Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society

About the book

“University of Hertfordshire Press should be congratulated for making these diverse... fascinating local studies available so cheaply. And they have bothered to provide a consolidated bibliography: something those hardback collections usually lack but which is so welcome to researchers.” Heather Falvey, The Ricardian

“This impressive… collection of essays is thought-provoking and diverse, covering regions, relationships, and industries that have been under-researched, and it offers nuanced reconsiderations of the principles of Tawney and Postan’s hypotheses.” H.R. French, Economic History Review

“This is a well-produced and well-priced book that provides good examples of the way in which debates begun by the great historical figures of the last century are being revisited and reshaped by the present generation of economic and social historians of the pre-modern era.” Dr Chris Briggs, Continuity and Change

“In this volume, Bowen and Brown have bought together a very strong set of contributors to revisit the major questions raised by Tawney and Postan through new case studies of diverse aspects of the period. As Christopher Dyer shows in a fascinating biographical chapter, these two scholarly giants had only ‘rather skeletal evidence’ to work with, but managed to present powerful visions of two societies driven into crisis through unsustainable growth. Moreover, both of these historians were interested in the dynamic relationship between ‘custom’ – such as feudal tenures, fixed rents and common-field agriculture – and ‘commercialization’. These themes tie together the volume as a whole, though as the editors show in their introduction, the essays also here push further than Tawney, Postan or most of their followers.” Brodie Waddell, Social History

“A great strength of Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society is its review of major historical debates and an examination of their relevance today. Local history is at its best when its writers build on the foundations of such work and the University of Hertfordshire Press is to be congratulated on publishing its series of Studies on Regional and Local History.” Dr Gillian Draper, Journal of Kent History

“Postan and Tawney would have enjoyed reading this volume, particularly the way in which the artificial distinction between the medieval and early modern periods for local historians is shown to be an unnecessary barrier when it comes to disentangling movements within each local economy.” John Beckett, The Local Historian

English rural society underwent fundamental changes between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries with urbanisation, commercialisation and industrialisation producing new challenges and opportunities for inhabitants of rural communities.

However, our understanding of this period has been shaped by the compartmentalisation of history into medieval and early-modern specialisms and by the debates surrounding the transition from feudalism to capitalism and landlord-tenant relations.

Inspired by the classic works of Tawney and Postan, this collection of essays examines their relevance to historians today, distinguishing between their contrasting approaches to the pre-industrial economy and exploring the development of agriculture and rural industry; changes in land and property rights; and competition over resources in the English countryside.

More about the book

These case studies further highlight the regional diversity of medieval and early-modern England by focusing on the mixed economies of south-western, western and northern England, and the role of coastal and urban communities within the rural economy.
Custom was a contested set of rules based upon historical precedent which governed the behaviour of village communities, and a key theme of Tawney's Agrarian Problem was the 'struggle between custom and competition'.
This collection of essays reconsiders the role of custom in medieval and early-modern England by arguing that it often facilitated the commercialisation of rural society in this period rather than hindering it. The book has an intentionally broad chronological span, ranging from the thirteenth century through to the eighteenth, exploring the interactions between custom and commercialisation during a key period in the economic development of English rural society.
The contributors include: James P. Bowen, John Broad, A.T. Brown, Christopher Dyer, John Gaisford, Tom Johnson, David Rollison, Simon Sandall, Alexandra Sapoznik, William D. Shannon, Sheila Sweetinburgh, and Andy Wood.

View the table of contents

	List of figures	vii
	List of tables	viii
	List of contributors	ix
	General Editor's preface	xiii
	Preface	xv
	Introduction: Custom and commercialisation in English rural society James P. Bowen and A.T. Brown	1
	Part I: PERSPECTIVES
1	Tawney and Postan: two pathways to understanding the pre-industrial economy Christopher Dyer	23
2	Rural industry and the peasant agrarian economy: a study of the iron industry in medieval England Alexandra Sapoznik	36
3	English agrarian structures in a European context, 1300–1925 John Broad	51
	Part II: LAND AND MOBILITY
4	Farming the Kentish marshlands: continuity and change in the late Middle Ages Sheila Sweetinburgh	73
5	‘The struggle for the commons': commons, custom and cottages in Shropshire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries James P. Bowen	96
	Part III: CUSTOM AND COMMERCE
6	The economics of shipwreck in late medieval Suffolk Tom Johnson	121
7	Custom and competition for woodland resources in early modern High and Low Furness, Lancashire William D. Shannon	139
8	Custom, common right and commercialisation in the Forest of Dean, c.1605–40 Simon Sandall	161
	Part IV: ACCOMMODATING CHANGE
9	A money economy? Provisioning Durham Cathedral across the dissolution, 1350–1600 A.T. Brown	181
10	Elizabethan entrepreneurs: three clothiers of the Frome Valley, 1550–1600 John Gaisford	203
11	‘The fellowship of the town’: constituting the commonality of an English country town, Cirencester, c.1200–1800 David Rollison	225
	Afterword: Small places, big questions: reintegrating social and economic history, c.1350–1750 Andy Wood	250
	Select Bibliography	267
	Index	287

