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Bury St. Edmunds and the Populations of Late Medieval English Towns, 1270-1530

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Robert S. Gottfried
Robert S. Gottfried*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
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Extract

One of the most intriguing and important eras of British demographic history is the later middle ages, crudely defined herein to encompass the years 1270 to 1530. This period includes medieval population at its apex, followed by what many observers have called a Malthusian subsistence crisis, an era of famine and plague pandemic, and finally, a slow, almost phased, period of recovery. Much of the groundwork of urban demographic studies was laid in the nineteenth century, by scholars such as William Denton and the Greens. They believed that most aspects of urban life declined in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and that demographic contraction went hand in hand with social and economic ruin. Despite some questioning and modification of these premises, the concept of decline passed into the twentieth century, and was synthesized by M.M. Postan, the leading economic historian of his time. Using empirical methods, Postan built a general model of late medieval economic stagnation and decay. Towns were more or less peripheral to the gist of his argument, which stressed the overwhelming importance of the rural economy, but he did comment on urban life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , Fall 1980 , pp. 1 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1980

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References

The first draft of this paper was read in October 1976 at the Social Science History Association Meeting at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Parts of it will be included in a forthcoming social, cultural, and economic study of late medieval Bury St. Edmunds.

1 Denton, W., England in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1888), pp. 127–31Google Scholar; Green, J.R., A History of the English Peoples (New York, 1874), pp. 482–576Google Scholar; and Mrs.Green, J.R., English Towns in the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1894), especially, i, 1–43Google Scholar.

2 An attempt at modification is Kingsford, C.J., Prejudice and Promise in Fifteenth Century England (Oxford, 1925), pp. 1-21, 107–45Google Scholar. The Postan works can be found in his Medieval Agriculture and General Problems. (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar, especially in the chapters, “The Fifteenth Century,” pp. 41-48; and “Some Agrarian Evidence of Declining Population in the Later Middle Ages,” pp. 186-213.

3 Postan, , “The Fifteenth Century,” p. 44Google Scholar.

4 Russell, J.C., British Medieval Population (Albuquerque, N.M., 1948), pp. 140–45Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., pp. 282-306.

6 Carus-Wilson, E.M., The Expansion of Exeter at the Close of the Middle Ages, (Exeter, 1963), especially pp. 3–10Google Scholar. Also see her “The First Half-Century of the Borough of Stratford-upon-Avon,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, xviii, 1965, pp. 46–63Google Scholar.

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8 Reynolds, Susan, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), pp. 160–87Google Scholar; Platt, Colin, The English Medieval Town (London, 1976), pp. 75–95Google Scholar.

9 Phythian-Adams, Charles, “Urban Decay in Late Medieval England,” in Abrams, Philip and Wrigley, E.A. (eds.), Towns in Societies (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 159–85Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 162.

11 Ibid., p. 164.

12 Ibid., p. 169.

13 Russell, , British Medieval Population, pp. 118–46Google Scholar. For Bury, see Charles, , A History of Epidemics in Britain (Cambridge, 1894), p. 201Google Scholar; and Oman Creighton, Charles, The Great Revolt of 1381, 2nd ed. (New York, 1968)Google Scholar. All have used the returns to make estimates of late fourteenth-century population. For estimates of total English population, the returns have been exploited by many scholars, with Russell remaining the most criticized but perhaps the most successful. More recent uses of the poll tax for demographic purposes can be found in several studies in Darby, H.C. (ed.), New Historical Geography of England (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar.

14 Perhaps the best discussion of the poll tax is Beresford, M. W., Lay Subsidies and Poll Taxes (Canterbury, 1963), pp. 19–29Google Scholar.

15 Powell, Edgar, “The Taxation for the Welsh War in 1282,” Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, xii, 1906Google Scholar.

16 Powell, Edgar, “Muster Rolls of the Territorials in Tudor Times,” Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, xv, 1915Google Scholar; and the same title and journal, slightly changed, xvi, 1918.

