Economics and the Cult of Death in Late Medieval England: The Guild of St. George in Nottingham, 1459-1546

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the decline of the fraternity of St. George in Nottingham between 1459 and 1546. It uses the guild’s accounts in conjunction with Nottingham’s rich surviving documentary materials to investigate the financial management of the fraternity by its officers. It argues that the officers were adept at negotiating shifting economic conditions by switching between various revenue streams. However, this adroit management did not stem the tide of membership decline. It discusses the role of religious reform in the guild’s ultimate demise. It investigates why the decline in membership started long before any moves towards state-sponsored religious reform in the 1540s. It examines the impact of key individuals upon the guild’s history. It argues that, for a more nuanced view of the decline of fraternal organizations in this period, a recognition of individuals’ impact upon institutions needs to be incorporated into our understanding of institutions’ influences upon the economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Medieval
• guilds
• fraternities
• business
• Reformation
• decline

Acknowledgments

We would particularly like to thank Gervase Rosser and Justine L. Trombley for commenting on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Hegyn paid 24s in tax on his Nottingham tenements at a rate if 12d in every pound. His entire (disclosed) property portfolio was assessed at £24 4s 11d, see, S. N. Mastoris, ‘A Tax Assessment of 1504 and the Topography of Early Tudor Nottingham’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, 89 (1985), 44; W. H. Stevenson, ed., Records of the Borough of Nottingham: Being a Series of Extracts from the Archives of the Corporation of Nottingham, 1485–1547. 9 vols. Vol. 2 (London: Quaritch, 1885), p. 289; W. H. Stevenson, ed., Records of the Borough of Nottingham: Being a Series of Extracts from the Archives of the Corporation of Nottingham, 1485–1547. 9 vols. Vol. 3 (London: Quaritch, 1885), pp. 256, 285, 317, 428, 431, 434–6; R. F. B. Hodgkinson, ed., The Account Books of the Gilds of St. George and of St. Mary in the Church of St. Peter Nottingham (Nottingham: Thomas Forman and Sons, 1939), p. 74..

² Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 2, pp. 426–32; Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 3, pp. 458–66.

³ Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 74.

⁴ R. Whiting, Local Responses to the English Reformation (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 47–9.

⁵ The commissioners were acting under the auspices of the Chantries Act of 1545, see, R. N. Swanson, Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp, 356–7; E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (Yale: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 454–5.

⁶ Nottinghamshire Archives (NA), PR 21,599/3. These contain other records as well, including sixteenth and seventeenth-century churchwardens accounts and late sixteenth-century accounts for the Guild of St. Mary, sited in St. Peter’s church.

⁷ NA, M 399; R. F. B. Hodgkinson, ed., The Account Books of the Gilds of St. George and of St. Mary in the Church of St. Peter Nottingham (Nottingham: Thomas Forman and Sons, 1939). There are errors in this edition’s foliation.

⁸ J. Mills, ‘The Guild of St. George, the Parish of St. Peter’s and the Town of Nottingham, 1459–1546’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, 111 (2007), 73–87.

⁹ Mills, ‘Guild of St. George’, 73.

¹⁰ Swanson, Church and Society, pp. 280–84; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 143; G. W. Bernard, The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome (London: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 118–25.

¹¹ Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 41. Many similar examples exist.

¹² Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 45; G. Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England’, The Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 431, 438; G. Rosser, The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages: Guilds in England 1250–1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 133–7.

¹³ This total excludes chaplains and other religious. Furthermore, only those the occupations of members who were mentioned in the accounts, generally on the occasion of leaving a bequest to the guild, are recoverable here. This represents a relatively small proportion of the membership and is heavily weighted towards the guild’s officers. In only 16.8% of members cited in the accounts can commercial occupations be discovered.

¹⁴ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 42, 45.

¹⁵ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 24–5, 68–9.

¹⁶ Mills, ‘Guild of St. George’, 75.

¹⁷ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 32, 36, 51, 55, 57, 59, 60, 62, 65.

¹⁸ G. Rosser, ‘Communities of Parish and Guild in the Late Middle Ages’, in Parish, Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion 1350–1750, ed. by S. J. Wright (London: Harper Collins, 1988), p. 35; Rosser, Art of Solidarity, pp. 55–6; A. D. Brown, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England: The Diocese of Salisbury 1250–1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 135–7.

¹⁹ Borthwick, Prob Reg 4. Folio 227 v, Prob Reg 4. Folio 34 r, Prob Reg 4. Folio 205 v, Prob Reg. 4. Folio 214, Prob Reg 5. Folio 121 r, Prob Reg. 5. Folio 105, Prob Reg. 5. Folio 104 v, Prob Reg 5. Folio 61 r, Prob Reg 4. Folio 123 v. My thanks to Dr Hannah Ingram for transcribing these wills.

