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Growth and Decay in English Towns 1500–1700

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Alan Dyer
Alan Dyer
Affiliation:
Department of History, University College of North Wales
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Extract

During the past thirty years the study of English early modern urban history has concentrated on the detailed examination of individual towns. Some very useful works have been produced, but each has treated the town in isolation, not daring to venture beyond its protective walls to speculate on the wider implications of its discoveries. Enough has now been written to encourage a recent wave of attempts at a more general view of the subject, in which,for the first time, certain generalizations are advanced which claim to summarize the characteristics of most, if not all, urban communities. Such enterprises demand much courage, for large sections of the field have still not been examined in detail, and in the reduction of the rich diversity of English urban experience to some sort of general principles lies the greatest challenge of all. It would be churlish not to pay tribute to the value of these syntheses, but equally unwise to claim that in the present state of our knowledge they can be regarded as definitive. The purpose of this essay is to examine critically three recently published studies which seek to establish general concepts of urban growth and decline in this period and to suggest alternative approaches to the problem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 6 , May 1979 , pp. 60 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

* Phythian-Adams, C., ‘Urban decay in late medieval England’ in Abrams, P. and Wrigley, E. A. (eds), Towns in Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978, 159–85.Google Scholar Clark, P. and Slack, P., English Towns in Transition 1500–1700, London: Oxford University Press, 1976.Google Scholar Corfield, P., ‘Urban Development in England and Wales in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in Coleman, D. C. and John, A. H. (eds), Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-Industrial England, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976, 214–47.Google Scholar

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3. Hoskins, W. G., The Age of Plunder (1976), 96.Google Scholar

4. It seems very widely accepted that national population began to rise either late in the fifteenth or early in the sixteenth century, and that this expansion continued until at least the middle of the seventeenth century with no more than temporary setbacks. Hoskins, op. cit., 4–5, 64, 219–21.

5. Statutes of the Realm, 1 & 2 Philip & Mary c. 7; 4 & 5 Philip & Mary c. 5.

6. Carus-Wilson, E. M., Medieval Merchant Venturers (1954), 204.Google Scholar

7. In rather depressed Northampton in 1524 there were still 31 dyers, fullers and shearmen, about 8 per cent of the working population. The fullers' tax assessments averaged double those of the 21 surviving weavers. Dyer, A. D., ‘Northampton in 1524’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, vi, 2 (1979)Google Scholar, table 1. A sixteenth-century calculation suggests that spinning and weaving contributed only about 9 per cent of the value of a dyed cloth while the finishing processes accounted for about half-thus it was mass employment at minimal wages rather than the more lucrative skills which moved to the countryside: Wilson, C., England's Apprenticeship 1603–1763 (1965), 71.Google Scholar

8. 26 Henry VIII c. 8–9; 27 Henry VIII c. 1; 32 Henry VIII c. 18–19; 33 Henry VIII c. 36; 35 Henry VIII c. 4.

9. 27 Henry VIII c.1.

10. See for instance the Oxford properties built in the thirteenth century, allowed to decay into gardens in the fourteenth and rebuilt in the sixteenth century: thousands of plots must have a similar history. Sturdy, D., ‘Eleven small Oxford houses’, Oxoniensia, xxvi–xxvii (1961–1962).Google Scholar

11. As in the case of prospering Chichester: Cornwall, J., ‘Sussex wealth and society in the reign of Henry VIII’, Sussex Archaeological Transactions cxiv (1976), 15.Google Scholar

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14. E.g. Third Book of Remembrance of Southampton, ed. Merson, A. L., II (1955), 110;Google Scholar Parker, V., The Making of King's Lynn (1971), 166;Google Scholar Weymouth and Melcombe Regis Minute Book 1625–1660, ed. Weinstock, M. (Dorset Record Society, 1964), 20.Google Scholar

15. E.g. the Black Friars' ‘rotten houses’ in Worcester, a city with no other evidence of decaying property and more prosperous than most. Dyer, A. D., The City of Worcester in the Sixteenth Century (1972), 162, 227.Google Scholar

16. About half the houses in York were owned by the Church. Palliser, D. M., The Reformation in York 1534–53 (1971), 17.Google Scholar

17. Contemporary complaints of raised entry fines for urban tenancies would indicate increased demand at the time. Letters and Papers XIII, ii, 1229.

18. Mr Phythian-Adams himself appears to regard the higher proportion as extremely tentative, and it must be influenced by Coventry's abnormal condition. No other student of the 1524–5 subsidy suggests a figure higher than one-third.

