The economic importance of medieval England’s small towns cannot be overestimated.
By Dr. James Davis
Professor of Anthropology
Queen’s University Belfast
Credit was a vital tool for medieval traders, allowing them to spread their commitments and expand the scale of their business. As Jim Bolton has highlighted, credit provided liquidity in a money economy.1 However, traders also needed known processes for the enforcement of sales credit or advance purchases, in order to engender market confidence and lower transaction costs. Consequently, the structure of institutions that facilitated credit could influence the prospects and growth of markets, whether in royal boroughs, small towns or villages. There were many jurisdictions through which disputed debts and contracts could be pursued in medieval England, from humble manorial courts to central common law courts, but this study will focus on those courts which were specifically designated as curia mercati or curia fori – ‘market courts’. These were special courts set up to deal primarily with personal pleas of debt, detinue, and broken contract, though sometimes they absorbed other market business such as maintenance of stalls or the assize of bread. The evidence for such courts is mostly found in small towns or seigneurial boroughs, but they are not as common as might be expected. The royal grant of a market franchise in medieval England seemingly included the jurisdictional right to hold a market court. However, there was no compulsion to offer such a facility for traders and the majority of small market towns simply incorporated this business into the main manorial court. This raises the question of why certain places considered it advantageous to establish a distinct forum for credit disputes and what this offered for both market holders and those conducting commerce. This was not just an issue about legal apparatus and transaction costs; the decision was undoubtedly embedded in the changing economic environment of late medieval England.
A significant amount of scholarly work has been undertaken on mercantile and rural credit in late medieval England in an effort to understand the mechanisms, participants and relationships involved. Pamela Nightingale, Jim Bolton, Richard Goddard, Phillipp Schofield and Chris Briggs, among others, have greatly furthered our understanding of medieval credit networks.2 However, much of their work has focused either on London and provincial towns or rural villages. In comparison, little research has been undertaken for fourteenth- and fifteenth-century small towns, despite their dominance in the English market hierarchy and the likelihood that small-scale sales credit was prominent in these places. The work of Elaine Clark on Writtle (for 1382–1490), Dave Postles on Loughborough (1397–1406) and James Davis on Newmarket (1399–1413) remain the main examples, but the findings have yet to be assessed within the context of broader debates about money and credit.3 For instance, one prominent debate, highlighted by the work of Bolton and Nightingale, is whether the credit supply could compensate for a severe contraction in the money supply that intensified between the 1390s and the mid fifteenth century. The establishment of a market court, whether successful or not, was perhaps a statement intended to bolster confidence for a specific market at a time of intense commercial competition and shortages of coin. This chapter provides a preliminary insight into the small town and seigneurial courts designated as curia mercati and the motivations behind their development. It is argued that such courts were, in effect, advertising ready access to the procedures of lex mercatoria (merchant law) which ensured that cases would be judged by fellow traders. In many ways these small markets were seeking to ape the facilities of many royal chartered boroughs in offering more efficient and merchant-friendly systems of enforcement. The question of who was driving these initiatives is also important, since it is increasingly recognized that seigneurial enterprise and investment were not uncommon, but by the fifteenth century many small towns were effectively run by their tenants as much as by lords.
