Candle Making ..
Medieval Prices & Wages
1 pound (L) ₤ = 20 shillings (s)
1 crown = 5 shillings
1 shilling = 12 pence (d)
1 penny = 4 farthings
1 mark = 13s 4d
https://thehistoryofengland.co.uk/resource/medieval-prices-and-wages/
http://www.medievalcoinage.com/prices/medievalprices.htm
http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng240/medieval_prices.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20110628231215/http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/medievalprices.html
........
http://www.florilegium.org/?http%3A//www.florilegium.org/files/COMMERCE/p-prices-msg.html .
Medieval Economics
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/m_econ.htm
1350-1400
4d - Master Carpenter (1360)
3.78d - Chanter at a church (£5/15/- per annum, 1315)
3d - Master Carpenter, Mason, Tiler (1351)
2.63d - Chaplain at Anglesey (£4 per annum, 1332)
2.5d - Threshing 8 bushels of wheat and rye
2d - Corn reaper per acre (or day)
2d - Skilled Carpenter, Mason, Tiler
1.5d - Carpenters' Servants/Apprentices
1.5d - Threshing 8 bushels of beans, barley, peas, oats
0.44d - Bailiff of Husbandry (160d per annum)
0.33d - Swineherd (120d per annum)
0.20d - Dairy woman (72d per annum)
1301
Bull, 96d
Cow, 72d
Ducks, 1½-2d
Ewe, 9-12d
Geese, 2-3½d
Hens, ¾-1d
Horse (Cart), 144-240d
Lamb, 5-7d
Muttons, 10-15d
Pigs, 20-30d
...............................1260......1300......1350
Barley, bushel 4-4¼d 4-6d 5-13½d
Oats, bushel 2½-2¾d 2-3¼d 2¼-6d
Rye, bushel 5-6d 3¼-6¾d 4¼-11d
Wheat, bushel 6-8d 7½-8½d 8-16d
1350 is the year following the great outbreak of bubonic plague, the huge price variance is in part illustrative of the shortage of labor for the harvesting of food grains and the dwindling of reserves. The year 1348 already saw a terrible harvest, and in November the plague hit London and spread explosively to virtually all quarters of England. In nearly all cases the higher price for foodstuffs and labor in this year is from records of prices in the winter of 1350-1351.
Spices - price
https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/SPICES1.htm
JOB TITLES
Bailiff of Husbandry - The "Manager" of a manor's farms
Cooper - A barrel maker
Pargetter - A plasterer, especially of chimney flues, in medieval times using a mortar composed of lime, hair, dung, and earth.
MEDIEVAL MEASUREMENTS
Dry Measures
1 Sextarius = 1 Sester = 1 Sema = 1 Quarter = 1 Seam = 8 Bushels
1 Bushel = 1 Sceppe = 4 Quartalium = 4 Pecks
1 Peck = 2 Gallons (dry) = 8 Quarts (dry) = 16 Pints (dry) = 32 Ounces (dry)
Liquids
1 Tun = 252 Gallons
Mass/Weight
1 Petra = a variable weight between 8 and 20 pounds
1 Great Pound = 1 Clove = 1 Nail (wool measure) 7 Pounds
1 Stone = 2 Clove = 14 pounds = ½ Tod
1 Sack = 2 Pisa = 26 Stone = 52 Clove
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_England_in_the_Middle_Ages
Pounds, shillings, and pence: a history of English coinage - Lindy > .
Other currencies: How red squirrel pelts shaped our monetary systems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOow2__jSlY
English Economy 14th century
Trade and Economics in the Middle Ages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Wfw_DbNVc
Early Medieval Trade | World History | Khan Academy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyW7CUl9KDc
11th-14th centuries: Rise of Towns & Europe's Economy in the Late Middle Ages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhnyQjRjxY4
Changes in the Middle Ages 3 Economy and Trade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvbegSLqMGc
Medieval Economics
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/m_econ.htm
http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/economy-in-the-middle-ages.html
http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/the-black-death.html
Medieval Coinage
14th century: farthing, half penny, penny, half groat, groat, noble
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/V86JZuKvRAS
The loss of life in the Great Famine of 1315–17 shook the English economy severely and population growth ceased; the first outbreak of the Black Death in 1348 then killed around half the English population, with major implications for the post-plague economy. The agricultural sector shrank, with higher wages, lower prices and shrinking profits leading to the final demise of the old demesne system and the advent of the modern farming system of cash rents for lands. The Peasants Revolt of 1381 shook the older feudal order and limited the levels of royal taxation considerably for a century to come. The 15th century saw the growth of the English cloth industry and the establishment of a new class of international English merchant, increasingly based in London and the South-West, prospering at the expense of the older, shrinking economy of the eastern towns. These new trading systems brought about the end of many of the international fairs and the rise of the chartered company. Together with improvements in metalworking and shipbuilding, this represents the end of the medieval economy, and the beginnings of the early modern period in English economics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_England_in_the_Middle_Ages
The putting-out system (cottage industry) is a means of subcontracting work. Historically, it was also known as the workshop system and the domestic system. In putting-out, work is contracted by a central agent to subcontractors who complete the work in off-site facilities, either in their own homes or in workshops with multiple craftsmen.
It was used in the English and American textile industries, in shoemaking, lock-making trades, and making parts for small firearms from the Industrial Revolution until the mid-19th century.
The domestic system was suited to pre-urban times because workers did not have to travel from home to work, which was quite impracticable due to the state of roads and footpaths, and members of the household spent many hours in farm or household tasks.
A cottage industry is a small-scale industry, where the creation of products and services is home-based, rather than factory-based. While products and services created by cottage industries are often unique and distinctive, given the fact that they are usually not mass-produced, producers in this sector often face numerous disadvantages when trying to compete with much larger factory-based companies.
A cottage industry is an industry—primarily manufacturing—which includes many producers, working from their homes, typically part time. The term originally referred to home workers who were engaged in a task such as sewing, lace-making, wall hangings, or household manufacturing. Some industries which are usually operated from large, centralized factories were cottage industries before the Industrial Revolution. Business operators would travel around the world, buying raw materials, delivering them to people who would work on them, and then collecting the finished goods to sell, or typically to ship to another market. One of the factors which allowed the Industrial Revolution to take place in Western Europe was the presence of these business people who had the ability to expand the scale of their operations. Cottage industries were very common in the time when a large proportion of the population was engaged in agriculture, because the farmers (and their families) often had both the time and the desire to earn additional income during the part of the year (winter) when there was little work to do farming or selling produce by the farm's roadside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putting-out_system
By late Roman times, domestic wool was already being used to produce textiles (“cloth”) in the Low Countries. The marshes along the coast, which had not yet been enclosed by dikes, provided grazing for large flocks of sheep which yielded sufficient wool to satisfy domestic demand. In the 12th century a fundamental change occurred. Production was transferred from the countryside to the fast-growing cities (Ypres, Ghent, Bruges, and later also Brussels and Antwerp), and weavers began using English wool as their raw material instead of home-produced wool. The result was a high quality, luxury product intended for export. Sheep reared on the type of grass produced by the very damp English pastureland with its poor soil yielded a particularly fine and springy woollen fleece. For that reason, demand for English wool was virtually inelastic: neither home-produced wool nor the wool occasionally imported from Spain offered a real alternative.
English wool was now being imported into the Low Countries in unprecedented quantities, in sacks or as fleeces still attached to the skin. Flemish and Brabant merchants and weavers were very active in this trade. They went to England in person, to the grounds of the sometimes remote Cistercian abbeys where the sheep were predominantly reared. On the local wool markets they often paid in advance for future deliveries, so that they also already had a stake in the actual production of the wool. Flemish vessels shipped the wool from London and other ports such as Great Yarmouth, King’s Lynn, Dover, Sandwich and Boston.
The Southern Netherlands merchants needed English coins to buy their wool; they became good customers of the English coin workshops, where they exchanged the lightweight pennies from the Netherlands or bars of silver for English sterling. Thus, the accounting records of the London Mint list the names of merchants from Ypres and Brussels, side by side with the names of English customers. On their return from England, they did not always take their surplus English money for melting down into local pennies again, but sometimes preferred to set the foreign currency aside ready for their next trip. It is therefore not surprising that the 13th century coin treasure discovered in 1908 during the demolition of a cellar wall in the house at no. 32 Rue d’assaut in Brussels contained no less than 80,927 English sterling coins.
