sheriffs 182 The later sixteenth century 183 Civic responsibilities of the mayor and aldermen 184 Conclusion 196 Chapter Six The Courts 198 The Borough court 200 The burgess court 202 The foreign pleas court 206 Court officers 208 Borough court juries 211 The Sessions court 212 Sessions court juries 218 The ‘Great Court’ and the Mickletorn jury 223 The Mickletorn jury and the Council 229 The Mayor’s court 232 Conclusion 233 Chapter Seven Challenges to Authority 236 Mickletorn and Session jury presentments 237 Insurrection 248 Constitutional change 260 Conclusion 272 Chapter Eight Conclusion to Part II 275 Conclusion Continuity or Change? 281 Bibliography 291 ii Charts, Maps and Tables page Chart 1: Nottingham Borough Records – Document Survival 22 Map 1: Nottingham c.1400-1600 37 Map 2: the common fields of Nottingham c.1400-1600 65 Table I: Estimates of population between 1377 and 1604 80 Table II: 1472-73 lay subsidy 83 Table III: 1473-79 levy 86 Table IV: 1524-25 lay subsidy 89 Table V: breakdown of 1524-25 subsidy payments 91 Table VI: Comparison of Nottingham and Worcester tax payers 92 Table VII: Comparison of average per capita tax paid in 1524-25 95 Table VIII: 1595 lay subsidy (incomplete) 100 Table IX: Number of occupations and people 113 Table X: Occupation Groups, 1400-1600: Number of workers in each 115 Group and Group as percentage of known occupations Table XI: Occupations of mayors 116 Table XII: Occupations of bailiffs, sheriffs and chamberlain 118 Table XIII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Distribution’ at 30 year 120 intervals Table XIV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Cloth Production’ at 30 128 year intervals Table XV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Clothing and 128 accessories’ at 30 year intervals Table XVI: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Food and drink’, at 30 year intervals. 132 iii Table XVII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Leather Production’ at 30 year intervals. 139 Table XVIII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Leather Products’ at 30 year intervals. 139 Table XIX: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Alabaster working’ at 30 year intervals. 143 Table XX: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Building’ at 30 year intervals. 143 Table XXI: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Metal working’ at 30 year intervals. 145 Table XXII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Miscellaneous’ at 30 147 year intervals. Table XXIII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Provisions’ at 30 149 year intervals. Table XXIV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Services’ at 30 year intervals. 149 Table XXV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Wood, horn and bone’ at 30 year intervals. 150 Table XXVI: Mayors 1400-1450 166 Table XXVII: Constables holding other civic offices 220 Table XXVIII: East and West side jury members holding civic office 221 Table XXIX: Mickletorn jurors found sitting on Sessions juries 227 Table XXX: Mickletorn jurors found holding civic office 231 iv Abbreviations NA Nottinghamshire Archive Foulds online Trevor Foulds, translation and calendar of the Nottingham Borough Court Rolls 1303-1457, http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/history/cuc/research/Online_Sources.php PRO Public Record Office Statutes The Statutes of the realm: printed by command of His Majesty George III, (London, 1810-1822) Stevenson Stevenson, W H, (ed), Records of the Borough of Nottingham, Vols. I-IV (Nottingham, 1882-99) TNA The National Archive v Introduction: Continuity and Change Research for this thesis was predicated on a simple truism that the world in 1600 was a very different place to that of 1400. This, of course, begs a number of questions: what changed, and its opposite, what did not change? How did it change? Why did it change? How quickly did it change? Broad-brush answers to these questions are provided by the way the years 1400- 1600 are described and labelled by historians, although these descriptions vary according to the focus of their work and the time they were writing. In the 1950s, F J Fisher, an economic historian, described the years between 1350-1450 as a period of stagnation, while 1450-1750 were the ‘Dark Ages’ of economic history because of lack of evidence.1 Forty years later, writing in particular on the development of towns, Christopher R Friedrichs also claimed that these years saw little development, asserting that urban infrastructures – physical, administrative and social – were all in place by 1450 and that ‘the truly creative and transforming epochs in the history of the European city took place not during the early modern era, but before and after it’.2 He justified his argument by saying that while these years saw some transformation, such as the growth of cities, the development of modern modes of government, the rise of science and the spread of capitalism, ‘town-dwellers were only dimly conscious of what we can now recognise as unidirectional changes’.3 1 F J Fisher, ‘The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. The Dark Ages in English Economic History?’, in P J Corfield and N B Harte (eds), London and the English Economy, 1500-1700 (London, 1990), p.134, first published in Economica, new series, 24 (1957), pp.2-18. 2 C R Friedrichs, The Early Modern City 1450-1570 (Burnt Mill, 1995), p.10. 3 Friedrichs, Modern City, p.333. 1 In other words, these centuries did undergo change but at a level which did not affect the everyday experiences of townspeople, whose frames of reference remained constant, thus justifying claims of stagnation. There are, however, alternative views. Catherine Patterson argues that ‘urban places lay at the centre of much of the dynamic change occurring in the sixteenth century.’4 Unlike Friedrichs, Patterson’s focus is not on overarching movements such as the development of the modern state, but on changes which, although long term and national, if not global, affected daily life. She summarises those changes and their consequences as Population rise, economic tensions, and increasing mobility ... Religious reformation introduced new divisions into civic life and significantly altered many traditional expressions of civic unity and governance. At the same time, central government placed increasing demands on urban officials, requiring, above all, that good order be kept, despite forces of disorder in their midst.5 The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, according to this argument, saw many aspects of traditional life amended, if not overturned, in what Eugene F Rice describes as ‘an intricate counterpoint of tradition and innovation, catastrophe and promise’.6 These differences in opinion are reflected in the manner in which the years between 1400 and 1600 are divided up for study.