1 Mayhew, N. J., ‘Population, money supply, and the velocity of circulation in England, 1300–1700’, Economic History Review xlviii, 2 (1995), 238–57Google Scholar, and the references cited there.

2 Fouquet, R. and Broadberry, S., ‘Seven centuries of European economic growth and decline’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 29, 1 (2015), 227–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and other students of comparative economic development have rightly written much about the likely effects of changing population, technologies, institutions (including banking), and urbanisation.

3 Metcalf, D. M., ‘How large was the Anglo-Saxon currency?’, Economic History Review 18 (1965), 475–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Metcalf, D. M., Thrymsas and Sceattas in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 3 vols. (London, 1993–1994)Google Scholar; and Metcalf, D. M., An atlas of Anglo-Saxon and Norman coin finds, c.973–1086 (London, 1998)Google Scholar.

4 Naismith, Rory, Money and power in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2012), 252–92Google Scholar, especially at 291–2. The bibliography, 323–5, lists over thirty works by Michael Metcalf.

5 Fairburn, Henry, ‘Was there a money economy in late Anglo-Saxon and Norman England?’, English Historical Review cxxxiv, 570 (October 2019), 1081–135Google Scholar.

6 For example, Lennard, R. V., Rural England, 1086–1135 (Oxford, 1959)Google Scholar; Harvey, S., Domesday: book of judgement (Oxford, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Naismith, R., ‘The English monetary economy, c.973–1100: the contribution of single-finds’, Economic History Review lxvi (2013), 198–225CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 D. L. Farmer, ‘Some price fluctuations in Angevin England’, Economic History Review, 2^nd ser. IX (1956), 34–43. P. D. A. Harvey, ‘The English Inflation of 1180–1220’, Past and Present 61 (1978), 3–30. N. J. Mayhew, ‘Frappes de monnaies et hausse des prix en Angleterre de 1180 à 1220’, in John Day ed., Études d'histoire monétaire (Lille, 1984), 159–77.

8 Christopher Dyer, An age of transition? Economy and society in England in the later middle ages (Oxford, 2005), 218–20; Christopher Dyer, Making a living in the middle ages: the people of Britain 850–1520 (New Haven and London, 2009), 364.

9 R. H. Britnell and B. M. S. Campbell eds., A commercialising economy: England 1086 to c.1300 (Manchester, 1995). J. Hatcher, ‘The great slump in the mid-fifteenth century’, in R. H. Britnell and J. Hatcher eds., Progress and problems in medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), 244. Also see M. Bailey, ‘Demographic decline in late medieval England: some thoughts on recent research’, Economic History Review 49 (1996), 11.

10 Postan was dismissive of suggestions that documentary evidence for the use of money should not be taken at face value. M. M. Postan, ‘The rise of a money economy’, Economic History Review 14 (1944), 126–7.

11 J. W. Kirby ed., Plumpton letters and papers, Camden Society (Cambridge, 1996), no.11, 1464. J. Maddicott, ‘The English peasantry and the demands of the crown 1294–1341’, Past and Present, Supplement 1, (1975), 49.

12 C. Briggs, Credit and village society in fourteenth-century England (Oxford, 2009); P. Nightingale, Enterprise, money and credit in England before the Black Death 1285–1349 (Cham, 2018), 3–4, 23 (notes 8 to 15) citing further works by Campbell and Britnell, and ‘A crisis of credit in the fifteenth century or of historical interpretation’, British Numismatic Journal 83 (2013), 149–63. M. F. Stevens, ‘London creditors and the fifteenth-century depression’, Economic History Review 69 (2016), 1083–107. R. Goddard, Credit and trade in later medieval England, 1353–1532 (London, 2016). Hatcher, ‘The great slump’, 244. Dyer, Age of transition, 176.

13 R. M. Smith, ‘Some reflections on the evidence for the origins of the ‘European Marriage Pattern’ in England’, in C. Harris ed., Sociological Review, Monograph 28 (The sociology of the family: new directions for Britain) (1979), 74–112.

14 Dyer, Age of transition, 14; D. M. Palliser ed., The Cambridge urban history of Britain (Cambridge, 2000), 4.

15 Dyer, Age of transition, 173–9.

16 Dyer, ‘Peasants and Coins: The uses of money in the middle ages’, British Numismatic Journal 67 (1997), 30–47. For non-monetary expedients employed alongside money, and their influence on Velocity (Y/M), see Mayhew, ‘Modelling medieval monetisation’, in R. H. Britnell and B. M. S. Campbell eds., A commercialising economy, 55–77, and Mayhew, ‘Population, money supply, and the velocity of circulation in England, 1300–1700’, Economic History Review 48 (1995), 238–57.