17 Ritchie, Carson, “The Black Death at St. Edmunds Abbey,” Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, xxviii, 1956Google Scholar. Hatcher, John, in his Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348-1530 (London, 1977), pp. 17-18 and 29–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has used the obituary list from the Canterbury Cathedral Priory to such ends. Because of the comparatively small number of monks in St. Edmunds Abbey and the brief time period covered by the data, we have elected not to do so.

18 See Warren, F.W., “A Pre-Reformation Guild,” Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, xi, 1903Google Scholar, which provides interesting demographic information from the nearby village of Bardwell; and Lobel, M.D., “A List of Aldermen and Bailiffs of Bury St. Edmunds from the 12th to the 16th Century,” Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, xxii, 1934–1936Google Scholar.

19 The following registers were used from the peculiar court of Bury St. Edmunds: Osburn, 1354-1443; Hawlee, 1443-83; Hardeman, 1483-91, missing abstracts of which are to be found in the British Library, British Museum, Ms. Harl. 294; Pye, 1491-1509; Mason, 1510-13; and Hoode, 1513-30. Additional wills from Bury residents were found in the Consistory Court of Norwich and the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and have been included in the aggregate will data. A few Bury men also registered their wills in the archdeaconry court at Sudbury, and these too have been incorporated. For a discussion of the East Anglian probate courts, see Gottfried, Robert S., Epidemic Disease in FifteenthCentury England (New Brunswick, N.J., 1978), pp. 18–22Google Scholar.

20 The issue is discussed in detail in: Gottfried, , Epidemic Disease, pp. 22–28Google Scholar; Dulley, A.J.F., “Four Kentish Towns at the End of the Middle Ages,” Archaeologica Cantiana, lxxxi, 1966, pp. 95–108Google Scholar; and Hollingsworth, T.H., Historical Demography (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969), pp. 43-44, 235-40, 316-17, 385–87Google Scholar.

21 The method that measures age of first marriage divides the testamentary population into three broad age groups, one of whose members were under twenty-five. The sample of under twenty-five is rather small—only 53—but the portion of marrieds is only 30.4 percent, suggesting a relatively late age of first marriage for females.

22 See Thrupp, S.L., “The Problem of Replacement Rates in Late Medieval English Population,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, xviii, 1965, pp. 101–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hollings-worth, , Historical Demography, pp. 375–88Google Scholar; Wrigley, E.A., Population and History, (New York, 1969), pp. 20–28Google Scholar; and Hatcher, , Plague, Population, pp. 26–29Google Scholar.

23 See Wrigley, E.A., “Fertility Strategy for the Individual and the Group,” in Tilly, Charles, ed., Historical Studies of Changing Fertility (Princeton, N.J., 1978), pp. 135–54Google Scholar.

24 This is a very complex issue. For details, see Sheehan, Michael, “The Influence of Canon Law on Property Rights of Married Women in England,” Mediaeval Studies, xxv, 1963, pp. 111–24Google Scholar.

25 Gottfried, , Epidemic Disease, pp. 26–28Google Scholar.

26 Among them are Dulley, “Four Kentish Towns”; Camp, A.J., Wills and Their Whereabouts (Canterbury, 1963)Google Scholar; and Gibson, A.S.W., Wills and Where to Find Them (Chichester, Sussex, 1974)Google Scholar.

27 Gottfried, , Epidemic Disease, pp. 18–22Google Scholar.

28 The Sir Nicholas Bacon Collection, The Regenstein Library, the University of Chicago. We have used as a guide an introduction by Smith, Richard, Sir Nicholas Bacon Collection: The Sources of an English Society, 1250-1700 (Chicago, 1972)Google Scholar. Smith's numberings of the documents have been followed; herein, we refer to Bacon 17 and 295.

