17 - The Town and Trade

Summary

In 1295, the year when the clergy granted a tenth of their revenues to the king, the then sacrist, John of Snailwell, compiled a methodical survey of the town. It is topographically arranged in four sections, one for each of the four wards, with subsections for the streets. The properties held by the various obedientiaries in each street are meticulously listed. Practically none of the rents of the tenements are recorded, but the survey ends with the total sum that each obedientiary contributed to the tenth of 1295, in respect of his holdings in the town. The purpose of the survey was to ensure that each obedientiary bore his fair share of the tax, but no more: each individually would have had a rental for all his holdings. No earlier survey of Bury is known – Margaret Statham observes that it ‘provides our earliest view of the town in a form identifiable with what we know today’. The names of many of the streets which it records still survive. The survey provides a good example of how the pressure of taxation stimulated the development of more business-like methods of record-keeping. An important objective of the abbey’s financial policy towards the town was to increase its profitability. The town was a lucrative source of revenue, from rents, judicial profits, toll and various customary dues. It is obvious that Abbot John and William of Hoo were exploiting the town for financial gain as far as possible. The administrative aspects of the disputes with the town in the 1280s and 1290s have already been discussed: the result of the agreements between John of Northwold and the townsmen in 1293 and again in 1298 was to confirm the abbot’s control. The root of the townsmen’s discontent was economic. They resented any limitations on the town’s growing prosperity – limitations which resulted from the abbot’s restrictions and financial demands.

Most of the complaints to the king by the ‘community’ of the town against its treatment by the abbot’s justices in the Lent eyre of 1287 had financial connotations. The townsmen accused the justices of appointing members of the abbot’s household and other unsuitable people to make presentments and asserted that those whom the justices appointed indicted people maliciously.