Read Online 1215: The Year of Magna Carta Ebook by Danny Danziger - Free Book Online
Authors: Danny Danziger
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towns were founded in England. Before the Norman Conquest the majority of new English boroughs had been royal foundations, but most of those established in the two centuries after 1066 were founded by wealthy landowners, bishops, abbots and, above all, secular nobles. Maurice Paynell, for example, created a new borough at Leeds by the bridge over the river Aire; and Richard de Argentein was responsible for Newmarket in Suffolk. Some boroughs attracted so few settlers that they remained villages – there were to be many of these ‘rural boroughs’ in Ireland – but the majority did well. Portsmouth was originally founded by a noble, Jean de Gisors, and was then taken over by Richard I in 1194 and developed as a naval base. Other successful new towns of this period included Honiton, founded by the earl of Devon; Chelmsford, founded by the bishop of London; Salisbury, founded by its bishop; Harwich, founded by the earls of Norfolk. One thing is crystal clear from the story of town foundation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The aristocratic landowners of the age were far from being contemptuous of the profits of trade. The Clare family, for example, as earls of Hertford and Gloucester, came to possess more than twenty boroughs.
Of course the urban boom was very far from being solely the creation of royal and aristocratic enterprise. These lords were riding a wave of rising population and rising production. As settlements grew in number and size more and more people were able to specialise as artisans, craftsmen or shopkeepers, making and selling goods in exchange for the agricultural production of the countryside or raw materials from the forest, quarries and mines. Markets proliferated. There were just two markets in Oxfordshire in 1086, but ten more by the 1220s. Everyone lived close enough to a market to be able to walk there and back in a day. Markets could and did spring up as spontaneously as car-boot sales today, but then, as now, they functioned better with some degree of regulation. Ensuring that markets had to be held on different days in different places, for example, allowed itinerant traders to adopt a circuit that kept them in business throughout the week. Even though a few places, such as Stowmarket, became market towns without ever being granted borough status, chartering a borough proved the most effective way of regulating – and promoting – a market.
Although a successful urban foundation depended upon lord and burgesses co-operating as shareholders in a joint enterprise, their interests were by no means identical, and as time went by they were increasingly likely to diverge. Bury St Edmunds was one of the earliest post-1066 urban developments. Abbot Baldwin (1065–97) laid out five new streets and a market place to the west of the abbey. The Domesday Book of 1086 noted that the abbey now had 342 houses on land that had been under the plough in the time of King Edward ‘the Confessor’ (1042–66). After a century of urban growth the monks felt that they were not making as much profit from St Edmund’s town as they should have been. Early in Richard I’s reign they went to see their formidable abbot, Samson, and complained that the income they derived from Bury had remained at its customary level of £40 a year, while ‘revenues from all the better towns and boroughs in England were rising to the advantage of the lords who possessed them’. These were monks with an eye on national economic trends. The burgesses of Bury, however, could not be budged: they looked to the king to protect what they called their ‘liberty’ – which often meant something more like ‘privilege’.
The monks of Bury were, however, right about the economy. Trade was booming. One of the principal engines of the growth of commerce was the increase in the money supply. At this time the only coin minted in north-west Europe was the silver penny, so the discovery in the 1160s of silver bearing ores in the Alps,
Of course the urban boom was very far from being solely the creation of royal and aristocratic enterprise. These lords were riding a wave of rising population and rising production. As settlements grew in number and size more and more people were able to specialise as artisans, craftsmen or shopkeepers, making and selling goods in exchange for the agricultural production of the countryside or raw materials from the forest, quarries and mines. Markets proliferated. There were just two markets in Oxfordshire in 1086, but ten more by the 1220s. Everyone lived close enough to a market to be able to walk there and back in a day. Markets could and did spring up as spontaneously as car-boot sales today, but then, as now, they functioned better with some degree of regulation. Ensuring that markets had to be held on different days in different places, for example, allowed itinerant traders to adopt a circuit that kept them in business throughout the week. Even though a few places, such as Stowmarket, became market towns without ever being granted borough status, chartering a borough proved the most effective way of regulating – and promoting – a market.
Although a successful urban foundation depended upon lord and burgesses co-operating as shareholders in a joint enterprise, their interests were by no means identical, and as time went by they were increasingly likely to diverge. Bury St Edmunds was one of the earliest post-1066 urban developments. Abbot Baldwin (1065–97) laid out five new streets and a market place to the west of the abbey. The Domesday Book of 1086 noted that the abbey now had 342 houses on land that had been under the plough in the time of King Edward ‘the Confessor’ (1042–66). After a century of urban growth the monks felt that they were not making as much profit from St Edmund’s town as they should have been. Early in Richard I’s reign they went to see their formidable abbot, Samson, and complained that the income they derived from Bury had remained at its customary level of £40 a year, while ‘revenues from all the better towns and boroughs in England were rising to the advantage of the lords who possessed them’. These were monks with an eye on national economic trends. The burgesses of Bury, however, could not be budged: they looked to the king to protect what they called their ‘liberty’ – which often meant something more like ‘privilege’.
The monks of Bury were, however, right about the economy. Trade was booming. One of the principal engines of the growth of commerce was the increase in the money supply. At this time the only coin minted in north-west Europe was the silver penny, so the discovery in the 1160s of silver bearing ores in the Alps,
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