29 Gottfried, , Epidemic Disease, pp. 161–64Google Scholar.

30 Lobel, M.D., The Borough of Bury St. Edmunds (Oxford, 1934), p. 107Google Scholar.

31 Gottfried, , Epidemic Disease, p. 33Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., pp. 18-22.

33 The coverage of the testamentary sources can be further defended through use of wealth measure. In a sense, this is a circular argument; one part of a document is being defended with evidence taken from another. Nevertheless, the wealth of results are rather telling. Categories were divided into five groups, as shown below, beginning with the wealthiest, designated as A, and descending to the poorest, designated E. Modal wealth was consistently around level D, entrance to which was pegged at a mere five pence; and from 1436 on, about the point from which the sample becomes most complete, select groups had a modal wealth of E. Since overall bequests to the high altar of the church of burial remained high, this skew probably represents an infusion of more poor people into the ranks of the will makers.

Wealth Distribution in Percents, 1354-1530

A = bequest of 10 shillings or more

B = bequest of 6 to 9 shillings

C = bequest of 2 to 5 shillings

D = bequest of 5 pence to 2 shillings

E = any bequest up to 5 pence

For more detail on this process, see Gottfried, , Epidemic Disease, p. 33Google Scholar.

34 Oman, , The Great Revolt, pp. 159–161Google Scholar; Beresford, , Lay Subsidies, pp. 21–22Google Scholar.

35 All of the above data have been taken from Russell, , British Medieval Population, pp. 148-54, 369–70Google Scholar.

36 There are many accounts. See Wrigley, , Population and History, pp. 161–201Google Scholar.

37 Ibid. Also, see Louis Chevalier, “Towards a History of Population,” in D.V. Glass and D.E.C. Eversley (eds.), Population in History (London, 1965), pp. 70-78.

38 Coale, Ansley J. and Demeny, Paul, Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations (Princeton, N.J., 1966)Google Scholar.

39 Hollingsworth, , Historical Demography, pp. 339–53Google Scholar.

40 Despite the reservations expressed in the text, extensive attempts at modeling based on the Coale-Demeny tables were made. In efforts to find the portion of the male population under age twelve, data were taken from those North and South tables that had death rates in the mid to high thirties, and birth rates in the high twenties to mid thirties. The North tables used included: mortality level 5, R=-5, R=-10; mortality level 4, G.R.R.=2, G.R.R.=2.25; mortality level 5, G.R.R. = 1.75, G.R.R.=2.00. The South tables, which seemed most approximate to demographic conditions in late medieval Bury, included: mortality level 3, R=-5, R=-10; mortality level 4, R=-5; mortality level 2, G.R.R.=2.50; mortality level 3, G.R.R.=2.00, G.R.R.=2.25; mortality level 4, G.R.R.=2.00, G.R.R.=2.25; mortality level 5, G.R.R.=2.00. The proportions of males under age fourteen ranged from 24.46 percent to 32.26 percent; and the portions of males over age sixty from 7.22 percent to 12.25 percent. The best set of data appear to come from the South tables, mortality level 4, G.R.R.=2.00. They provide a birth rate of 30.4, a death rate of 36.9, a growth rate of-6.5, average age of 31.7, life expectancy of 32.9, proportion of males over age sixty of 11.81 percent, and the proportion of males under age fourteen at 26.49 percent. All but the very last figure seem to fit nicely with the most informed estimates of fifteenth-century demographic conditions, but there are too many problems with the Coale-Demeny figures to allow for their general application. In addition to the objections discussed above, we have taken as our starting points not bits of hard data but rather subjective estimates as to probable birth and death rates. The major difficulty in using the Coale-Demeny life tables seems to rest with birth rates, which are too low in many of the tables in which the death rates are about right, and with infant mortality levels, which are probably also too low, due to the mitigating effects of modern medical techniques, even in the poorest nineteenth- and twentieth-century societies. All of this, coupled with the dramatic fluctuations in preindustrial mortality caused by disease and famine, plus the general rule that an urban area defeats the whole assumption of a closed population, has convinced us not to rely heavily on the Coale-Demeny models.

