Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Dates
- References to Colchester borough records
- Introduction
- PART I RUSTICITY, 1300–49
- PART II GROWTH, 1350–1414
- 4 Colchester cloth and its markets
- 5 Industry
- 6 Population
- 7 Credit and wealth
- 8 Government
- 9 Economic regulation
- 10 Town and country
- Survey, 1350–1414
- PART III CHANGE AND DECAY, 1415–1525
- Some further reflections
- Appendix: Some Colchester statistics
- List of printed works cited
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Dates
- References to Colchester borough records
- Introduction
- PART I RUSTICITY, 1300–49
- PART II GROWTH, 1350–1414
- 4 Colchester cloth and its markets
- 5 Industry
- 6 Population
- 7 Credit and wealth
- 8 Government
- 9 Economic regulation
- 10 Town and country
- Survey, 1350–1414
- PART III CHANGE AND DECAY, 1415–1525
- Some further reflections
- Appendix: Some Colchester statistics
- List of printed works cited
- Index
Summary
In spite of heavy losses of population at the time of the Black Death, Colchester immediately entered a new phase of industrial and commercial growth. Colchester merchants increased their trade to Gascony and opened up new relations with the Baltic, exporting local russets in exchange for wine, fish, salt, continental manufactures and other commodities. In the last decades of the fourteenth century even the Mediterranean world offered markets for Colchester cloth through the agency of Italian exporters in London. Cloth output increased to satisfy these expanding markets, creating new employment in the town. This, with its secondary repercussions, brought about an expansion of urban population from below 3,000 immediately after the Black Death to perhaps over 8,000 by the end of the century. The growth of cloth production was accompanied by increasing levels of internal trade in the town and by an even more considerable expansion of credit. The merchant class became rapidly larger. Colchester's good fortune in these years was not unique; the growth of urban industry and trade had parallels elsewhere, notably in Coventry and Salisbury, and the older and larger towns of York and Norwich also enjoyed an industrial upsurge in this period. Nearer at hand, other market towns and industrialising villages were showing features of industrial development, such as at Hadleigh in Suffolk and Thaxted in Essex.
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- Information
- Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300-1525 , pp. 159 - 160Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986