The right to hold a market court was embedded in the royal grant of a market. Judicialia ad mercatum pertinentia were frequently mentioned in thirteenth-century Quo Warranto proceedings, which looked into royal franchises and their upkeep, but most often referred to the punishment of trading infringements in the pillory or tumbrel.4 However, early twentieth-century historians such as Ephraim Lipson, Charles Gross and Louis Salzman argued that the market charter implicitly included the right to hold a market court to deal with commercial disputes.5 Lipson and Gross both suggested that the link between a grant of a fair/market and associated jurisdiction stemmed from the eleventh- and twelfth-century inclusion of ‘sac and soc’ in such grants. Even once this term disappeared from grants after the reign of Henry II, the jurisdiction was still assumed. This would mirror the jurisdiction of ‘piepowder courts’ offered in fairs like St. Ives, which provided speedy justice to merchants.6 The stipulation that a court of piepowder pertained to all fairs was reinforced in later statutes and rolls of parliament: ‘To every of the same fairs is of right pertaining a court of pypowders, to minister in the same due justice in this behalf; in which court it hath been all times accustomed, that every person coming to the said fairs should have lawful remedy of all manner of contracts, trespasses, covenants, debts, and other deeds.’7 Fair courts were thus franchisal courts, intrinsic to the right to hold a fair and contingent on the fair holder to organize. Market courts were seemingly viewed in the same way.8 A case before the king in 1361 outlined that the lady of the manor of Newport ‘had by reason of that market cognizance of pleas of Pie Poudre, namely, from contracts, trespasses, agreements, arising there in the time of the market’.9 By the reign of Edward IV, the notion that an associated court was an appurtenance of a market grant was reinforced by the royal judges: ‘a chescun market est incident un court de pypoud[re] pour faire justice as marchants deins le market’.10
However, there is no indication that market grant holders were compelled to offer such a separate facility, even though they had the right to do so. Indeed, the vast majority of small towns, whether boroughs or not, provide no evidence for the existence of a special market court. Instead, most small towns and seigneurial boroughs, like many rural manors, simply incorporated such business into the main manorial or borough court.11 By the fourteenth century, such manorial courts had established procedures for debt actions that mirrored royal court practices, including summonses, essoins, amercements for non-appearance, use of pledges, and distraint.12 There are even occasional hints of ad hoc piepowder courts, not directly linked to a fair, held within a town’s court, such as at the portmote of Melton Mowbray in the fifteenth century.13 Hilton suggests that the late medieval Halesowen borough court included infrequent meetings of a piepowder court (curia pulentis) on some market and fair days.14 In many larger boroughs a similar conflation of jurisdiction occurred, such as in Ipswich and Bristol which both held piepowder sessions on the days of their fair, but otherwise administered merchant law within the ordinary jurisdiction of the town’s court ‘when required from day to day’.15 Southampton’s charter of 1401 contained a provision for an extra session of the town court for piepowder cases, which only became a distinct piepowder court by the 1470s.16 Chartered boroughs at the peak of the commercial chain had a certain leeway in how they organized credit litigation, but how they did so is a complex subject beyond the scope of this study, which will focus instead on provision within small urban markets.
Market court rolls survive for a number of small towns and seigneurial boroughs in late medieval England. A regional focus on East Anglia reveals extant records for Newmarket and Bildeston (both Suffolk), and Heacham, Hingham and Thetford (all Norfolk).17 There is indirect evidence that three further urban sites in this region once had such a court, namely Bury St. Edmunds (Suffolk), Clare (Suffolk) and Saffron Walden (Essex), but no rolls survive. Gladys Thornton’s study of Clare notes references to a curia fori as early as 1343–4, when pleas of a market court were accounted for in tandem with borough court fines and the bailiff of the borough was ordered to account for 8d worth of income.18 However, there are no other references beyond that year and most cases of debt subsequently came before the borough court, which was held every three weeks. It did occasionally specify the use of lex mercatoria.19 Mary Lobel refers to a market court that sat in Bury St. Edmunds tollhouse every market day (Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and was called the ‘little court’ to distinguish it from the main ‘great court’.20 She argued that it developed in the thirteenth century because it sat more regularly than the great court and was more efficient in its procedures for debt litigation.
