Money and the English Economy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Abstract

The subject of money is of clear importance to the history of the English economy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and has attracted a considerable literature over the past decades. The author surveys the main strands of this work, dealing with the coinage itself, its production and quantity, its distribution and use, whether money can be equated with the coinage, and the question of credit. The article then goes on to deal with the debates on two important issues involving money in the period, the questions of inflation and commercialization, and suggests ways in which they should be taken forward. Few historians would deny that money was important in the medieval economy. Although no one doubts that, throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, much subsistence production and consumption took place without directly requiring money, the days are long gone when even the early medieval economy could be regarded as a ‘natural economy’, much less that of England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 1 This was a period in England during which undoubtedly both the quantity and the use of money increased substantially in its then predominant form of a silver-based coinage. This coinage is of intrinsic interest to historians and numismatists as a cultural artifact, irrespective of the importance of its economic role, but to one degree or another scholars have generally acknowledged its economic significance, though often disagreeing on its importance as an explanatory factor in particular economic developments. Before turning to questions about the relationship of money to the economy, principally its impact in determining prices and its role in commercialization, it seems best to start with the coinage itself, its production and its quantity. It was in many ways an exceptional coinage in European terms. A single category of coins, a relatively high-value silver penny of a generally consistent standard, dominated the English currency to an