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Brewing and the Peasant Economy: Some Manors in Late Medieval Devon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

David Postles
David Postles
Affiliation:
Department of English Local History, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.
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Extract

Brewing was an important part of the medieval peasant economy. There are different views, however, about the nature and position of those who brewed. It has been suggested that brewing was an integral part of the household economy, that is, at the fully developed stage of the household and family, whilst others have connected brewing with the early stages of the life-cycle of individuals, before household formation. Either as part of the household economy or before household formation, brewing may have supplemented income from agrarian activity, whether from the direct holding of land, or from wages for work on the land. Brewing may also have been a feature of the sexual division of labour within the household. Moreover, it has been proposed that brewing was more important for the household economy of cottagers and lesser landholders than for the tenants of standard holdings, who, perhaps, needed to supplement their income less than the smaller landholders. When related to the life-cycle of individuals, however, brewing may have been undertaken more consistently by those who would later acquire land and would then divest themselves of brewing as a major part of their income, although Chayanov believed brewing to relate more widely to the developmental cycle of all peasant households. His perception was that brewing would have been necessary at that stage of household development where there were many mouths to feed and many hands to perform the labour, whereas, when the siblings left the household, the supplementary income from brewing would no longer be required. There are thus a number of issues involved in the question of who, in the main, brewed, and at what stage of their life-cycle they did so.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , October 1992 , pp. 133 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

Notes

1. R.M. Smith, in idem, (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 27–30Google Scholar, argued that brewing related mainly to the life-cycle of siblings before marriage and household formation; Bennett, J.M., ‘Village ale-wives’ in Hanawalt, B.A., (ed.), Women and Work in Pre-Industrial Europe (Bloomington, Indiana, 1986)Google Scholar, and eadem, Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender and Household in Brigstock before the Plague (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar, considered brewing largely in the context of production by the peasant household and particularly by women in the family; Hanawalt, B.A., The Ties that Bound (Oxford, 1986), p. 298, n.14Google Scholar; Hilton, R.H., The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), pp. 45–6Google Scholar; Dyer, C., Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 346–9Google Scholar. Chayanov, A.V., The Theory of Peasant Economy, ed. Horner, D. (Homewood, Illinois, 1966), pp. 57–61, 78–82Google Scholar; Gatrell, P., ‘Historians and peasants: studies on medieval English society in a Russian context’, in Aston, T. H. (ed.), Landlords, Peasants and Politics in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 416–19Google Scholar. A further consideration, not pursued here, is whether income from such by-employment allowed marriage and family formation at an earlier age than might otherwise have been possible. Judith Bennett and Maryanne Kowaleski have kindly advised on several points, comments have been gratefully received from two anonymous referees and Keith Snell, but I alone am responsible for the remaining shortcomings of this paper.

2. Amongst a very large literature, the most succinct outlines are still Hatcher, J., Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348–1520 (London, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Miller, E. and Hatcher, J., Medieval England, Rural Society and Economic Change 1086–1348 (London, 1978), pp. 134–64Google Scholar; but see also now Smith, R.M., ‘Human resources’, in Astill, G. and Grant, A. (eds.), The Countryside of Medieval England (Oxford, 1988), pp. 188–212Google Scholar. The most pessimistic view of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century is described succinctly by Titow, J.Z., English Rural Society, 1200–1350 (London, 1972)Google Scholar, and May, A.N., ‘An index of thirteenth century peasant impoverishment: manor court fines’, Economic History Review 2nd ser. 26 (1973), 389–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; but there is a large and complex literature.

3. For industrial by-employment in the later middle ages, Blanchard, I., ‘Industrial employment and the rural land market, 1380–1520’Google Scholar, in Smith, R.M. (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-cycle, pp. 227–76.Google Scholar

4. Goldberg, P.J.P., ‘Women in fifteenth-century town life’, in Thompson, J.A.F. (ed.), Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1988), pp. 116–18Google Scholar; Clark, P., The English Alehouse (London, 1983)Google Scholar. For concentration in brewing elsewhere, possibly as a result of the structural change to beer, leading to the exclusion of poorer tenants and alewives from the trade: McIntosh, M.K., ‘Money lending on the periphery of London, 1300–1600’, Albion 20 (1988), 564CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where largescale brewers monopolised by 1500 at Havering, on the fringe of London.