In each case the market court was a supplementary forum, mostly dealing with personal pleas that occurred on the chartered market day itself. Newmarket has some of the best surviving market and fair court rolls covering the years 1399 to 1413.21 The account rolls also indicate that revenue accrued from market courts in 1428–40, with an average of thirty courts held per annum, even though the court rolls themselves do not survive.22 Newmarket was a small market on the cusp between a village and town, which catered for a significant amount of through traffic. In the early fifteenth century the town was part of the manor of Sir William Argentein, but he was mostly absent and thus the running of day-to-day affairs was left to the tenants themselves.23 The other extant East Anglian market court rolls are relatively scanty. Bildeston was a small cloth town that never matched the prosperity of others in the Stour Valley. Its market court records cover the years 1379 to 1384 and are interspersed on the roll with the main manorial court business, though separately headed as a curia mercati.24 Hingham’s market court sat almost every month, but the court rolls from 1428 to 1469 contain increasingly few debt cases, and by the later period it was largely used to record the offences of bakers against the assize of bread.25 Cases against the assize also appear in the year-long set of market court rolls extant for Heacham (1426–7), similarly with a handful of debt cases in their monthly meetings.26 The borough of Thetford provides a slightly different case in that the borough court appears to have been leased to the burgesses by the fifteenth century, but the lord maintained control over the market court. However, once the market tolls were leased the market court faced a significant fall in its income as well as the number of courts held each year. Indeed, the account rolls show that the number of market courts held in Thetford declined substantially, from forty-two in 1436–7 to twenty-two in the 1450s and just five in 1479–80.27 This was partly linked to a fall in trade, but it was also due to an internal competition for debt pleas. The burgesses were seemingly undermining the market court in order to draw more business to their borough court. The extant court rolls from 1508, 1513–14, 1516 and 1540 show that the number of courts had revived by the early sixteenth century before starting to decline again.28 Something similar may have happened at Saffron Walden (Essex), where the residents were granted burgage tenure by the lord of the manor and by the fifteenth century they were running the main facets of the town. They elected one of their number as bailiff of the market, who apparently presided over a market court that sat only on market days at the ‘Tolhous’.29 Some of the disputes were transferred into the manorial court for further judgment, which somewhat blurs the role of the market court. This may have been due to the nature of the case and whether it involved merchants, or it may have simply acted as a small court intended to initiate business on market day, which could then proceed at the next available manor court.
The basic responsibility of the market courts was the registering of pleas, summoning of defendants, identifying essoins and defaults, and executing judgments. The basic procedures in each of the courts were very similar and a brief overview will suffice here. As with so many local courts, the level of detail in the recorded debt pleas is sparse. We cannot be certain that all the debts were sales credit since a number may have involved wages, rents or simply money loans. However, all the courts are reasonably consistent in identifying individuals as ‘mercator’, a term that covered a range of trading activities but was, as shall be discussed, an important identifier in allowing them access to merchant law.30 Newmarket and Thetford, in particular, also clearly denoted outsiders and the location of their origin. The amount of business passing through these courts was comparatively modest, from around twenty-five cases per annum for Newmarket and Thetford, sixteen for Heacham, and nine for Bildeston. The number of suits in Hingham’s market court noticeably fell during the fifteenth century, from around eighteen a year in the 1420s and 1430s to just four to five in the 1460s, even though the court still met every three to four weeks and handled market infringements. The court sessions at Newmarket and Thetford were the most regular, meeting on average every two to three weeks, though the frequency of courts did vary. Heacham’s court met every four to five weeks. Bildeston’s market court was obviously struggling, which is probably why it met as a type of adjunct to the manorial court about every eight weeks, and by 1385 the business of debt litigation was fully integrated back into the main court. Most of the debts in the courts were small, largely because this was the scale of the business in these small towns, but also due to a legal restriction since the late thirteenth century which meant that debts over 40s were to be referred to the royal courts.31 In Newmarket, the majority of pleas (where monetary values were stated) were over 2s (84 per cent) and a very significant number were over 10s (32 per cent), which equates with Clark’s findings for the small town of Writtle (Essex).32 The average stated values of debt pleas in Bildeston was 46d and in Heacham a modest 13d, but based on just a handful of cases. The business in these courts was thus variable and the revenue for the lord was sometimes meagre.