17 PROME, Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed., C. Given-Wilson, P. Brand, S. Phillips, M. Ormrod, G. Martin, A. Curry and R. Horrox (Woodbridge, 2005), Scholarly Digital Editions (accessed 25 June 2018) PROME ii,62 item 15 (1331); PROME ii,106 (1339); PROME intro 1340; PROME ii,271 (1362); PROME iii,319,320 (1394); PROME iii,470 (1401); PROME iii,498 (1402); PROME iii,540 (1404); PROME iv,69 (1415); PROME iv,255 (1423); PROME vi,184 (1478). Statutes of the Realm, I, 131–3 (1299), 269–74 (1335), A. Luders ed., Record Commission 1810. Concern about small change was frequent but silver shortage was often more general. For small change see below and T. J. Sargent and F. R. Velde, The big problem of small change (Princeton, 2002).

18 Christine Desan, Making money: Coin, currency, and the coming of capitalism (Oxford, 2014). David Fox, ‘The Case of Mixt Monies’, Cambridge Law Journal 70 (2011), 144–74; and David Fox, ‘The enforcement of nominal values to money in the Medieval and Early Modern Common Law’, in David Fox and Ernst Wolfgang eds., Money in the Western legal tradition: middle ages to Bretton Woods (Oxford, 2016), 203–23. For an endorsement of the principle of Nominalism, see also H. A. Miskimin, Money and power in fifteenth-century France (New Haven, 1984), 54–5, and J. H. Munro, ‘Money, prices, wages, and “Profit Inflation” in Spain, the Southern Netherlands, and England during the Price Revolution era, ca.1520-ca.1650’, História e economia: revista interdisciplinar 4 (2008), 41 note 83.

19 Such an alteration in the intrinsic pure metal content of coinage may be achieved by changing the purity of the alloy, or by changing the weight of the coins, or by increasing the face value of coins without enhancing their intrinsic content, or by any combination of these changes. Nicholas Mayhew, Sterling: the history of a currency (London, 1999), 285.

20 For a fuller account of the importance of Desan's work, see Mayhew, ‘Government, Money and the Law’, Law and History Review 39 (2021), 1–14.

21 Before the sixteenth century the prohibition of usury meant interest payments were usually concealed, until Henry VIII recognised the payment of interest up to a maximum rate of 10 per cent in 1545. The legal maximum was reduced gradually reaching 5 per cent in 1713. Albert Feaveryear, The pound sterling (Oxford, 1963), 242–3.

22 A. C. Hotson, Respectable banking: the search for stability in London's money and credit markets since the great currency crisis of 1695 (Oxford, 2017), Tables 1 to 7, gives detail on the mint price paid for bullion together with other minting charges. Also https://oxford.academia.edu/AnthonyHotson.

23 For an explanation of ‘hard’ or ‘strong’ currencies, see Mayhew, Sterling, 287. The process is discussed more fully in C. E. Challis, A new history of the Royal Mint (Cambridge, 1992), and M. Allen, Mints and money in medieval England (Cambridge, 2012). It was only the much more extreme debasements of Henry VIII and Edward VI which resulted in severe inflation, economic disruption, and widespread popular discontent. J. Bishop, ‘Currency, conversation, and control: political discourse and the coinage in mid-Tudor England’, English Historical Review CXXXI (2016), 764–72 for contemporary opinions.

24 J. E. T. Rogers, Six centuries of work and wages: the history of English labour (London, 1890), 274–5, 341–2. Rogers wrongly believed prices did not react to debasements because payments were ordinarily made by weight. For modern scholarship rejecting this assumption, see Desan, Making money.

25 N. Mayhew, ‘Was later medieval sterling too strong’, in Kevin Butcher ed., Debasement: manipulation of coin standards in pre-modern monetary systems (Oxford, 2020), 208–18.

26 M. M. Postan, ‘The fifteenth century’, Economic History Review 9 (1939), 160–7.

27 S. Broadberry, B. M. S. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton, B. van Leeuwen, British Economic Growth 1270–1870 (Cambridge, 2015), 204, Table 5.05, and Table 1 of Nominal GDP 1270s to 1690s. For prices, see N. J. Mayhew, ‘Prices in England, 1170–1750’, Past and Present 219 (May 2013), and the sources cited there.

