Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: points of departure
- Introduction An uncommon tradition
- Part I The emergent commonalty
- 1 What came before: antecedent structures and emergent themes
- 2 The formation of a constitutional landscape, c.1159–1327
- 3 The power of a common language
- Part II Accumulating a tradition: popular resistance and rebellion, 1327–1549
- Part III The English explosion
- Part IV The empowered community
- Index
- References
2 - The formation of a constitutional landscape, c.1159–1327
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: points of departure
- Introduction An uncommon tradition
- Part I The emergent commonalty
- 1 What came before: antecedent structures and emergent themes
- 2 The formation of a constitutional landscape, c.1159–1327
- 3 The power of a common language
- Part II Accumulating a tradition: popular resistance and rebellion, 1327–1549
- Part III The English explosion
- Part IV The empowered community
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter introduces and explores changes that emerged in the period from John of Salisbury's writing of Policraticus to the fall of Edward II. Section 2.1 shows that from c.1150–1250 population doubled, that growth halted in the second half of the thirteenth century and that the reign of Edward II (1307–27) marks the beginning of the long demographic depression of c.1300–c.1550. The argument of this chapter is that most of the themes and structures that shaped English history from the fourteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries were present by the end of 1327. Section 2.2 introduces a theme with strong claims to being the precondition for all the rest. ‘Trafike’ was the early modern English word for ‘traffic’, ‘trade’ and ‘commerce’. Section 2.2 traces the emergence of a commercial landscape grounded in market towns, provincial cities, highways, roads, streets and tracks – and the ‘vehicles’ (including people and ideas) that kept them functioning. Section 2.3 introduces two more grass roots institutions, one (enterprise and resourcefulness) a tenacious attitude, the other (household and family) the primary locus of reproduction, upbringing, learning and production. Each of the sections introduces an enduring theme or structure, the chapter as a whole stressing the variability and complexity of an aggregative, fluctuating yet accumulative, process.
Having examined the emergence and survival of a tenacious commercial landscape, Section 2.4 describes the emergence of a discourse about what kind of community England was, how the parts should relate to each other, aided by what institutions and in what language.
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- Information
- A Commonwealth of the PeoplePopular Politics and England's Long Social Revolution, 1066–1649, pp. 63 - 118Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010