The speed at which business passed through the East Anglian market courts was also mixed, with only Newmarket seemingly providing the option of justice within a day. However, most cases in Newmarket were initiated at one court session and a decision about the procedure to be adopted, including licences of concord, was heard at the next court a fortnight or so later. From the initial plea to a final conclusion, the time span varied from six to twenty-one weeks, depending partly upon the number of sessions during that period. However, the majority, even those partly delayed, were completed within three months. Where the court sat less frequently, such as in Bildeston, it was usually a matter of two to three months at the most.33 All the courts set a limit of three for the number of summonses and fines for non-appearance of a defendant before a decision was made. The court rolls also show that distraint was made both to encourage attendance and, if needed, to compensate the plaintiff. Pledges were needed at various stages of a case, to enable the plaintiff to continue with a suit, to ensure a defendant’s appearance, and to provide surety for payments.34 Plaintiffs often required a pledge to initiate a plea so that an amercement could be guaranteed if they lost the case or if they were judged to have brought an unjust plea. Theoretically, the pledge was liable severally for the defaults of those they had pledged for.
The costs of a plea were fairly consistent and not especially excessive, with the plaintiff paying 2–3d to initiate a plea, and, unless the claim turned out to be false, the remaining court charges (often 3d) fell on the defendant. This was another encouragement for the defendant to settle sooner. The most common result was that the court acted as mediator and permitted a licence of agreement (licencia concordandi), suggesting that the court’s main role was to encourage parties to come to their own agreement rather than use the full panoply of legal redress. Britnell has suggested that a large proportion of such licences within debt plea business might indicate the esteem with which a court is held.35 In Newmarket 35.6 per cent of debt pleas led to a request for a licence, for which the defendant paid 3d. If a decision was taken by the Newmarket court, as in 26.8 per cent of debt pleas, it was five times more likely to go in favour of the plaintiff.
This small sample of extant market courts for the highly commercialized region of medieval East Anglia may be a documentary aberration, but the evidence of debt pleas in other borough and manorial courts suggests that not all market holders were prepared to invest in such a forum. Indeed, it could be argued that the provision of market courts in particular small towns was the result of a deliberate policy intended to attract visiting merchants. A market court would ostensibly lower transaction costs and thus attract more traders, though it seems that the actual effect and success of these institutions was variable. Outside East Anglia, a search of the catalogues for medieval court rolls similarly reveals only a handful of curia mercati from the late thirteenth to sixteenth century.36 There are thus only glimpses of market courts or similar across England in small market towns and seigneurial boroughs. All the East Anglian examples are from the fourteenth to early sixteenth centuries, which in itself may be significant. It is possible that there were inter-connections between these trading centres and also competition between them. It is important to remember that most small towns drew the majority of their trading links from a hinterland up to 10–12 km away, so the competitive sphere was small and known.37
The economic importance of medieval England’s small towns has been increasingly recognized over the past two decades, with notable studies by Rodney Hilton, Chris Dyer and Mark Bailey.38 There were some 600 small towns by the early fourteenth century, characterized by a reasonably diverse level of non-agrarian activity and each with a chartered market. They served as local centres of exchange and production and many offered specialized services or industries.39 Compared to royal boroughs, most seigneurial boroughs often had little more than burgage tenure, which their lords were able to grant. Although this provided tenants with important economic flexibility, a mesne borough was still ostensibly controlled by the lord’s officials. However, the notion that manorialism was inimical to markets has long been rejected, and historians like Richard Goddard have argued that lords might seek to invest in these local enterprises in the hope of a later return.40 The average return from the market court sessions in the sample ranged from a few pence to a few shillings. This was not enough to suggest it was a prime factor in the market courts’ creation. On average, Newmarket’s lord received about £2 per annum (1428–40) from the market court, and this was one of the more successful small town enterprises.41 Profit may have been a consideration, but such courts should also be regarded as another means of investment by the lord in the market infrastructure, perhaps looking for the associated benefits of attracting and supporting trade. Bailey has also noted that burgesses in these towns could exert significant influence and from the mid fourteenth century there is substantial evidence that tenants were leasing or running the markets and adjunct facilities in many places.42 This was beneficial both to the lord, who received a regular fee and released his officials from an administrative burden, and to the burgesses, who could shape their commercial affairs more effectively. Even where there was no formal lease or borough status, some small town communities were able to run most matters, particularly when the lord was an absentee, such as in Newmarket.43
Rodney Hilton once noted that the records of medieval small towns highlighted the need to keep the market in good order, while also ensuring the quality of commodities and payments of debts, but ‘on the whole, the impression is they hardly coped’.44 This might be the case, but certain places were actively seeking to address these issues. People had choices in their markets to frequent and would have known a certain amount about their restrictions and facilities. Clear regulations and strong procedures for dealing with debts were vital ways to reduce transaction costs for market users, by providing secure surroundings and legal redress for unpaid debts and broken contracts. Any successful market also had to offer inducements to set against the costs of tolls, regulations, and other restrictions, both for residents and outsiders. Personal trust and reciprocal ties were, of course, also important aspects of credit dealings at this time, but it was still important to safeguard one’s interests. Consequently, by providing a specific court on market day the small town authorities were issuing a statement of intent that they were supportive of incoming traders. It exuded a sense that this market had moved beyond village and feudal institutions and could be more flexible in its dealings.
