6. Self-Government in the Small Towns of Late Medieval England

Abstract

A fter decades in which research into the largest and greatest towns dominated the agenda of urban historians, they now recognise the important economic role played by the small towns of medieval England. Richard Britnell's research has been influential in effecting this change in emphasis, because one of his first publications considered the foundation and early development of the small market town of Witham (Essex), and his later, magisterial, work on the commercialisation of the economy sketched the background to the expansion of small boroughs, markets and fairs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Rodney Hilton and Chris Dyer also championed these ‘small places with large consequences’, emphasising their importance both as barometers for economic and social change, and in shaping regional differences across England. Their published works have inspired others to research small-town life in late medieval England, the cumulative effect of which has been to counterbalance the excessive concentration upon the largest — and best-documented — English towns and cities. As Dyer rightly states, ‘the concern for the top ranks of the urban hierarchy can be readily understood … [yet] small towns were not optional additions to the economy, but formed the crucial means of communication between the countryside and the higher reaches of the world of commerce’. Around 1300 there were perhaps 650 urban foundations in England, of which around 600 might reasonably be described as ‘small’.

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