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The Economic Crisis of the 1690s in England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2022
Abstract
Beginning in 1689, England was struck by not one but three economic shocks. First, the war against France – Europe's greatest military power – attracted swarms of hostile warships and privateers that heavily damaged English maritime trade, while military expenses also led to a doubling of the tax burden. Second, wartime conditions and government mismanagement sparked a currency crisis in 1695–7 that halted much domestic commerce and caused a run on the recently founded Bank of England. Third, William III's reign brought rapid inflation in the cost of the necessities of life, especially food and fuel, which resulted in prolonged widespread hunger from 1693 onwards. Yet, these hardships have rarely received more than a passing mention in political histories of the Glorious Revolution and do not fit easily into the narratives of economic expansion in the later Stuart period. Close analysis of these ‘hard times’ demonstrates the limits of histories that emphasize long-term developments over short-term crises. Using evidence from a wide range of local and national archives, this article shows the impact of these shocks on the lives of ordinary people.
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References
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30 King's Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C 44/55.
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37 Childs, Army, pp. 199–205; Ehrman, Navy, pp. 617–18. For examples of desperate disbanded soldiers owed wage arrears, see Luttrell, Relation, IV, pp. 518, 618.
38 For the major problems caused by a proportionally smaller demobilization in 1748, see Nicholas Rogers, Meyham: post-war crime and violence in Britain, 1748–1753 (New Haven CT, 2012), ch. 2.
39 British Library (BL), Add. MS 28924, fo. 85.
40 Essex Record Office (ERO), T/A 465/269/19. For other examples of Colchester petitions citing unemployment at this time, see ERO, T/A 465/269/16–17.
41 Childs, Army, chs. 4, 8; Ehrman, Navy, pp. 131–5.
42 London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), COL/CC/01/01/049, fo. 284.
43 Middlesex county records: sessions books, 1689–1709, ed. J. Hardy (London, 1905), p. 107.
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46 Turner, ed., Heywood, III, pp. 276–7.
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48 Carl Wennerlind, Casualties of credit: the English financial revolution, 1620–1720 (Cambridge, 2011), ch. 4.
49 For more on this process, see Jones, War, pp. 20–6, 228–47.
50 SALS, DD\SF/7/1/31/15, /20. For other reports of monetary scarcity in 1690, see Marshall, ed., Stout, p. 97; Luttrell, Relation, II, p. 104.
51 York Minster Archives, MS Add. 319, fos. 10–11 (n.d., c. 1689–91).
52 Marshall, ed., Stout, pp. 108–9. For further reports of coinage problems in 1693–4, see The diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer (6 vols., Oxford, 1955) (hereafter Evelyn), V, p. 186; Jonathan Healey, The first century of welfare: poverty and poor relief in Lancashire, 1620–1730 (Woodbridge, 2014), p. 236. The Mint estimated that the coinage was about 15 per cent ‘deficient’ in 1688, rising to over 20 per cent by 1691, over 30 per cent by 1693, and about 40 per cent by late 1694: Jones, War, pp. 232–3.
53 Luttrell, Relation, III, pp. 555–61; Journal of the House of Lords (London, 1767–1830), XV, p. 599.
54 Journal of the House of Commons (JHC), XI (London, 1802), p. 363.
55 By the king, a proclamation. Whereas…the coin, which passes in payment, is generally clipped (London, 19 Dec. 1695).
56 BL, Add. MS 28924, fo. 103.
57 Evelyn, V, p. 229; SALS, DD\SF/7/1/31/44, /48; The manuscripts of Lord Kenyon (London, 1894) (hereafter Kenyon), p. 395; The diary of Abraham de la Pryme, the Yorkshire antiquary, ed. Charles Jackson (Ripon, 1870) (hereafter Pryme), pp. 77–8; Bodl., MS Rawl. letters 91, fo. 305; Le Fleming, p. 339.
58 BL, Add. MS 28924, fo. 105.
59 TNA, ADM 106/484/25; Ehrman, Navy, p. 584; SALS, DD\SF/7/1/31/48, /52, /61; Evelyn, V, p. 233; Luttrell, Relation, IV, p. 40; Kenyon, p. 402. The Bank of England seems to have been anxious about ‘the State of the Cash’ that it was receiving by March: Bank of England Archives (BEA), G4/2, pp. 114, 117.
60 C. E. Challis, The Tudor coinage (Manchester, 1978), pp. 81–112; Bishop, Jennifer, ‘Currency, conversation, and control: political discourse and the coinage in mid-Tudor England’, English Historical Review, 131 (2016), pp. 763–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61 Luttrell, Relation, IV, p. 55.
