This book analyzes the economic and social development of Britain and Ireland between 1050 and 1530. It compares economic institutions, the structure of production and rates of economic development and is richly supplied with up-to-date evidence. After considering the principal geographical, cultural and political constraints on economic development, the book examines in detail the development of towns and trade, settlement patterns, agriculture and relations between lords and tenures. The book is structured so that it can be used on both short courses and longer ones, with the material...

This is a study of one of England's principal cloth towns during the late Middle Ages. It draws extensively upon unpublished records in Colchester and elsewhere, and is the first history of a medieval English town to analyse in conjunction the relationships between overseas trade, urban development and changes in rural society. First it describes Colchester in the earlier fourteenth century, its trade, its agricultural setting and its form of government. The book then shows how cloth-making grew in Colchester after the Black Death and how the population increased until about 1414. The...