The economy of England in the Middle Ages, from the Norman invasion in 1066, to the death of Henry VII in 1509, was fundamentally agricultural, though even before the invasion the local market economy was important to producers. Norman institutions, including serfdom, were superimposed on an existing system of open fields and mature, well-established towns involved in international trade.Bartlett, p. 313; Dyer 2009, p. 14. Over the five centuries of the Middle Ages, the English economy at first grew and then suffered an acute crisis, resulting in significant political and economic change. Despite economic dislocation in urban and extraction economies, including shifts in the holders of wealth and the location of these economies, the economic output of towns and mines developed and intensified over the period.Homer, p. 58; Hatcher 1996, p. 40; Bailey, p. 55. By the end of the period, England had an economy dominated by rented farms controlled by gentry, and a thriving community of merchants and corporations.
The 12th and 13th centuries saw a small development of the English economy.Cantor 1982a, p. 18. This was partially driven by the growth in the population from around 1.5 million at the time of the creation of the Domesday Book in 1086 to between 4 and 5 million in 1300. England remained a primarily agricultural economy, with the rights of major landowners and the duties of serfs increasingly enshrined in English law.Bailey, p. 41; Bartlett, p. 321; Cantor 1982a, p. 19. More land, much of it at the expense of the royal forests, was brought into production to feed the growing population or to produce wool for export to Europe. Many hundreds of new towns, some of them planned, sprung up across England, supporting the creation of guilds, charter fairs and other important medieval institutions. The descendants of the Jewish financiers who had first come to England with William the Conqueror played a significant role in the growing economy, along with the new Cistercian and Augustinian religious orders that came to become major players in the wool trade of the north.Hillaby, p. 16; Dyer 2009, p. 115. Mining increased in England, with the silver boom of the 12th century helping to fuel a fast-expanding currency.
Economic growth began to falter by the end of the 13th century, owing to a combination of over-population, land shortages and depleted soils. The loss of life in the Great Famine of 1315–17 shook the English economy severely and population growth ceased; the first outbreak of the Black Death in 1348 then killed around half the English population, with major implications for the post-plague economy. The agricultural sector shrank, with higher wages, lower prices and shrinking profits leading to the final demise of the old demesne system and the advent of the modern farming system of cash rents for lands. The Peasants Revolt of 1381 shook the older feudal order and limited the levels of royal taxation considerably for a century to come. The 15th century saw the growth of the English cloth industry and the establishment of a new class of international English merchant, increasingly based in London and the South-West, prospering at the expense of the older, shrinking economy of the eastern towns. These new trading systems brought about the end of many of the international fairs and the rise of the chartered company. Together with improvements in metalworking and shipbuilding, this represents the end of the medieval economy, and the beginnings of the early modern period in English economics.
Invasion and the early Norman period (1066–1100) William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, defeating the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings and placing the country under Norman rule. This campaign was followed by fierce military operations known as the Harrying of the North in 1069–70, extending Norman authority across the north of England. William's system of government was broadly feudal in that the right to possess land was linked to service to the king, but in many other ways the invasion did little to alter the nature of the English economy.Dyer 2009, p. 8. Most of the damage done in the invasion was in the north and the west of England, some of it still recorded as "wasteland" in 1086. Many of the key features of the English agricultural and financial system remained in place in the decades immediately after the conquest.
Agriculture and mining
English agriculture
Agriculture formed the bulk of the English economy at the time of the Norman invasion. Twenty years after the invasion, 35% of England was covered in arable land, 25% was put to pasture, 15% was covered by woodlands and the remaining 25% was predominantly moorland, fens and heaths.Cantor 1982a, pp. 17–8. Wheat was the single most important arable crop, but rye, barley and oats were also cultivated extensively. In the more fertile parts of the country, such as the Thames valley, the Midlands and the east of England, legumes and beans were also cultivated. Sheep, cattle, oxen and pigs were kept on English holdings, although most of these breeds were much smaller than modern equivalents and most would have been slaughtered in winter.Dyer 2009, p. 25.