62 BEA, G4/2, p. 135; Luttrell, Relation, IV, p. 59; TNA, SP 44/274, pp. 111–12.
63 Bodl., MS Ballard 11, fo. 132; Luttrell, Relation, IV, pp. 79, 84, 85.
64 Bodl., Carte MS. 130, fo. 263. For other reports from London in May and June, see Kenyon, p. 409; Evelyn, V, p. 242; Bodl., MS Ballard 11, fos. 137–8; Evelyn, V, p. 245; TNA, SP 44/274, p. 155.
65 Luttrell, Relation, IV, p. 91; Evelyn, V, pp. 253, 255–6.
66 Pryme, p. 93.
67 Specifically, distress and complaints were reported from the following areas associated with industry or manufacturing over the course of the summer: TNA, SP 44/274, p. 133 (Derbys.); TNA, SP 44/100, p. 250 (Newcastle); TNA, SP 44/274, pp. 159 (Newcastle, Leicester), 166 (Wilts.), 169 (Kendall, Halifax, Sheffield), 188 (Norwich), 228–9 (Staffs.); TNA, SP 44/274, pp. 141, 145 (Colchester); BL, Add. MS 6668, fos. 210–11 (Derbys.); Pryme, pp. 95 (Rochdale), 97 (Newcastle); ‘Petitions in the State Papers: 1690s’, in Petitions in the State Papers, 1600–1699, ed. Brodie Waddell, British History Online, www.british-history.ac.uk/petitions/state-papers/1690s (Leics.); Luttrell, Relation, IV, p. 70 (Newcastle).
68 Kenyon, pp. 409–10.
69 Pryme, p. 109. This generalization is supported by the specific example of Penryn, Cornwall, where the innkeepers were ‘not able to Subsist’ due to ‘the Scarcity of mony’ alongside expensive provisions and quartered soldiers: TNA, SP 32/6/31.
70 JHC, XI, p. 572 (emphasis added).
71 Ibid., p. 583. See also SALS, DD\SF/7/1/31/92, /96–8.
72 JHC, XI, p. 584.
73 Luttrell, Relation, IV, pp. 84, 85, 90, 102, 110, 129, 131, 160.
74 Mann, ‘Wiltshire’, pp. 250–1. For other complaints from Devon and Wiltshire in January, see JHC, XI, pp. 655, 665. There was also a continued scarcity of money in other parts of the country until at least March: Bodl., MS Ashmole 1829, fos. 100, 137; Evelyn, V, p. 261; Turner, ed., Heywood, IV, p. 173; Le Fleming, p. 348.
75 JHC, XI, pp. 698, 704.
76 Luttrell, Relation, IV, pp. 177, 185, 186, 200.
77 For the failure of the Malt Tax Lottery, see Murphy, Origins, p. 58; Dickson, Financial revolution, pp. 49, 57.
78 SALS, DD\SF/7/1/31/118; Mann, ‘Wiltshire’, p. 252.
79 On coastal attacks, see Luttrell, Relation, II, pp. 353, 436, 508, 584. On turning back, see Luttrell, Relation, III, p. 335; BL, Add. MS 28924, fo. 6. On embargos and impressment, see D. R. Hainsworth, ed., The correspondence of Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven, 1693–1698: a provincial community in wartime (London, 1983), p. 49. For more extensive analysis of the impact of war on coal prices across a longer period, see William Cavert, The smoke of London: energy and environment in the early modern city (Cambridge, 2016).
80 Luttrell, Relation, II, pp. 466, 472, 514. For impressment of collier seamen in 1691, see ibid., pp. 174, 181, 187, 191–2, 214. See also the reports of coal bought at Newcastle for shipping to the army in Flanders: Luttrell, Relation, II, pp. 568, 571.
81 Statutes of the realm, ed. John Raithby (s.l., 1819), VI, pp. 600–6 (6 & 7 W. & M. c. 18).
82 W. H. Beveridge, Prices and wages in England from the twelfth to the nineteenth century, I (New York, NY, 1930), pp. 434, 577. For contemporary comment on the prices at London, see Bodl., MS Carte 239, fo. 50; Luttrell, Relation, II, pp. 187, 191–2, 354, 625; ibid., III, pp. 517, 519. I am grateful to William Cavert for his advice on this issue.
83 Beveridge, Prices and wages, pp. 90, 240.
84 JHC, X, p. 491.
85 JHC, XI, pp. 375–82, 390, 398, 410–11, 421; Norfolk Record Office (NRO), NCR Case 16a/26, fo. 8.
86 Andrews, ‘Geographical’, p. 192. The annual average was 1,020 quarters in 1686–8, 443 in 1689–97, and 1,875 in 1698–1702.