28 J. Hatcher, ‘The great slump’, 237–72. P. Nightingale, ‘England and the European depression of the mid-fifteenth century’, Journal of European Economic History 26 (1997), 631–56, describes the severity of the Depression in terms similar to those used by Postan and Hatcher, but unlike them doubts an explanation based on mortality, drawing attention instead to the later medieval shortage of silver coin, 640–1.

29 See note 17 above.

30 Mayhew, ‘Prices in England’, table 4, 28.

31 Mayhew, ‘Velocity’, 399.

32 K. Ball, MSt dissertation, Oxford University, https://www.academia.edu/26434624/Royal_Wealth_and_the_English_Money_Stock_During_the_Reign_of_Henry_VII, 20–3.

33 P. Nightingale, ‘England and the European Depression’, 640–1, 647 and ‘Gold, credit, and mortality: distinguishing deflationary pressures on the late medieval English economy’, Economic History Review 63 (2010), 1081–104.

34 J. H. Munro, ‘Bullion flows and monetary contraction in late-medieval England and the Low Countries’, in J. F. Richards ed., Precious metals in the medieval and early modern worlds (Durham N. C., 1983), 97–158, especially 125. He also observes (p. 123) that ‘the influx of Central European silver into north-western Europe in the second half of the fifteenth century did little to offset the overall trend of monetary contraction…’.

35 C. M. Cipolla, The monetary policy of fourteenth-century Florence (Berkeley, 1982), 32–3.

36 F. C. Lane and R. C. Mueller, Money and banking in medieval and renaissance Venice, vol. 1, Coins and moneys of Account (Baltimore, 1985), ch. 18.

37 J. H. Munro, ‘Deflation and the petty coinage problem in the late-medieval economy: The case of Flanders, 1334–1484’, Explorations in Economic History 25 (1988), 402–3. During the later Middle Ages England only reduced the fineness of its silver coins once, when halfpennies and farthings were struck at 83.33 per cent between 1335 and 1343. C. E. Challis, The Royal Mint, 700.

38 Mayhew, ‘Was later medieval sterling too strong?’, 214.

39 J. Lucassen, ‘Deep monetisation in Eurasia in the long run’, in R. J. van der Spek and B. van Leeuwen eds., Money, currency and crisis: in search of trust, 2000 BC to AD 2000 (Abingdon, 2018) especially 63–9.

40 Desan, Making money, Chapter 5, especially 210–15.

41 See K. Ball, ‘The role of demographic and monetary factors in the late medieval economies of England, Scotland and the Southern Low Countries (1351–1530)’, DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford 2018, available on Open Access through the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Figure 2.9, ‘Bimetallic Ratios in England, Scotland, Flanders and Brabant’. Note that exceptionally the English Gold:Silver ratio moved in favour of silver in the 1420s and 1430s, permitting significant output of silver groats in the Calais mint (in English hands) and in London.

42 The reduction in the weights of the Scottish currency in 1367 was justified ‘propter raritatem pecuniae de argento ad presens in regno nostro’. E. Gemmill and N. Mayhew, Changing values in medieval Scotland: A study of prices, money and weights and measures (Cambridge, 1995), 117.

43 Ibid., Tables at 138–9.

44 Ball, ‘Demographic and Monetary factors’, Figure 2.5, ‘The Silver Weight of English, Scottish, Flemish and Brabantine pence’. Figure 2.3, ‘The Value of North-West European silver coins calculated in English sterling’. Figure 2.4, ‘The value of North-West European silver coin calculated in Florentine Florins’. P. Spufford, Money and its use in medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1992), 290–99, documents debasement across a range of currencies, confirming the unusual strength of Sterling.

45 Munro, ‘Coinage debasements in Burgundian Flanders 1334–1482: monetary or fiscal policies?’, Table 1A The Flemish Silver Coinage from 1300 to 1482; Table 1B Alterations of the Flemish Silver Coinages 1384–1482, with Bullion Prices, Siegniorage and Brassage Fees, in D. Nicholas, B. Bachrach, and J. Murray eds., Comparative perspectives on history and historians: essays in memory of Bryce Lyon (1920–2007) (Kalamazoo, 2012), 336–41.

46 Munro, ‘Monetary or fiscal Policies’, 329: ‘The historical lesson is clearly demonstrated in table 2, which relates changes in Flemish silver coinages to changes in the price level, for each year from 1380 to 1482. Coinage debasement, and consequent increases in money supplies, never produced correspondingly proportional inflations’. Munro goes on to identify a number of reasons why the inflationary response to debasements was not directly proportionate.

