Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Part I Introductory
- Part II The early middle ages 600–1300
- Part III The later middle ages 1300–1540
- 12 General survey 1300–1540
- 13 Government, power and authority 1300–1540
- 14 The economy of British towns 1300–1540
- 15 Urban culture and the Church 1300–1540
- 16 The built environment 1300–1540
- 17 London 1300–1540
- 18 The greater towns 1300–1540
- 19 Port towns
- (a) England and Wales 1300–1540
- (b) Scotland 1300–1540
- 20 Small towns 1270–1540
- Part IV Regional surveys
- Part V Conclusion
- Appendix: Ranking lists of English medieval towns
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
(a) - England and Wales 1300–1540
from 19 - Port towns
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Part I Introductory
- Part II The early middle ages 600–1300
- Part III The later middle ages 1300–1540
- 12 General survey 1300–1540
- 13 Government, power and authority 1300–1540
- 14 The economy of British towns 1300–1540
- 15 Urban culture and the Church 1300–1540
- 16 The built environment 1300–1540
- 17 London 1300–1540
- 18 The greater towns 1300–1540
- 19 Port towns
- (a) England and Wales 1300–1540
- (b) Scotland 1300–1540
- 20 Small towns 1270–1540
- Part IV Regional surveys
- Part V Conclusion
- Appendix: Ranking lists of English medieval towns
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
As the chief gateways of an island kingdom perched on the periphery of Europe, English and Welsh port towns served a crucial function not only in linking Britain with the continent and neighbouring islands, but also in facilitating inter-island trade and communications. Presiding over this traffic and trade was a wide social and cultural mix of peoples: merchants and mariners, pilgrims and pirates, rich and poor, native English and foreigners who traded by coast and overseas, embarked for distant lands, fished nearby waters, built and owned the country's ships and manned the royal navy. While this concentration of distinctive occupational groups and visitors clearly differentiated seaports from inland settlements, so too did their special relationship with the crown, which relied on the inhabitants of port towns to transport troops and supplies, to collect the hefty revenues associated with royal customs and to police the staple system. Port towns also occupied a significant place in the urban hierarchy; eight of the twenty wealthiest English towns in 1334, seven of the most populous towns in 1377 and half of the twenty wealthiest towns in 1524–5 were port towns. In Wales, six of the ten largest towns around 1300 were seaports.
waterfronts and port administration
This chapter will focus primarily on coastal towns with immediate access to the sea, treating riverine ports only when they were customs headports, such as Exeter and London, or when they could be easily reached by ocean-going ships. Exeter, in fact, was a port town only in an administrative sense since it enjoyed no direct access to the sea, relying instead on its outport four miles south at Topsham, which itself is located at the head of a narrow-channelled estuary, six miles from the open sea.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Urban History of Britain , pp. 467 - 494Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
References
, ‘Coastal fishing off South East Suffolk in the century after the Black Death’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, 37 (1990).Google Scholar
, The English Customs Service, 1307–1343: A Study of Medieval Administration (Transactions of the American Philosophical Association, new series, vol. 51, part 6, 1961).Google Scholar
, New Towns of the Middle Ages: Town Plantation in England, Wales and Gascony (London, 1967; 2nd edn, Gloucester, 1988)Google Scholar
, ‘The medieval coal trade of North East England: some fourteenth century evidence’, Northern History, 2 (1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and , A Medieval Capital and its Grain Supply: Agrarian Production and Distribution in the London Region c. 1300 (Historical Geography Research Series, 30, London, 1993)Google Scholar
, ‘The commercial shipping of south-western England in the late fifteenth century’, Mariner's Mirror, 83 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Trade and Shipping of Hull 1300–1500 (East Yorkshire Local History Series, 43, 1990)
, ‘Cloth exports from London and Southampton in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth century: a revision’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 31 (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ed., The Local Port Book of Southampton for 1439–40 (Southampton Record Series, 5, 1961);Google Scholar
, ‘Trade and prosperity in the fifteenth century: some aspects of the trade of Southampton’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 16 (1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ed., ‘Registre de la Comptablie de Bordeaux, 1482–1483’, Archives historiques du département de la Gironde, 50 (1915).Google Scholar
, ‘The early history of the Rye fishing industry’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 108 (1969).Google Scholar
, ‘London and foreign merchants in the reign of Henry VI’, English Historical Review, 25 (1910).Google Scholar
, ‘The early hostmen of Newcastle upon Tyne’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 5th series, 12 (1984)Google Scholar
, ‘The life and death of John of Denton’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, 37 (1959).Google Scholar
, ed., The Accounts of the Chamberlains of Newcastle upon Tyne 1508–1511 (Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 3, 1987);Google Scholar