87 Luttrell, Relation, II, pp. 173, 180, 274, 481, 486, 498, 508, 585, 611, 629; ibid., III, pp. 20, 24, 32; Childs, Army, p. 251; Jones, War, p. 36 n. 30.
88 Wood, III, pp. 389, 391, 397, 403. For further evidence from this year, see Luttrell, Relation, II, pp. 355, 498; Evelyn, V, pp. 93, 96, 98, 108, 112, 114, 117.
89 W. Le Hardy, ed., County of Buckingham: calendar to the sessions records (Aylesbury, 1933–80), I, p. 480; Wood, III, pp. 421, 431, 463, 484, 486; Luttrell, Relation, III, p. 515; Pryme, p. 112; Evelyn, V, pp. 145, 155, 157, 188–9, 245, 247, 250, 253, 256, 259.
90 NRO, NCR Case 16a/25, fo. 333; Luttrell, Relation, III, p. 433; Wood, III, pp. 478, 481, 483; SALS, DD\SF/7/1/31/112; Evelyn, V, p. 263; Flemstadts most strange and wonderful prophecy (London, 1695), pp. 4–5; John Shower, Winter meditations (London, 1695), epistle dedicatory.
91 Pryme, pp. 166–8; Cambridgeshire Archives (CA), R76/92, pp. 90–1.
92 TNA Discovery catalogue description of Nottinghamshire Archives, DD/E/117/1.
93 Hampshire Record Office, 63M84/235, n.p. (3 May 1698); Borthwick Institute for Archives (BIA), MD.112, p. 31; W. H. Stevenson et al., eds., Records of the borough of Nottingham (9 vols., Nottingham, 1882–1951), V, pp. 397–8; Le Fleming, p. 351; Pryme, pp. 176–8; Turner, ed., Heywood, IV, p. 158; Evelyn, V, p. 287; Flying Post or The Post Master, 5 May 1698, issue 466; Philosophical Transactions, XXI (1699), pp. 47–8. For May 1697, see Essex Record Office, T/A 156/1, vol. 1, pp. 69–70.
94 Geoffrey Parker, Global crisis: war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth century (New Haven, CT, 2013), ch. 1.
95 ‘Hadley Centre Central England Temperature (HadCET) dataset’ (Met Office, 2014, www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/). Specifically, 1690 was precisely average, but all other years from 1689 to 1701 were colder. The decade as a whole was the coldest ever recorded (1660s–2000s), being on average 0.76 degrees cooler than the mean for 1660 to 1729.
96 Pryme, p. 112; HadCET. Specifically, Aug. 1694 (second coldest, 1659–2013), Sept. 1694 (coldest), July 1695 (second coldest), Aug. 1695 (second coldest).
97 Peter J. Bowden, ‘Statistics’, in John Thirsk, ed., The agrarian history of England and Wales, II (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 829–30.
98 NRO, NCR Case 16a/25–7.
99 Wood, III, p. 446. For barley, oats, and rye, see below. In 1698–9, the average prices of other food crops (beans, peas, and hops) were significantly inflated and in the case of hops, essential for the ale that formed a key source of calories for labouring people, they reached unprecedented heights. In 1697–8, dairy products were the dearest they had been since 1673–4. Even the prices of beef and pork in the mid-1690s were the highest since the Restoration. For all these prices, see Bowden, ‘Statistics’.
100 Boulton, Jeremy, ‘Food prices and the standard of living in London in the “century of revolution”, 1580–1700’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 53 (2000), p. 483CrossRefGoogle Scholar; NRO, NCR Case 16a/25–7; Coventry History Centre, BA/H/C/17/2–3; B. R. Mitchell, British historical statistics (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 754–5; Thorold Rogers, A history of agriculture and prices in England, 1259–1793 (7 vols., Oxford, 1866–1902), V, pp. 89–98. Note that Portsmouth's second peak was 1697–8 rather than 1698–9.
101 ERO, T/A 465/271/15; ERO, D/DBm Z10, p. 2; Buckingham sessions records, I, p. 492. For other complaints from 1693–4, see LMA, COL/CA/01/01/102, p. 274; CA, Q/S01, p. 57; NRO, C/S 2/4, unpaginated (10 Jan. 1693); Bodl, MS Ballard 35, fo. 68; Wood, III, pp. 437, 446; HMC, Lords, I, p. 323; Luttrell, Relation, III, pp. 86, 96, 233, 240. For others from 1698–9, see LMA, COL/CA/01/01/107, p. 9; ERO, Q/SO 3, pp. 10, 30, 58; ERO, Q/SBb 12/26; Middlesex sessions books, p. 193; Luttrell, Relation, IV, pp. 436, 438; Evelyn, V, pp. 287–8, 301; JHC, XII pp. 385, 394–5, 408, 424, 441.