About the Editor/s:
James P Bowen

James P. Bowen is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Liverpool.
A.T. Brown

Alex Brown works on the economic and social history of rural England across the medieval and early modern periods.
His thesis was a study of how rural society in Durham adapted to the economic problems of the fifteenth-century recession and how this affected their ability to respond to the inflation of the sixteenth century. This study focused upon the development of agrarian capitalism in the Durham countryside: a region uniquely characterised by a high concentration of ecclesiastical landownership and the precocious development of large-scale coal production.
This has been further developed by postdoctoral research examining the rise of the coal industry, the supposed gentrification of merchant wealth, and the experience of lay landowners like the Nevilles and Lumleys. Together, this forms the basis of his first monograph on Rural Society and Economic Change in County Durham: Recession and Recovery, c.1400-1640 published by Boydell and Brewer in 2015.
Alex won the New Researchers Prize at the annual conference of the Economic History Society in 2012 and held the EHS Postan Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research in 2012-13. He is currently an Addison Wheeler Fellow at Durham University, exploring downward social mobility and institutional memory in English rural society.
He co-organised ‘Agriculture and Industry: the Development of Rural England, 1000-1700’, a colloquium at the Institute of Historical Research, 1 July 2013, with James Bowen.
This resulted in the edited volume Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society (with University of Hertfordshire Press, 2016). He also co-organised 'Coping with Crisis: Re-Evaluating the Role of Crises in Economic and Social History', a three-day international conference at Durham University, 26-28 July 2013, with Andy Burn and Rob Doherty, which inspired a collection of essays on Crises in Economic and Social History: A Comparative Perspective (Boydell, 2015).
Research Interests
- The economic and social history of pre-industrial England
- The development of agrarian capitalism
- Social structure and social mobility
- Rural and agricultural history
Research Groups
- Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia
- Early Modern
- Economic/Labour
- Landscape/Memory
- Medieval
- Social Cultures
Selected Publications
Books: authored
- 2015 Rural Society and Economic Change in County Durham: Recession and Recovery, c.1400-1640, Boydell and Brewer.
Books: edited
- 2016 (co-edited with Bowen, James P.) Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society, 1300-1800: Revisiting Postan and Tawney, University of Hertfordshire Press.
- 2015 (co-edited with Burn, Andy & Doherty, Rob) Crises in Economic and Social History: A Comparative Perspective, Boydell Press.
Essays in edited volumes
- Forthcoming 'Church Leaseholders on the Dean and Chapter's Estates, 1540-1640: The Rise of a Rural Elite?', in Green, Adrian & Crosbie, Barbara (eds.), The Economy and Culture of North-East England, 1500-1800, Boydell and Brewer.
- 2016 'A Money Economy? Provisioning Durham Cathedral across the Dissolution, 1350-1600', in Brown, A. T. & Bowen, James P. (eds.), Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society, 1300-1800: Revisiting Postan and Tawney, University of Hertfordshire Press.
- 2016 (co-authored with Bowen, James P.) 'Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society', in Brown, A. T. & Bowen, James P. (eds.), Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society, 1300-1800: Revisiting Postan and Tawney, University of Hertfordshire Press.
- 2015 (co-authored with Burn, Andy & Doherty, Rob) 'Coping with Crisis: Understanding the Role of Crises in Economic and Social History', in Brown, A. T., Burn, Andy & Doherty, Rob (eds.), Crises in Economic and Social History: A Comparative Perspective, Boydell Press.
- 2015 'Economic Life', in Swanson, Robert (ed.), The Routledge History of Medieval Christianity, 1050-1500, Routledge, pp. 295-308
Journal papers: academic
- 2014 'Estate Management and Institutional Constraints in Pre-Industrial England: the Ecclesiastical Estates of Durham, c.1400-1640', Economic History Review 67, pp. 699-719
- 2010 'Surviving the mid-fifteenth-century recession Durham cathedral priory, 1400-1520', Northern history 47, pp. 209-231

ISBN: 978-1-909291-45-4 Format: Paperback, 326pp Published: Jun 2016

Custom and Commercialisation in English Rural Society

Revisiting Tawney and Postan

About the book

Contents

James P Bowen

A.T. Brown

Research Interests

Research Groups

Selected Publications

Books: authored

Books: edited

Essays in edited volumes

Journal papers: academic

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