In Europe, the magnetic compass first appeared in Amalfi, Italy, around the turn of the 14th century. But it is not known if the magnetic compass was also invented in the West or if it migrated to Europe along trade routes from China. However, it is clear that because sea trade and military advantage were of far more strategic importance to Western nations, they pushed the technology of the magnetic compass far more intensely than did the Chinese. With the successive rise of the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English empires, development of the compass shifted to the European nations facing the Atlantic Ocean.
Though the behavior of lodestone, a naturally magnetized piece of the mineral magnetite, was observed by the ancient Greek philosophers Thales of Miletus and Socrates, the evidence is clear that the idea for using it in a compass first appeared in China. There are allusions in the manuscript Wu Ching Tsung Yao, written in 1040, to “an iron fish” suspended in water that pointed to the south. And the earliest reference to a magnetic direction-finding device for land navigation is recorded in a Song Dynasty book dated to 1040-44. http://theinstitute.ieee.org/tech-history/technology-history/a-history-of-the-magnetic-compass https://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/compass2.html
The compass was invented more than 2,000 years ago. The first compasses were made of lodestone, a naturally magnetized ore of iron, in Han dynasty China between 300 and 200 BC. The compass was later used for navigation by the Song Dynasty. Later compasses were made of iron needles, magnetized by striking them with a lodestone. Dry compasses begin appearing around 1300 in Medieval Europe and the Medieval Islamic world. This was replaced in the early 20th century by the liquid-filled magnetic compass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_compass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass#Magnetic_compass
Homo 'navigatus'?: Primitive Humans Conquered Sea, Surprising Finds Suggest: Prehistoric axes found on a Greek island suggest that seafaring existed in the Mediterranean more than a hundred thousand years earlier than thought"
"Providence College archaeologist Thomas Strasser and his team came across a whopping surprise—a sturdy 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) hand ax.
Knapped from a cobble of local quartz stone, the rough-looking tool resembled hand axes discovered in Africa and mainland Europe and used by human ancestors until about 175,000 years ago. This stone tool technology, which could have been useful for smashing bones and cutting flesh, had been relatively static for over a million years.
Crete has been surrounded by vast stretches of sea for some five million years. The discovery of the hand ax suggests that people besides technologically modern humans—possibly Homo heidelbergensis—island-hopped across the Mediterranean tens of thousands of millennia earlier than expected.
Many researchers have hypothesized that the early humans of this time period were not capable of devising boats or navigating across open water. But the new discoveries hint that these human ancestors were capable of much more sophisticated behavior than their relatively simple stone tools would suggest."
"Strasser believes the earliest tools could have belonged to an island-hopping group of Homo heidelbergensis or Homo erectus."
"These ancient mariners would have crossed at least 40 miles of open sea. The sheer number of artifacts indicates that it was not just a one-time fluke, but required multiple crossings to establish a population. "We don't think it was just one guy hanging on a log," Strasser says, "but I doubt there was any sailing." The findings, which will be published in the journal Hesperia this year, add to a growing but controversial view that modern humans and their precursors traveled by sea. So far, the oldest evidence of seafaring by modern humans has come from Australia, which was colonized about 60,000 years ago. Other, potentially earlier, cases have been more speculative." http://archive.archaeology.org/1005/trenches/voyage.html
Currier— leather processing specialist. After leather has been tanned process, the currier dresses, finishes and colours the tanned hide to make it strong, flexible and waterproof. The leather is stretched and burnished to produce a uniform thickness and suppleness. Dyeing and other chemical finishes give the leather its desired colour. After currying, the leather is then ready to pass to the fashioning trades such as saddlery, bridlery, shoe-making, and glove-making.
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.
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.