Gradually, the rulers and merchants on the Continent came to realise that they could make considerable savings by minting sterling coins themselves in their own country, rather than buying them from English coin workshops. From around 1270, coins worth one or two sterling pennies were therefore minted in the Low Countries, alongside the ordinary lightweight pennies. The sterling copies had the same weight and alloy as the foreign originals. The images on the face of the coins varied greatly: some depicted a crowned head, just like the English coins, while others displayed a totally distinctive image. In contrast, the reverse of virtually all the coins depicted the cross with three bullets between the arms, copied from the English model. From about the mid 14th century, owing to the rising demand for high value currency, the sterling penny became less important, giving way to the silver groat – worth three sterlings – and gold coins.
https://www.nbbmuseum.be/en/2009/12/sterling.htm
The importance of London for craft and industry in medieval England
http://www.theposthole.org/sites/theposthole.org/files/downloads/posthole_47_360.pdf
1100-1290
Mining did not make up a large part of the English medieval economy, but the 12th and 13th centuries saw an increased demand for metals in England, thanks to the considerable population growth and building construction, including the great cathedrals and churches. Four metals were mined commercially in England during the period: iron, tin, lead and silver using a variety of refining techniques. Coal was also mined from the 13th century onwards.
Iron mining occurred in several locations including the main English centre in the Forest of Dean, as well as in Durham and the Weald. Some iron to meet English demand was also imported from the continent, especially by the late 13th century. By end of the 12th century, the older method of acquiring iron ore through strip mining was being supplemented by more advanced techniques, including tunnels, trenches and bell-pits. Iron ore was usually locally processed at a bloomery and by the 14th century the first water-powered iron forge in England was built at Chingley. As a result of the diminishing woodlands and consequent increases in the cost of both wood and charcoal, demand for coal increased in the 12th century and began to be commercially produced from bell-pits and strip mining.
A silver boom occurred in England after the discovery of silver near Carlisle in 1133. Huge quantities of silver were produced from a semicircle of mines reaching across Cumberland, Durham and Northumberland - up to three to four tonnes of silver were mined each year, more than ten times the previous annual production across the whole of Europe. The result was a local economic boom and a major uplift to 12th century royal finances. Tin mining was centred in Cornwall and Devon, exploiting alluvial deposits and governed by the special Stannary Courts and Parliaments - tin formed a valuable export good, initially to Germany and then later in the 14th century to the Low Countries. Lead was usually mined as a by-product of mining for silver, with mines in Yorkshire, Durham and the north, as well as in Devon. Economically fragile, the lead mines usually survived as a result of being subsidised by silver production.
England's economy was fundamentally agricultural throughout the period, but the mining of iron, tin, lead and silver, and later coal, played an important part within the English medieval economy.
The Black Death epidemic first arrived in England in 1348, re-occurring in waves during 1360-2, 1368-9, 1375 and more sporadically thereafter. The most immediate economic impact of this disaster was the widespread loss of life, between around 27% mortality amongst the upper classes, to 40-70% amongst the peasantry. Despite the very high loss of life, few settlements were abandoned during the epidemic itself, but many were badly affected or nearly eliminated altogether. The medieval authorities did their best to respond in an organised fashion, but the economic disruption was immense. Building work ceased and many mining operations paused. In the short term, efforts were taken by the authorities to control wages and enforce pre-epidemic working conditions. Coming on top of the previous years of famine, however, the longer term economic implications were profound. In contrast to the previous centuries of rapid growth, the English population would not begin to recover for over a century, despite the many positive reasons for a resurgence. The crisis would affect English mining for the remainder of the medieval period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_English_Mining_in_the_Middle_Ages
Medieval technology
After the Renaissance of the 12th century, medieval Europe saw a radical change in the rate of new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth. The period saw major technological advances, including the adoption of gunpowder, the invention of vertical windmills, spectacles, mechanical clocks, and greatly improved water mills, building techniques (Gothic architecture, medieval castles), and agriculture in general (three-field crop rotation).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/ZDDAWBU6Snj
Pb poisoning northern Europe
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/7Y1mWi8EaVU
Search google book: "English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products" edited by John Blair, Nigel Ramsay
Prices
Anglo-Saxon
https://regia.org/research/misc/costs.htm
Medieval England
http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng240/medieval_prices.html
Regia Anglorum - Prices and costs in Anglo-Saxon England and Viking Age Europe
regia.org
Medieval Prices & Wages
1 pound (L) ₤ = 20 shillings (s)
1 crown = 5 shillings
1 shilling = 12 pence (d)
1 penny = 4 farthings
1 mark = 13s 4d
https://thehistoryofengland.co.uk/resource/medieval-prices-and-wages/
http://www.medievalcoinage.com/prices/medievalprices.htm
http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng240/medieval_prices.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20110628231215/http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/medievalprices.html
........
http://www.florilegium.org/?http%3A//www.florilegium.org/files/COMMERCE/p-prices-msg.html .
Medieval Economics
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/m_econ.htm
1350-1400
4d - Master Carpenter (1360)
3.78d - Chanter at a church (£5/15/- per annum, 1315)
3d - Master Carpenter, Mason, Tiler (1351)
2.63d - Chaplain at Anglesey (£4 per annum, 1332)
2.5d - Threshing 8 bushels of wheat and rye
2d - Corn reaper per acre (or day)
2d - Skilled Carpenter, Mason, Tiler
1.5d - Carpenters' Servants/Apprentices
1.5d - Threshing 8 bushels of beans, barley, peas, oats
0.44d - Bailiff of Husbandry (160d per annum)
0.33d - Swineherd (120d per annum)
0.20d - Dairy woman (72d per annum)
1301
Bull, 96d
Cow, 72d
Ducks, 1½-2d
Ewe, 9-12d
Geese, 2-3½d
Hens, ¾-1d
Horse (Cart), 144-240d
Lamb, 5-7d
Muttons, 10-15d
Pigs, 20-30d
...............................1260......1300......1350
Barley, bushel 4-4¼d 4-6d 5-13½d
Oats, bushel 2½-2¾d 2-3¼d 2¼-6d
Rye, bushel 5-6d 3¼-6¾d 4¼-11d
Wheat, bushel 6-8d 7½-8½d 8-16d
1350 is the year following the great outbreak of bubonic plague, the huge price variance is in part illustrative of the shortage of labor for the harvesting of food grains and the dwindling of reserves. The year 1348 already saw a terrible harvest, and in November the plague hit London and spread explosively to virtually all quarters of England. In nearly all cases the higher price for foodstuffs and labor in this year is from records of prices in the winter of 1350-1351.
Spices - price
https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/SPICES1.htm
JOB TITLES
Bailiff of Husbandry - The "Manager" of a manor's farms
Cooper - A barrel maker
Pargetter - A plasterer, especially of chimney flues, in medieval times using a mortar composed of lime, hair, dung, and earth.
MEDIEVAL MEASUREMENTS
Dry Measures
1 Sextarius = 1 Sester = 1 Sema = 1 Quarter = 1 Seam = 8 Bushels
1 Bushel = 1 Sceppe = 4 Quartalium = 4 Pecks
1 Peck = 2 Gallons (dry) = 8 Quarts (dry) = 16 Pints (dry) = 32 Ounces (dry)
Liquids
1 Tun = 252 Gallons
Mass/Weight
1 Petra = a variable weight between 8 and 20 pounds
1 Great Pound = 1 Clove = 1 Nail (wool measure) 7 Pounds
1 Stone = 2 Clove = 14 pounds = ½ Tod
1 Sack = 2 Pisa = 26 Stone = 52 Clove
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_England_in_the_Middle_Ages
14th century coins -- first three Edwards & Richard II
14th Coins -- first three Edwards & Richard II
English Money
From the 8th century the Anglo-Saxons made silver pennies. A pound weight of silver was melted to make 240 pennies. There were 240 pennies in a pound until 1971. However in the 8th century a penny was a large sum of money (4 or 5 pence would buy a sheep). Most people continued to barter for everyday goods.