This highlights why certain small places considered it advantageous to establish a separate body for credit disputes. In some ways it is difficult to discern what was starkly different about a market court compared to what could be undertaken in a manor or borough court. However, the title of the court was important since it related to issues of jurisdiction. Market courts were openly advertising their ability to tap into that amorphous body of law known as lex mercatoria. This is usually translated as merchant law, but could be equally rendered as ‘market law’.45 In essence, this was a set of commercial procedures that were important in defining the obligations of sales, debt and contract, as well as outlining a system of speedy, efficient justice that suited the lifestyle of itinerant traders.46 Its origins remain somewhat obscure. The procedures of merchant law had developed in a customary manner from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries and there was no precise uniformity in practices. In its main principles it was close to common law; the main differences lay in procedure rather than judgments.47
A surviving treatise on lex mercatoria, seemingly compiled for use by Bristol’s officials in the early fourteenth century as a guide to best practice, reinforces the conception that a forum for adjudicating merchant law was an appurtenance of holding a market:48 ‘The law merchant is understood to come out of the market … a market of this kind is held in five places only, to wit, in cities, fairs, seaports, market towns and boroughs,’49 The treatise is clear on the benefits of merchant law compared to common law, in that it expedited the judicial process by reducing delays and allowing adjournments either hour to hour or market day to market day. As Richard Goddard has noted: ‘Credit chains were, potentially, very fragile matrices and this helps explain the need for speedy resolution of debt suits.’50 The procedures of common law and royal courts tended to be cumbersome, lengthy and costly, as well as better suited to land disputes than commercial debts. Even in Colchester’s borough court, Britnell found that most debt pleas took eight to ten weeks to settle, which was why the burgesses developed a separate court of pleas for litigation.51 There were other aspects of merchant law that were beneficial. It outlined a system that required no writ for proceedings, allowed few excuses for non-attendance, and facilitated enforcement through the use of distraint.52 An important power and attraction of market courts was the right to make distraint of the defendant’s goods immediately after a non-appearance, in order to force the unwilling to attend and discourage them from travelling beyond the jurisdiction. Theoretically, distraint ordered by a manorial or seigneurial court was confined to assets within the lord’s land,53 which would have handicapped a court’s effectiveness when dealing with travelling merchants. Merchant law appears to have allowed the court to seize moveable and personal chattels as an attachment near the start of the process. The defendant would then be called to attend a stated number of times, usually two or three further times each subsequent market day, but sometimes it could be fast-tracked within a single day as in the manner of a fair court. There are fifteen examples between 1399 and 1413 of such an expedited piepowder court in the Newmarket market court.54 If the defendant failed to appear, judgment could be made in favour of the plaintiff and the attachment would be sold to pay the debt, having first been valued by appointed assessors. If the defendant did come to court then the onus was on the plaintiff to prove the case, though the means of proof better suited itinerant traders. The use of pledges and compurgators could be difficult for foreign merchants, so merchant law allowed more reliance upon witnesses, tallies, and recognizances.55 Indeed, a declaration that a contract was subject to merchant law because it had been agreed ‘in the market’ meant that a trader could actively prevent his adversary from ‘waging his law’.56
Such merchant law procedures were regularly invoked in royal borough and Staple courts, where high-level mercantile interests were prominent. The increasing importance placed on these procedures can be seen in a statute of 1353, which sought to bolster the legal provision for travelling traders: ‘And because that merchants may not often tarry in one place [to transact commerce], we will and grant that speedy justice be to them done, from day to day and from hour to hour’.57 The statute further stated that they should have access to merchant law even outside Staple towns,58 which might have proved a spur to small town authorities in providing suitable apparatus. The provision of a market court thus enabled these small towns to emphasize that those using the periodic market could access merchant