47 E. Fournial, Histoire monétaire de l'Occident médiéval (Paris, 1970), 133–6, and Conclusion, 159. For the pied de monnaie, see especially 100–01.

48 H. A. Miskimin, Money, prices and foreign exchange in fourteenth-century France (New Haven, 1963), and Money and power.

49 Miskimin's English figures are based on London mint data, but information on Calais, Canterbury, and York are also available. See Challis ed., Royal Mint, and Allen, Mints and Money.

50 Miskimin, Money and Power, 54–5, confirms Desan and Munro's observations on Nominalism. Desan, Making money; also Munro, ‘Money, prices, wages, and “Profit Inflation”’, 41, note 83.

51 Miskimin, Money and Power, Graph III, 56–61 and 66, citing his graphs IV and V.

52 Ibid., 67–8.

53 E. Fournial, ‘L'indexation des créances et des rentes au XIVe siècle’, Le Moyen Âge 69 (1963), 583–96. P-C. Timbal, J. Metman, and H. Martin, Les obligations contractuelles dans le droit français des XIIIe et XIVe siècles d'après la jurisprudence du Parlement vol. I (Paris, 1973), 335–90. Marc Bompaire and Françoise Dumas, Numismatique Médiévale: Monnaies et Documents d'Origine Française, (L'Atelier du Médiéviste 7, dirigée par Jacques Berlioz et Olivier Guyotjeannin), (Turnhout, 2000), 337–51. I am grateful to Marc Bompaire and François Velde for advice.

54 For a brief sketch of the course of later medieval German debasements in Prague and Meissen, see Nicholas Mayhew, ‘The Purchase of Silver in the English Mint 1220–1500’, in Rudolf Tasser and Ekkehard Westermann eds., Der Tiroler Bergbau und die Depression der europäischen Montanwirtschaft im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert (Bolzano, 2004), 156–7. For the falling silver content of the Lübeck pfennig, see W. Jesse, Der Wendishe Münzverein (Lübeck, 1928), 209. Thanks to Oliver Volckart for his advice on Lübeck.

55 Fournial, Histoire monétaire, 100–36, shows how the pied de monnaie system indicates the extent of debasement in France.

56 Ball, ‘Demographic and monetary factors’, notes that England, unlike Scotland and the Burgundian Netherlands, did not usually lower the intrinsic value of small change relative to larger silver denominations, and the resulting shortage of small change may have affected the movement of prices, 263, 268, Figs 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4. Munro, ‘Monetary or fiscal policies’, 336–41, provides in minute detail the data charting the progress of Flemish debasement and occasional reinforcements 1300 to 1482.

57 Ball, ‘Demographic and monetary factors’, Figs 4.1, 4.3, 4.5, 4.8.

58 The behaviour of English prices is discussed and summarized in Mayhew, ‘Prices in England’, 3–39, especially Table 1, based on the Phelps Brown and Hopkins, and the Robert Allen Indices.

59 Maynard Keynes in a broadcast in January 1931 entitled ‘Spending and saving’, subsequently published in Essays in persuasion (London, 1931), 149–50.

60 Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, Table 5.06, 205.

61 Hatcher, ‘The great slump’, 237–72, which shares many of the features noted by Nightingale in her description, ‘England and the European Depression’, although she prioritises a monetary explanation, while also considering high mortality, political instability, and trade disputes.

62 Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, 205, estimates English nominal GDP falling from the 1300s – £5.43m, to 1350s – £4.57m, to 1400s – £4.03m, to 1450s – £3.25m, and to 1500s – £4.13m.

63 Hatcher, ‘The great slump’, 240–41.

64 R. Hilton, ‘Women traders in medieval England’, in Class conflict and the crisis of feudalism: essays in medieval social history (London, 2003), 207, Hilton identifies monetisation as a key transmission mechanism between peasants and landlords, town and country.

