Government and Market in the Early Fourteenth Century

Summary

Edward II's reign is best known for its dramatic political narrative of a wilful king, his reliance on favourites, violent baronial resistance and eventually the loss of his throne and his murder, but he also confronted major economic problems of price inflation, famine, murrain and a sliding wool trade. These problems prompted complaints and governmental action. English kings had long had both the responsibility and means to act in economic affairs; they were expected to maintain a stable coinage, fair weights and measures, fair prices in an open market and legal protection for traders. As England's economy had grown in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, so government action had expanded to cope with and benefit from it, steadily moving from simply upholding local regulations to issuing national legislation. Indeed, state intervention of this sort has been seen as one of the drivers towards European economic expansion. But how far did English governments yet have conscious and coherent economic policies? Political problems brought open clashes and conscious articulation of political theories and practices. But what happened in the less confrontational economic area? The government was financially sophisticated, but were there conscious articulations of financial and economic concepts as there were political ones? How far did the government look for the causes of economic problems? How far was government aware of economic consequences of its actions? Did it, indeed, consciously attempt to manipulate the economy as well as squeezing it for financial gains?

Edward's reign offers two areas in which to explore these questions: rising prices and the conflict over compulsory wool staples. In its responses to both of these problems Edward's government went further than its predecessors in manipulating the economy and surviving records of its actions allow us to see something of its approach to the problems.

It has become a cliche to say that economics was not an acknowledged intellectual discipline in the Middle Ages and that the present vocabulary of economics was a nineteenth-century development. Nonetheless there was strong interest in economic ideas in the writings of theologians, philosophers, lawyers and moralists, who, as part of their other interests, discussed theories of just price, supply and demand, monopoly and competition, risk, usury and exploitation. Their views seeped out beyond the schools and universities and casual comment on economic matters crops up in many writings.