For over half a century historians have suggested that population growth, economic development and agricultural innovation supported and enhanced the cultural, intellectual and spiritual achievements of Benedictine monasticism and new monastic orders in late Anglo-Saxon England and Anglo-Norman Britain. These developments were gradual and have provided the basis for suggesting that two Worcester cartularies fulfilled different functions. In recent years the transformation of Anglo-Saxon England has been presented within an inter-disciplinary framework which has brought together archaeology, history, numismatics, and landscape studies. The success of the research programme has had an unintended consequence in that less attention has been given to the impact of short-run shocks upon institutions and their responses to economic problems. This article will question the view that the monastic scribes writing the two Worcester cartularies in the late Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman period were responding to evolutionary change, and will argue that economic and political crises around c.1000 and c.1095 underpinned the drafting and ordering of diplomas and other documents (i.e. redaction) in both cartularies. Before discussing the relationship between the compilation of cartularies and economic upheaval, we need to consider the economic environment in western England.

The diocese of the bishopric of Worcester (formerly the kingdom of the Hwicce) was made up of the midland counties of Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and southwestern Warwickshire, and it was bounded by watersheds (Malvern and Cotswold Hills), woodlands (Arden and Wyre forests) and river valleys (the lower Wye and Avon). Important economic connections within the region are documented from the early seventh century, and by the late ninth century Worcester was a major centre of consumption, following the foundation of a burh and market centre. During the tenth century economic ties developed between the countryside and towns of Worcester, Gloucester and Warwick, whose markets ‘could serve as a meeting point for producers with complementary needs and resources’, while the salt industry based at Droitwich rendered considerable returns to its investors and from there saltways created trading paths which linked the area to other parts of the British Isles. The economic development of the region cannot be placed in a national business cycle of expansion, peak, recession, depression and recovery, in the manner of Bolton’s application of business history to the later medieval English economy.