Enterprise, Money and Credit in England Before the Black Death 1285-1349

ISBN-13: 9783030079741 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 382 str.

Pamela Nightingale

Spis treści

Chapter 1: The Place of Credit and Coin in the Medieval English Economy

The Relationship of Credit to the Monetary Economy

 

The Shortage of Coin

 

The Crown and the Coinage

 

Barter

 

The Constraints on Credit

 

Usury and Interest

 

Risks of Default

 

The Instability of Credit

 

The Balance of Trade and Coin

 

The Wool Trade and Credit

 

Chapter 2: The Records of the Statutes of Acton Burnell, and Merchants, 1284–1349

The Registries

Conflicting interpretations of the Certificates

The Certificates of Debt as a Sample of Credit

A London Merchant’s record of Credit.

The Relationship between Credit and Wool Exports

.

Chapter 3: The Contribution of Alien Creditors to the English Economy, 1285–1289

            Italian Creditors, 1285-9

            Cahorsin Creditors, 1285-9

            Gascon Creditors, 1285-9

            German Merchants

            Other alien creditors

            London and Alien Merchants

 

Chapter 4: English Wealth and Credit, 1285–1289

London and its Region

Shropshire

Lincolnshire

Yorkshire

Hampshire

Credit in other coastal counties

Northumberland

The Inland Counties

 

Chapter 5: The Growth of English Credit, 1290–1294

Hampshire

Yorkshire

Shropshire

Lincolnshire

London

Bristol

The New Registries

Nottingham

Chester

 

Chapter 6: Warfare, Currency Confusion, and Falling Credit, 1295–1299

            Hampshire

            Lincolnshire

            Yorkshire

            Shropshire

            Herefordshire

            Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire

            Devon

            London

 

Chapter 7: Recovery and New Patterns of Credit, 1300–1304

London

Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire

Lincolnshire

Norfolk

Yorkshire

Shropshire

Herefordshire

Devon

 

Chapter 8: Monetary Expansion and Economic Growth, 1305–1309

            London and its Region

            Oxford and its Region

Bristol and its Region

Norfolk

Nottinghamshire

Derbyshire,

Leicestershire

Lincolnshire

Yorkshire

Shropshire

Herefordshire

Hampshire

Devon

 

Chapter 9: Crises, Conflicts, and Mercantile Credit, 1311–1329

            Circumstances inimical to credit

            Repeal of the Ordinances, 1322

            Differing regional concentrations of merchants

            London

            London’s Region

            Norfolk

            Suffolk

            Lincolnshire

            Yorkshire

            Shropshire

Herefordshire

Bristol, Somerset and Gloucestershire

Nottinghamshire

Staffordshire

 

Chapter 10: Warfare, Gold, and Regional Disparities, 1330–1339

London

The expansion of London’s Region

Norfolk

Suffolk

Growth in the Midlands:

Northamptonshire

Warwickshire

Oxfordshire

Bristol and Somerset

Dorset

Cornwall and Devon

Counties with Declining Credit:

Lincolnshire

Shropshire

Herefordshire

Yorkshire

 

Chapter 11: English Financiers, a Gold Currency and Plague, 1340–1349

Coin and Credit

            Counties with Falling Credit:

            Oxfordshire

            Norfolk

Counties with Increased Credit:

London

The Rise of London’s Mercers

Other London Creditors

Increased Provincial Enterprise and Credit

Devon

Wiltshire

Bristol

Gloucestershire

Herefordshire

Warwickshire

Lincolnshire

Newcastle and Northumberland

Yortkshire

 

Chapter 12: Conclusions

O autorze

Pamela Nightingale read history at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she stayed to do research for a Ph.D. which she was awarded in 1963. Her first three books were on the history of British India and Chinese Central Asia from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, until she changed her field to write a book on the trade and politics of medieval London. Her research led her to investigate and then to calendar the huge collection of certificates of debt in the National Archives on which this present book is based.  Her publications, two Senior Research Fellowships held at the Ashmolean Museum, and regular participation in an Oxford research seminar on medieval economic and social history led to her election in 1999 as a member of Oxford University's Faculty of History, and in 2010 she was awarded an Oxford D.Litt. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 

Blurb

This book charts the contributions made to the development of the late medieval English economy by enterprise, money, and credit in a period which saw its major export trade in wool, which earned most of its money-supply, suffer from prolonged periods of warfare, high taxation, adverse weather, and mortality of sheep. Consequently, the economy suffered from severe shortages of coin, as well as from internal political conflicts, before the plague of 1348-9 halved the population. The book  examines from the Statute Merchant certificates of debt, the extent to which credit, which normally reflects economic activity, was affected by these events, and the extent to which London, and the leading counties were affected differently by them. The analysis covers the entire kingdom, decade by decade, and thereby contributes to the controversy whether over-population or shortage of coin most inhibited its development.