²⁰ These are, Robert Shirwod, Richard Burton, John Hunt, John Payntor and John Squyer, see, Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 2, pp. 284–97.

²¹ Mastoris, ‘Tax assessment of 1504’, pp. 37–56.

²² These were John Williamson, Robert Northwod, George Bredon and Alexander Elrington and his wife Emma, see, Mastoris, ‘Tax assessment of 1504’, p. 39.

²³ J. J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation of the English People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 34–5; C. Barron, ‘The Parish Fraternities of Medieval London’, in The Church in Pre-Reformation Society, ed. by C. Barron and C. Harper-Bill (Exeter: 1985), p. 25; C. Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 172; Brown, Popular Piety, p. 141; Whiting, Local Responses, pp. 47–9; D. J. F. Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Gilds in Late Medieval Yorkshire 1389–1547, (York: York Medieval Press, 2000), pp. 52, 220–1; K. Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community in Late Medieval East Anglia, C.1470–1550 (York: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 154–5.

²⁴ See, for example, Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 68.

²⁵ Swanson, Church and Society, p. 232; Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community, pp.73–80; Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 184–92.

²⁶ This proportion changed from year to year. The 84.3% is a mean from the buoyant 1470s. This revenue stream was sometimes boosted by sales of corn given as alms (rarely more than 10% of total revenue), see for example, Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 25, 26 et passim. For the costs associated with Leicester’s St. George’s guild procession, which included a dragon operated by two men, see, J. Wilshere, The Religious Gilds of Mediaeval Leicester (Leicester: Leicester Research Section of Chamberlain Music and Books, 1979), pp. 20–22.

²⁷ There is no evidence that St. George’s gained revenue by making loans at interest to members, see, Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community, pp. 67–73. Unlike the Jesus Guild in St. Paul’s, London, St. George’s also did not farm out the collection of ‘offerings’, see E. A. New, ed., Records of the Jesus Guild in St Paul’s Cathedral, C. 1450–1550: An Edition of the Oxford Bodleian Ms Tanner 221 and Associated Material, Vol. 56 (Woodbridge: London Record Society, 2022), pp. 7–8.

²⁸ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 19, 48–51.

²⁹ This is calculated by dividing the annual membership takings by the guild’s total annual income, see, Hodgkinson, Account Books.

³⁰ M. Williamson, ‘Quadring Cows: Resourcing Music in the Pre-Reformation Parish’, in Late Medieval Liturgies Enacted: The Experience of Worship in Cathedral and Parish Church, ed. by S. Harper, P. S. Barnwell and M. Williamson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016), pp. 125–53.

³¹ 12s 3½d. of £8 18s 6d., see, Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 37; Swanson, Church and Society, pp. 232..

³² Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 3, pp. 60, 84, 102, 122, 160, 168, 367, 384, 443; for a similar wide sixteenth-century occupational profile, see, New, Records of the Jesus Guild, p. 17.

³³ Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 3, pp. 163–80. Only the fair copies survive. There is no surviving evidence of rough, working copies of the accounts.

³⁴ J. Raine, ed., Testamenta Eboracensia: A Selection of Wills from the Registry at York. Vol. 5, Publications of the Selden Society (Durham: Seldon Society, 1884), pp. 136–7, 278–80.

³⁵ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 73, 88.

³⁶ Hodgkinson Account Books, pp. 73, 75.

³⁷ They started cleaning the armour again in 1523, see, Hodgkinson Account Books, p. 93.

³⁸ Hodgkinson Account Books, pp. 94. For a few years in the 1530s, they revert to being described as ‘chamberlains’, possibly due to a change of scribe, but then return to the use of ‘warden’, see Hodgkinson Account Books, pp. 101–3.

³⁹ A similar but more far-reaching overhaul of the Jesus Guild in St. Paul’s in 1506 has been linked to embezzlement by some of that guild’s officers, See New, Records of the Jesus Guild, pp. 8–10; see also, Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community, p. 65.

⁴⁰ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 76–7, 80, 86–8..

⁴¹ See, for example, Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 23, 29, 32, 40, 46, 73.

⁴² Hodgkinson Account Books, p. 105.

⁴³ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 101–2.

⁴⁴ Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 77–8.

⁴⁵ The bequests found in surviving wills are also recorded in the accounts (the executors do not always forward the full endowment) and so have not been counted twice, See for example, Prob Reg 4. Folio 227 v., Prob Reg 4. Folio 34 r.; Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 20, 29.

⁴⁶ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 48.