In the late 13th century the farthing (one quarter of a penny) was introduced. (The farthing ceased to be legal tender in 1961). Also in the late 13th century half pennies and groats (worth four pence) were minted.
https://andreacefalo.com/2014/10/27/halfpennies-farthings-and-nobles-a-guide-to-englands-medieval-coins/
In the 14th century a coin called a noble, which was worth 80 pence or 1/3 of a pound was minted. So were coins called half-nobles. However they went out of use about 1470 and they were replaced by coins called angels and half-angels. Angels were last used in the early 17th century.
http://www.localhistories.org/money.html
Noble
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_(English_coin)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_(English_coin)#/media/File:London_Noble_of_Richard_II.jpg
http://commodityhq.com/education/a-brief-2000-year-history-of-gold-prices/
Around 1300 AD, a laborer in England could expect two earn about 2 pounds sterling in a year, or about 672 g of silver (approximately 2.1 g of silver per day, given the different workweek of medieval times). Likewise, we know a thatcher in 1261 could look to earn about 2 pennies a day or 2.8 g of silver. Thatchers’ pay increased to about 3 pence (approximately 4.2 g of silver) in 1341, 4 pence in 1381, and 6 pence in 1481. Along the way, a city “craftsman” could look to earn about 4 pence a day in the 1350s.
So what would those wages buy? In the early 14th century, wine cost between 3 pence and 10 pence per gallon in England, and two dozen eggs could be had for 1 pent. Some time later, an axe cost about 5 pence in mid-15th century England, while wheat cost approximately 0.2 g of silver per liter (not much different than the per-liter price in ancient Greece).
http://commodityhq.com/education/a-brief-2000-year-history-of-silver-prices/
Copper/bronze coinage was not minted regularly during the medieval period, as government mints focused on silver and gold coinage. Given that the large majority of the population was too poor to frequently conduct business with gold coins or large amounts of silver, the absence of copper coinage perpetuated trade through barter and credit.
The Byzantine empire was arguably the most active minter of low-value copper coinage, with the bronze folles amounting to 1:288 of the gold nomisma. Soldiers of the Byzantine empire were paid one gold nomisma per year of service. It was arguably the great emphasis on trade in the Byzantine empire that led to the significant production of bronze/copper coinage.
In the late 1500s, England did start minting a copper farthing under King James I, and the German and Italian states periodically produced copper coinage as well. However, copper’s most common use in European coinage was in debasing silver coinage – with Henry VIII famously swapping out as much of two-thirds of the silver content of coins with copper. As Europe moved into the 1700s, bronze coinage became more common, with most major governments producing them.
http://commodityhq.com/education/a-brief-2000-year-history-of-copper-prices/
Minting
The Middle Ages
Up until the 1660s, English coins were struck between a pair of hand-held dies. The pile, or lower die, had a spiked end to enable it to be driven firmly into a block of wood; a blank was placed on top of the pile and above it was held the trussel or upper die. The trussel then received blows from a hammer, causing the blank to be impressed with the obverse and reverse designs.
Dies were produced on average at the rate of two trussels to one pile, for the trussel by sustaining the direct blows of the hammer was subjected to greater wear and tear. It was therefore the custom for the trussel to bear the reverse design, since this was simpler and more easy to replace than the royal portrait which by now normally appeared on the obverse. Yet even the portrait may not have been that difficult to reproduce, being constructed by small chisel-like punches showing crescents, pellets, wedges and bars.
Written accounts of the minting process from this time are few and far between but a document of 1606 lists out a 16-stage process:
melting and casting the ingots,
annealing, or heat treating, the ingots to soften them,
hammering the ingots,
another annealing,
cutting the ingots into blanks,
annealing the blanks,
hammering the blanks thinner,
another annealing,
another hammering of the blanks,
another annealing,
another hammering of the blanks,
rolling and
hammering the edges to make the blanks rounder,
another annealing,
blanching to clean the blanks
and then finally coining.
http://www.royalmintmuseum.org.uk/history/making-money/making-money-in-the-past/the-middle-ages/index.html
Plantagenets to Tudors
http://home.eckerd.edu/~oberhot/eplant.htm
In order to be accepted outside the territory where it was issued, a coin had to satisfy a number of conditions relating to its weight, alloy and value, and had to be familiar to many. From the end of the 12th century, the English sterling penny amply fulfilled these conditions; throughout north-western Europe it enjoyed a reputation as a strong and reliable currency, in contrast to the silver pennies of the continent, which had gradually lost much of their value.
https://www.nbbmuseum.be/en/2009/12/sterling.htm
images Pinterest
https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/217861700695844732/
https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/316448311289099720/
https://finds.org.uk/medievalcoins/categories/category/id/16
[edited] Hammered English gold coins are so captivating in their designs, which invariably include intricate symbolism and Latin abbreviations of Biblical quotations favored by the respective monarchs, that many collectors focus too much on the coin designs, without understanding the historical motivations behind the coinages.
Prior to the 14th century, gold was rare in England. Almost no earlier English gold coins exist. In the reign of Edward III (1327-77), the next to last Plantagenet King, this all changed. All the silver coinage types continued, with little alteration other than title, as they had been under Edward I and II. A complicated system of privy-marks developed under the first Edward, called “Longshanks” ... he set up numerous mints to issue large amounts of silver coins, and died leaving England a wealthy nation.
Edward III ..... Black Plague. Defying the French, he kept the title “King of France” on his coins, slaughtered them in a naval victory at Sluys in 1340, and expanded England’s horizons into international trade.
This latter development was the reason behind the first sizable gold coinage for the nation. Alliance with the Low Countries (Holland) had military value, but it also meant a new trade of England’s wool for foreign goods and money. Edward III introduced gold coins similar enough to those of Flanders to make trade exchanges equitable.
The first attempt did not last, despite their great beauty of design, because Edward’s new gold was of too high a quality. These were the famed Florins, Leopards and Helms, and it proved profitable in their day to melt them in exchange for more silver than they were worth in England. As a consequence, today they are all great rarities.
The second attempt at an English gold coin proved successful. We call these coins today the Nobles. Their fineness was decreased just a bit, to bring them into almost exactly the same exchange value both in the Low Countries and in England. They met with instant success and were made in large quantities. However, war with France again had an impact on the coins, this time creating a fascinating variety of “types” as the king’s title changed and mint initials were introduced, including a “C” for Calais, the port of France so long claimed as English soil. This time it became so English that an English mint was built there!
It is no coincidence that England’s wool-trade with the Flemish market gained sudden vigor right after the peace treaty of 1343, and the introduction of English gold in 1344.
Fascinating array of types of Nobles seen during this reign. War ended in 1343 with the treaty of Malestroit, but broke out almost immediately again. As would be duplicated almost to the Nth degree in 1415 at Agincourt, the Battle of Crecy of 1346 saw a small army of English decimate a large French force. Victory was short lived, however, as the Black Death plague struck the same year and did not end until 1350, during which very little gold was needed, or made, for commerce.
. . .” and when both Edward the king died in 1377, and his great warrior son The Black Prince died the year before him, England was inherited by a weak, fearful man, Richard II. He continued the Noble coinage but its output was meager, the nation suffered badly from the long war with France, and murderous politics put a sharp end to Richard’s claim to French lands. When the last Plantagenet died a prisoner in Pontefract castle, a new but divided Royal House came to England, that of Lancaster and York, and a new feud would erupt as an internal war.
https://coinweek.com/world-coins/english-coins/english-gold-coins-rise-gold-standard-14th-century-england/
DENOMINATIONS & WEIGHT STANDARDS
Denomination Metal Value Weight standard (in grains)
1351
Farthing Silver ¼ pence .........4.5
Halfpenny Silver ½ pence ......9
Penny Silver 1 penny ..............18
Half-groat Silver 2 pence........ 36
Groat Silver 4 pence........... 72
Noble Gold 6s. 8d....................128.59
file:///C:/Users/Gillian/Downloads/Introduction%20to%20later%20medieval%20coins.pdf
[Extensive details] The Different Means of Payment in the Medieval and Early-Modern European Economies:
a) means of payment: At the same time, you must realize that coined money was not the sole medium of exchange in medieval Europe, the sole means of effecting payments. You must avoid the common pitfall of supposing that actual coins were used merely because the transaction was recorded in monetary terms in some account book or register. These notations represent merely the 'standard of value' function of money. Actual payment may have occurred by either:
i) barter: the simple exchange of goods for goods, or the exchange of goods for services, especially labour services, computed and recorded in monetary terms. And don't make the common mistake of believing in a mythical 'rise of a money economy' that displaced barter transactions. There was always, from Greco-Roman times, some form of a 'money-economy' utilizing coinage; and conversely, barter transactions continued on into modern times, even in sophisticated economies. Thus the following, still popular, stage theory of economic development, advanced by 19th-century German economic historians (in particular Bruno Hildebrand), deeply influenced by current evolutionary theories, is patently unhistorical:
Barter Economy (Naturalwirtschaft) Coined-Money Economy (Geldwirtschaft) Credit Economy (Kreditwirtschaft)
ii) credit: that is, a written promise to pay at some future date, recorded on paper, sometimes notarized, but often informal. By such credit instruments in this period -- and functioning along side both coin and barter transactions, I mean specifically: lettres de foire or 'fair letters,' by which a merchant purchased goods at one fair and promised to pay at the next; letters obligatory, which are a form of a promissory note or I.O.U.; bills-of-exchange, by which a merchant promised to pay the sum borrowed or to pay for goods received at a later date, in another city, and in different currency; and bank money, what the Italians called moneta di banco, by which deposits were recorded in bank ledgers that permitted transfers from one account to another to effect payments. And finally, by the 16th and 17th centuries, actual cheques (rather than verbal commands) to effect such bank-account transfers, and banknotes. The use of the earlier credit instruments mentioned go back certainly as far as 12th-century Italy, and to the 9th century Islamic world. All related to coins; but many could be used in place of coin.
