Employment on the Priory of Durham Estates, 1494–1519: The Priory as an Employer

Abstract

THE CENTRAL ROLE played by the monasteries in the economic life of their localities, throughout the Middle Ages and up to the Dissolution, has long been a commonplace of urban history. Indeed, it is probable that it was the temporal activities of major monastic foundations, in their roles as influential local landlords, rather than their spiritual endeavours, which made the greater impact upon the everyday working lives of their local tenantry. Moreover, the servicing of such institutions inevitably made a considerable impact upon the mechanisms of economic life in the local community. In the North, Hexham and Durham were towns of this sort. In southern England there are numerous examples: the very names of Bury St Edmunds, St Albans, and Peterborough signify the monastic core of the urban communities there. Malmesbury and Ramsey are other instances. None of these towns had more than a few thousand inhabitants, and in each case the presence of a monastic house may be assumed important in creating trade and employment in the local community. Just how important, it is usually impossible to assess. Given their socio-economic prominence in the host community, it is commonly assumed that abbeys played a major role in providing employment in such places. At one extreme, these might be envisaged as having self-contained and mutually supporting systems of exchange in which a monastery created employment for the local inhabitants and generated a demand for traded goods to be supplied by local enterprise. It is rare, though, to be able to test to what extent this perception is appropriate; few places have the quantitative evidence needed to assess the monastic contribution to the local economy in any but the most impressionistic way.2 Durham, however, is exceptional in this respect. It was