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
Search google book: "English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products" edited by John Blair, Nigel Ramsay
The Verderers in the Forest of Dean have been in existence since at least 1218 and are charged with protecting the vert and venison (that is, generally, the vegetation and habitat) of the Forest. They are the last remnant of the traditional forest administration – unlike the New Forest, their structure has been unaltered over the centuries – there are still four verderers just as there has been for the past 800 years. The Verderers are elected by the freeholders of Gloucestershire at the Gloucester Court (an ancient procedure in its own right) and serve for life. Over the years, the deer in the Forest of Dean have fluctuated in numbers and species (they were totally absent for about 90 years from 1855) but today a herd of about 400 fallow deer inhabits the Forest. The Verderers now meet quarterly in their courtroom in the Speech House, close to the centre of the Forest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verderer#Forest_of_Dean_Verderers http://www.deanverderers.org.uk/verderers-history.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reeve_(England)
The Agisters are employees of the Verderers of the New Forest. They are often commoners in their own right, and as such depasture stock themselves, thus giving them an intimate knowledge of the area and the workings of the Forest. The word agist means to take in to graze for payment, and this explains part of their role. The post of Agister is medieval in origin, when they were also known as ‘marksmen’. As officers of the Crown they were required to collect grazing fees from ‘strangers’, those who wished to depasture animals but had no right to do so. New Forest commoners with rights of pasture did not have to pay a fee at that time.
To be an Agister a person must be adept at handling all types of livestock, an excellent rider, and able to work, very often on their own, in the rough and tough conditions found out on the Forest. The hours are long, and they can be called out at any time and in any weather to deal with an emergency. They also have the general public to deal with, and are required to be good ambassadors for the Forest in general, and commoning in particular.
Their work is to assist in the management of commoners’ stock on the Forest, and carry out instructions given to them by the Court of Verderers. Much of their time is spent out on the Forest, often on horseback, observing the conditions of both land and stock. They are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond to any problem involving the stock on the Forest. In the spring, they collect the ‘marking fee’, which is the payment a commoner has to make for each animal he wishes to turn out onto the Forest. This helps to offset the cost of their employment. They are also required to report to the Verderers any breaches of the Verderers’ byelaws, which could include such things as unbranded or unpaid for animals.
Another important aspect of their work is the monitoring of the welfare of the livestock on the Forest. During the winter and spring the stock will lose some body condition. The Verderers, in conjunction with various welfare organisations, set a condition standard below which the animal must not fall. If it does the Agister will arrange its removal from the Forest back to the owners holding so it can receive supplementary feeding
There are currently five Agisters, one Head Agister, and four colleagues. Each one is responsible for a specific area of the Forest, but many of the tasks they carry out require them to work as a team. Much of the day to day routine will involve contact with both the animals and the people on their ‘patch’ and an Agister will develop an uncanny ability to identify animals and to whom they belong. In the late summer and early autumn the Agisters organise the ‘drifts’ or round-ups of the Forest ponies. At this time the ponies are ‘tail marked’, a certain cut of the hair of the tail of the pony is put in to show the pony has been paid for. Each Agister has his own mark, and this is to signify in which Agisters’ area the owner of the pony lives. Any foals that are to be kept are branded with the owners individual brand, a register of which is held by the Verderers. Commoners may take this opportunity to remove any ponies they want to sell or take in for the winter, and the rest of the ponies are given a good check over before being released back out onto the Forest. The Agisters are called out to deal with all sorts of problems. Animals stuck in bogs, ditches, fences or cattle grids, straying into people’s gardens or onto fenced roads, ponies with colic after eating lawn mowings or other garden refuse, or cows choking on discarded plastic bags. Sadly one of the more common call-outs is to road accidents. Despite speed limits and much publicity there are still a large number of animals being hit and killed on the Forest roads. It is often the Agister’s unpleasant but necessary duty to put the animal out of its suffering, and then inform the owner of their loss.
Agistment originally referred specifically to the proceeds of pasturage in the king's forests. To agist is, in English law, to take cattle to graze, in exchange for payment.
Agistment originally referred specifically to the proceeds of pasturage in the king's forests in England, but now means either:
1. the contract for taking in and feeding horses or other cattle on pasture land, for the consideration of a periodic payment of money;
2. the profit derived from such pasturing.
Agistment involves a contract of bailment, and the bailee must take reasonable care of the animals entrusted to him; he is responsible for damages and injury which result from ordinary casualties, if it be proved that such might have been prevented by the exercise of great care. There is no lien on the cattle for the price of the agistment unless by express agreement.