law and would be judged by other traders (often suitors) who understood the needs of business. In a case recorded in the market court of Hingham, the lord’s bailiff was instructed to find twelve good and true merchants from the neighbourhood to serve on the jurors’ panel.59 The Bristol treatise on lex mercatoria stated: ‘In all market courts all judgments ought to be rendered by the merchants of that same Court and not by the mayor or steward of the market’.60 Thus, unlike a manor court, the tag of a ‘market court’ implied that it was not directly held under the auspices of seigneurial officials, even if the lord ultimately reaped the income and his steward had overall responsibility for executing any judgments with immediacy.61
The importance of nomenclature was highlighted by Derek Keene in his study of medieval Winchester. This city had a permanent piepowder court from the early fifteenth century, which was distinct from the main city court and dealt with cases concerning non-burgesses.62 It increased its business in parallel with significant administrative developments in the city, with the recorder (a legal adviser) reorganizing the archives and the processes of record-keeping, including the provision of special recorda for separate case details. Much of the business of the piepowder court could be handled within a day, and it could be called at any time it was required for the convenience of not just merchants but also other non-resident litigants. What is notable is that the court was careful to designate the origins of litigants as ville mercatorie, ‘even when they were such manifestly non-mercantile settlements as Chilcomb, Wonston, or Winnall.’63 This designation enabled the parties to be judged under the procedures of merchant law without specifically identifying the individuals as traders (mercator or mercatrix), which was more usual.64 The city was clearly encouraging use of the court, and litigants were attracted not only by the processes of merchant law but also the extra legal provisions put in place by the recorder. Caroline Barron has examined another related action that took place in London in the late fourteenth century, when cases concerning merchant law were transferred from the sheriffs’ courts to the mayor’s court ‘before the mayor and aldermen having knowledge of the law merchant’.65 It was paramount that there was confidence in the application of merchant law and the knowledge of those judging cases. Barron also argued that it was not just the speed of merchant law procedures that appealed but also the relative privacy of the court, which might help protect the reputation of the merchants involved. Whereas the ordinary business of the court took place in the more open outer chamber of the Guildhall, merchant law cases withdrew into the inner chamber.66
It could be argued that the appearance of specific market courts in many small towns after the Black Death was a small-scale version of what was happening in Winchester and London. They hoped to attract outside litigation for its own income and also any further business the suitors might bring with them. At a lower level, Chris Briggs has noted that ‘English villagers required access to courts that allowed them to enforce obligations using formal legal means’ and they thus sometimes travelled beyond their lord’s jurisdiction ‘to sue in one’s choice of court’.67 This choice would be informed by the costs and logistics involved, but also the attractiveness and competency of the courts on offer. Market courts thus might include civil pleas between two outsiders, even though theoretically the business of the court should only relate to actions in its own market. It is noticeable that the Suffolk and Norfolk market court rolls often identify one or both of the suitors as ‘mercator’ since this is obviously considered by the clerk to be a prerequisite for the use of merchant law. However, there were often resident suitors who were not merchants. Such ambiguity may be explained by lex mercatoria, which stated that ‘the common law and also the law of the market suppose all feoffees and residents in markets or market towns to be merchants, even though they do not merchandise’.68
