Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300-1525

The history of English towns in the fourteenth century is one of strongly contrasting experiences. While many decayed under the impact of famines and epidemics, others, like Colchester, grew. In the fifteenth century, however, urban fortunes were more uniformly waning, and the early sixteenth century was the last phase in a long period of general urban contraction. Colchester did not have any unique advantages in this context. The townsmen enjoyed easy access to the North Sea and Baltic trades, but in the middle and late fifteenth century urban decay was particularly marked in towns on or near the east coast. Colchester was a centre of the new English cloth industry, but so were York, Norwich and Coventry, all of which had greatly shrunk from their former size by the 1520s. Coventry's population fell by about 40 per cent between 1440 and 1523. Evidence already discussed suggests that water-borne trade through Hythe diminished after the middle of the century and that employment in clothmaking was probably below the peak level of c. 1412–14 for the rest of the fifteenth century except in some years between 1436 and 1449. The chances that Colchester experienced some contraction are therefore high.

The changing number of brewers, as reported by lawhundred juries, constitutes the most continuous evidence relating to consumption in the town (Figure 13.1). The number was greatest early in the fifteenth century, and then declined slowly. By 1522 the number of brewers amerced at the lawhundreds was much the same as it had been in the early fourteenth century. The rate of decline implied by these figures is nothing dramatic.