41 Russell, , BritishMedieval Population, pp. 142, 284Google Scholar. Others attempting estimates include: Oman, , The Great Revolt, pp. 158–66Google Scholar; Creighton, , History of Epidemics, i, pp. 200–01Google Scholar; and Lobel, M.D., “A Detailed Account of the 1327 Rising at Bury St. Edmunds and the Subsequent Trial,” Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, xxl, 3, 1933Google Scholar, in which she misleadingly accepts the 1377 poll tax figure as complete for the entire town population.

42 Ritchie, Carson, “The Black Death,” pp. 50 ff.Google Scholar

43 Jessop, A. J., “The Black Death in East Anglia,” in his The Coming of the Friars (London, 1889), pp. 166–261Google Scholar.

44 Bacon, p. 21.

45 Bury has a series of magnificent topographical surveys, extending from the late thirteenth through the late sixteenth centuries. The best are: British Library, British Museum Mss. Harl. 743, 626 (1295); Cambridge University Library Ms. Ff 2 33 (late fourteenth century); British Library, British Museum Ms. Harl. 58 (1433); ibid. (a relevia, or relief tax from 1351 to 1539); and ibid for 1539 and 1553.

46 For this crucial point in the text, our methodology is rather haphazard. The following literary and narrative accounts have been used: Lobel, The Borough; Redstone, L.J., “The Liberty of St. Edmunds,” Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, xv, 1914Google Scholar; Cam, Helen, Liberties and Communities in Medieval England (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Jewell, Helen M., English Local Administration (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; and Butler, H.E. (ed.), The Chronicle ofjocelin of Brakeland, (New York, 1949), specifically, pp. xxiv–xxviGoogle Scholar. A comparative survey was also made from wills registered in the peculiar court of Bury St. Edmunds, and wills registered in the Archdeaconry of Sudbury, perhaps an area somewhat smaller than the “franchise” in question; the archdeaconry wills stand in relation to the borough wills at a ratio of about four to one. From the narrative sources, especially Redstone, we have somewhat subjectively decided that the borough represented about 33 percent to 35 percent of the total franchise population. The final figure of 30 percent is a compromise between the testamentary and literary figures. The shortcomings of such procedure, especially in a study that has pretense toward, scientific method, are obvious, but no other preferable method could be found. If the estimate of 30 percent is incorrect, it will apply only to the 1522 population estimate.

47 Cornwall, Julian, “English Country Towns in the 1520s,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, xv, 1962, pp. 54–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “English Population in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, xxiii, 1970, pp. 32–44Google Scholar.

48 Bacon, p. 240.

49 Bacon, p. 21.

50 Bacon, pp. 351, 369, 380, 390, 32, 39.

51 See above, note 46.

52 Gottfried, , Epidemic Disease, pp. 47–50Google Scholar.

53 Some assessments on fertility differentials can be made from the indirect evidence of replacement ratios when surveying diverse sexual, occupational, and socioeconomic subgroups within the sample. For all the groups, the most striking feature is their low level. For example, the ratio for all male testators to all male progeny was: for gentry, .60; for drapers, mercers, and grocers, .61; for textile workers, .56; for blacksmiths and bakers, .60; and for small shopkeepers, .56. The ratio for all male testators to all female progeny was: for gentry, .50; for drapers, mercers, grocers, .47; for textile workers, .45; for blacksmiths and bakers, 38; and for small shopkeepers, .42. In decennial splits for these and other groups, the highest replacement ratio figures were 82 percent for males and 61 percent for females. The distribution of sons was consistently low, and numbers of families with two or more sons was never higher than 20 percent. The merchants of Bury St. Edmunds, the social, economic, and political elite of their community, suffered from the same problems of biological attrition as did the lesser folk, and their peers in London. See Thrupp, S.L., The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Chicago, 1948), pp. 191–206Google Scholar.

54 Bacon, pp. 27, 29.

55 Gottfried, , Epidemic Disease, pp 187–204Google Scholar.

56 Ibid., pp. 175-83 provides more information on the relationship of marriage and fertility in fifteenth-century East Anglia.