, The Good Ship: Ships, Shipbuilding and Technology in England 1200–1529 (London, 1995), contains the best recent overview of shipbuilding.Google Scholar
, ‘Italian maritime trade with medieval England (c. 1270–c. 1530)’, Recueils de la société Jean Bodin, 32 (1974).Google Scholar
, ‘Alien merchants in England in the fifteenth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 9 (1895)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and , eds., Waterfront Archaeology: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Waterfront Archaeology (Council for British Archaeology, Research Reports, 74, 1991)Google Scholar
, Minehead in the County of Somerset: A History of the Parish, the Manor, and the Port (Taunton, 1903);Google Scholar
, English Tin Production and Trade before 1550 (Oxford, 1973), 112–16, 119–31, 164–93.Google Scholar
, ‘North Sea fishing in the fifteenth century: the Scarborough fleet’, Northern History, 3 (1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The fourteenth-century French raids on Hampshire and the Isle of Wight’, in and , eds., Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge, 1994)Google Scholar
, ‘Merchants, overseas trade, and urban decline: York, Beverley and Hull c. 1380–1500’, Northern History, 23 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The expansion of fishing in southwestern England in the later middle ages’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 53 (2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ed., Local Customs Accounts of the Port of Exeter 1266–1321 (Devon and Cornwall Record Society, new series, vol. 36, 1993).Google Scholar
, ‘The port towns of fourteenth-century Devon’, in , , , and , eds., The New Maritime History of Devon, vol. I (London, 1992)Google Scholar
, ‘A contribution to the commercial history of medieval Wales’, Y Cymmrodor, 24 (1913).Google Scholar
, The Mediæval Boroughs of Snowdonia: A Study of the Rise and Development of the Municipal Element in the Ancient Principality of North Wales down to the Union of 1536 (London, 1912)Google Scholar
, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611: A Study of their Trade and Diplomacy (Cambridge, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Rye and the defence of the Narrow Seas: a 16th century town at war’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 120 (1982).Google Scholar
, ‘The collectors of customs’, in and , eds., The English Government at Work, 1327–1336, vol. II (Cambridge, Mass., 1947)Google Scholar
, A History of the Royal Navy (London, 1847), vol. II, 40–1, 260–3, 285–6, 354–5, 357–9, 362–4, 369, 374, 377–80;Google Scholar
, ed., The Making of King's Lynn: A Documentary Survey (British Academy, Records of Social and Economic History, new series, 9, 1984)Google Scholar
, ‘The rope and net industry of Bridport’, Proc. of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 82 (1961)Google Scholar
, ‘Town defences in medieval England and Wales’, in and , eds., The Medieval Military Revolution (London, 1995)Google Scholar
, ‘Timber exports from the Weald during the fourteenth century’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 69 (1928)Google Scholar
, ‘“Sore decay” and “fair dwellings”: Boston and urban decline in the later middle ages’, Midland History, 10 (1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ed., The Navy of the Lancastrian Kings: Accounts and Inventories of William Soper, Keeper of the King's Ships, 1422–1427 (Navy Records Society, vol. 123, 1982)Google Scholar
, ‘Alien hosting in Southampton in the fifteenth century’, Economic History Review, 16 (1946)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘London capitalists and the decline of Southampton in the early Tudor period’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 20 (1949).Google Scholar
, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton 1270–1600 (Southampton Records Series, 1, 1951);Google Scholar
, ‘Ships and mariners in later medieval England’, J of British Studies, 16 (1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The herring industry at Great Yarmouth c. 1280–c. 1400’, Norfolk Archaeology, 38 (1981)Google Scholar
, ‘English towns in the late middle ages: the case of Great Yarmouth’, Journal of Medieval History, 8 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘English merchant shipping at the end of the middle ages: some east coast evidence’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 13 (1961).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘War at sea under the early Tudors: some Newcastle upon Tyne evidence’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, 38 (1960)Google Scholar
, and , eds., Urban Archaeology in Britain (Council for British Archaeology, Research Reports, 61, 1987)Google Scholar
, ‘The Hundred Years War: the English navy: shipping and manpower 1369–1389’, P&P, 37 (1967).Google Scholar
, The Port of Bristol in the Middle Ages (Bristol Branch of the Historical Association Local History Pamphlets, 1965).Google Scholar
, ‘Grimsby's mariners guild in the second half of the sixteenth century’, Lincolnshire Historian, 2 (1955)Google Scholar
, ed., The Black Book of the Admiralty (Rolls Series, 55, 1871), vol. I.
, ‘The medieval ports and trade of north-east Yorkshire’, Mariner's Mirror, 63 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Medieval foreign trade: the western ports’, in , ed., An Historical Geography of England before A.D. 1800 (Cambridge, 1951)Google Scholar
, ‘The geographical history of the Cinque Ports’, History, new series, 11 (1926)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ed., Chester Customs Accounts 1301–1566 (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 110, 1969).Google Scholar
- 6
- Cited by