Most small debts were handled effectively in local courts.69 However, it should be noted that these courts could not offer formal enrolment of debts. The thirteenth-century legislation of Statute Merchant or Statute Staple only allowed recognizances to be made before the mayor of London, York, Bristol and ‘other good towns’, the record of which was copied to the creditor. Default could lead to urban officials intervening through the imprisonment of the debtor and immediate distraint of assets, both made under the king’s seal. This further allowed a certificate of debt to be deposited in chancery and thus the pursuit of the debtor throughout the kingdom.70 However, this was a facility reserved to certain boroughs and it was also more suited to higher-value debts.71 It has been argued that some forms of debt plea in local courts may have constituted a type of quasi-recognizance (in the form ‘pro recognicione’, ‘cognoscit’ or ‘ponit se’ form) at the initial stage of credit.72 As Britnell noted, these by-products of court recordings ‘put beyond question the plaintiff’s right to recover the disputed sum’.73 Lex mercatoria, which appears to rehearse a set of common practices, states that ‘it is ordained that clerks of markets deliver transcripts of pleas to all and singular who plead in those markets if they ask for this; and always they are to have of them one penny for 10 lines’. Such penny transcripts were to include the sign and name of the clerk and rolls kept ‘so that others may not be able to deny such delivery’.74 If this was standard practice in market courts, then, even though they were not courts of record, such a transcript from the court roll could act as evidence of a recognized debt and the debtor’s liability. In relation to this, it is even possible that some licencia concordandi were legal fictions designed to record the debtor’s acknowledgement of the debt, rather than actual out-of-court settlements resulting from disputes, but this remains speculation.75 Indeed, Phillipp Schofield and Nicholas Mayhew both argue that the majority of debt pleas were recorded in court rolls at the stage of recovery not inception.76
Similarly, it is possible that market courts effectively policed the separate unsealed bills or letters of obligation that Bolton argues were increasingly popular among traders from the late fourteenth century and were drawn up informally between parties.77 They could be sued in any local court, whereas these courts theoretically did not have the authority to consider cases involving sealed writings as proof (a bond or specialty), which was one reason why higher-value debts went to the king’s courts.78 Bolton asserts that courts that acted under merchant law could protect the assignment of written bonds,79 which again would have made designated market courts more attractive and flexible than other local courts where debts were pleaded. However, there is no explicit mention of these in the court rolls sampled.
All of the sampled market courts were established within a post-Black Death commercial environment that was highly competitive for medium-sized markets. Alongside population decline and then stagnation, there was a massive fall in aggregate demand and agrarian contraction, which undoubtedly contributed to the difficulties faced by many towns during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.80 To a certain extent, market towns weathered the post-Black Death economic environment well in comparison to village markets or even some larger boroughs.81 They were able to meet the growing demand for certain consumables and peasants were seemingly prepared to travel further. Nevertheless, the aggregate volume of trade had fallen and most small towns saw a decline in their income over the course of the fifteenth century. As Mark Bailey has highlighted, Standon’s income from the borough court fell by 60 per cent from its pre-Black Death peak, Newmarket’s market income declined by 70 per cent between the 1400s and 1480s, and Mildenhall saw a loss of leased stalls from twelve in the early fifteenth century to just two by the 1460s.82 Balanced against these negative conditions, there were transactions in certain consumer goods that appear to have increased, and this is particularly pertinent for East Anglia where there was a burgeoning local cloth trade, which demonstrated a significant dependence upon credit among its merchants.83
In general, contracting trade was an important factor in reducing credit usage.84 However, monetary problems and coin shortages also contributed to the depression of demand during the mid fifteenth-century slump, as people reduced spending and hoarded coin. Historians have highlighted how England’s monetary stock fell from the 1360s onwards, with bouts of significant silver bullion shortages from the 1390s until the 1460s.85 This all led to a scarcity of silver coin and small change for everyday transactions. Allen argues that per caput the silver money supply fell from 5–7s in 1351 to 1–2s in 1422, before a moderate recovery over the following decades.86 Contemporaries commented upon this stark shortfall, and we also see growing problems with clipping of coins.87 One prominent issue debated by historians such as Jim Bolton and Pamela Nightingale is whether the flow of credit could alleviate a severe contraction in the money supply.88 Nightingale has argued that credit could not compensate for a pronounced fall in currency and, indeed, was itself influenced by coin shortages. In her model, credit rises and falls in line with the money supply, with trends largely predicated upon market confidence, and at times