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Immigration and population growth in early fourteenth-century Norwich: evidence from the tithing roll

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Elizabeth Rutledge
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Extract

Estimates of urban population before the Black Death have been hampered by a lack of suitable data. Although it is common knowledge that many towns reached a physical size in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries that was not exceeded until the early-modern period, little definite is known about the gross urban population at this date. Where attempts have been made to estimate urban populations these have traditionally depended on multiplying from one arbitrary sector of the community, such as property owners, taxpayers or freemen, or on back projections from the late-fourteenth-century poll tax returns. The problem with such an approach is not only that there is little independent basis for the multipliers used, but also that the relationship between any such arbitrary sector and the urban population as a whole may alter from town to town as well as from time to time within the same community. An exception to this approach has been the recent work of Derek Keene, who has used other indicators of population size and pressure, namely land values, the extent of the built-up area and density of settlement, to estimate the early-fourteenth-century populations of Winchester and London. It may be significant that this method has produced considerably higher population figures than had been reached by the more traditional approach. In this uncertainty, any source that purports to record the whole of a demographically defined section of the population is of considerable interest. Norwich is fortunate in the survival of such a source in an early-fourteenth-century tithing roll for the leet of Nedham and Mancroft (hereafter Mancroft), one of the four leets of the city.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 15 , May 1988 , pp. 15 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

Notes

Acknowledgements are due to the Norwich Survey and the British Academy for helping to fund this paper, to Dr Derek Keene and Dr Roger Virgoe for their helpful criticism, to Margot Tillyard for making the Reconstructions available and to the staff of the Norfolk Record Office.

1 Published comments include: ‘No reliable estimate can be made of her pre-Black Death population’, M. D. Lobel and E. M. Carus-Wilson, ‘Bristol’, 11 n.5; ‘No figures relating to population exist before the poll tax of 1377’, Lobel, M. D., ‘Cambridge’, 12.Google Scholar Both from The Atlas of Historic Towns, ed. Lobel, M. D., II (1975).Google Scholar

2 For example, E. Miller's estimate of over 8, 000 for York in 1334 is based on entries to the freedom. ‘Medieval York’, in A History of Yorkshire: the City of York, ed. Tillott, P. M. (Victoria County History, 1961), 84–5.Google Scholar A. Saul suggests a pre-1348 population of over 4, 500 for Great Yarmouth from the 1377 poll tax figures. ‘Great Yarmouth and the Hundred Years War in the fourteenth century’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 52, no. 126 (1979), 105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Keene, Derek, Survey of Medieval Winchester, Winchester Studies, 2 (1985), 368Google Scholar and Cheapside before the Great Fire (1985), 19–20Google Scholar and a paper given to the Anglo-American seminar on aspects of the late medieval economy and society (Historical Geography Research Group) Norwich, July 1986. The Winchester figure of 10, 000–12, 000 is based on a much increased estimate for the fifteenth century. The London figure is more or less double the conventional estimate of 40, 000–50, 000.

4 Norfolk Record Office (hereafter NRO), Norwich City Records (hereafter NCR), case 5, shelf c.

5 Mobility in rural Essex in the early fourteenth century is the subject of Poos, L. R., ‘Population turnover in medieval Essex: the evidence of some early-fourteenth-century tithing lists’, in The World We Have Gained, eds Bonfield, L., Smith, R. M. and Wrightson, K. (1986), 1.Google Scholar Keene, Derek discusses urban mobility in the fifteenth century in Cheapside before the Great Fire, 17.Google Scholar

6 For details of the methods employed in the Reconstructions see Tillyard, M., ‘The acquisition by the Norwich Blackfriars of the site for their church c.1310–1325’ in Kelly, S., Rutledge, E. and Tillyard, M., Men of Property, an Analysis of the Norwich Enrolled Deeds, 1285–1311 (1983), 5ff.Google Scholar At present the plans are held by the Centre of East Anglian Studies, University of East Anglia. When finalized they will be deposited in the Norfolk Record Office.

7 The other county was Oxfordshire. Glasscock, R. E., ‘England circa 1334’, in A New Historical Geography of England, ed. Darby, H. C. (1973), 141, 184.Google Scholar

8 Campbell, Bruce, ‘Population pressure, inheritance and the land market in a fourteenth-century peasant community’, in Land, Kinship and Life-cycle, ed. Smith, R. M. (1984), 92.Google Scholar

9 Campbell, James, ‘Norwich’, in The Atlas of Historic Towns, ed. Lobel, M. D., II (1975), 11 and map 2.Google Scholar In the following discussion this map is being compared to the Reconstructions.