65 For wages, see E. H. Phelps Brown and S. V. Hopkins, ‘Seven centuries of building wages’ and ‘Seven centuries of the prices of consumables, compared with builders’ wage-rates’, both in E. M. Carus-Wilson ed., Essays in economic history (London, 1962), 168–78 and 179–96; G. Clark, ‘The long march of history: farm wages, population and economic growth, England 1209–1869’, Economic History Review 60 (2007), 97–135; C. Dyer, ‘A golden age rediscovered: labourers’ wages in the fifteenth century’, and R. Britnell, ‘Labour turnover and wage rates on the demesnes of Durham priory, 1370–1410’ both in Allen and D'Maris Coffman eds., Money, Prices and Wages (Basingstoke, 2015), 158–79, and 180–95. For women specifically, see P. J. P. Goldberg, Women, work, and life cycle in a medieval economy: Women in York and Yorkshire c. 1300–1520 (Oxford, 1992); J. Bennett, Beer and brewsters in England: Women's work in a changing world, 1300–1600 (Oxford, 1996); J. Humphries and J. Weisdorf, ‘The wages of women in England 1260–1850’, Journal of Economic History 75 (2015), 405–46; note that their Table 1A, pp. 431–32 provides wages in pence per day of unskilled men (Clark, 2007) and women by decades, 1260–1850, together with Allen's CPI. For prices, see N. J. Mayhew, ‘Prices in England’, and the sources listed there.

66 J. Hatcher, ‘Unreal wages: long-run living standards and the ‘Golden Age’ of the fifteenth century’, in B. Dodds and C. D. Liddy eds., Commercial activity, markets and entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages: essays in honour of Richard Britnell (Woodbridge, 2011), 1–24 concedes this point though making the distinction between real wages and earnings. For better nutrition see C. Dyer, Standards of living in the later middle ages: Social change in England c. 1200–1520 (Cambridge, 1994), 151–60.

67 M. Bailey, ‘Demographic decline’, 14, suggests ‘Within, say, six to eight months the enterprising labourer would have earned sufficient income to support a comfortable lifestyle for that year’. Humphries and Weisdorf, ‘The wages of women’, agree.

68 Humphries and Weisdorf, ‘The wages of women’, find that unmarried, live-in servants’ wages and board did not match the very high wages paid for short-term seasonal work.

69 Hatcher, ‘Unreal wages’.

70 Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, 113.

71 Recall once more Munro's discussion of the role of moderate inflation in supporting economic growth in ‘Profit Inflation’.

72 J. Langdon and J. Masschaele, ‘Commercial activity and population growth in medieval England’, Past and Present 190 (2006), 36 and for their view of the fifteenth century, 78.

73 Nightingale, ‘England and the European Depression’, 647.

74 Guy Bois, Crise du féodalisme. Économie rurale et démographie en Normandie orientale du début du XIVe siècle au milieu du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1976), 121–4. GDP data from Holland is less reliable before 1510. Fouquet and Broadberry, 239.

75 Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, ch. 1, 3–45.

76 Ibid., 22 (our italics). For Munro's explanation see his ‘Bullion flows and monetary contraction’.

77 Ibid., 20, 29. See also their Figure 5.05 on p. 204.

78 Ball, ‘Demographic and monetary factors’, 145–8, and A. Grant, Independence and Nationhood: Scotland 1306–1469 (London, 1984), 74–5.

79 Gemmill and Mayhew, Changing Values, Chapter 6 offers an up-beat assessment of later medieval Scotland, but see especially, 376–7, citing particularly Margaret Sanderson, Scottish Rural Society in the Sixteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1982).

80 Ball, ‘Demographic and monetary factors’, 112, 153–7, Figure 2.21, citing W. Prevenier and W. Blockmans, The Burgundian Netherlands (Cambridge, 1986), 392; W. Blockmans, G. Pieters, W. Prevenier, and R. W. M. van Schaik, ‘Tussen Crisis en Welvaart; Sociale Verandering 1300–1500’, in D. P. Blok ed., Aldemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden (12 vols., Haarlem, 1980), iv, 44–52; J. Roosen, and D. Curtis, ‘The “light touch” of the Black Death in the Southern Netherlands: an urban trick?’, Economic History Review 72 (2019), 32–56; H. van der Wee, The growth of the Antwerp market and the European economy (fourteenth–sixteenth centuries) (The Hague, 1963), i 546, ii 61–70. For England, Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth, 205, Table 5.06.

81 Dyer, Age of transition, 157, 235; Making a living, 266. P. Nightingale, ‘Some new evidence of crises and trends of mortality in late medieval England’, Past and Present 187 (2005), 33–68, reprinted in Mortality, trade, money and credit in late medieval England (1285–1531) (Abingdon, 2021), 28–9. Page references in our article are those from the 2021 reprint.