⁴⁷ Borthwick, Prob Reg 4. Folio 227 v, Prob Reg 4. Folio 34 r, Prob Reg 4. Folio 205 v, Prob Reg. 4. Folio 214, Prob Reg 5. Folio 121 r, Prob Reg. 5. Folio 105, Prob Reg. 5. Folio 104 v, Prob Reg 5. Folio 61 r. This excludes the 7-mark outlier, Borthwick, Prob Reg 4. Folio 123 v.

⁴⁸ Most wills left bequests to several guilds, Swanson, Church and Society, p. 225; Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 78, 81–3, 109; Brown, Popular Piety, pp. 135, 142; Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community, pp. 92.

⁴⁹ Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 45.

⁵⁰ Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 48.

⁵¹ Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 120, 188.

⁵² Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community, pp. 187–8.

⁵³ J. Laughton, Life in a Late Medieval City: Chester 1275–1520 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2008), p. 118; for St. Mary’s Guild in Hull, see, Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 206–11; for the Jesus Guild, London, see New, Records of the Jesus Guild, pp. 24.

⁵⁴ G. Templeman, ed., The Records of the Guild of the Holy Trinity, St. Mary, St. John the Baptist and St. Katherine of Coventry, Vol. 2, Publications of the Dugdale Society, 19 (Oxford: The Dugdale Society, 1944), pp. 53, 69; see also, Brown, Popular Piety, pp. 141.

⁵⁵ Hodgkinson Account Books, p. 73.

⁵⁶ Hodgkinson Account Books, p. 53.

⁵⁷ Hodgkinson Account Books, p. 65.

⁵⁸ Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 188–9.

⁵⁹ J. Hatcher, ‘The Great Slump of the Mid-Fifteenth Century’, in Progress and Problems in Medieval England, ed. by R. Britnell and J. Hatcher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 237–72; R. Goddard, Credit and Trade in Later Medieval England, 1353–1532 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016), pp. 109–19; Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 78–81, 120, 188; Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community, pp. 160–62.

⁶⁰ See, for example, Hodgkinson Account Books, p. 31–7.

⁶¹ A. F. Butcher, ‘Rent and the Urban Economy: Oxford and Canterbury in the Later Middle Ages’, Southern History, 1 (1979), pp. 34, 36–7, 41–2; A. F. Butcher, ‘Rent, Population and Economic Change in Late-Medieval Newcastle’, Northern History, 14 (1978), 69–71, 76.

⁶² C. Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 36–8.

⁶³ Hatcher, ‘The great slump’, pp. 237–72; Goddard, Credit and Trade, pp. 109–19.

⁶⁴ Hatcher, “The great slump’, pp. 241–4, 246, 249–50, 271; M. M. Postan, ‘The Fifteenth Century’, Economic History Review, 9 (1939), 160–67; S. Broadberry, et al., British Economic Growth, 1270–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). p. 191.

⁶⁵ Goddard, Credit and Trade, pp. 9–16; 158–62.

⁶⁶ Goddard, Credit and Trade, pp. 148–53. The evidence for debts pleas in Nottingham’s borough court is more fragmentary.

⁶⁷ C. Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2013), pp. 368–74.

⁶⁸ For a similar policy in Salisbury and York, see, Brown, Popular Piety, pp. 151–2; Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 188–9.

⁶⁹ Goddard, Credit and Trade, pp. 127–9, 160–2; M. Bailey, ‘Demographic Decline in Late Medieval England: Some thoughts on recent research’, The Economic History Review, 49 (1996), 16; B. Harvey, Living and Dying in England, 1100–1540: The Monastic Experience (Oxford, 1993), pp. 112–45; J. Hatcher, A. J. Piper and D. Stone, ‘Monastic Mortality: Durham Priory, 1395–1529’, Economic History Review, 59 (2006), 667–87; B. Dodds, ‘Estimating arable output using Durham Priory tithe receipts, 1341–1450’, Economic History Review, 57 (2004), 245–85.

⁷⁰ Butcher, ‘Rent, Population and Economic Change’, p. 76; D. M. Palliser, ‘Epidemics in Tudor York’, Northern History, 8 (1973), 45–63.

⁷¹ J. Craig, The Mint: A History of the London Mint from AD. 287 to 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), pp. 413–14; N. J. Mayhew, ‘Prices in England, 1170–1750’, Past and Present, 219 (2013), 5, 26. The guild, having been dissolved in 1546, did not suffer the effects of the excessive inflation arising from the Tudor debasements of the mid-1540s.

⁷² Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 90; for evidence of famine see, Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, p. 59.

⁷³ Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 37; Williamson, ‘Quadring cows’, pp. 128–9, 133.

⁷⁴ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 44, 86.

⁷⁵ Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 99; Williamson, ‘Quadring cows’, pp. 136–43; for music at the Jesus Guild, London, see, New, Records of the Jesus Guild, p. 10.

