Change and continuities in rural society from the later middle ages to the sixteenth century: the contribution of west Berkshire

Abstract

r T he findings from west Berkshire are presented here as a contribution to the understanding of the nature of change in the rural economy and population between the late medieval and early modem periods and the article spans the-now largely indefensible-divide at 1500. Answers are needed to a number of difficult questions: when can sustained economic and demographic growth be discerned after the fluctuations of the fifteenth century, and how do regional variations fit into the more generalized descriptions of trends in the population and the economy? Postan described the fifteenth century as one of stagnation and decline in terms of GNP. This interpretation was contradicted by Bridbury's conclusions, drawn from an analysis of per caput wealth, that this was a time of growth in productivity.2 It was certainly a period of contradictory tendencies as there were slumps in arable cultivation at the same time as dynamism in pastoral farming and, additionally, dispersed areas of industrial growth such as in the production of cloth.3 Fluctuations were a real characteristic: for example, the evidence from rents in Derbyshire suggests an upswing in income from the 1 460s to the 1 490s and a downswing from the 1 490s to the 1 520s.4 Towns such as Salisbury, Reading, and Newbury grew while older centres such as Winchester and Oxford declined.5 There were also underlying regional differences within the country's economy such as the high level of commercialization of eastern England and the diversified economy of Devon and Cornwall, and these stand in contrast to the findings from the Home Counties.6 In I This article is based on my doctoral thesis, 'Continuity and change in rural society'. The urban