b) European Money Supply as a means of payment and as a foundation for moneys-of-account was largely though not entirely in the form of silver coinage. During medieval and early modern times, most of Europe operated on essentially silver based monetary systems that were supplemented by gold coinages from about mid 13th century. Much later, in the 18th century, England drifted quite unintentionally onto a gold standard: to a gold-based monetary system supplemented by silver. But that fortunately lies well beyond this course, during which most countries operated conversely on a silver standard.
https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/MONEYLEC.htm
http://machaut.weebly.com/money-in-the-middle-ages.html
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/research_projects/all_current_projects/collaborative_doctoral_awards/patterns_of_monetisation.aspx
Money and Coinage in Elizabethan England
http://www.elizabethan.org/compendium/6.html
Money making: A brief history of currency from the British Museum
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36047863
14th Coins -- first three Edwards & Richard II
English Money
From the 8th century the Anglo-Saxons made silver pennies. A pound weight of silver was melted to make 240 pennies. There were 240 pennies in a pound until 1971. However in the 8th century a penny was a large sum of money (4 or 5 pence would buy a sheep). Most people continued to barter for everyday goods.
In the late 13th century the farthing (one quarter of a penny) was introduced. (The farthing ceased to be legal tender in 1961). Also in the late 13th century half pennies and groats (worth four pence) were minted.
https://andreacefalo.com/2014/10/27/halfpennies-farthings-and-nobles-a-guide-to-englands-medieval-coins/
In the 14th century a coin called a noble, which was worth 80 pence or 1/3 of a pound was minted. So were coins called half-nobles. However they went out of use about 1470 and they were replaced by coins called angels and half-angels. Angels were last used in the early 17th century.
http://www.localhistories.org/money.html
Noble
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_(English_coin)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_(English_coin)#/media/File:London_Noble_of_Richard_II.jpg
http://commodityhq.com/education/a-brief-2000-year-history-of-gold-prices/
Around 1300 AD, a laborer in England could expect two earn about 2 pounds sterling in a year, or about 672 g of silver (approximately 2.1 g of silver per day, given the different workweek of medieval times). Likewise, we know a thatcher in 1261 could look to earn about 2 pennies a day or 2.8 g of silver. Thatchers’ pay increased to about 3 pence (approximately 4.2 g of silver) in 1341, 4 pence in 1381, and 6 pence in 1481. Along the way, a city “craftsman” could look to earn about 4 pence a day in the 1350s.
So what would those wages buy? In the early 14th century, wine cost between 3 pence and 10 pence per gallon in England, and two dozen eggs could be had for 1 pent. Some time later, an axe cost about 5 pence in mid-15th century England, while wheat cost approximately 0.2 g of silver per liter (not much different than the per-liter price in ancient Greece).
http://commodityhq.com/education/a-brief-2000-year-history-of-silver-prices/
Copper/bronze coinage was not minted regularly during the medieval period, as government mints focused on silver and gold coinage. Given that the large majority of the population was too poor to frequently conduct business with gold coins or large amounts of silver, the absence of copper coinage perpetuated trade through barter and credit.
The Byzantine empire was arguably the most active minter of low-value copper coinage, with the bronze folles amounting to 1:288 of the gold nomisma. Soldiers of the Byzantine empire were paid one gold nomisma per year of service. It was arguably the great emphasis on trade in the Byzantine empire that led to the significant production of bronze/copper coinage.
In the late 1500s, England did start minting a copper farthing under King James I, and the German and Italian states periodically produced copper coinage as well. However, copper’s most common use in European coinage was in debasing silver coinage – with Henry VIII famously swapping out as much of two-thirds of the silver content of coins with copper. As Europe moved into the 1700s, bronze coinage became more common, with most major governments producing them.
http://commodityhq.com/education/a-brief-2000-year-history-of-copper-prices/
Minting
The Middle Ages
Up until the 1660s, English coins were struck between a pair of hand-held dies. The pile, or lower die, had a spiked end to enable it to be driven firmly into a block of wood; a blank was placed on top of the pile and above it was held the trussel or upper die. The trussel then received blows from a hammer, causing the blank to be impressed with the obverse and reverse designs.
Dies were produced on average at the rate of two trussels to one pile, for the trussel by sustaining the direct blows of the hammer was subjected to greater wear and tear. It was therefore the custom for the trussel to bear the reverse design, since this was simpler and more easy to replace than the royal portrait which by now normally appeared on the obverse. Yet even the portrait may not have been that difficult to reproduce, being constructed by small chisel-like punches showing crescents, pellets, wedges and bars.
Written accounts of the minting process from this time are few and far between but a document of 1606 lists out a 16-stage process:
melting and casting the ingots,
annealing, or heat treating, the ingots to soften them,
hammering the ingots,
another annealing,
cutting the ingots into blanks,
annealing the blanks,
hammering the blanks thinner,
another annealing,
another hammering of the blanks,
another annealing,
another hammering of the blanks,
rolling and
hammering the edges to make the blanks rounder,
another annealing,
blanching to clean the blanks
and then finally coining.
http://www.royalmintmuseum.org.uk/history/making-money/making-money-in-the-past/the-middle-ages/index.html
Plantagenets to Tudors
http://home.eckerd.edu/~oberhot/eplant.htm
In order to be accepted outside the territory where it was issued, a coin had to satisfy a number of conditions relating to its weight, alloy and value, and had to be familiar to many. From the end of the 12th century, the English sterling penny amply fulfilled these conditions; throughout north-western Europe it enjoyed a reputation as a strong and reliable currency, in contrast to the silver pennies of the continent, which had gradually lost much of their value.
https://www.nbbmuseum.be/en/2009/12/sterling.htm
images Pinterest
https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/217861700695844732/
https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/316448311289099720/
https://finds.org.uk/medievalcoins/categories/category/id/16
[edited] Hammered English gold coins are so captivating in their designs, which invariably include intricate symbolism and Latin abbreviations of Biblical quotations favored by the respective monarchs, that many collectors focus too much on the coin designs, without understanding the historical motivations behind the coinages.
Prior to the 14th century, gold was rare in England. Almost no earlier English gold coins exist. In the reign of Edward III (1327-77), the next to last Plantagenet King, this all changed. All the silver coinage types continued, with little alteration other than title, as they had been under Edward I and II. A complicated system of privy-marks developed under the first Edward, called “Longshanks” ... he set up numerous mints to issue large amounts of silver coins, and died leaving England a wealthy nation.
Edward III ..... Black Plague. Defying the French, he kept the title “King of France” on his coins, slaughtered them in a naval victory at Sluys in 1340, and expanded England’s horizons into international trade.
This latter development was the reason behind the first sizable gold coinage for the nation. Alliance with the Low Countries (Holland) had military value, but it also meant a new trade of England’s wool for foreign goods and money. Edward III introduced gold coins similar enough to those of Flanders to make trade exchanges equitable.
The first attempt did not last, despite their great beauty of design, because Edward’s new gold was of too high a quality. These were the famed Florins, Leopards and Helms, and it proved profitable in their day to melt them in exchange for more silver than they were worth in England. As a consequence, today they are all great rarities.