10 Hudson, W. and Tingey, J. C. (eds), The Records of the City of Norwich (1906–1910), 1, 23–7;Google Scholar II, 226/7.

11 For more detailed plans and a concise history of the development of Norwich see Campbell, James, ‘Norwich’.Google Scholar

12 Campbell, , ‘Norwich’, 11.Google Scholar

13 The standard work is Morris, W. A., The Frankpledge System (1910).Google Scholar

14 Hudson, W. (ed.), Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich during the 13th and 14th Centuries with a Short Notice of its Later History and Decline (Selden Society, 5, 1892).Google Scholar

15 Poos, , ‘Population turnover’.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., 8, 13–14.

17 Hudson, and Tingey, , Records, I, 372–81.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., II, cxix; Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction, xlviii.

19 Hudson, and Tingey, , Records, I, 18–20.Google Scholar

20 Hudson, , Leet Jurisdiction, xlviii–1.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., xxiv-xxvi.

22 Bateson, M. (ed.), Records of the Borough of Leicester, II (1901), 153–4, 157;Google Scholar Poos, , ‘Population turnover’ 8–9.Google Scholar

23 The clause from Magna Carta requiring view of frankpledge to be held at Michaelmas was among those copied into the Norwich Book of Customs in the early fourteenth century (NRO, NCR, case 17, shelf b, f. 30d) but there is no evidence that it was followed. The Essex tithing rolls were drawn up in May and June—Poos, ‘Population turnover’, 7–9.

24 Public Record Office, E179/149/9m.79.

25 Hudson, , Leet Jurisdiction, lxv ff.Google Scholar

26 NRO, NCR, case 17, shelf b, fos 37–8.

27 Russell, J. C., British Medieval Population (Albuquerque, 1948), 293.Google Scholar

28 Hudson, , Leet Jurisdiction, 41.Google Scholar

29 NRO, NCR, case 5, shelf b.

30 De Bracton, H., De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae, f. 124b.Google Scholar

31 Hudson, , Leet Jurisdiction, xlii.Google Scholar

32 Le Strange, H. (ed.), Norfolk Official Lists (1890), 93–5, 132–4.Google Scholar

33 51 out of 112. Of the 112, 5 were women, one name cannot be read and one man is only identified as the brother of John de Marsham.

34 The instability of peasant surnames at this date is discussed by Zvi Razi in ‘The Toronto School's reconstitution of medieval peasant society: a critical view’, Past and Present, 85 (1979), 142–4;Google Scholar Poos discusses the problems this produces in comparing different tithing lists in ‘Population turnover’, 14–15. In The Origin of English Surnames (1967), 331, 338–41Google Scholar, P. H. Reaney gives examples of name changes in early-fourteenth-century London but found the printed records of Norwich threw little light on the question. Hudson, however, from his knowledge of the records of about 1300 believed ‘the same person will figure sometimes with a name of origin, sometimes with a name of occupation, sometimes with a nickname, and to a casual reader his identity will be altogether unsuspected’, Leet Jurisdiction, xcii.

35 Public Record Office E179/149/9 m. 79d; Strange, Le, Norfolk Official Lists, 132, 94–5;Google Scholar Reconstructions; leet roll 1313, NRO, NCR, case 5, shelf b.

36 This point is implicit in much of Willard, J. F., Parliamentary Taxes on Personal Property, 1290 to 1334. A Study in Medieval English Financial Administration (Cambridge, Mass., 1934).Google Scholar It has also been made by Bridbury, A. R. in ‘English provincial towns in the later middle ages’, Econ. Hist. Review, 2nd series, 34 (1981), 18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 There were apparently two Simon de Lophams owning property in Wymer. Rye, W. (ed.), Calendar of Norwich deeds enrolled in the court rolls……1307–1341 (1915)Google Scholar, passim. Public Record Office E179/149/9 m. 79.

38 Keene, , Survey of Medieval Winchester, 294–5.Google Scholar Special arrangements were made to tax London merchants at their place of residence but this may not have applied where they held ‘foreign’ tenements. Willard, , Parliamentary Taxes, 153ff.Google Scholar

39 Leet roll 1313, NRO, NCR, case 5, shelf b.

40 Hudson, , Leet Jurisdiction, xlii and li.Google Scholar

41 193 out of 860 and 483 out of 1513 respectively. Unless otherwise apparent, all numbers in this paper have been rounded up or down to the nearest whole number.

42 The numbers rose by 70.69 per cent from 56 to 94, whereas the population rose by 76 percent. All other factors being equal, the duplication of names in a population of 1, 000 will be more than twice that in a population of 500.

43 Turnover rates are used and discussed in Laslett, Peter, Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (1977), Ch. 2, 50ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Poos, , ‘Population turnover’, table 1.2.Google Scholar

45 Laslett snowed that the turnover rate for the French parish of Langueness rose from an average of 40.5 per cent to one of 81 per cent over 12 years when intermediate movement was taken into account, Family Life, 82–3.Google Scholar

46 Similar comments are made in Poos, , ‘Population turnover’, 17.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., 12 and table 1.1.