Manorial system
In the century prior to the Norman invasion, England's great estates, owned by the king, bishops, monasteries and thegns, had been slowly broken up as a consequence of inheritance, wills, marriage settlements or church purchases.Dyer 2009, pp. 27, 29. Most of the smaller landowning nobility lived on their properties and managed their own estates. The pre-Norman landscape had seen a trend away from isolated hamlets and towards larger villages engaged in arable cultivation in a band running north–south across England.Dyer 2009, pp. 19, 22. These new villages had adopted an open field system in which fields were divided into small strips of land, individually owned, with crops rotated between the field each year and the local woodlands and other common lands carefully managed.Dyer 2009, pp. 19–21. Agricultural land on a manor was divided between some fields that the landowner would manage and cultivate directly, called demesne land, and the majority of the fields that would be cultivated by local peasants, who would pay rent to the landowner either through agricultural labour on the lord's demesne fields or through cash or produce.Bartlett, p. 313. Around 6,000 watermills of varying power and efficiency had been built in order to grind flour, freeing up peasant labour for other more productive agricultural tasks.Dyer 2009, p. 26. The early English economy was not a subsistence economy and many crops were grown by peasant farmers for sale to the early English towns.Dyer 2009, p. 14.
The Normans initially did not significantly alter the operation of the manor or the village economy.Douglas, p. 310. William reassigned large tracts of land amongst the Norman elite, creating vast estates in some areas, particularly along the Welsh border and in Sussex. The biggest change in the years after the invasion was the rapid reduction in the number of slaves being held in England.Bartlett, p. 319; Douglas, p. 311. In the 10th century slaves had been very numerous, although their number had begun to diminish as a result of economic and religious pressure.Dyer 2009, pp. 36–8. Nonetheless, the new Norman aristocracy proved harsh landlords.Douglas, p. 312. The wealthier, formerly more independent Anglo-Saxon peasants found themselves rapidly sinking down the economic hierarchy, swelling the numbers of unfree workers, or serfs, forbidden to leave their manor and seek alternative employment. Those Anglo-Saxon nobles who had survived the invasion itself were rapidly assimilated into the Norman elite or economically crushed.Dyer 2009, pp. 81–2.
Creation of the forests
The Normans also established the royal forests. In Anglo-Saxon times there had been special woods for hunting called "hays", but the Norman forests were much larger and backed by legal mandate.Dyer 2009, p. 18. The new forests were not necessarily heavily wooded but were defined instead by their protection and exploitation by the crown. The Norman forests were subject to special royal jurisdiction; forest law was "harsh and arbitrary, a matter purely for the King's will".Huscroft, p. 97. Forests were expected to supply the king with hunting grounds, raw materials, goods and money. Revenue from forest rents and fines came to become extremely significant and forest wood was used for castles and royal ship building.Cantor 1982b, p. 63. Several forests played a key role in mining, such as the iron mining and working in the Forest of Dean and lead mining in the Forest of High Peak. Several other groups bound up economically with forests; many monasteries had special rights in particular forests, for example for hunting or tree felling.Cantor 1982b, p. 59. The royal forests were accompanied by the rapid creation of locally owned parks and chases.Cantor 1982a, p. 18; Cantor 1982b, p. 81.
Trade, manufacturing and the towns
Although primarily rural, England had a number of old, economically important towns in 1066. A large amount of trade came through the Eastern towns, including London, York, Winchester, Lincoln, Norwich, Ipswich and Thetford.Stenton, pp. 162, 166. Much of this trade was with France, the Low Countries and Germany, but the North-East of England traded with partners as far away as Sweden.Douglas, p. 303. Cloth was already being imported to England before the invasion through the mercery trade.Sutton, p. 2.
Some towns, such as York, suffered from Norman sacking during William's northern campaigns.Douglas, p. 313. Other towns saw the widespread demolition of houses to make room for new motte and bailey fortifications, as was the case in Lincoln. The Norman invasion also brought significant economic changes with the arrival of the first Jews to English cities.Douglas, p. 314. William I brought over wealthy Jews from the Rouen community in Normandy to settle in London, apparently to carry out financial services for the crown.Hillaby, pp. 16–7. In the years immediately after the invasion, a lot of wealth was drawn out of England in various ways by the Norman rulers and reinvested in Normandy, making William immensely wealthy as an individual ruler.Douglas, pp. 303–4.
The minting of coins was decentralised in the Saxon period; every borough was mandated to have a mint and therefore a centre for trading in bullion.Stenton, p. 162. Nonetheless, there was strict royal control over these moneyers, and coin dies could only be made in London. William retained this process and generated a high standard of Norman coins, leading to the use of the term "sterling" as the name for the Norman silver coins.
Governance and taxation
William I inherited the Anglo-Saxon system in which the king drew his revenues from: a mixture of customs; profits from re-minting coinage; fines; profits from his own demesne lands; and the system of English land-based taxation called the geld.Douglas, p. 299. William reaffirmed this system, enforcing collection of the geld through his new system of sheriffs and increasing the taxes on trade.Douglas, pp. 299, 302. William was also famous for commissioning the Domesday Book in 1086, a vast document which attempted to record the economic condition of his new kingdom.
Mid-medieval growth (1100–1290)