5. Fox, H.S.A., ‘The chronology of enclosure and economic development in medieval Devon’, Economic History Review 2nd ser. 28 (1975), 186–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Peasant farmers, patterns of settlement and pays: transformations in the landscapes of Devon and Cornwall during the later middle ages’, in Higham, R. (ed.), Landscape and Townscape in the South West (Exeter, 1989), pp. 41–73.Google Scholar

6. Britnell, R.H., Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 89–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Devon Record Office (hereafter DRO) 902M/M3–33; E5 and E7-E8; court rolls, extent of a third of the manor and rentals. Additionally, Erskine, A.M. (ed.), The Devonshire Lay Subsidy of 1332 (Devon and Cornwall Record Society, NS 14, 1969), p. 93Google Scholar. For notions of a licensing system, Denholm-Young, N., Seignorial Administration in England (Oxford, 1937), pp. 89–91Google Scholar; Hilton, , English Peasantry, pp. 45–6Google Scholar; idem, A Medieval Society: The West Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1966), p. 155Google Scholar; Post, J.B.. ‘Manorial amercements and peasant poverty’, Economic History Review 2nd ser. 28 (1975), 308–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. There are 81 pleas of debt and detinue in the rolls, of which eight are explicitly for sales, three for loans, and the remainder unspecific. See also, Clark, E., ‘Debt litigation in the late medieval English vill’, in Raftis, J.A. (ed.), Pathways to Medieval Peasants (Toronto, 1981), pp. 247–82Google Scholar; McIntosh, , ‘Money lending’, pp. 557–71.Google Scholar

9. DRO 902M/3, 4, 15, 18, 25, 26, 28, 34: ‘pro detencione vjd ob pro seruicia empta’; ‘pro detencione xvjs … pro braseo empto per duos annos elapsos’; ‘quod ei non vendit j bras’ brasei (sic) bonum et sanum (sic) pro ceruisia bona inde facienda …’; ‘quod non fregit conuencionem de j equo portante j barellam ceruisie de Stoke uersus Dertemouth’ ad dampna xs …’; ‘Prepositus in misericordia quia non leuauit de Ricardo Holman xxvjs viijd pro braseo … ad opus Roberti Pourpilion’; ‘Ideo attachiatus est per iij quarteria brasei auene ij ciste (sic) j patelle(sic) et tripide(sic) et non venit’; ‘… tenetur ei in vjs ijd pro braseo vendito …’; ‘quod non debent nec tenentur ei in xviijs pro braseo…’; ‘Item prepositus in misericordia quia non leuauit de Geruasio Eliot j bussellum brasei … ad opus Willelmi Hamond’; detinue of 5s ‘de remanenti xs pro braseo empto per patrem suum’; to repair his house called le Brewhouse (John Page, a principal brewer in the 1530s).

10. For Dartmouth, M. Kowaleski, ‘The 1377 Dartmouth Poll Tax’, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries 35 (1982–1986), 286–95Google Scholar, where Dartmouth is placed as the third largest town in Devon in the fourteenth century, with a population of about 1000 inhabitants. Watkin, H.R., Dartmouth vol 1: Pre-Reformation (Devonshire Association, 1935).Google Scholar

11. DRO CR 1288 (Ottery St Mary); British Library Add MS 28838, fos 77v–84r (‘Rentale manerii beate marie de Otery …’); DRO Bedford Papers Werrington court rolls and rentals. The court rolls distinguished between brewers and tapsters: ‘semel braciauit et fregit assisam ceruisie’; ‘vendidit tappale contra assisam’. For dislocation of the production of ale by epidemic in Colchester in the 1460s, Britnell, , Colchester, p. 202.Google Scholar

12. Smith, , Land, Kinship and Life-cycle, p. 28Google Scholar; Bennett, , ‘Village ale-wives’. For fines for brewing levied predominantly on women:Google ScholarJewell, H.M., ‘Women at the courts of the manor of Wakefield, 1348–50’, Northern History 26 (1990), 61–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raftis, J.A., Warboys: Two Hundred Years in the Life of an English Medieval Village (Toronto, 1974), pp. 237–40Google Scholar; Ratcliff, S.R. (ed.), Elton Manorial Records 1279–1351 (Roxburghe Club, 1946)Google Scholar, passim. Britnell, , Colchester, p. 90Google Scholar refers to the predominance of alewives in the urban context. For women brewers in small towns, Hilton, R.H., ‘Lords, burgesses and hucksters’Google Scholar, repr. in idem, Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism (London, 1985), pp. 203–4Google Scholar, and idem, ‘Women traders in Medieval England’, ibid., pp. 209–10 and 214.

13. Exeter Dean and Chapter Archives 4784–4786.

14. Public Record Office SC2 Portfolio 168 no 57; DRO CR 1429–1438; DRO 346M/M1.

15. For husbands' responsibilities for wives' brewing, Raftis, J.A., Tenure and Mobility (Toronto, 1964), p. 101.Google Scholar

16. Based on biographical analysis of the brewers in the Werrington court rolls and rentals. For example, Jurdan Ilond, who appears transiently in the court rolls between 1384 and 1386, fleetingly involved in brewing and debt.