The second attempt at an English gold coin proved successful. We call these coins today the Nobles. Their fineness was decreased just a bit, to bring them into almost exactly the same exchange value both in the Low Countries and in England. They met with instant success and were made in large quantities. However, war with France again had an impact on the coins, this time creating a fascinating variety of “types” as the king’s title changed and mint initials were introduced, including a “C” for Calais, the port of France so long claimed as English soil. This time it became so English that an English mint was built there!
It is no coincidence that England’s wool-trade with the Flemish market gained sudden vigor right after the peace treaty of 1343, and the introduction of English gold in 1344.
Fascinating array of types of Nobles seen during this reign. War ended in 1343 with the treaty of Malestroit, but broke out almost immediately again. As would be duplicated almost to the Nth degree in 1415 at Agincourt, the Battle of Crecy of 1346 saw a small army of English decimate a large French force. Victory was short lived, however, as the Black Death plague struck the same year and did not end until 1350, during which very little gold was needed, or made, for commerce.
. . .” and when both Edward the king died in 1377, and his great warrior son The Black Prince died the year before him, England was inherited by a weak, fearful man, Richard II. He continued the Noble coinage but its output was meager, the nation suffered badly from the long war with France, and murderous politics put a sharp end to Richard’s claim to French lands. When the last Plantagenet died a prisoner in Pontefract castle, a new but divided Royal House came to England, that of Lancaster and York, and a new feud would erupt as an internal war.
https://coinweek.com/world-coins/english-coins/english-gold-coins-rise-gold-standard-14th-century-england/
DENOMINATIONS & WEIGHT STANDARDS
Denomination Metal Value Weight standard (in grains)
1351
Farthing Silver ¼ pence .........4.5
Halfpenny Silver ½ pence ......9
Penny Silver 1 penny ..............18
Half-groat Silver 2 pence........ 36
Groat Silver 4 pence........... 72
Noble Gold 6s. 8d....................128.59
file:///C:/Users/Gillian/Downloads/Introduction%20to%20later%20medieval%20coins.pdf
[Extensive details] The Different Means of Payment in the Medieval and Early-Modern European Economies:
a) means of payment: At the same time, you must realize that coined money was not the sole medium of exchange in medieval Europe, the sole means of effecting payments. You must avoid the common pitfall of supposing that actual coins were used merely because the transaction was recorded in monetary terms in some account book or register. These notations represent merely the 'standard of value' function of money. Actual payment may have occurred by either:
i) barter: the simple exchange of goods for goods, or the exchange of goods for services, especially labour services, computed and recorded in monetary terms. And don't make the common mistake of believing in a mythical 'rise of a money economy' that displaced barter transactions. There was always, from Greco-Roman times, some form of a 'money-economy' utilizing coinage; and conversely, barter transactions continued on into modern times, even in sophisticated economies. Thus the following, still popular, stage theory of economic development, advanced by 19th-century German economic historians (in particular Bruno Hildebrand), deeply influenced by current evolutionary theories, is patently unhistorical:
Barter Economy (Naturalwirtschaft) Coined-Money Economy (Geldwirtschaft) Credit Economy (Kreditwirtschaft)
ii) credit: that is, a written promise to pay at some future date, recorded on paper, sometimes notarized, but often informal. By such credit instruments in this period -- and functioning along side both coin and barter transactions, I mean specifically: lettres de foire or 'fair letters,' by which a merchant purchased goods at one fair and promised to pay at the next; letters obligatory, which are a form of a promissory note or I.O.U.; bills-of-exchange, by which a merchant promised to pay the sum borrowed or to pay for goods received at a later date, in another city, and in different currency; and bank money, what the Italians called moneta di banco, by which deposits were recorded in bank ledgers that permitted transfers from one account to another to effect payments. And finally, by the 16th and 17th centuries, actual cheques (rather than verbal commands) to effect such bank-account transfers, and banknotes. The use of the earlier credit instruments mentioned go back certainly as far as 12th-century Italy, and to the 9th century Islamic world. All related to coins; but many could be used in place of coin.
b) European Money Supply as a means of payment and as a foundation for moneys-of-account was largely though not entirely in the form of silver coinage. During medieval and early modern times, most of Europe operated on essentially silver based monetary systems that were supplemented by gold coinages from about mid 13th century. Much later, in the 18th century, England drifted quite unintentionally onto a gold standard: to a gold-based monetary system supplemented by silver. But that fortunately lies well beyond this course, during which most countries operated conversely on a silver standard.
https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/MONEYLEC.htm
http://machaut.weebly.com/money-in-the-middle-ages.html
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/research_projects/all_current_projects/collaborative_doctoral_awards/patterns_of_monetisation.aspx
Money and Coinage in Elizabethan England
http://www.elizabethan.org/compendium/6.html
Money making: A brief history of currency from the British Museum
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36047863
A time traveller’s guide to medieval shopping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdMlKVio0LA
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheMSsoundeffects/videos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_England_in_the_Middle_Ages
Medieval Economics
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/m_econ.htm
The marketplace
“Ribs of beef and many a pie!” you hear someone call over your shoulder. Turning, you see a young lad walking through the crowd bearing a tray laden with wooden bowls of cooked meats from a local shop.
All around him people are moving, gesturing, talking. So many have come in from the surrounding villages that this town of about 3,000 inhabitants is today thronged with twice as many. Here are men in knee-length brown tunics driving their cattle before them. Here are their wives in long kirtles with wimples around their heads and necks. Those men in short tunics and hoods are valets in a knight’s household. Those in long gowns with high collars and beaver-fur hats are wealthy merchants. Across the marketplace more peasants are leading in their flocks of sheep, or packhorses and carts loaded with crates of chickens.
Crowds are noisy. People are talking so much that chatter could almost be the whole purpose of the market – and in many ways it is. This is the one open public area in the town where people can meet and exchange information. When a company performs a mystery play, it is to the marketplace that they will drag the cart containing their stage, set and costumes. When the town crier rings his bell to address the people of the town, it is in the marketplace that the crowd will gather to hear him. The marketplace is the heart of any town: indeed, the very definition of a town is that it has a market.
What can you buy? Let’s start at the fishmongers’ stalls. You may have heard that many sorts of freshwater and sea fish are eaten in medieval England. Indeed, more than 150 species are consumed by the nobility and churchmen, drawn from their own fishponds as well as the rivers and seas.
But in most markets it is the popular varieties which you see glistening in the wet hay-filled crates. Mackerel, herring, lampreys, cod, eels, Aberdeen fish (cured salmon and herring), and stockfish (salt cod) are the most common varieties. Crabs and lobsters are transported live, in barrels. In season you will see fresh salmon – attracting the hefty price of four or five shillings each. A fresh turbot can cost even more, up to seven shillings.
Next we come to an area set aside for corn: sacks of wheat, barley, oats and rye are piled up, ready for sale to the townsmen. Then the space given over to livestock: goats, sheep, pigs and cows. A corner is devoted to garden produce – apples, pears, vegetables, garlic and herbs – yet the emphasis of a medieval diet is on meat, cheese and cereal crops. In a large town you will find spicerers selling such exotic commodities as pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, liquorice, and many different types of sugar.
These are only for the wealthy. When your average skilled workman earns only two shillings (2s) in a week, he can hardly afford to spend four shillings (4s) on a pound of cloves or 20 pence (20d) on a pound of ginger.
The rest of the marketplace performs two functions. Producers come to sell fleeces, sacks of wool, tanned hides, furs, iron, steel and tin for resale further afield. The other function is to sell manufactured commodities to local people: brass and bronze cooking vessels, candlesticks and spurs, pewterware, woollen cloth, silk, linen, canvas, carts, rushes (for hall floors), glass, faggots, coal, nails, horse shoes and planks of wood.
Planks, you ask? Consider the difficulties of transporting a tree trunk to a saw pit, and then getting two men to saw it into planks with only a handsaw between them.
Everyone in medieval society is heavily dependent on each other for such supplies, and the marketplace is where all these interdependencies meet.
Haggling
Essential items such as ale and bread have their prices fixed by law. Yet for almost everything that’s been manufactured you will have to negotiate. Caxton’s 15th-century dialogue book is based on a 14th-century language guide, and gives the following lesson in how to haggle with a cloth vendor:
“Dame, what hold ye the ell (45 inches) of this
cloth? Or what is worth the cloth whole?