57 See above, note 22. The proportion of marrieds under age twenty-five remains steady throughout the period surveyed.

58 See the table in Gottfried, , Epidemic Disease, pp. 47–50Google Scholar; and Creighton, , A History of Epidemics, i, pp. 177–233Google Scholar.

59 Ibid. The relationship between disease, climate, and social change is well summed up in Biraben, J.N., Les Homines et la Peste, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1975)Google Scholar; Chambers, J.D., Population, Economy and Society in Preindustrial England (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar; and Ladurie, E. LeRoy, “Un Concept: L'Unification Microbienne Du Monde (XIVe-XVIIe Siecles),” Schweizerische Zeitschfrift Für Geschichte, 1973Google Scholar.

60 Gottfried, Robert S., “Population, Plague and the Sweating Sickness: Demographic Movements in Late Fifteenth Century England,” Journal of British Studies, xvii. Fall. 1977, pp. 12–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Creighton, , History of Epidemics, i, pp. 429–38Google Scholar.

62 Ibid., pp. 374-83. Also, see Appleby, Andrew, “Disease of Famine? Mortality in Cumberland and Westmoreland, 1580-1640,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 1973, pp. 403–61Google Scholar, for a comparison.

63 A new, rather interesting approach to the topic is Hatcher, , Plague, Population, pp. 63–67Google Scholar.

64 Gottfried, , Epidemic Disease, pp. 84–154Google Scholar. Also of interest are Bailey, N.J.T., Mathematical Theory of Epidemics (London, 1959)Google Scholar; and Hollingsworth, , Historical Demography, pp. 355–74Google Scholar.

65 The 1440s appear initially to be exceptional, but on closer inspection the winter dominant patterns reflect a series of influenza epidemics and pneumonic, as well as bubonic plague. Similarly, the spring patterns in the 1460s can in part be explained not by the absence of plague, but rather the impact of the pox of 1462-63.

66 General discussion of medieval migration can be found in Russell, J.C., “Population in Europe, 500-1500,” in Cipolla, Carlo, (ed.) The Fontana Economic History of Europe: The Middle Ages (London, 1972)Google Scholar. For England, see Raftis, J.A., Tenure and Mobility (Toronto, 1964)Google Scholar.

67 Bacon, pp. 127, 129.

68 Further research into the archival records of Bury St. Edmunds shows that few families remained in trade for more than three generations; they either died out in the male line, or made enough money to pass into the ranks of the landed gentry. The two most influential families in late medieval Bury, the Drurys and the Barets, both had their starts in the draperies.

69 The precise percentages are: West Suffolk, 53.4 percent; Norfolk, 23.1 percent; East Suffolk, 13.3 percent; Cambridgeshire and Essex, 8.9 percent; others, 1.3 percent.

70 Ekwall, Eilert, Studies in the Population of Medieval London (Stockholm, 1956)Google Scholar; McKinley, R. A., Norfolk and Suffolk Surnames in the Middle Ages (London, 1975)Google Scholar; McClure, Peter, “Patterns of Migration in the Late Middle Ages: The Evidence of English Place Name Surnames,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, xxxii, 1979, pp. 167–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 McClure, “Patterns of Migration.” The figures for one to twenty miles, twentyone to forty miles, and forty-one to sixty miles for Leicester, Nottingham, York, and London are, respectively: 69.5 percent, 12.2 percent, 8.2 percent; 55.7 percent, 18.6 percent, 10.4 percent; 68.9 percent, 20.7 percent, 3.0 percent; 21.1 percent, 26.5 percent, and 18.2 percent.

72 Smith, A.H., “English Place-Name Elements”, English Place-Name Society, xxvi, 1956Google Scholar; Ekwall, Eilert, A Dictionary of English Place Names (Oxford, 1939)Google Scholar; and McKinley, Norfolk and Suffolk Surnames.

73 For details of the assessments, see the following entries in Darby (ed.), New Historical Geography: Glasscock, R.E., “England, circa 1334,” pp. 136–85Google Scholar; and Baker, Alan R.H., “Changes in the Later Middle Ages,” pp. 186–247Google Scholar.