Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-17T15:09:15.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

II. Plague and Economic Decline in England in The Later Middle Ages1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

John Saltmarsh
Affiliation:
Fellow of King's College and Lecturer in the University
Get access

Extract

As I see it, the course of English economic history in the later Middle Ages is as follows. By the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries medieval civilization had reached a climax of material prosperity and spiritual confidence which it was never to surpass. A cessation of economic advance in the first half of the fourteenth century was followed by a positive decline in the second half, continuing and deepening in the century following, to reach its lowest point between 1450 and 1470. Recovery first started in the last twenty or twenty-five years of the fifteenth century, leading directly to the great economic renaissance which came to flowering in Tudor England. Then began that ‘cumulative crescendo’ which was to lead, at an ever-increasing pace, through the Industrial Revolution, to the command over Nature and the vast material resources of our own day.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1941

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Postan, M. M., ‘The Fifteenth Century’, in Econ[omic] Hist[ory] Rev[iew], IX (1939), 169.Google Scholar

3 Pirenne, Henri, Econ[omic] and Soc[ial] Hist[ory of Medieval Europe], tr. Clegg, I. E. (1936), 193Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., 194.

5 Bloch, Marc, Les Caractères Originaux de l'Histoire Rtirale Française (1931), 118Google Scholar.

6 Heitland, W. E., After Many Years (1926), 19Google Scholar.

7 ‘The defence of John Hales’, A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England, ed. Lamond, (1929), lxiiiGoogle Scholar.

8 Postan, , Econ. Hist. Rev. ix, 163Google Scholar.

9 Creighton, Charles, Hist[ory] of Epidemics [in Britain] (1891), 1, 115Google Scholar.

10 Chambers, E. K. and Sidgwick, F., Early English Lyrics (1926), 150Google Scholar.

11 Cf. Postan, M. M. in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century 123, 131, 136Google Scholar.

12 Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, James (1910), I, 42Google Scholar.

13 Pirenne, , Econ. and Soc. Hist., 196 et seqGoogle Scholar.

14 Cf. Pirenne, , Econ. and Soc. Hist., 202Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., 196–7.

16 Postan, , Econ. Hist. Rev., ix, 166Google Scholar.

17 Cf. Maitland, F. W., ‘History of a Cambridgeshire Manor’, in Collected Papers (1911), 11, 401Google Scholar.

18 Greenwood, M., Epidemics and Crowd Diseases (1935), 290Google Scholar.

19 Creighton, , Hist. of Epidemics, I, 159Google Scholar.

20 See estimated figures in Creighton, , op. cit., I, 660Google Scholar.

21 Quoted ibid., 1, 226.

22 Ibid., 1, 345.

23 Greenwood, , Epidemics and Crowd Diseases, 296Google Scholar.

24 Scott, H. H., History of Tropical Medicine (1939), II, 724Google Scholar

25 Greenwood, , op. cit., 294Google Scholar.

26 Scott, H. H., op. cit., II, 742Google Scholar.

27 Greenwood, , op. cit., 300Google Scholar.

28 Scott, H. H., op. cit., II, 735Google Scholar.

29 Scott, H. H., loc. citGoogle Scholar.

30 Page, F. M., Estates of Crowland Abbey (1934), 123Google Scholar.

31 Robo, Etienne, Medieval Farnham (1935), 212Google Scholar.

32 Ballard, A., The Black Death, in Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, vol. v (1916)Google Scholar.

33 Thompson, A. Hamilton, ‘Registers of John Gynewell, Bishop of Lincoln, for the years 1347–1350’, Arch[aeological] Journal, LXVIII (1911), 301Google Scholar et seq.; ‘The Pestilences of the Fourteenth Century in the dioces e of York’, ibid., LXXI (1914), 97 et seq.

34 Arch. Journal, LXVIII, 316.

35 Based on tables in Arch. Journal, LXXI, 129–31.

36 Mortality was also light in the marshy districts of Yorkshire, , Arch. Journal, LXXI, 112–13Google Scholar.

37 This is because bubonic plague can only be contracted through the bite of a flea, and not by direct contact with the human sufferer. The far more deadly pneumonic form, on the other hand, is conveyed by personal contact; as for example in the very fatal outbreaks in Manchuria.

38 In the diocese of Lincoln (excluding the Lincoln archdeaconry, for which figures are not available) 72 benefices out of a total of 1304 were vacant by death in the 18 months from 23 September 1347 to 24 March 1348–9–a yearly average of about 3.7 %(Arch. Journal, LXVIII, 316, n. 1; 335–8). In the diocese of York, 24 out of 536 benefices were vacant by death in the 15 months ending 24 March 1348–9–a yearly average of about 3–6 %(Arch. Journal, LXXI, 129–31).

39 Arch. Journal, LXXI, 115–16. The figures for the diocese of Lincoln are stated by Professor Hamilton Thompson to be based on a rough calculation, subject to future revision.

40 Creighton, , Hist. of Epidemics, I, 226Google Scholar.

41 Ibid., 1, 294.

42 Ibid., 1, 341.

43 Creighton, , op. cit., I, 225Google Scholar et se.q.

44 Quoted ibid., I, 230.