In short, so to speak, how much the ell?”
“Sire, reason; ye shall have it good and cheap.”
“Yea, truly, for cattle. Dame, ye must me win.
Take heed what I shall pay.”
“Four shillings for the ell, if it please you.”
“For so much would I have good scarlet.”
“But I have some which is not of the best
which I would not give for seven shillings.”
“But this is no such cloth, of so much money,
that know ye well!”
“Sire, what is it worth?”
“Dame, it were worth to me well three shillings.”
“That is evil-boden.”
“But say certainly how shall I have it without
a part to leave?”
“I shall give it ye at one word: ye shall pay five
shillings, certainly if ye have them for so many
ells, for I will abate nothing.”
And so you open your purse, which hangs from the cords attached to your belt and find five shillings. Except that there is no shilling coin in the late 14th century. The smallest gold coins are the half-noble (3s 4d) and the quarter-noble (1s 8d), so if you have one each of these, you can make up the sum. Alternatively you will have to make it up from the silver coins: groats (4d), half-groats, pennies, halfpence and farthings (¼d).
Regulations
A well-run market is crucial to the standing of a town. Thus it is heavily regulated. The actual policing tends to be undertaken by the town’s bedels or bailiffs, who enforce regulations like “no horses may be left standing in the marketplace on market days” and “every man is to keep the street in front of his tenement clean”. Most towns have between 40 and 70 regulations, and those breaking them are taken to the borough court and fined.
There are reasons to be grateful for the supervision of trade. Short measures are a notorious problem, and turners normally have to swear to make wooden measures of the appropriate size. Clerks in borough courts will tell you of cooking pots being made out of soft metal and coated with brass, and loaves of bread baked with stones in them to make them up to the legally required weight.
Wool is stretched before it is woven, to make it go further (but then it shrinks). Pepper is sold damp, making it swell, weigh more, and rot sooner. Meat is sometimes sold even though it is putrid, wine even though it has turned sour, and bread when it has gone green.
If you are the victim of malpractice, go straight to the authorities. The perpetrator will be pilloried – literally. The pillory is the wooden board which clasps the guilty man’s head and hands, and shamefully exposes him to the insults of the crowd.
A butcher selling bad meat can expect to be dragged through the streets of the town on a hurdle and then placed in the pillory with the rotten meat burnt under him. A vintner caught selling foul wine is dragged to the pillory on a hurdle, forced to drink a draught of the offending liquor, and then set in the pillory where the remainder is poured over his head.
The sweetness of the revenge makes up for the sourness of the wine.
Shopping in the 14th century will often remind you of how much we have in common with our medieval forebears. It will likewise alert you to the huge differences between us. We are not the same as our ancestors. Look at how young they are – the median age is just 21 – and look at the meagre diet of the poor, their rotten teeth as they smile, their resilience in the face of death.
Consider how rough and smelly the streets are, and how small the sheep and cattle are in the marketplace. When a fight breaks out over some stolen goods, and the bedels rush to intervene, you may see how the spirit of the people is so similar to our own and yet how much the process of managing that spirit has changed. For if the stolen goods are of sufficient value, the thieves will be summarily tried and hanged the same day. This is what makes history so interesting – the differences between us across the centuries, as well as the similarities.
At dusk – just before the great gates of the city are closed for the night, and you see everyone leaving the adjacent taverns – you may begin to think that Auden was on to something. To understand ourselves, we must first see society differently – and to remember that history is the study of the living, not the dead.
Facts
Prices in the 1390s*
Ale, ordinary: ¾d–1d per gallon
Wine from Bordeaux: 3d–4d per gallon
Bacon: 15d per side
Chicken: 2d each
Cod, fresh: 20d each
Sugar, loaf of: 18d per lb
Apples: 7d per hundred
Eggs: 33d for 425
A furred gown: 5s 4d
* Prices from the account books of Henry of Lancaster, Earl of Derby.
Wages/salaries in the 1390s
The king’s physician: £40 per year
Officers in the royal household: £20 per year
Mason: £8 per year (6d per day)
Carpenter: 4¼d per day
Thatcher: 4¼d per day
Labourer: 3¼d per day
Valets in a lord’s household: £1 10s per year
Manservant in a yeoman’s household: £1 per year
Maidservant in a yeoman’s household: 10s per year
In old money, there were 12 pence (d) to the shilling (s) and 20 shillings to the pound (£).
A time traveller’s guide to medieval shopping
Graphs and (dubious?) summary of prices and wages in Medieval England
Summary of findings about Englishmen in Late Middle Ages inferred purely from raw price and wage data.
● Consumer basket based on typical consumption indicate that people probably had better diet than we do today. Not really = too little meat
● Although prices were fluctuating a lot year-over-year, average prices (CPI) remained relatively stable from 1264 to 1499, with little inflation over entire
● period.
● People spent a disproportionately large (by modern standards) amount on alcohol. *Only source of safe drinking water.
● Crop price spike circa 1320 indicates possible drought.
Spending patterns are similar across different locations in Western Europe, meaning markets were fairly efficient.
● Textile prices were growing much faster than other commodities, which also drove prices of sheep. Good times to be a textile merchant.
● Wages were growing faster than CPI, meaning people’s wealth was increasing.
● Wages rose sharply after Black Death due to low labor supply.
● Mason wage was fairly representative of other “middle class” citizens (merchants, clerks, craftsmen, etc). However incomes of noble elite were not even comparable, nor were those of the most unfortunate, indicating severe income inequality.
● After subtracting cost of basic consumer products, housing, and taxes, typical mason would probably have some disposable income to treat himself to some good wine once in a while, buy an old horse, and pay guild fees. He wouldn’t be able to afford a more significant purchase, such as university education, armorer’s toolset, or knight’s equipment. Therefore, moving up a social class by simply working hard was not an option. Most of leftover money was probably saved for exceptional events, such as wedding and funerals.
https://medium.com/@zavidovych/what-we-can-learn-by-looking-at-prices-and-wages-in-medieval-england-8dc207cfd20a
Sources
Medieval and Early Modern Data Bank
http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/memdb/
Medieval Price Collection
http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_England_in_the_Middle_Ages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdMlKVio0LA
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheMSsoundeffects/videos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_England_in_the_Middle_Ages
Medieval Economics
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/m_econ.htm
The marketplace
“Ribs of beef and many a pie!” you hear someone call over your shoulder. Turning, you see a young lad walking through the crowd bearing a tray laden with wooden bowls of cooked meats from a local shop.
All around him people are moving, gesturing, talking. So many have come in from the surrounding villages that this town of about 3,000 inhabitants is today thronged with twice as many. Here are men in knee-length brown tunics driving their cattle before them. Here are their wives in long kirtles with wimples around their heads and necks. Those men in short tunics and hoods are valets in a knight’s household. Those in long gowns with high collars and beaver-fur hats are wealthy merchants. Across the marketplace more peasants are leading in their flocks of sheep, or packhorses and carts loaded with crates of chickens.
Crowds are noisy. People are talking so much that chatter could almost be the whole purpose of the market – and in many ways it is. This is the one open public area in the town where people can meet and exchange information. When a company performs a mystery play, it is to the marketplace that they will drag the cart containing their stage, set and costumes. When the town crier rings his bell to address the people of the town, it is in the marketplace that the crowd will gather to hear him. The marketplace is the heart of any town: indeed, the very definition of a town is that it has a market.
What can you buy? Let’s start at the fishmongers’ stalls. You may have heard that many sorts of freshwater and sea fish are eaten in medieval England. Indeed, more than 150 species are consumed by the nobility and churchmen, drawn from their own fishponds as well as the rivers and seas.
But in most markets it is the popular varieties which you see glistening in the wet hay-filled crates. Mackerel, herring, lampreys, cod, eels, Aberdeen fish (cured salmon and herring), and stockfish (salt cod) are the most common varieties. Crabs and lobsters are transported live, in barrels. In season you will see fresh salmon – attracting the hefty price of four or five shillings each. A fresh turbot can cost even more, up to seven shillings.
Next we come to an area set aside for corn: sacks of wheat, barley, oats and rye are piled up, ready for sale to the townsmen. Then the space given over to livestock: goats, sheep, pigs and cows. A corner is devoted to garden produce – apples, pears, vegetables, garlic and herbs – yet the emphasis of a medieval diet is on meat, cheese and cereal crops. In a large town you will find spicerers selling such exotic commodities as pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, liquorice, and many different types of sugar.