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20. Figures conveniently gathered in Percival, A., ‘Gloucestershire village population’, Local Population Studies, viii (1972),Google Scholar with urban data from the sources quoted therein. Communicants have been reduced to households by dividing by 2.8, the accepted figure.

21. Figures from Somerset Record Society II (1888); British Library, MS. Harley 594. The towns are Crewkerne, North and South Petherton, Wellington, Milverton, Bridgwater, Glastonbury, Langport and North Curry.

22. The 20 per cent factor is only an average, not to be relied on too far in individual cases: thus of the 28 Gloucestershire towns, 5 grew slightly, and 22 lost 8 per cent or more of their population, including all the bigger towns; 21 are reduced by between 8 per cent and 43 per cent.

23. Based on a comparison by counties of the following listings: Smith, William, The Particular Description of England, ed. Wheatley, H. B. and Ashbee, L. (1879),Google Scholar for 1588, supplemented for Wales by The Description of Pembrokeshire, ed. H. Owen, Cymmrodorion Record Society (1892), 140–1, and The Taylor's Cushion, ed. E. Pritchard (1906), I, 74–82. John Speed, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611); Direction for the English Traviller (1635); Villare Anglicanum (1656); R. Blome, Britannia (1673); Adams' Index Villaris (1960); Magna Britannia (1720–31); 1792 from Parliamentary Papers, Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls, First Report (1889).

24. Figures for 1524 from Sheail, J., ‘The regional distribution of wealth in England as indicated in the 1524/5 Lay Subsidy Returns’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1968);Google Scholar 1563 figures from British Library, MS. Harley 595. Figures for 1524 increased by 30 per cent, though Coventry's by 50 per cent, while all 1563 totals are increased by 20 per cent. The Warwickshire towns are Henley, Alcester, Stratford, Atherstone, Sutton, Birmingham and Solihull.

25. Glass, D. V., ‘Gregory King's estimate of the population of England and Wales 1695’, Population Studies, iii (1949–1950), 341.Google Scholar

26. Gloucestershire from sources cited in n. 20. Leicestershire from V.C.H. Leicestershire, III (1955), with the addition of c. 1715 estimates from ‘Documents relating to Leicestershire…’, Association of Architectural Societies Reports, xxii (1893). Oxfordshire from Compton Census, William Salt Library, Stafford; Bishop Secker's Visitation Returns, Oxfordshire Record Society (1957). The figures for these three counties have been re-assembled on a parochial basis so that missing parishes can be filled in by estimation; where town parishes contain a large rural element an attempt to separate the two has been made. The market town sections contain all places known to possess a market at the date indicated. Norfolk and Suffolk from Patten, J., ‘Population distribution in Norfolk and Suffolk during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Transactions Institute of British Geographers, lxv (1975);Google Scholar gaps in the original table have been filled by estimation and the rural element increased by 1 per cent to compensate for omissions.

27. Everitt, A., ‘The marketing of agricultural produce’, Agrarian History of England and Wales, IV, ed. Thirsk, J. (1967).Google Scholar

28. A number of authorities have been misled by the decline in the South-West to imagine that it is a national trend—e.g. Chartres, J. A., ‘The marketing of agricultural produce in metropolitan western England…’, in Husbandry and Marketing in the South-West, ed. Havinden, M. (1973), 64,Google Scholar and Internal Trade in England (1977), 47–8.

29. New charters are reflected in P.R.O. class Chancery C 202; dates of market halls can be traced in the volumes of the Victoria County History and Pevsner's Buildings of England series; data on market profits can be found in many municipal archives, though the practice of farming these revenues complicates matters.

30. See table 2. Although the Cambridge Group are not yet able to give a definitive analysis of the computerized parish register data, provisional findings do indicate the continued growth of the market towns in the later seventeenth century (personal communication from Dr E. A. Wrigley).

31. Borsay, P., ‘The English urban renaissance: the development of provincial urban culture c. 1680–1760’, Social History, v (1977).Google Scholar

32. Despite periods of stagnation, a broadly upward trend in all these sectors, though slow and intermittent, seems to be the consensus of opinion among economic historians, though convincing statistical confirmation of this impression is unlikely to materialize. Clarkson, L. A.. The Pre-Industrial Economy in England 1500–1750 (1971), 210–15;Google Scholar Holderness, B. A., Pre-Industrial England (1976), 197–9, 225ff.Google Scholar