Under the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1883, agisted cattle cannot be distrained on for rent if there be other sufficient distress to be found, and if such other distress be not found, and the cattle be distrained, the owner may redeem them on paying the price of their agistment. The tithe of agistment or "tithe of cattle and other produce of grass lands" was formally abolished by the Act of Union in 1707, on a motion submitted with a view to defeat that measure.
In England, Agisters were formerly the officers of the forest empowered to collect the agistment. They have been re-established in the New Forest to carry out the daily duties of administering the forest.
regard inspection of a forest by regarders with foresters and woodwards, presented to the swanimote court next before and preparatory to an eyre, included vert, eyries, mines and forges, ports, harbours and the wood they shipped, dogs, nets and weapons; swarms of bees, wax and honey were also included in the charges of the swanimote and eyre where regards were enrolled (M 227 (v) and 242 (v)). The king might exempt private land and woods in a forest from regards (M 58 (r) and (v), 196 (r) and (v))
regarder officer responsible for making triennial inspections of forests to discover trespasses (P 205); ministerial rather than judicial officer appointed by royal letters patent under oath, twelve per forest, to hold a regard and enrol all offences discovered for presentation through a swanimote to an eyre. Duties specified in the Charter of the Forest (1217); called lespegend in Canute’s Forest Charter (1016) (M 1(v), 6 (r) and (v) and 191 (r) – 200 (r))
Regarders (like the Verderers in being independent of the foresters = 12 general inspectors = checking for assarts, buildings (purprestures), cut trees, royal demesne woods and pastures, eyries of hawks, forges or mines, seaports, transporting timber, honey, bows and arrows or dogs for hunting
Gifts of venison or oak made by the king, straying domestic animals, conduct of foresters, Agisters, sellers of wood
Forest courts & eyres sometimes held as infrequently as 24 years.
Essoins by death
In the United Kingdom a chase is a type of common land used for hunting to which there are no specifically designated officers and laws but instead reserved hunting rights for one or more persons. Similarly, a Royal Chase is a type of Crown Estate by the same description, but where certain rights are reserved for a member of the British Royal Family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_(land)
Pannage was a common right for peasants who were allowed to graze their pigs in the woods of the forest when the acorns fell and for a period of time after. This season was decided at the Verderers Court (see Forest Law page for more details) and the numbers of pigs were monitored by Agisters who acted as tax collectors.
This entry shows that with the demise of the Forest Eyre Courts by the time of 1440 (see 1287 Sherwood Forest Eyre Court and 1334 Sherwood Forest Eyre Court entries); how breaches of the forest law were dealt with.
The area's history is obscure for several centuries after Roman period during the so-called Dark Ages, although at different times it may have been part of the Welsh kingdoms of Gwent and Ergyng, and the Beachley and Lancaut peninsulas east of the Lower Wye remained in Welsh control at least until the 8th century.
Around 790 the Saxon King Offa of Mercia built his dyke high above the Wye, to mark the boundary with the Welsh. The Forest of Dean then came under the control of the diocese of Hereford. Throughout the next few centuries Vikings conducted raids up the Severn, but by the 11th century the kingdom of Wessex had established civil government. The core of the forest was used by the late Anglo Saxon kings, and after 1066 the Normans, as their personal hunting ground. The area was kept stocked with deer and wild boar and became important for timber, charcoal, iron ore and limestone.
The Hundred of St Briavels was established in the 12th century, at the same time as many Norman laws concerning the Forest of Dean were put in place. St Briavels Castle became the Forest's administrative and judicial centre. Verderers were appointed to act for the king and protect his royal rights, and local people were given some common rights.
Flaxley Abbey was built and given rights and privileges. In 1296, miners from the Hundred of St Briavels supported King Edward I at the siege of Berwick-on-Tweed in the Scottish Wars of Independence by undermining the then Scottish town's defences in the first step of his campaign to seize Scotland from John Balliol. As a result, the king granted free mining rights within the forest to the miners and their descendants; the rights continue to the present day. Miners at that time were mainly involved in iron mining although the presence of coal was well known and limited amounts had been recovered in Roman times. Coal was not used for iron making with the methods of smelting then in use. Later the freeminer rights were used mainly for coal mining. The activities of the miners were regulated by the Court of Mine Law.