These are only for the wealthy. When your average skilled workman earns only two shillings (2s) in a week, he can hardly afford to spend four shillings (4s) on a pound of cloves or 20 pence (20d) on a pound of ginger.
The rest of the marketplace performs two functions. Producers come to sell fleeces, sacks of wool, tanned hides, furs, iron, steel and tin for resale further afield. The other function is to sell manufactured commodities to local people: brass and bronze cooking vessels, candlesticks and spurs, pewterware, woollen cloth, silk, linen, canvas, carts, rushes (for hall floors), glass, faggots, coal, nails, horse shoes and planks of wood.
Planks, you ask? Consider the difficulties of transporting a tree trunk to a saw pit, and then getting two men to saw it into planks with only a handsaw between them.
Everyone in medieval society is heavily dependent on each other for such supplies, and the marketplace is where all these interdependencies meet.
Haggling
Essential items such as ale and bread have their prices fixed by law. Yet for almost everything that’s been manufactured you will have to negotiate. Caxton’s 15th-century dialogue book is based on a 14th-century language guide, and gives the following lesson in how to haggle with a cloth vendor:
“Dame, what hold ye the ell (45 inches) of this
cloth? Or what is worth the cloth whole?
In short, so to speak, how much the ell?”
“Sire, reason; ye shall have it good and cheap.”
“Yea, truly, for cattle. Dame, ye must me win.
Take heed what I shall pay.”
“Four shillings for the ell, if it please you.”
“For so much would I have good scarlet.”
“But I have some which is not of the best
which I would not give for seven shillings.”
“But this is no such cloth, of so much money,
that know ye well!”
“Sire, what is it worth?”
“Dame, it were worth to me well three shillings.”
“That is evil-boden.”
“But say certainly how shall I have it without
a part to leave?”
“I shall give it ye at one word: ye shall pay five
shillings, certainly if ye have them for so many
ells, for I will abate nothing.”
And so you open your purse, which hangs from the cords attached to your belt and find five shillings. Except that there is no shilling coin in the late 14th century. The smallest gold coins are the half-noble (3s 4d) and the quarter-noble (1s 8d), so if you have one each of these, you can make up the sum. Alternatively you will have to make it up from the silver coins: groats (4d), half-groats, pennies, halfpence and farthings (¼d).
Regulations
A well-run market is crucial to the standing of a town. Thus it is heavily regulated. The actual policing tends to be undertaken by the town’s bedels or bailiffs, who enforce regulations like “no horses may be left standing in the marketplace on market days” and “every man is to keep the street in front of his tenement clean”. Most towns have between 40 and 70 regulations, and those breaking them are taken to the borough court and fined.
There are reasons to be grateful for the supervision of trade. Short measures are a notorious problem, and turners normally have to swear to make wooden measures of the appropriate size. Clerks in borough courts will tell you of cooking pots being made out of soft metal and coated with brass, and loaves of bread baked with stones in them to make them up to the legally required weight.
Wool is stretched before it is woven, to make it go further (but then it shrinks). Pepper is sold damp, making it swell, weigh more, and rot sooner. Meat is sometimes sold even though it is putrid, wine even though it has turned sour, and bread when it has gone green.
If you are the victim of malpractice, go straight to the authorities. The perpetrator will be pilloried – literally. The pillory is the wooden board which clasps the guilty man’s head and hands, and shamefully exposes him to the insults of the crowd.
A butcher selling bad meat can expect to be dragged through the streets of the town on a hurdle and then placed in the pillory with the rotten meat burnt under him. A vintner caught selling foul wine is dragged to the pillory on a hurdle, forced to drink a draught of the offending liquor, and then set in the pillory where the remainder is poured over his head.
The sweetness of the revenge makes up for the sourness of the wine.
Shopping in the 14th century will often remind you of how much we have in common with our medieval forebears. It will likewise alert you to the huge differences between us. We are not the same as our ancestors. Look at how young they are – the median age is just 21 – and look at the meagre diet of the poor, their rotten teeth as they smile, their resilience in the face of death.
Consider how rough and smelly the streets are, and how small the sheep and cattle are in the marketplace. When a fight breaks out over some stolen goods, and the bedels rush to intervene, you may see how the spirit of the people is so similar to our own and yet how much the process of managing that spirit has changed. For if the stolen goods are of sufficient value, the thieves will be summarily tried and hanged the same day. This is what makes history so interesting – the differences between us across the centuries, as well as the similarities.
At dusk – just before the great gates of the city are closed for the night, and you see everyone leaving the adjacent taverns – you may begin to think that Auden was on to something. To understand ourselves, we must first see society differently – and to remember that history is the study of the living, not the dead.
Facts
Prices in the 1390s*
Ale, ordinary: ¾d–1d per gallon
Wine from Bordeaux: 3d–4d per gallon
Bacon: 15d per side
Chicken: 2d each
Cod, fresh: 20d each
Sugar, loaf of: 18d per lb
Apples: 7d per hundred
Eggs: 33d for 425
A furred gown: 5s 4d
* Prices from the account books of Henry of Lancaster, Earl of Derby.
Wages/salaries in the 1390s
The king’s physician: £40 per year
Officers in the royal household: £20 per year
Mason: £8 per year (6d per day)
Carpenter: 4¼d per day
Thatcher: 4¼d per day
Labourer: 3¼d per day
Valets in a lord’s household: £1 10s per year
Manservant in a yeoman’s household: £1 per year
Maidservant in a yeoman’s household: 10s per year
In old money, there were 12 pence (d) to the shilling (s) and 20 shillings to the pound (£).
A time traveller’s guide to medieval shopping
Graphs and (dubious?) summary of prices and wages in Medieval England
Summary of findings about Englishmen in Late Middle Ages inferred purely from raw price and wage data.
● Consumer basket based on typical consumption indicate that people probably had better diet than we do today. Not really = too little meat
● Although prices were fluctuating a lot year-over-year, average prices (CPI) remained relatively stable from 1264 to 1499, with little inflation over entire
● period.
● People spent a disproportionately large (by modern standards) amount on alcohol. *Only source of safe drinking water.
● Crop price spike circa 1320 indicates possible drought.
Spending patterns are similar across different locations in Western Europe, meaning markets were fairly efficient.
● Textile prices were growing much faster than other commodities, which also drove prices of sheep. Good times to be a textile merchant.
● Wages were growing faster than CPI, meaning people’s wealth was increasing.
● Wages rose sharply after Black Death due to low labor supply.
● Mason wage was fairly representative of other “middle class” citizens (merchants, clerks, craftsmen, etc). However incomes of noble elite were not even comparable, nor were those of the most unfortunate, indicating severe income inequality.
● After subtracting cost of basic consumer products, housing, and taxes, typical mason would probably have some disposable income to treat himself to some good wine once in a while, buy an old horse, and pay guild fees. He wouldn’t be able to afford a more significant purchase, such as university education, armorer’s toolset, or knight’s equipment. Therefore, moving up a social class by simply working hard was not an option. Most of leftover money was probably saved for exceptional events, such as wedding and funerals.
https://medium.com/@zavidovych/what-we-can-learn-by-looking-at-prices-and-wages-in-medieval-england-8dc207cfd20a
Sources
Medieval and Early Modern Data Bank
http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/memdb/
Medieval Price Collection
http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_England_in_the_Middle_Ages
Other currencies: How red squirrel pelts shaped our monetary systems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOow2__jSlY
English Economy 14th century
Trade and Economics in the Middle Ages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Wfw_DbNVc
Early Medieval Trade | World History | Khan Academy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyW7CUl9KDc
11th-14th centuries: Rise of Towns & Europe's Economy in the Late Middle Ages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhnyQjRjxY4
Changes in the Middle Ages 3 Economy and Trade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvbegSLqMGc
Medieval Economics
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/m_econ.htm
http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/economy-in-the-middle-ages.html
http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/the-black-death.html
Medieval Coinage
14th century: farthing, half penny, penny, half groat, groat, noble
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/V86JZuKvRAS
The loss of life in the Great Famine of 1315–17 shook the English economy severely and population growth ceased; the first outbreak of the Black Death in 1348 then killed around half the English population, with major implications for the post-plague economy. The agricultural sector shrank, with higher wages, lower prices and shrinking profits leading to the final demise of the old demesne system and the advent of the modern farming system of cash rents for lands. The Peasants Revolt of 1381 shook the older feudal order and limited the levels of royal taxation considerably for a century to come. The 15th century saw the growth of the English cloth industry and the establishment of a new class of international English merchant, increasingly based in London and the South-West, prospering at the expense of the older, shrinking economy of the eastern towns. These new trading systems brought about the end of many of the international fairs and the rise of the chartered company. Together with improvements in metalworking and shipbuilding, this represents the end of the medieval economy, and the beginnings of the early modern period in English economics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_England_in_the_Middle_Ages
The putting-out system (cottage industry) is a means of subcontracting work. Historically, it was also known as the workshop system and the domestic system. In putting-out, work is contracted by a central agent to subcontractors who complete the work in off-site facilities, either in their own homes or in workshops with multiple craftsmen.
