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Decline and decay in late medieval towns: a look at some of the concepts and arguments1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Susan Reynolds
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Extract

The fortunes of late medieval towns seem to have become rather a contentious topic. That is probably a good thing. It is a poor historical proposition that cannot be illustrated by some evidence, but proof of an historical phenomenon like general decline or decay requires something more than illustration and something that argument may help to secure. So far, however, as S. H. Rigby points out, the debate has suffered from an uncertainty over terms that may frustrate the advance of knowledge and understanding. Two words which he did not mention but which seem to me particularly unclear are ‘decline’ and ‘decay’ themselves. Until they are examined more closely we may not be sure enough of what anyone is trying to prove to know whether he has succeeded or not.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 7 , May 1980 , pp. 76 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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Footnotes

1

Professor R. B. Dobson and Mr C. V. Phythian-Adams have kindly both read this paper in typescript, though no doubt they disagree with much of it. Mr Phythian-Adams also allowed me to read Desolation of a City in proof and to refer to it.

References

2 S. H. Rigby, ‘Urban decline in the later Middle Ages’, A. Dyer, ‘Growth and decay in English towns 1500–1700’, and Phythian-Adams, C. V., ‘Dr Dyer's urban undulations’, all in Urban History Yearbook (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Palliser, D. M., ‘A crisis in English towns? The case of York, 1460–1640’, Northern History, xiv (1978), 108–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Rigby, S. H., Urban History Yearbook (1979), 56–7.Google Scholar

4 Postan, M. M., ‘Some economic evidence of declining population in the later middle ages’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., ii (1950), 221–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar (or as ‘Some agrarian evidence…’ in Essays on Medieval Agriculture, 1973).

5 e.g. Lander, J. R., Conflict and Stability in Fifteenth-Century England (1969), 22, 28, 35Google Scholar; du Boulay, F. R. H., An Age of Ambition (1970), 32–6.Google Scholar

6 Saltmarsh, J., ‘Plague and economic decline in England in the later Middle Ages’, Cambridge Historical Journal, vii (1941), 30.Google Scholar Postan does not distinguish very clearly a population static in the fifteenth century from one still falling: Postan, op. cit., 245.

7 Hatcher, J. H., Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348–1530 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim, especially 11, 12, 68–9, 73.

8 Dobson, R. B., ‘Urban decline in late medieval England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., xxvii (1977), 20–1.Google Scholar

9 On York, Ibid., and Palliser, op. cit. On Coventry, Phythian-Adams, C. V., ‘Urban decay in late medieval England’, in Abrams, P. and Wrigley, E. A. (eds), Towns in Societies (1978), 159–85Google Scholar and idem, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the urban crisis of the late Middle Ages (1979). It is not my intention to quarrel with the evidence of Coventry's (or York's) sixteenth-century troubles, let alone with Phythian-Adams's fascinating study of Coventry society, which seems to me to stand entirely independent of any argument about earlier decline there or general decline elsewhere.

10 I omit here the issue of declining or static population before 1348, but it should be noted that the ‘Malthusian’ thesis has not gone unchallenged. If there was a ‘Malthusian’ situation the Black Death in any case seems to have eliminated it, so that the situation was sufficiently changed to justify treating it as a separate problem.

11 Their arguments seem to me sufficiently similar to make it not improper, I hope, to consider them together in this way as making a single case.

12 Parker, V., The Making of King's Lynn (1971), 4–5, 11–12, 30, 166Google Scholar; Platt, C., Medieval Southampton (1973), 145–7, 152–71, 182–5, 203–4, 215–24Google Scholar; see also e.g. Campbell, J., ‘Norwich’ in Lobel, M. D. and Johns, W. H. (eds), The Atlas of Historic Towns, ii (1975), 16–17.Google Scholar

13 Phythian-Adams, ‘Urban decay’, op. cit. 164; Dobson, op. cit., 14.

14 The evidence of reluctance in late fifteenth-century Worcester comes from the fixing of fines: Dyer, A. D., The City of Worcester in the Sixteenth Century (1973), 191Google Scholar; there is no evidence before the mid-sixteenth century to show whether they were imposed there: After that they were ‘almost unknown’: Ibid., 196. At Coventry no fines were apparently imposed before 1495: Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, op. cit., 47, 250–2, 287–8. Cf. Platt, op. cit, 56–7, 176–7.

15 Wright, A. P. M., ‘The relations between the king's government and the English cities and boroughs in the fifteenth century’ (Ph. D. thesis, University of Oxford, 1965), 160–250.Google Scholar Dobson's comment (op. cit., is fair but note e.g. pp. 172, 184, 192, 212, 222–4, 230–50. See also Platt, op. cit, 169–75.

16 Searle, E., Lordship and Community: Battle Abbey and its banlieu. 1066–1538 (1974), 351–66.Google Scholar