Bread and Ale for the Brethren extract

Table of Contents

1 ‘A puzzling economy’: demesne cultivation and seigniorial autarky in the age of commercialisation

2 Norwich Cathedral Priory: population, food requirements and provisioning channels

3 Norwich Cathedral Priory’s grain market, 1260–1538

4 Grain production on Norwich Cathedral Priory demesnes

5 Shipping the produce: transportation requirements, strategies and costs

6 Space for grain: barns and granaries

7 Grain into bread and ale: processing and consumption

8 Economics of charity: grain alms as poor relief

Conclusion: Seigniorial conservativism as an economic strategy

Extract from Bread and Ale for the Brethren

Taken from Chapter 1: 'A puzzling economy'

In other words, despite a series of potential hazards, there is no doubt that the widespread presence of local markets, both in towns and their rural hinterland, the commercial activities of cornmongers, the proliferation of credit, a sophisticated network of grain storages and the international grain trade all contributed significantly to the successful provisioning of urban communities in the late medieval period. Naturally, one would expect these communities, whether family households or religious congregations, to rely heavily on local markets. And it is precisely here where one comes upon one of the most intriguing and somewhat incomprehensible enigmas relating to the economic history of the late Middle Ages. Notwithstanding the highly developed networks of commercial crop supply, very few, if any, major urban conventual households (cathedrals, monasteries, colleges) relied entirely upon the local market to provision themselves on a daily, weekly and yearly basis. Instead, they chose to depend, for the most part, on their directly managed demesnes, which produced and dispatched considerable amounts of grain every year. For instance, in the era of direct demesne management, Norwich Cathedral Priory demesnes dispatched about 50 and 75 per cent of their annual wheat and malted barley, while about 80 per cent of all grain supplied to the priory on an annual basis derived from the demesnes.¹ Similarly, between 1300 and 1380 only some 25 per cent of all Canterbury Cathedral Priory’s grain came from the market,² and comparable figures are found at Durham Cathedral Priory.³ Neither Peterborough Abbey nor St Paul’s Cathedral in London spent anything on grain purchases around 1300.⁴ The only major conventual house to have relied on the market was Westminster Abbey: between c.1300 and 1380 some 65 per cent of its grain supply came from purchases.⁵ But the case of Westminster Abbey was an exception rather than the rule, and was attributable to its physical situation in the single most commercialised centre of the country. In the majority of cases conventual households tended to rely heavily on direct supply by their own agricultural producers, rather than on local markets.

Norwich Cathedral Priory, the subject of the present study, was by no means an exception. It was not until the late fourteenth century that these communities diverted their energy from demesne production and augmented the share of annual market purchases to meet the provisioning requirements of their houses. But even when the demesnes were leased out and the era of direct demesne management was long over, these houses still largely depended on annual fixed food farms (grain rents), paid by the farmers of their demesnes in lieu of cash rents. What accounts for that? Is it possible that local urban markets, despite their sophisticated nature, were still insufficient to satisfy the daily dietary needs of the brethren? Were these markets, in reality, not as sophisticated and developed as they seem at first sight? Were these religious institutions themselves not commercialised enough to integrate into the network of urban markets? Or was it more profitable and more efficient to rely on the direct supply of grain?

In order to appreciate this economic enigma better, it is essential to consider the wider economic structures of late medieval seigniorialism in England. In essence, the period between c.1200 and 1450 can be characterised as a gradual shift from a farming-based economy to a directly managed economy and back. In other words, in the course of the first half of the thirteenth century, after a prolonged period of demesne leasing to better-off tenants, lords reverted to the direct exploitation of their demesnes. The chronology differed from estate to estate: thus, Winchester bishopric had its estates back in hand by 1207; the Abbey of St Benet at Holm in Norfolk managed its demesnes from the 1230s; Ramsey Abbey estates were exploited directly from at least the 1240s; the earliest accounts of Norwich Cathedral Priory’s manors go back to the mid-1250s; and by the 1260s and 1270s Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral and Durham Cathedral priories took their demesnes back in hand (although Durham was still leasing out several of its demesnes). Meanwhile, the lay lords were catching up with their religious counterparts, so that by 1300 the vast majority of demesnes throughout the country were managed directly by their lords. Exceptional regions were the ‘Celtic Fringe’ (a belt stretching from the South West through the Welsh Marches and Wales to the North West) and the North East, where manorialism was at its weakest. The era of the direct cultivation of the demesne lasted until the late fourteenth century: between c.1380 and 1420 there was a gradual return to the leasing policy. With very few notable exceptions, especially in the south, by 1500 direct demesne management no longer existed.

The concepts of a rent-based economy and direct management have been classified by some German scholars, working on the early modern East German economy, as Grundherrschaft (cash- or lease-based seigniorial economy) and Gutsherrschaft (kind- or demesne-based seigniorial economy).⁶ Both terms can be applied to the study of late medieval England and, as such, they will be used throughout the book. The issue of the shift from Grundherrschaft to Gutsherrschaft and back has occasioned some debate among scholars working on the late medieval English economy. It has been contended that gradual inflation between c.1180 and 1220 (or, perhaps, more specifically, between 1200 and 1206) made demesne leasing no longer profitable, whereas relying on direct production and partial marketing of the demesne produce would increase lords’ real income.⁷ As far as the post-Black Death return to the Grundherrschaft is concerned, there are largely two explanations. One, ‘Ricardian’ or demographic in its nature, contends that the altered labour-to-land ratio brought about by the mortality, on the one hand, and the fall in real production costs and relative prices of grain, on the other, prompted the lords to lease out their demesnes.⁸ Most recently, however, John Munro offered a complementary and compelling monetary-fiscal model, arguing that the adverse combination of the fall in prices in both the agrarian and pastoral sectors of the economy (which, however, did not occur until c.1376), wage-stickiness and royal taxation and intervention in the wool trade dramatically increased the real costs of production of the lords and thus lowered their real income.⁹ As we shall see later, the case of Norwich Cathedral Priory’s demesne management and food provisioning seem to fully confirm the validity of Munro’s model.

1. P. Slavin, ‘Feeding the brethren: grain provisioning of Norwich Cathedral Priory, c.1280–1370’, PhD thesis (University of Toronto, 2008), pp. 119, 122 and 232.

2. Canterbury Cathedral Priory Archives, DCc/Granger 1–76 and Bartoner 1–60.

3. Durham Cathedral Priory Archives, Granator Rolls.

4. Campbell et al., A medieval capital, p. 204.

5. Ibid., p. 204, and Westminster Abbey Muniments, Granger’s accounts,WAM 19155–19217.

6. For instance, see W.W. Hagen,‘How mighty the junkers? Peasant rents and seigniorial profits in sixteenth-century Brandenburg’, P&P, 108 (August 1985), pp. 80–116.

7. P.D.A. Harvey, ‘The English inflation of 1180–1220’, P&P, 61 (1973), pp. 3–30; P. Latimer, ‘The English inflation of 1180–1220 reconsidered’, P&P, 171 (2011), pp. 3–29.

8. A.R. Bridbury,‘The Black Death’, EcHR, 26 (1973), pp. 557–92.

9. J.H.A. Munro, ‘From Gutsherrschaft to Grundherrschaft: demographic, monetary and political fiscal factors’, in M. Bailey and S. Rigby (eds), Town and countryside in the age of the Black Death: essays in honour of John Hatcher (Turnhout, 2011).