Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: points of departure
- Introduction An uncommon tradition
- Part I The emergent commonalty
- 1 What came before: antecedent structures and emergent themes
- 2 The formation of a constitutional landscape, c.1159–1327
- 3 The power of a common language
- Part II Accumulating a tradition: popular resistance and rebellion, 1327–1549
- Part III The English explosion
- Part IV The empowered community
- Index
- References
2 - The formation of a constitutional landscape, c.1159–1327
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: points of departure
- Introduction An uncommon tradition
- Part I The emergent commonalty
- 1 What came before: antecedent structures and emergent themes
- 2 The formation of a constitutional landscape, c.1159–1327
- 3 The power of a common language
- Part II Accumulating a tradition: popular resistance and rebellion, 1327–1549
- Part III The English explosion
- Part IV The empowered community
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter introduces and explores changes that emerged in the period from John of Salisbury's writing of Policraticus to the fall of Edward II. Section 2.1 shows that from c.1150–1250 population doubled, that growth halted in the second half of the thirteenth century and that the reign of Edward II (1307–27) marks the beginning of the long demographic depression of c.1300–c.1550. The argument of this chapter is that most of the themes and structures that shaped English history from the fourteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries were present by the end of 1327. Section 2.2 introduces a theme with strong claims to being the precondition for all the rest. ‘Trafike’ was the early modern English word for ‘traffic’, ‘trade’ and ‘commerce’. Section 2.2 traces the emergence of a commercial landscape grounded in market towns, provincial cities, highways, roads, streets and tracks – and the ‘vehicles’ (including people and ideas) that kept them functioning. Section 2.3 introduces two more grass roots institutions, one (enterprise and resourcefulness) a tenacious attitude, the other (household and family) the primary locus of reproduction, upbringing, learning and production. Each of the sections introduces an enduring theme or structure, the chapter as a whole stressing the variability and complexity of an aggregative, fluctuating yet accumulative, process.
Having examined the emergence and survival of a tenacious commercial landscape, Section 2.4 describes the emergence of a discourse about what kind of community England was, how the parts should relate to each other, aided by what institutions and in what language.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Commonwealth of the PeoplePopular Politics and England's Long Social Revolution, 1066–1649, pp. 63 - 118Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
and , ‘Commercial Activity and Population Growth in Medieval England’, Past and Present 90 (February 2006), 58Google Scholar
, Making a Living in the Middle Ages: the People of Britain 850–1520 (London 2003), 228–33Google Scholar
, ‘Introduction: Land and People’, in (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol.3 1348–1500 (Cambridge 1991), 6Google Scholar
, ‘Demographic developments in Rural England 1300–1348’, in (ed.), Before the Black Death: Studies in the Crisis of the Early Fourteenth Century (Manchester 1991), 48Google Scholar
, ‘The Agrarian Problem in the Early Fourteenth Century’, Past and Present, no. 188 (August 2005), 3–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The Multiplicity of Medieval Markets Reconsidered’, Journal of Historical Geography 20 (1994), 452Google Scholar
and , Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts 1086–1348 (London and New York 1995), 274–9Google Scholar
, The Double Helix: a Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (New York 1968)Google Scholar
(ed.), Studies in Economic History: the Collected Papers of George Unwin (London 1927)
, ‘The Estate of Merchants’, in his Finance and Trade under Edward III (Manchester 1918)Google Scholar
, The Politics of Social Conflict: the Peak Country 1520–1770 (Cambridge 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Industry in the Countryside: Wealden Society in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Population and Society in an East Devon Parish: Reproducing Colyton, 1540–1840 (Exeter 2002)Google Scholar
(ed.), The Brut or The Chronicles of England (London 1906), 359
, Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England, ed. (London 1840), 7Google Scholar
, The Constitutional History of England (1897; repr. New York 1967), 1: 4, 6, 11, 91, 103, 366Google Scholar
and , The Governance of Medieval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh 1963, 22–3Google Scholar
, ‘History and Historical Criticism: Recent Work of Richardson and Sayles’, Journal of British Studies 3:2 (May 1964), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Theory and Practice of Revolt in Medieval England (Aldershot 2003), 12, 14, 19, 27Google Scholar
, ‘English Peasants in Politics 1258–1267’, Past and Present, no. 136 (August 1992), 3–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Subversive Words: Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France, trans. , (Cambridge 1994), 1Google Scholar
and (trans. and ed.), Select Cases of Procedure Without Writ Under Henry III (Selden Society: London 1941), 42–5
, ‘Public or Plebs: the Changing Meaning of the Commons, 1381–1549’, in and (eds.), Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies (Oxford 2007), 245Google Scholar
, ‘The Risings of the Commons in England, 1381–1549’, in (ed.), Orders and Hierarchies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Basingstoke 1999), 109, 111, 112, 113–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(ed.) Norwich Consistory Court Depositions 1499–1530, Norfolk Record Society 10 (Norwich 1938): deposition numbers 48, 95, 233, 308
, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles (Oxford 2000), 191Google Scholar
, ‘The Forms and Machinery of the “Commune Petition” in the Fourteenth Century, Part One’, English Historical Review vol. 56, no. 222 (April 1941), 208Google Scholar
, Piers Plowman: the Prologue and Passus 1–VII of the B-Text as found in Bodleian MS Laud Misc. 581, ed. (Oxford 1972), 5Google Scholar
and (ed.), A Book of London English 1384–1425 (Oxford 1931), 29
, The Art of War, in , The Prince and the Art of War (1521: Collectors Library Edition, London 2004), 221Google Scholar
, ‘Popular Politics’ in and (ed.), The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society (Stroud 1995), 165Google Scholar
, ‘The Military Revolution in History and Historiography’, in The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, Colorado 1995), 30Google Scholar
, ‘Technology, Society and the Infantry Revolution of the Fourteenth Century’, Journal of Military History 68 (April 2004), 361–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The Army and Navy’, in and (ed.), The English Government at Work 1327–1336, vol. 1 Central and Prerogative Administration (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), 343Google Scholar
, The Military Survey of Gloucestershire, 1522, Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society Series 6, (Bristol 1993)Google Scholar
, Brittania, or a Chorographical Description of Great Britain and Ireland, transactions and additions by (London 1722), vol. 1, p. 280Google Scholar
, Political Songs of England from the reign of John to that of Edward II (Camden Society 1839, repr. Cambridge 1996), 187–95Google Scholar
‘Commerce and Communication’, in (ed.), New Cambridge Medieval History (Cambridge 2000)Google Scholar
, ‘The Economic and Social Roots of Medieval Popular Rebellion: Sussex in 1450–1451,’ Economic History Review, new series, 45:4 (Nov. 1992), 661–2, 664Google Scholar
, ‘Agenda for Legislation, 1322–c.1340’, English Historical Review 105:414 (January 1990), 8, 15–16, 25–6Google Scholar
, ‘The Deposition and Abdication of Edward II’, English Historical Review 113:453 (September 1998), 852–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Greatest Traitor: the Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, Ruler of England 1327–1330 (London 2004), 173–85Google Scholar
, The Perfect King: the Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation (London 2006), esp. 66 and appendices 2, 3Google Scholar
(trans. and ed.), Froissart Chronicles (Harmondsworth 1978), 114
, ‘The Profits of Violence: the Minor Gentry in the Rebellion of 1321 in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire’, Speculum 52 (1977), 843–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(ed.), The Brut or The Chronicles of England (London 1906), 331
, ‘The Eccentricities of Edward II’, English Historical Review 48:190 (April 1933), 265Google Scholar
, Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (Cambridge 1998), 77CrossRefGoogle Scholar