Government, power and authority 1300–1540

Rigby, S. H.; Ewan, Elizabeth; Palliser, D. M.; Clark, Penney; Daunton, Martin

doi:10.1017/chol9780521444613.014

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 113 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The social and economic life of most individuals was strongly constrained by the household, which formed the social and spatial context for work and life. Taken together, patronage, households, guilds, and parishes were responsible for the local provision of public goods, thereby extending their reach into all facets of social life [ 4 – 7 , 46 , 48 , 49 , 95 , 96 ]. The extent to which these institutions determined the social and economic networks in medieval cities is an important question that we address here via scaling analysis.…”

Section: Medieval European Urban Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The political institutions of English cities were increasingly controlled by the enfranchised merchant elites (burgesses) of independent municipalities by ca .1300, and only indirectly connected landed elites through economic ties [ 15 , 95 , 96 ]. In contrast to the political privileges of Italian city-state capitals, the English urban network developed decentralized market-based interdependencies among both large and small towns [ 14 , 15 , 45 , 90 , 91 , 95 , 96 , 121 ]. As Europe’s largest wholesale exporters of wool and woolen cloth, English urban economies were increasingly stimulated by the development of associated commercial institutions and subsidiary industries.…”

Section: Medieval European Urban Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Population-Area Relationship for Medieval European Cities

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Medieval European urbanization presents a line of continuity between earlier cities and modern European urban systems. Yet, many of the spatial, political and economic features of medieval European cities were particular to the Middle Ages, and subsequently changed over the Early Modern Period and Industrial Revolution. There is a long tradition of demographic studies estimating the population sizes of medieval European cities, and comparative analyses of these data have shed much light on the long-term evolution of urban systems. However, the next step—to systematically relate the population size of these cities to their spatial and socioeconomic characteristics—has seldom been taken. This raises a series of interesting questions, as both modern and ancient cities have been observed to obey area-population relationships predicted by settlement scaling theory. To address these questions, we analyze a new dataset for the settled area and population of 173 European cities from the early fourteenth century to determine the relationship between population and settled area. To interpret this data, we develop two related models that lead to differing predictions regarding the quantitative form of the population-area relationship, depending on the level of social mixing present in these cities. Our empirical estimates of model parameters show a strong densification of cities with city population size, consistent with patterns in contemporary cities. Although social life in medieval Europe was orchestrated by hierarchical institutions (e.g., guilds, church, municipal organizations), our results show no statistically significant influence of these institutions on agglomeration effects. The similarities between the empirical patterns of settlement relating area to population observed here support the hypothesis that cities throughout history share common principles of organization that self-consistently relate their socioeconomic networks to structured urban spaces.

show abstract

Section: Medieval European Urban Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Medieval European Urban Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Population-Area Relationship for Medieval European Cities

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Mitchell, 1951, pp. 210-20), and this separation contributed to their enfranchisement (Rigby and Ewan, 2000). 27 The link between administrative separation and enfranchisement is also highlighted by Elton (1974, p. 41): "[...] mainly because consent to taxes was required, the Crown summoned both knights for the shires and burgesses and citizens for the towns; that is to say, the concept of communities of the realm was extended beyond the administrative divisions [i.e., the shires] to the embedded lesser units [i.e., the boroughs].…”

Section: Farm Grants Extra-ordinary Taxation and Parliamentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The administration in municipal corporations was typically in the hands of an oligarchy, who also had influence over the selection of MPs (Evans, 1974). In the 15th and 16th centuries, the governing oligarchies were relatively open and accountable to the wider body of freemen, with some variation across boroughs (Rigby and Ewan, 2000;Patterson, 2008;Liddy, 2017). We exploit this variation in our empirical analysis.…”

Section: Independence Of Borough Politics In the 15-17th Centurymentioning

confidence: 99%

How Merchant Towns Shaped Parliaments: From the Norman Conquest of England to the Great Reform Act

Angelucci¹,

Meraglia

Voigtländer

2022

American Economic Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We study the emergence of urban self-governance in the late medieval period. We focus on England after the Norman Conquest of 1066, building a novel comprehensive dataset of 554 medieval towns. During the Commercial Revolution (twelfth to thirteenth centuries), many merchant towns obtained Farm Grants: the right of self-governed tax collection and law enforcement. Self-governance, in turn, was a stepping stone for parliamentary representation: Farm Grant towns were much more likely to be summoned directly to the medieval English Parliament than otherwise similar towns. We also show that self-governed towns strengthened the role of Parliament and shaped national institutions over the subsequent centuries. (JEL D02, D72, D73, K11, K34, N43, N93)

show abstract

“…Something of the same sort may well have been at issue at Dover in 1506 when Lovell advised the mayor and jurats to take order that 'oon Rychard Yong, Scottysheman born, for dyv[er]s offens & sclaundryng w[ith] hys tong, that he shall have hys ere nayled to a cart whele & so be band the towne for ev[er]'. 56 At another level, however, Henry appealed more widely and directly to his subjects for their support than any previous king. His proclamations were fuller than his predecessors' in their explanations of policyone in 1496, for example, featuring an extended passage blaming war with Scotland on James IV rather than himself -and he made much more use of print to communicate with his subjects, from the translation and printing of the papal bull authorizing his marriage to the tracts produced in celebration of his daughter's betrothal to the future Charles V. 57 He also used more popular media, as when 'sundry roundellis & songis to his shame & derision' were made about Perkin Warbeck following his failed attack on the Kent coast in 1495.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Henry VII in Context: Problems and Possibilities

Gunn¹

2007

History

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Clearer understanding of Henry VII's reign is hindered not only by practical problems, such as deficiencies in source material, but also by its liminal position in historical study, at the end of the period conventionally studied by later medievalists and the beginning of that studied by early modernists. This makes it harder to evaluate changes in the judicial system, in local power structures, in England's position in European politics, in the rise of new social groups to political prominence and in the ideas behind royal policy. However, thoughtful combination of the approaches taken by different historical schools and reflection on wider processes of change at work in Henry's reign, such as in England's cultural and economic life, can make a virtue out of Henry's liminality. Together with the use of more unusual sources, such an approach enables investigation for Henry's reign of many themes of current interest to historians of the later Tudor period. These include courtly, parliamentary and popular politics, political culture, state formation and the interrelationships of different parts of the British Isles and Ireland. H enry VII is the victim of a sad paradox. 'Liminality' -existence on the threshold between two phases of a process -is a fashionable notion, so fashionable that some groups of students laugh excitedly each time one of them contrives to use the word. Henry VII, first of the Tudors, last of the Lancastrians, presiding over the end of the Wars of the Roses, the eve of the Reformation and the first English landfalls in North America, is surely a liminal king. Yet Henry VII is by no stretch of the imagination fashionable. To be outshone in public memory by his charismatic son and granddaughter, Henry VIII and Elizabeth, might be accepted as his dynastic duty. To be eclipsed in fame by the man he displaced is a bitter fate indeed. Since 1980 Richard III has scored six new biographies to Henry's two, at least four monographs to Henry's two, and three collections of scholarly essays to Henry's one; not to mention three edited collections of contemporary documents, a personalized academic journal and several Ricardian websites.

show abstract

Government, power and authority 1300–1540

Cited by 6 publications

References 113 publications

Population-Area Relationship for Medieval European Cities

Population-Area Relationship for Medieval European Cities

How Merchant Towns Shaped Parliaments: From the Norman Conquest of England to the Great Reform Act

Henry VII in Context: Problems and Possibilities

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About