82 Histoire de la Population Française, under the direction of Jacques Dupâquier (Paris, 1988). The first volume covers the subject up to the early sixteenth century. See also B. Dodds, ‘Patterns of decline: arable production in England, France and Castile, 1370–1450’, in B. Dodds and R. H. Britnell eds., Agriculture and rural society after the Black Death: common themes and regional variations (Hatfield, 2008), ch. 7.

83 Dubois, Population, 324, 327.

84 Ibid, 328.

85 Ibid, 346, for the terrible effects of war on ordinary family life.

86 Arlette Higounet-Nadal, in Histoire de la Population, 367, cites a famous letter of Jean Jouvenel des Ursins to the Estates of Blois 1433 identifying causes of depopulation: war, famine, mortality.

87 Dubois, Population, 329.

88 Ibid., 347–8, references the work of P. Desportes, ‘La population de Reims au xve siècle, d'après un dénombrement de 1422’, Le Moyen Âge, 72 (1966), 463–509, on Saint Pierre and another Reims parish, Saint-Hillaire. Similar numbers were found by Pirenne for Ypres 1412 and 1437.

89 Dubois, Population, 348–50.

90 Ibid., 333–5.

91 Ibid., 358.

92 Ibid., 353, citing N. Coulet.

93 Ibid., 353.

94 Ibid., 352–3.

95 Ibid., 351.

96 Dodds, ‘Agriculture and rural society’, 130. He remained unclear what mechanism might have driven the demographic recovery in France and Castile.

97 Arlette Higounet-Nadal, Chapter VII Le Relèvement, Histoire de la Population Française, 367–420.

98 Ibid., 371.

99 Bois, Crise du féodalisme, 51–72.

100 Dubois, Population, 371–2.

101 For a powerful critique of the fertility school favoured by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population, see J. Hatcher, ‘Understanding the population history of England 1450–1750’, Past and Present 180 (2003), 83–130. The fertility school have generally responded gently, yet firmly.

102 The key texts are J. Hatcher, ‘Mortality in the fifteenth century: some new evidence’, Economic History Review 39 (1986), 19–38 on Canterbury Cathedral Priory and B. Harvey, Living and dying in England 1100–1540 (Oxford, 1993), 112–45, on Westminster Abbey. Harvey p.114–5 also conveniently summarises Hatcher's data. For a comparison of life expectancy at Westminster and Canterbury, see Harvey's Figure IV.3, 128. See also J. Hatcher, D. Stone, and A. Piper, ‘Monastic mortality: Durham Priory, 1395–1529’, Economic History Review 59 (2006), 667–87. See also Bailey, ‘Demographic decline’, 1, citing the ‘golden age of bacteria’ in north-west Europe, L. R. Poos, A rural society after the Black Death: Essex 1350–1525 (Cambridge, 1991), and R. M. Smith, ‘Measuring adult mortality in an age of plague; England, 1349–1540’, in M. Bailey and S. Rigby eds., Town and countryside in the age of the Black Death: essays in honour of John Hatcher (Turnhout, 2012), 58.

103 Harvey, Living and Dying, 129, 143 thought it is quite likely that monastic mortality rates were higher than those normal elsewhere.

104 Smith, ‘Measuring adult mortality’, 43–85, offers a carefully measured analysis, concluding tentatively that monastic mortality was probably higher than in non-monastic samples.

105 Nightingale, ‘Crises and Trends of Mortality in late medieval England’, 33–68. Table of Quinquennial death rates of creditors 1305–1529, at p. 53.

106 Poos, Essex, 111–20.

107 Ibid, 120.

108 Ibid, 125–9. Quotation at p. 129.

109 Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle. Jan Luiten van Zanden with Tine de Moor, ‘Girlpower. The European marriage pattern and labour markets in the North Sea region in the later medieval period’, in J. L. van Zanden ed., The long road to the Industrial Revolution: The European Economy in a Global Perspective, 1000–1800 (Leiden, 2009), 101–41.

110 Judith M. Bennett, ‘Married and not: Weston's grown children in 1268–1269’, Continuity and Change 34 (2019), 151–82 and Judith M. Bennett, ‘Wretched girls, wretched boys and the European Marriage Pattern in England (c.1250–1350)’, Continuity and Change 34 (2019), 315–47, endorsing several papers by R. M. Smith, including his ‘Human resources’, in G. Astill and A. Grant eds., The countryside of medieval England (Oxford, 1988), 188–212.

111 Bennett, ‘Wretched girls, wretched boys’, 324–38, for the costs of marriage, and married life.

112 Hatcher, ‘The great slump’, passim.