A major contribution to the economic and social history of a mysterious period, the years around 1500, using new evidence and methods of analysis. Presents a fresh and engaging view of history by highlighting an individual, John Heritage.

Around 1500 England's society and economy had reached a turning point. After a long period of slow change and even stagnation, an age of innovation and initiative was in motion, with enclosure, voyages of discovery, and new technologies. It was an age of fierce controversy, in which the government was fearful of beggars and wary of rebellions. The 'commonwealth' writers such as Thomas More were sharply critical of the greed of profit hungry landlords who dispossessed the poor. This book is about a wool merchant and large scale farmer who epitomises in many ways the spirit of the period. John Heritage kept an account book, from which we can reconstruct a whole society in the vicinity of Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire. He took part in the removal of a village which stood in the way of agricultural 'improvement', ran a large scale sheep farm, and as a 'woolman' spent much time travelling around the countryside meeting with gentry, farmers, and peasants in order to buy their wool. He sold the fleeces he produced and those he gathered to London merchants who exported through Calais to the textile towns of Flanders. The wool growers named in the book can be studied in their native villages, and their lives can be reconstructed in the round, interacting in their communities, adapting their farming to new circumstances, and arranging the building of their local churches. A Country Merchant has some of the characteristics of a biography, is part family history, and part local history, with some landscape history. Dyer explores themes in economic and social history without neglecting the religious and cultural background. His central concerns are to demonstrate the importance of commerce in the period, and to show the contribution of peasants to a changing economy.

This is a major contribution to the economic and social history of a mysterious period, the years around 1500, using new evidence and methods of analysis. It presents a fresh and engaging view of history by highlighting an individual, John Heritage.

The wool trade was undoubtedly one of the most important elements of the British economy throughout the medieval period - even the seat occupied by the speaker of the House of lords rests on a woolsack. In The Wealth of England Susan Rose brings together the social, economic and political strands in the development of the wool trade and show how and why it became so important. The author looks at the lives of prominent wool-men; gentry who based their wealth on producing this commodity like the Stonors in the Chilterns, canny middlemen who rose to prominence in the City of London like Nicholas Brembre and Richard (Dick) Whittington, and men who acquired wealth and influence like William de la Pole of Hull. She examines how the wealth made by these and other wool-men transformed the appearance of the leading centres of the trade with magnificent churches and other buildings. The export of wool also gave England links with Italian trading cities at the very time that the Renaissance was transforming cultural life. The complex operation of the trade is also explained with the role of the Staple at Calais to the fore leading to a discussion on the way the policy of English kings, especially in the fourteenth century, was heavily influenced by trade in this one commodity. No other book has treated this subject holistically with its influence on the course of English history made plain. Susan Rose presents a fascinating new exposition on the role of the wool trade in the economy and political history of medieval England. She shows how this simple product created wealth and status among men of hugely varying backgrounds, transformed market towns both economically and in architectural terms and contributed to fundamental social and cultural changes through trading links with Italy and other European countries at the height of the Renaissance

English rural society underwent fundamental changes between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries with urbanization, commercialization and industrialization producing new challenges and opportunities for inhabitants of rural communities. However, our understanding of this period has been shaped by the compartmentalization 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.

Peasants have been despised, underrated, or disregarded in the past. Historians and archaeologists are now giving them a more positive assessment, and in Peasants Making History, Christopher Dyer sets a new agenda for this kind of study. Using as his example the peasants of the west midlands of England, Dyer examines peasant society in relation to their social superiors (their lords), their neighbours, and their households, and finds them making decisions and taking options to improve their lives. In their management of farming, both cultivation of fields and keeping of livestock, they made a series of modifications and some dramatic changes, not just reacting to shifts in circumstances but also devising creative initiatives. Peasants played an active role in the development of towns, both by migrating into urban settings, but also by trading actively in urban markets. Industry in the countryside was not imposed on the rural population, but often the result of peasant enterprise and flexibility. If we examine peasant attitudes and mentalities, we find them engaging in political life, making a major contribution to religion, recognizing the need to conserve the environment, and balancing the interests of individuals with those of the communities in which they lived. Many features of our world have medieval roots, and peasants played an important part in the development of the rural landscape, participation of ordinary people in government, parish church buildings, towns, and social welfare. The evidence to support this peasant-centred view has to be recovered by imaginative interpretation, and by using every type of source, including the testimony of archaeology and landscape.

The Southampton brokage books are the best source for English inland trade before modern times. Internal trade always matched overseas trade. Between 1430 and 1540 the brokage series records all departures through Southampton’s Bargate, the owner, carter, commodity, quantity, destination and date, and many deliveries too. Twelve such years make up the database that illuminates Southampton’s trade with its extensive region at the time when the city was at its most important as the principal point of access to England for the exotic spices and dyestuffs imported by the Genoese. If Southampton’s international traffic was particularly important, the town’s commerce was representative also of the commonplace trade that occurred throughout England. Seventeen papers investigate Southampton’s interaction with Salisbury, London, Winchester, and many other places, long-term trends and short-term fluctuations. The rise and decline of the Italian trade, the dominance of Salisbury and emergence of Jack of Newbury, the recycling of wealth and metals from the dissolved monasteries all feature here. Underpinning the book are 32 computer-generated maps and numerous tables, charts, and graphs, with guidance provided as to how best to exploit and extend this remarkable resource. An accompanying web-mounted database (http://www.overlandtrade.org) enables the changing commerce to be mapped and visualised through maps and trade to be tracked week by week and over a century. Together the book and database provide a unique resource for Southampton, its trading partners, traders and carters, freight traffic and the genealogies of the middling sort.