of bullion famine the ability to provide credit was concentrated in fewer hands.89 At times of coin shortages, merchant lenders might consider that there was a greater risk of default by debtors, thus reducing their investment in industry and commerce.90 The evidence of Statute Staple recognizances supports Nightingale’s argument. However, most research has concentrated on the upper echelons of mercantile credit in the central or large borough courts, or else on the rural courts where consumption loans were prominent, with little work on the sales credit available in the vast array of smaller markets. It is in institutions such as local market courts where we might find a new perspective and which therefore need more research.91 Were these institutions an attempt, whether successful or not, to compensate for shortages of coin by alleviating the risks of credit? At the pettiest level of sales credit, many traders appear to have acted both as creditors and debtors, and there is evidence for running accounts, reciprocal dealings and a ‘complex of claims and counter-claims’.92 This short chapter cannot fully answer this complex question, but one has to ask whether small town authorities were trying to temper the risk for commercial lenders by providing better institutions for credit and its enforcement.93
Alternatively, perhaps the use of market courts was first reinvigorated in the few decades after the Black Death when there appears to have been resurgence in retail activity, perhaps spurred by heightened wages.94 John Hatcher and Mark Bailey suggested that the ‘effect of a scarcity of coin in an economy which is otherwise thriving would be an increase in barter and credit in order to meet the needs of eager buyers and sellers short of ready cash’.95 This might account for the rise in debt pleas from the 1350s to 1380s in places such as Colchester, Winchester, Exeter, Nottingham, Thornbury, Ramsey, Clare and Sudbury.96 It was only after the 1390s, when monetary problems became stark and commerce contracted, that traders demanded cash rather than extending credit.97 As Richard Goddard has highlighted, there was a short-lived period of economic vitality in the late fourteenth century, and some attempts to innovate in court procedures, but this gave way to commercial contraction and local court decline, particularly from the 1420s. In Colchester, Winchester, Coventry and Nottingham, debt litigation declined in the fifteenth century as economic depression took hold.98 For many manorial or mesne borough courts, the fifteenth century also saw a steady decline in petty pleas and the use of pledging, as seen in Clare, Sudbury and Willingham.99 Havering suffered a significant mid fifteenth-century fall in its court pleas, but there was an increase from the 1460s after new administrative liberties were introduced.100 On this basis, McIntosh argues that if there was a potential volume of pleas and the courts appeared efficient, then tenants would still use them. However, there is little evidence that the small market courts in this sample met this condition, with even the more substantial market court at Newmarket facing problems of declining income and frequency by the mid fifteenth century. The ambition behind establishing a market court did not necessarily match the amount of business it handled, and a number of market courts, such as at Bildeston, appear to have been transient ventures with the business of credit eventually absorbed back into the manorial or borough court.
Credit oiled the wheels of trade, and market courts dealt in small-scale sales debts that were integral to local retail and wholesale commerce. A market court ostensibly lowered transaction costs and thus attracted more traders by aiding a perception of the market as ‘fair, affordable, efficient’.101 Any advantage over one’s market neighbours was perhaps grasped by the lord and residents in order to stimulate some growth. It may be that this new infrastructure was often more about perception than tangible benefits, but there were advantages to the specified use of merchant law and it is likely that such facilities were part of a conscious policy to enhance the town’s prosperity. However, it seems that the success of these institutions was variable. The evidence seems to suggest that most were short-lived institutions, even in the small towns where court rolls survive. They were intended to engender confidence among traders, but the impression so far is that such local institutions were better suited to a context of commercial growth than to periods of economic depression and shortages of coin.
See endnotes and bibliography at source.
Chapter 14 (271-290) from Medieval Merchants and Money: Essays in Honour of James L. Bolton, edited by Martin Allen and Matthew Davies (Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 06.30.2016), published by OAPEN under the terms of a Creative Commons
