The economics of English agriculture in the Middle Ages is the economic history of English agriculture from the Norman invasion in 1066, to the death of Henry VII in 1509. England's economy was fundamentally agricultural throughout the period, though even before the invasion the market economy was important to producers. Norman institutions, including serfdom, were superimposed on an existing system of open fields.
Over the next five centuries the English agricultural economy grew but struggled to support the growing population, and then suffered an acute crisis, resulting in significant political and economic change. By the end of the period, England would have an economy dominated by rented farms, many controlled by the rising class of the gentry.
English agriculture at the time of the Norman Invasion
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% put to pasture, with 15% covered by woodlands and the remaining 25% predominantly being moorland, fens and heaths.Cantor 1982a, pp17-18. Wheat formed 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 breed were much smaller than modern equivalents and most would have been slaughtered in winter.Dyer, 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, p.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, p.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, pp19-21. 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, 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, 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, p.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, pp81-2.
By 1086 when the Domesday Book was prepared, the Normans owned more than ninety percent of the land.Lindsay, p.279. Just two native Englishmen still had significant landholdings: Thorkill of Arden, who held seventy-one manors in Warwickshire, and Coleswain, who had forty-four manors.Lindsay, p.280.
Mid-medieval growth (1100-1290)
The 12th and 13th centuries were a period of huge economic growth in England. The population of England rose from around one and a half million in 1086 to around four or five million in 1300, stimulating increased agricultural outputs and the export of raw materials to Europe.Cantor 1982a, p.18 suggests an English population of 4 million; Jordan, p.12, suggests 5 million.
In contrast to the previous two centuries, England was relatively secure from invasion. Except for the years of the Anarchy, most military conflicts either had only localised economic impact or proved only temporarily disruptive. English economic thinking remained conservative, seeing the economy as consisting of three groups: the ordines, those who fought, or the nobility; laboratores, those who worked, in particular the peasantry; and oratores, those who prayed, or the clerics.Burton, p.8. Trade and merchants played little part in this model and were frequently vilified at the start of the period, although increasingly tolerated towards the end of the 13th century.Wood, p.15.
The Medieval Warm Period followed the Norman conquest.Bartlett, p.288. Average summer temperatures were higher, and rainfall marginally lower, than in the modern day and there is evidence of vineyards in southern England.Bartlett, p.288-9.
English agriculture and the landscape
Agriculture remained by far the most important part of the English economy during the 12th and 13th centuries. There remained a wide variety in English agriculture, influenced by local geography; in areas where grain could not be grown, other resources were exploited instead.Myers, p.55. In the Weald, for example, agriculture centred on grazing animals on the woodland pastures, whilst in the Fens fishing and bird-hunting was supplemented by basket making and peat cutting.Bailey, p.51.
In some locations, such as Lincolnshire and Droitwich, salt manufacture was important, including production for the export market.Bailey, p.53. Fishing became an important trade along the English coast, especially in Great Yarmouth and Scarborough, with the herring a particularly popular catch; salted at the coast, it could then be shipped inland or exported to Europe.Bailey, p.53; Keen, p.134. Piracy between competing English fishing fleets was not unknown during the period.
Sheep were the most common farm animal in England during the period, their numbers doubling by the 14th century.Bartlett, p.368; Bailey, p.44. Sheep became increasingly widely used for wool, particularly in the Welsh borders, Lincolnshire and the Pennines. Pigs remained popular on holdings because of their ability to scavenge for food. Oxen remained the primary plough animal, with horses used more widely on farms in the south of England towards the end of the 12th century.Bailey, p.44.
Rabbits were introduced from France in the 13th century, being farmed for their meat in special warrens.Cantor 1982b, p.83. The underlying productivity of English agriculture remained low, despite the increases in food production. Wheat prices fluctuated heavily year to year, depending on local harvests, with up to a third of the grain being produced in England potentially being for sale, much of it ending up in the growing towns.Bailey, p.44, 48.
Development of estate management
The Normans retained and reinforced the manorial system with its division between demesne and peasant lands paid for in agricultural labour. Landowners could profit from the sales of goods from their demesne lands and a local lord could also expect to receive income from fines and local customs, whilst more powerful nobles profited from their own regional courts and rights.Bartlett, p.315.
During the 12th century major landowners tended to rent out their demesne lands for money, motivated by static prices for produce and the chaos of the Anarchy between 1135 and 1153.Postan 1972, p.107. This practice began to alter in the 1180s and 1190s, spurred by the greater political stability.Postan 1972, p.111. In the first years of John's reign, agricultural prices almost doubled, at once increasing the potential profits on the demesne estates and also increasing the cost of living for the landowners themselves.Danziger and Gillingham, p.44. Landowners now attempted wherever possible to bring their demesne lands back into direct management, creating a system of administrators and officials to run their new system of estates.Danziger and Gillingham, p.45.
Agricultural development New land was brought into cultivation to meet demand for food, including drained marshes and fens, including Romney Marsh, the Somerset Levels and the Fens; royal forests from the late 12th century onwards; poorer lands in the north, south-west and in Welsh Marches.Cantor 1982a, p.19. The first windmills in England began to appear along the south and east coasts in the 12th century, expanding in number in the 13th, adding to the mechanized power available to the manors.Danziger and Gillingham, p.47.
By 1300 it has been estimated that there were more than 10,000 watermills in England, used both for grinding corn and for fulling cloth.Dyer, p.131. Improved ways of running estates began to be circulated and were popularised in Walter de Henley's famous book, Le Dite de Hosebondrie, written around 1280. In some regions and under some landowners investment and innovation increased yields significantly through improved ploughing and fertilisers, particularly in Norfolk where yields eventually equalled later 18th century levels.Bailey, p.44; Dyer, p.128.
The role of the Church in agriculture
The Church in England was a major landowner throughout the medieval period and played an important part in the development of agriculture and rural trade in the first two centuries of Norman rule. The Cistercian order first arrived in England in 1128, establishing around eighty new monastic houses over the next few years; the wealthy Augustinians also established themselves and expanded to occupy around 150 houses, all supported by agricultural estates, many of them in the north of England.Burton, p.55, 69; Dyer, p.114.
By the 13th century these and other orders were acquiring new lands and had become major economic players both as landowners and as middlemen in the expanding wool trade.Dyer, p.115. In particular, the Cistercians led the development of the grange system.Dyer, p.156. Granges were separate manors in which the fields were all cultivated by the monastic officials, rather than being divided up between demesne and rented fields, and became known for trialling new agricultural techniques during the period.Dyer, pp156-7. Elsewhere, many monasteries had significant economic impact on the landscape, such as the monks of Glastonbury, responsible for the draining of the Somerset Levels to create new pasture land.Danziger and Gillingham, p.38.
The military crusading order of the Knights Templar also held extensive property in England, bringing in around £2,200 per annum by the time of their fall.Forey, p.111, 230; Postan 1972, p.102. It was primarily rural holdings rented out for cash, but also some urban properties in London. Following the dissolution of the Templar order in France by Philip IV of France, Edward II ordered their properties to be seized and passed to the Hospitaller order in 1313, but in practice many properties were taken by local landowners and the hospital was still attempting to reclaim them twenty-five years later.Forey, p.230.