48 Maitland, F. W. and Baildon, W. P. (eds), The Court Baron (Selden Society, 4, 1891), 80.Google Scholar

49 Stevenson, W. H. (ed.), Records of the Borough of Nottingham (1882–1900), I, 200ff;Google Scholar Hudson, , Leet Jurisdiction, lix–lxi.Google Scholar

50 A tithing population for Birdbrook of 133. Poos, , ‘Population turnover’, table 1.1.Google Scholar

51 The loose occupational zoning in Norwich at this time is discussed by Serena Kelly in Kelly, Rutledge, and Tillyard, , Men of Property, 13ff.Google Scholar

52 Hatcher, J., ‘Mortality in the fifteenth century: some new evidence’, Econ. Hist. Review, Ser.2, no.39 (1986), 19–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed One-third of the Canterbury monks studied may have died of plague.

53 Keene, , Cheapside before the Great Fire, 17.Google Scholar

54 There is a difficulty in not knowing exactly when this move took place. If it was after 16 years the average number of new tithingmen would have been slightly higher in the earlier period; if it took place after 16 years and 6 months the reverse was the case.

55 High levels of immigration tend to increase the proportion of the population of reproductive age and so increase the birth rate. Corfield, P., ‘A provincial capital in the late seventeenth century: the case of Norwich’, reprinted in The Early Modern Town, ed. Clark, P. (1976), 235.Google Scholar The c.1311 Mancroft tithing population of 860 suggests a possible total leet population of 2, 494. (For the methods used to calculate this see p. 26.) The resulting 100 births a year would be female as well as male and the number of boys coming into the leet would be reduced by mortality before the age of 12.

56 This statement is not intended to conflict with the use Reaney has made of Norwich surnames to show immigration patterns, Origin of English Surnames, 332ff.Google Scholar The issue here is whether particular individuals were first-generation immigrants.

57 Campbell, , ‘Population pressure’, 87ff.Google Scholar

58 The custumal mentions the problem of day labourers, working for ld. a day, who had no goods to be attached. Hudson, and Tingey, , Records, I, 189.Google Scholar

59 For reasons which cannot be gone into here, these figures probably underestimate the true extent of owner-occupation. It is hoped to go into this question in more detail at a later date.

60 Reconstructions and Rye, Calendar of Norwich Deeds, passim.

61 At least 33 per cent (17) of the 51 subsidymen whose names appear on the Mancroft tithing roll had been living in the same parish since c.1311. Another 24 per cent (12) may have been in the leet since c.1311, but as some names appear more than once on the roll this group overlaps to some extent with the 24 per cent (12) of the subsidymen who may only have come into the area since c. 1327–8.8 per cent (4) of the names of men assessed for the subsidy appear for the first time on the additional membrane. Misidentification is a particular problem with the 1332 subsidy assessment because it consists of a bald list of names for the leet of Mancroft as a whole and gives no additional information. Identification between men named on the Mancroft tithing roll and the owners of property who appear on the Reconstructions is often more satisfactory. Richard Cole de Wymondham illustrates this point. He appears described as such both on the tithing roll and in the Reconstructions. On the subsidy assessment, on the other hand, there is only a Richard Cole who has been assumed to be the same man because there is no other Richard Cole on the tithing list. It is accepted that the possibility of misidentification exists throughout this paper.

62 Russell, , British Medieval Population, 292–3.Google Scholar

63 Campbell, , ‘Norwich’, 10;Google Scholar Hudson, and Tingy, , Records, II, cxix, cxx.Google Scholar

64 Nothing is known about female immigration into Norwich at this period and so it has been assumed that the number of women was equal to that of men. The 45 per cent figure for children under 12 is also a little arbitrary. Russell approves of the addition of 50 per cent to the poll tax returns to allow for children under 14, British Medieval Population, 9. This multiplier of 2.90 lies towards the higher end of the range used by Poos in estimating the total population of Essex communities from tithing lists, ‘Population turnover’, table 1.1.

65 Poos, L. R., ‘The rural population of Essex in the later middle ages’, Econ. Hist. Review, Ser.2, no. 38 (1985), 521.Google Scholar

66 Campbell, , ‘Population pressure’, 97ff.Google Scholar

67 Campbell, ‘Norwich’, 21.Google Scholar

68 See note 3.

69 Public Record Office E179/149/9 mm. 79–80; Old Free Book NRO, NCR, case 17, shelf c, f.30ff. Lists of admissions were copied up from 1317–18 but are only continuous from 1343–4.

70 The difficulties experienced by some of the cloth towns in the early fourteenth century are discussed by Carus-Wilson, E. M. in Medieval Merchant Venturers (1954), Chs IV and V.Google Scholar York was expanding both physically and economically, Miller, , ‘Medieval York’, 84–5.Google Scholar Hadwin, J. F. opposes the view that many towns were close to their (economic) nadir in 1334 in ‘The medieval lay subsidies and economic history’, Econ. Hist. Review, Ser.2, no. 36 (1983), 212.Google Scholar