The Forest of Dean lies in west Gloucestershire in the angle formed by the rivers Severn and Wye as they approach their confluence. A large tract of woodland and waste land there was reserved for royal hunting before 1066 and survived into the modern period as one of the principal Crown forests in England, the largest after the New Forest. The name Forest of Dean was recorded from c. 1080 and was probably taken from the valley on the north-east of the area, where a manor called Dean was the Forest's administrative centre in the late 11th century.
In modern times the name Forest of Dean was sometimes used loosely for the part of Gloucestershire between the Severn and Wye, but all that land belonged to the Forest (used in the specific sense of the area subject to the forest law) only for a period in the early Middle Ages. In the 13th century the Forest's bounds were the two rivers and it extended northwards as far as Ross-on-Wye (Herefs.), Newent, and Gloucester; it then included 33 Gloucestershire and Herefordshire parishes, besides a central, uncultivated area which the Crown retained in demesne. Revised bounds, perambulated in 1300 and accepted by the Crown in 1327, reduced the extent of the Forest to the royal demesne and 14 parishes or parts of parishes, most of them, like the demesne itself, in St. Briavels hundred. The royal demesne remained extraparochial until the 1840s when, villages and hamlets having grown up within it, it was formed into the civil townships (later parishes) of East Dean and West Dean and into ecclesiastical districts.
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The formerly extraparochial land of the Forest of Dean lies mainly at over 200 m. (656 ft.), reaching its highest point, 290 m. (951 ft.), at Ruardean hill in the north. Sometimes described as a plateau but actually comprising steep ridges and the valleys of streams draining to the Severn and Wye, its boundaries with the surrounding cultivated and ancient parochial lands are in most places defined by a scarp where the underlying carboniferous limestone of the region outcrops. On the west, however, the limestone outcrops at a shallower angle and there is a less obvious distinction in height between the Forest and the cultivated land of the large ancient parish of Newland. The long valley of Cannop brook, earlier called the Newerne stream, crosses the west part of the Forest from north to south, and a stream called in its northern part Cinderford brook and in its southern Soudley brook forms a long winding valley through the east part. Blackpool brook, so called by 1282, carves another deep valley through the south-eastern edge of the high land to meet Soudley brook at Blakeney below the Forest's scarp, and at the Forest's northern edge Greathough brook, formerly Lyd brook, descends a valley to the Wye. The streams were dammed in places for ironworks, notably in the Cannop valley where two large ponds were made in the 1820s to provide power for works at Parkend. Other large ponds on a tributary stream of Soudley brook at Sutton bottom, near Soudley, were built as fishponds in the mid 19th century for a privately-owned estate in that part of the Forest called Abbots wood. In the late 20th century the Forestry Commission maintained the Forest's ponds as nature reserves and as a public amenity; new ones were made at Woorgreen, near the centre of the Forest, as part of landscape restoration following opencast coal mining in the 1970s, and at Mallards Pike, near the head of Blackpool brook, in 1980.
Geology has given the Forest its rich industrial history. The land is formed of basin-shaped strata of the Carboniferous series. Underlying and outcropping at the rim are limestones which, especially the stratum called Crease Limestone, contain deposits of iron ore. Above are beds of sandstone, shale, and coal. The lowest bed of sandstone is known by the local name of Drybrook Sandstone, and the highest is the Pennant Sandstone. There are over 20 separate coal seams, varying in thickness from a few inches to 5 ft., the highest yielding being the Coleford High Delf which rises close to the surface near the rim of the Forest. Surface workings, shallow pits, or levels driven into the hillsides were the means of winning the iron ore and coal until the late 18th century when deeper mines were sunk. There were also numerous quarries, notably those in the Pennant Sandstone at Bixhead and elsewhere on the west side of the Cannop valley; that stone, which varies in colour but is mainly dark grey, was the principal building material used in the Forest's 19th-century industrial hamlets.