102 TNA, SP 32/6/31; SALS, Q\SO/8, fo. 248. For other reports of dearth from the south-west from 1696 to 1699, see SALS, DD\SF/7/1/31/88, /98, /112; DD\SF/7/1/53, unpaginated (July 1697); DD\SF/7/1/74, unpaginated (4 Nov. 1696); JHC, XI, pp. 622–3, 665; JHC, XII, pp. 391, 446; Richard Newnam, The complaint of English subjects (London, 1700), pp. 21–2, 29, 33–5; Mann, ‘Wiltshire’, p. 252. On barley bread, see Bowden, ‘Statistics’, pp. 829–30, 865; Rogers, Prices, V, pp. 282–3. According to Bowden's regional statistics, the sharpest rise in the price of barley from the 1680s to the 1690s was in the south-west (36 per cent).
103 On disruption in the north and Scotland, see Francis Hill, Tudor and Stuart Lincoln (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 225–6; York City Archives, E113. Annual ‘national’ prices of oats and rye peaked in the second half of the decade: Bowden, ‘Statistics’, pp. 829–30; Rogers, Prices, V, p. 286.
104 Muldrew, Craig, Food, energy and the creation of industriousness: work and material culture in agrarian England, 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 2011), p. 215CrossRefGoogle Scholar (based on figures for c. 1680 and c. 1740). Note, however, that this proportion would be lower when workers were partly supplied with food by their employers: ibid., pp. 226–33.
105 JHC, XII, p. 441.
106 ERO, T/A 465/271/15.
107 Waddell, ‘Rise of the parish welfare state’, pp. 30–1.
108 Newnam, Complaint, p. 21; Luttrell, Relation, II, p. 355. There were many more that reported poor people ‘ready to starve’ or ‘nearly starved’.
109 E.A. Wrigley and Roger Schofield, The population history of England, 1541–1871: a reconstruction (London, 1981), pp. 649–56, 660–1, 667.
110 Appleby, Andrew, ‘Grain prices and subsistence crises in England and France, 1590–1740’, Journal of Economic History, 39 (1979), pp. 865–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. B. Outhwaite, Dearth, public policy and social disturbance in England, 1550–1800 (Basingstoke, 1991), pp. 24–6; R. H. Hoyle, ‘Why was there no crisis in England in the 1690s’, in R. H. Hoyle, ed., The farmer in England, 1650–1980 (Farnham, 2013), pp. 97–100.
111 Memoirs of Thomas Papillon of London, merchant (1623–1702), ed. A. F. W. Papillon (Reading, 1887), p. 361.
112 Hoskins, William George, ‘Harvest fluctuations and English economic history, 1620–1759’, Agricultural History Review, 16 (1968), pp. 17, 28–31Google Scholar; Hoskins, William George, ‘Harvest fluctuations and English economic history, 1480–1619’, Agricultural History Review, 12 (1964), pp. 44–6Google Scholar.
113 All of these are mentioned frequently in Wood, III, pp. 415, 421–2, 431, 437, 448, 463.
114 Turner, ed., Heywood, IV, p. 173 (alluding to Proverbs 6:11 – ‘So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man’).
115 Turner, ed., Heywood, IV, pp. 158, 160; Healey, Welfare, pp. 236–8.
116 Ormrod, Commercial empires, pp. 56, 67, 183–202, 276; Nuala Zahedieh, The capital and the colonies: London and the Atlantic economy 1660–1700 (Cambridge, 2010), chs. 4–6; Lorna Weatherill, Consumer behaviour and material culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (London, 1997), ch. 2; Mark Overton, Jane Whittle, Darron Dean, and Andrew Hann, Production and consumption in English households, 1600–1750 (London, 2004), ch. 5, appendix 4; Stephen Broadberry et al., British economic growth, 1270–1870 (Cambridge, 2015), p. 205 (Table 5.6).
117 Dickson, Financial revolution; Roseveare, Financial revolution; Murphy, Origins.
118 Bowden, ‘Statistics’; Wrigley and Schofield, Population history, p. 643; Humphries, Jane and Weisdorf, Jacob, ‘The wages of women in England, 1260–1850’, Journal of Economic History, 75 (2015), pp. 405–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
119 Historians of debt and credit have already expertly examined individual precarity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though they have paid less attention to collective commercial failures: Muldrew, Economy of obligation; Paul, The poverty of disaster.
120 Bohstedt, using E. A. Wrigley's figures, estimates the proportion of ‘market dependent consumers’ in the English population increased from 30 per cent in 1600 to 39.5 per cent in 1670 to 45 per cent in 1700: John Bohstedt, The politics of provisions: food riots, moral economy, and market transition in England, c. 1550–1850 (Farnham, 2010), p. 93.