It was used in the English and American textile industries, in shoemaking, lock-making trades, and making parts for small firearms from the Industrial Revolution until the mid-19th century.
The domestic system was suited to pre-urban times because workers did not have to travel from home to work, which was quite impracticable due to the state of roads and footpaths, and members of the household spent many hours in farm or household tasks.
A cottage industry is a small-scale industry, where the creation of products and services is home-based, rather than factory-based. While products and services created by cottage industries are often unique and distinctive, given the fact that they are usually not mass-produced, producers in this sector often face numerous disadvantages when trying to compete with much larger factory-based companies.
A cottage industry is an industry—primarily manufacturing—which includes many producers, working from their homes, typically part time. The term originally referred to home workers who were engaged in a task such as sewing, lace-making, wall hangings, or household manufacturing. Some industries which are usually operated from large, centralized factories were cottage industries before the Industrial Revolution. Business operators would travel around the world, buying raw materials, delivering them to people who would work on them, and then collecting the finished goods to sell, or typically to ship to another market. One of the factors which allowed the Industrial Revolution to take place in Western Europe was the presence of these business people who had the ability to expand the scale of their operations. Cottage industries were very common in the time when a large proportion of the population was engaged in agriculture, because the farmers (and their families) often had both the time and the desire to earn additional income during the part of the year (winter) when there was little work to do farming or selling produce by the farm's roadside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putting-out_system
By late Roman times, domestic wool was already being used to produce textiles (“cloth”) in the Low Countries. The marshes along the coast, which had not yet been enclosed by dikes, provided grazing for large flocks of sheep which yielded sufficient wool to satisfy domestic demand. In the 12th century a fundamental change occurred. Production was transferred from the countryside to the fast-growing cities (Ypres, Ghent, Bruges, and later also Brussels and Antwerp), and weavers began using English wool as their raw material instead of home-produced wool. The result was a high quality, luxury product intended for export. Sheep reared on the type of grass produced by the very damp English pastureland with its poor soil yielded a particularly fine and springy woollen fleece. For that reason, demand for English wool was virtually inelastic: neither home-produced wool nor the wool occasionally imported from Spain offered a real alternative.
English wool was now being imported into the Low Countries in unprecedented quantities, in sacks or as fleeces still attached to the skin. Flemish and Brabant merchants and weavers were very active in this trade. They went to England in person, to the grounds of the sometimes remote Cistercian abbeys where the sheep were predominantly reared. On the local wool markets they often paid in advance for future deliveries, so that they also already had a stake in the actual production of the wool. Flemish vessels shipped the wool from London and other ports such as Great Yarmouth, King’s Lynn, Dover, Sandwich and Boston.
The Southern Netherlands merchants needed English coins to buy their wool; they became good customers of the English coin workshops, where they exchanged the lightweight pennies from the Netherlands or bars of silver for English sterling. Thus, the accounting records of the London Mint list the names of merchants from Ypres and Brussels, side by side with the names of English customers. On their return from England, they did not always take their surplus English money for melting down into local pennies again, but sometimes preferred to set the foreign currency aside ready for their next trip. It is therefore not surprising that the 13th century coin treasure discovered in 1908 during the demolition of a cellar wall in the house at no. 32 Rue d’assaut in Brussels contained no less than 80,927 English sterling coins.
Gradually, the rulers and merchants on the Continent came to realise that they could make considerable savings by minting sterling coins themselves in their own country, rather than buying them from English coin workshops. From around 1270, coins worth one or two sterling pennies were therefore minted in the Low Countries, alongside the ordinary lightweight pennies. The sterling copies had the same weight and alloy as the foreign originals. The images on the face of the coins varied greatly: some depicted a crowned head, just like the English coins, while others displayed a totally distinctive image. In contrast, the reverse of virtually all the coins depicted the cross with three bullets between the arms, copied from the English model. From about the mid 14th century, owing to the rising demand for high value currency, the sterling penny became less important, giving way to the silver groat – worth three sterlings – and gold coins.
https://www.nbbmuseum.be/en/2009/12/sterling.htm
The importance of London for craft and industry in medieval England
http://www.theposthole.org/sites/theposthole.org/files/downloads/posthole_47_360.pdf
1100-1290
Mining did not make up a large part of the English medieval economy, but the 12th and 13th centuries saw an increased demand for metals in England, thanks to the considerable population growth and building construction, including the great cathedrals and churches. Four metals were mined commercially in England during the period: iron, tin, lead and silver using a variety of refining techniques. Coal was also mined from the 13th century onwards.
Iron mining occurred in several locations including the main English centre in the Forest of Dean, as well as in Durham and the Weald. Some iron to meet English demand was also imported from the continent, especially by the late 13th century. By end of the 12th century, the older method of acquiring iron ore through strip mining was being supplemented by more advanced techniques, including tunnels, trenches and bell-pits. Iron ore was usually locally processed at a bloomery and by the 14th century the first water-powered iron forge in England was built at Chingley. As a result of the diminishing woodlands and consequent increases in the cost of both wood and charcoal, demand for coal increased in the 12th century and began to be commercially produced from bell-pits and strip mining.
A silver boom occurred in England after the discovery of silver near Carlisle in 1133. Huge quantities of silver were produced from a semicircle of mines reaching across Cumberland, Durham and Northumberland - up to three to four tonnes of silver were mined each year, more than ten times the previous annual production across the whole of Europe. The result was a local economic boom and a major uplift to 12th century royal finances. Tin mining was centred in Cornwall and Devon, exploiting alluvial deposits and governed by the special Stannary Courts and Parliaments - tin formed a valuable export good, initially to Germany and then later in the 14th century to the Low Countries. Lead was usually mined as a by-product of mining for silver, with mines in Yorkshire, Durham and the north, as well as in Devon. Economically fragile, the lead mines usually survived as a result of being subsidised by silver production.
England's economy was fundamentally agricultural throughout the period, but the mining of iron, tin, lead and silver, and later coal, played an important part within the English medieval economy.
The Black Death epidemic first arrived in England in 1348, re-occurring in waves during 1360-2, 1368-9, 1375 and more sporadically thereafter. The most immediate economic impact of this disaster was the widespread loss of life, between around 27% mortality amongst the upper classes, to 40-70% amongst the peasantry. Despite the very high loss of life, few settlements were abandoned during the epidemic itself, but many were badly affected or nearly eliminated altogether. The medieval authorities did their best to respond in an organised fashion, but the economic disruption was immense. Building work ceased and many mining operations paused. In the short term, efforts were taken by the authorities to control wages and enforce pre-epidemic working conditions. Coming on top of the previous years of famine, however, the longer term economic implications were profound. In contrast to the previous centuries of rapid growth, the English population would not begin to recover for over a century, despite the many positive reasons for a resurgence. The crisis would affect English mining for the remainder of the medieval period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_English_Mining_in_the_Middle_Ages
Medieval technology
After the Renaissance of the 12th century, medieval Europe saw a radical change in the rate of new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth. The period saw major technological advances, including the adoption of gunpowder, the invention of vertical windmills, spectacles, mechanical clocks, and greatly improved water mills, building techniques (Gothic architecture, medieval castles), and agriculture in general (three-field crop rotation).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/ZDDAWBU6Snj
Pb poisoning northern Europe
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/7Y1mWi8EaVU
Search google book: "English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products" edited by John Blair, Nigel Ramsay
Prices
Anglo-Saxon
https://regia.org/research/misc/costs.htm
Medieval England
http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng240/medieval_prices.html
Regia Anglorum - Prices and costs in Anglo-Saxon England and Viking Age Europe
regia.org