The Forest was most significant as a producer of oak timber, which was the principal reason for its survival in the modern period. Until the early 17th century, however, there was as much beech as oak among its large timber trees, and chestnut trees once grew in profusion on the north-east side of the Forest near Flaxley and gave the name by 1282 to a wood called the Chestnuts. The underwood was composed of a variety of small species such as hazel, birch, sallow, holly, and alder. The ancient forest contained many open areas. In 1282 various 'lands', or forest glades, maintained by the Crown presumably as grazing for the deer, included several with names later familiar in the Forest's history, Kensley, Moseley, Cannop, Crump meadow, and Whitemead (later a part of Newland parish). Numerous smaller clearings called 'trenches' had also been made as corridors alongside roads for securing travellers against ambush or for the grazing and passage of the deer. Larger areas of waste, or 'meends', such as Clearwell Meend and Mitcheldean Meend, lay on the borders adjoining the manorial lands, whose inhabitants used them for commoning their animals.
Although the royal demesne land was without permanent habitation until the early modern period, it was crossed by many ancient tracks, used by ironworkers, miners, and charcoal burners; large numbers, many termed 'mersty' (meaning a boundary path), were recorded in 1282 in a perambulation of the Forest bailiwicks, its administrative divisions. One of the more important ancient routes, known as the Dean road, had a pitched stone surface and borders of kerbstones. It ran between Lydney and Mitcheldean across the eastern part of the demesne by way of Oldcroft, a crossing of Blackpool brook, recorded as Blackpool ford in 1282, and a crossing of Soudley brook at Upper Soudley. The survival of much pitching and kerbing after the road went out of use in the turnpike era, and the possibility that it had linked two important Roman sites at Lydney and Ariconium, in Weston under Penyard (Herefs.), has led to the suggestion that it was a Roman road, though much of the stonework probably dates from the medieval and early modern periods; an estimate was made for renewing long stretches of the road, including the provision of new border stones, as late as the 1760s.
Two main routes crossed the extraparochial Forest from north-east to south-west and on them were sited the principal points of reference in a terrain with few landmarks. A route from the Severn crossing at Newnham to Monmouth recorded in 1255, when 'trenches' were ordered to be made beside it, was presumably that through Littledean, the central Forest, and Coleford. It entered over a high ridge west of Littledean, where a hermitage of St. White had been founded by 1225, and crossed Soudley (or Cinderford) brook at the place called Cinder ford in 1258, long before its name was taken by the principal settlement of the extraparochial Forest that formed on the hillside to the north-east of the crossing. Further west, near the centre of the Forest, the road passed the clearing called Kensley, where a courthouse stood by 1338 close to the site of the later Speech House, and crossed Newerne (or Cannop) brook at Cannop. The road emerged into the cultivated land of Coleford tithing at a place later called Broadwell Lane End, where a tree called Woolman oak in 1608 (fn. 34) was probably the 'W(o)lfmyen' oak which in 1282 was a landmark at the boundary of four of the Forest's bailiwicks. The other main route, recorded in 1282 as the high road to Monmouth, was that crossing the high north-western part of the extraparochial land from Mitcheldean, by way of Nailbridge, Brierley, Mirystock, where it crossed a tributary of Cannop brook above Lydbrook, to Coleford. The two remained the principal routes through the Forest but the northern one, described in the 1760s as the great road through the Forest from Gloucester to South Wales, was much altered in its course by later improvements.
The rivers Severn and Wye played a vital role in the development of Dean's industry but few of the various tracks and hollow ways that led from the central Forest to riverside landing-places and ferries were usable other than by packhorses before the 19th century. One of the few routes negotiable by wagons and timber rigs was the central main road out to Littledean with its branch down to Newnham; that was the usual route for carrying timber out of the Forest in 1737 when the Crown was asked to assist Newnham parish to repair part of it. Later in the 18th century a road leading from the south part of the woodlands by way of Parkend and Viney Hill to Gatcombe and Purton on the Severn became the principal route for timber destined for the naval dockyards.
The Crown's hunting rights, which provided the original motive for the Forest's preservation, were much used in the 13th century. The frequent orders made at the period for taking deer for gifts by the Crown and to meet the needs of the royal household suggest that fallow deer were the majority species in Dean, with red deer and roe present in smaller numbers. In 1278 the Forest was sufficiently well stocked for royal huntsmen to take 100 fallow bucks. At that period all three species of deer were classed as beasts of the forest, reserved for the exclusive use of the Crown, but roe were not classified as such after 1340.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
[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.
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:
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
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 (£).
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.
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.
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.
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
