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II. Plague and Economic Decline in England in The Later Middle Ages1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

John Saltmarsh
John Saltmarsh
Affiliation:
Fellow of King's College and Lecturer in the University
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Extract

As I see it, the course of English economic history in the later Middle Ages is as follows. By the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries medieval civilization had reached a climax of material prosperity and spiritual confidence which it was never to surpass. A cessation of economic advance in the first half of the fourteenth century was followed by a positive decline in the second half, continuing and deepening in the century following, to reach its lowest point between 1450 and 1470. Recovery first started in the last twenty or twenty-five years of the fifteenth century, leading directly to the great economic renaissance which came to flowering in Tudor England. Then began that ‘cumulative crescendo’ which was to lead, at an ever-increasing pace, through the Industrial Revolution, to the command over Nature and the vast material resources of our own day.

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , 1941 , pp. 23 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1941

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References

2 Postan, M. M., ‘The Fifteenth Century’, in Econ[omic] Hist[ory] Rev[iew], IX (1939), 169.Google Scholar

3 Pirenne, Henri, Econ[omic] and Soc[ial] Hist[ory of Medieval Europe], tr. Clegg, I. E. (1936), 193Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., 194.

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15 Ibid., 196–7.

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35 Based on tables in Arch. Journal, LXXI, 129–31.

36 Mortality was also light in the marshy districts of Yorkshire, , Arch. Journal, LXXI, 112–13Google Scholar.

37 This is because bubonic plague can only be contracted through the bite of a flea, and not by direct contact with the human sufferer. The far more deadly pneumonic form, on the other hand, is conveyed by personal contact; as for example in the very fatal outbreaks in Manchuria.

38 In the diocese of Lincoln (excluding the Lincoln archdeaconry, for which figures are not available) 72 benefices out of a total of 1304 were vacant by death in the 18 months from 23 September 1347 to 24 March 1348–9–a yearly average of about 3.7 %(Arch. Journal, LXVIII, 316, n. 1; 335–8). In the diocese of York, 24 out of 536 benefices were vacant by death in the 15 months ending 24 March 1348–9–a yearly average of about 3–6 %(Arch. Journal, LXXI, 129–31).

39 Arch. Journal, LXXI, 115–16. The figures for the diocese of Lincoln are stated by Professor Hamilton Thompson to be based on a rough calculation, subject to future revision.

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41 Ibid., 1, 294.

42 Ibid., 1, 341.

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44 Quoted ibid., I, 230.