Market towns and the countryside in late medieval England

The presence of the local gentry in market towns is well-known, but their impact on the townspeople less easily assessed. They sometimes disrupted markets with their violence, but less well-publicized activities included membership of fraternities, thereby adding to the dignity of civic life.(53) A concrete example of the practical benefit that could come from gentry interest concerns a Worcestershire esquire, John Vampage, who lived in the town of Pershore in the late fourteenth century. He acted as steward for the wealthy rector of Bishop's Cleeve in Gloucestershire, and when building work was being carried out on the rectory, we find Vampage making a contract with a Pershore mason, though there were plenty of qualified craftsmen living nearer to the job.(54) Many informal networks based on migration, kinship, marriage, patronage, and conviviality must have helped to create links between towns and their rural surroundings, of which our documents only occasionally provide a glimpse.

III

We must conclude by recognizing that theories of central place and urban hierarchy provide an appropriate framework for understanding the role of the medieval market town. We can identify "spheres of influence," and when these are examined in a region they seem closely packed, indicating a high degree of urbanization. Although the local retailing hinterlands did not differ greatly in size, the varying functions of towns at different levels in the urban hierarchy emerge from a close examination of debts and other evidence for trade. Larger places provided more specialized goods and services, and either sold these directly into the territories of the smaller towns, or supplied the small town retailers with their wares. Just as large towns provided political, social, and religious facilities of a high order, such as county courts, cathedrals, and friaries, so the market towns had their fraternities, processions, and schools. When we can observe the urban system at work m the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it seems stable and well established. It had however been through a period of much upheaval and fierce competition in the previous two centuries. The apparent maturity achieved by the urban network after 1300, and the fact that we can apply theories devised for nineteenth and twentieth-century cities to our towns, reinforces our view that we are observing a society which had already reached a high degree of market orientation. The towns could function as they did because of the high level of production for the market in the countryside, and at least small scale commercial activity had permeated through all levels of society.(55) Relations between market towns and the countryside were not conditioned solely by economic laws. The eccentric shape of hinterlands, the unpredictable choices of consumers, the unexpected development of small-town specialisms, and social interactions together produced an idiosyncratic variety of market towns.

University of Birmingham

1 I am grateful to Chris Kent and John Langdon for giving me the opportunity to contribute to these commemorative essays. I am grateful to Andrew Watkins and Robert Peberdy for giving me permission to make reference to their theses.