England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II

That phrase held a wider, deeper meaning than Jocelyn could have known. Bury St Edmund’s rural tenants had made far more progress toward enfranchisement than tenants of other great estates, such as Abingdon Abbey. In 1185, after Abbot Roger of Abingdon’s death, a dispute between the convent’s obedientiaries and the king’s appointed steward during the vacancy produced a consuetudinary, comparable to Peterborough’s earlier “Black Book.” While most tenant dues were paid in cash, many older customs survived: the chamberlain held an acre at Culham that local men were required to reap; a meadow at Stockgrave supplied hay for the monks’ baths; at Welsford near Newbury, twenty-two cotset-lands were held via services as swineherds, bedels, shepherds, and hedgewards; at Boxhole, eight of twelve tenants, in addition to paying rent, had to plough an acre of the demesne with their own seed, and seven had to carry hay and corn. Accounts from the bishop of Durham’s estates, recorded by Hugh of Puiset in 1183, show old labour rents and customs remaining almost entirely intact: at Boldon, twenty-two of thirty-six tenants held two bovates (thirty acres each), paying two shillings and sixpence in scot-pennies, half a chalder of oats, sixteen pence in aver-pennies, five cart-loads of wood, two hens and ten eggs, and three days of work weekly year-round except Easter week, Whitsun week, and the twelve days of Christmas; they also performed autumn boon-work with all family members except the housewife, reaped three roods of averipe, ploughed and harrowed three roods of averere, and provided labour to build a house forty feet long and fifteen feet wide. At Whickham, however, sweeping changes had been implemented: thirty-five villeins each holding an oxgang of fifteen acres had previously paid sixteen pence and worked three days a week, but the record notes “now, however, the said manor of Whickham is at farm”—all services and dues, except a small tribute of hens and eggs, were commuted for a yearly rent of twenty-six pounds.

Overall, glimpses of the rural population under the Angevin kings show they were not excluded from the kingdom’s progress. Even rising dues likely reflect growth in agricultural prosperity and material comfort. Industrial expansion was visible in many ways: in towns, the growing influence of handicraftsmen was proven by the jealousy with which both the central government and civic authorities viewed their gilds. Weavers were a particular target of civic hostility, treated as near-outcasts in most large towns; in 1201, London citizens paid John twenty silver marks yearly plus sixty marks upfront for a charter authorizing them to expel all weavers from the city. The outcome was typical of John, and equally revealing of the craftsmen’s growing influence: the king took the citizens’ money, issued the requested charter, then nullified it by granting the weavers his continued protection, only raising their annual payment from eighteen to twenty marks.

Industrial growth went hand in hand with expanding trade, as markets and fairs sprang up across the country, sparking fierce commercial rivalry. Bury St Edmund’s established a merchant gild whose members required all non-members to pay toll to use the town’s market. Abingdon fair’s great success in Henry II’s early years stirred jealousy in Wallingford and Oxford, whose complaints led the king to order an inquisition by 24 elderly shire men who lived in Henry I’s reign to check if Abingdon had held a market then. The case was tried at Farnborough: Wallingford jurors swore only bread and ale had been sold at Abingdon in Henry I’s time; Oxford men admitted more goods but no “full market”; the shire men acknowledged a full market had existed but doubted any boats other than the abbot’s had carried goods there. Earl Robert of Leicester, presiding, sent the conflicting testimonies to the king without issuing a ruling, adding that he had seen a full market at Abingdon in William I’s reign when he was a boy at the abbey school. The men of Abingdon won their case.

Around forty years later, in 1201, Ely monks established a market at Lakenheath within the liberties of S. Edmund’s abbey. The abbey chapter sent a friendly remonstrance, offering to refund the fifteen marks the Ely monks paid for their market charter if they abandoned it. The plea had no effect. Recognitors found the new market was harming S. Edmund’s market, so the king, in exchange for a promise of forty marks, granted S. Edmund’s a charter banning any market in the abbey’s liberties without the abbot’s consent, and ordered justiciar Geoffrey Fitz-Peter to abolish the Lakenheath market. The abbot gathered six hundred well-armed men and marched on Lakenheath at midnight; the market was deserted, with all stallholders having fled. The prior of Ely refused to leave his house, so S. Edmund’s bailiffs seized the butchers’ trestles, planks, cart-horses, sheep, and oxen, and carried them to Icklingham. The bishop of Ely complained in person to the justiciar and England’s great men, decrying the act as an unheard-of insult to St Etheldreda in peacetime.

The Angevins’ wide cross-sea political ties drove growth in foreign commerce. One surviving example is a 1175 or 1176 writ from Henry II to Dublin’s bailiffs on behalf of Chester’s citizens: Henry had granted Bristol’s men the right to colonize Dublin and hold it with the same liberties as Bristol, putting Chester (Bristol’s Irish trade rival) at risk of being shut out of the market. Henry’s writ ordered that Chester burghers be free to trade in Dublin as they had previously. Even more significant was eastern coastal trade with the Angevins’ continental dominions and most of Europe. The renewed political ties between England and the Empire boosted trade from northern German and Low Countries merchant cities to London. Richard, on the eve of his return from captivity in 1194, granted Cologne’s citizens a gildhall in London “with all their other customs and demands,” in exchange for a two-shilling annual payment. The hall of the Teutonic merchants, later famous as the Steel-yard, was likely established around the same time; early in the 13th century, an elaborate set of trade regulations covered the Lorrainers, the “men of the Emperor of Germany,” Danes, and Norwegians. Commercial growth brought increased wealth, material comforts, and refinements. Domestic architecture improved: Henry Fitz-Aylwine’s opening mayoral “Assize,” the earliest English Building Act, showed civic authorities working to secure health, comfort, and fire safety in urban housing. Ecclesiastical architecture advanced even faster: church building and rebuilding took place across the country on a scale that proved the great growth in artistic taste and material wealth England had achieved under its first Angevin king’s just rule. At the start of John’s reign, London citizens planned to replace the city’s wooden Thames bridge with a stone structure. In April 1202, John wrote to the mayor and citizens to recommend the architect Isenbert, master of the schools at Saintes. The citizens instead chose their own candidate: Peter, chaplain of St Mary Colechurch, the small church under whose shadow St Thomas the Martyr was born. Peter began work on the London stone bridge, and his body was buried in its chapel when he died in 1205.