⁷⁶ See, for example, Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 44–7; Williamson, ‘Quadring cows’, pp. 130–1.

⁷⁷ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 48.

⁷⁸ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 43, 69.

⁷⁹ R. W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 129; Swanson, Church and Society, p. 255.

⁸⁰ See, for example, Borthwick, Prob Reg 4. Folio 6 r-6 v; Prob Reg. 4. Folio 214; Prob Reg 5. Folio 121 r; Prob Reg. 5. Folio 105; Prob Reg. 5. Folio 104 v; for medieval testamentary evidence, see, C. Cross, ‘The Development of Protestantism in Leeds and Hull, 1520–1640: The Evidence from Wills’, Northern History, 18 (1982), 230–38; J. D. Alsop, ‘Religious Preambles in Early Modern English Wills as Formulae’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 40 (1989), 19–27.

⁸¹ Borthwick, Prob Reg 4. Folio 123 v; Prob Reg 5. Folio 61 r.

⁸² Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 44; for similar spending in York, see, Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, p. 190.

⁸³ Swanson, Church and Society, pp. 227–8, 283, 292–4.

⁸⁴ Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People; Haigh, English Reformations; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars; Whiting, Local Responses; Brown, Popular Piety; R. Hutton, ‘The Local Impact of the Tudor Reformations’, in The English Reformation Revised, ed. by C. Haigh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 114–38.

⁸⁵ Holy Trinity, St. Mary’s, All Saints and St. Katherine’s in St. Mary’s p church and St. Mary’s in St. Peter’s church, see, Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 3, pp. 4, 26, 44, 56, 128, 134, 136, 138, 186, 435; R. Goddard, ‘Medieval Social Networking: St. Mary’s Guild and the Borough Court in Later Medieval Nottingham’, Urban History, 40 (2012), 3–27; Mills, ‘Guild of St. George’, p. 14.

⁸⁶ VCH Nottingham, Vol. 2, pp. 144–7.

⁸⁷ H. Gill, ‘Architectural Notes on The Church of St. Mary the Virgin Nottingham’, Thoroton Society Transactions, 20 (1916); F. A. Wadsworth, ‘Notes on the Tombs, Chapels, Images, and Lights, in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Nottingham’, Transactions of Thoroton Society, 21 (1917), 47–71.

⁸⁸ Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 3, pp. 140, 443, 453–56.

⁸⁹ J. A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards, 1414–1520 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 5, 12, 95–7, 100, 106–7.

⁹⁰ Classic works include, A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (London: Batsford, 1964); P. Hughes, The Reformation in England. 3 vols (London: Hollis & Carter, 1950–4); Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 379–477; R. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 61–77; Marshall, Reformation England, pp. 51–2; Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community, pp. 153–65; Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power. pp. 219–43.

⁹¹ A. Kreider, English Chantries: The Road to Dissolution (London: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 155–64, 211–13.

⁹² Marshall, Reformation England, pp. 53–4..

⁹³ Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 192–3, 232–6.

⁹⁴ R. W. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 194, 286–7.

⁹⁵ VCH Nottingham. Vol. 2, pp. 91–100.

⁹⁶ J. Gairdner, ed., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10 (London, 1887), p. 514; J. Gairdner, ed., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 12 (London, 1890–91); VCH Nottingham. Vol. 2, p. 100.

⁹⁷ Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community, pp. 157–9.

⁹⁸ Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 380, 382, 384–92, 395–406, 410, 415–20, 422, 424, 428–32, 437, 440–1, 445.

⁹⁹ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 106–12; John Fryth performed a similar role for the town’s chamberlains, see, Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 3, pp. 385, 443.

¹⁰⁰ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 22, 68.

¹⁰¹ Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 76.

102 Testamenta Eboracensia, pp. 278–80; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 505–9; Whiting, Blind Devotion. p. 263; Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 223–4.

¹⁰³ Cross, ‘The Development of Protestantism’, 230–38; Alsop, ‘Religious Preambles’, 19–27.

¹⁰⁴ Brown, Popular Piety, pp. 233–49; Whiting, Local Responses, pp. 126, 130, 136, 139, 165–6; Whiting, Blind Devotion. pp. 64–82, 172–87, 259–68.

¹⁰⁵ Marshall, Reformation England, p. 55.

¹⁰⁶ Whiting, Local Responses, pp. 143–4; Whiting, Blind Devotion, pp. 63–70, 107–11..

¹⁰⁷ S. Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); S. Ogilvie, The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).

¹⁰⁸ The influence of individuals upon guilds, usually in terms of maladministration, has been noted by some historians, see, Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community, p. 65; New, Records of the Jesus Guild, pp. 8–9.

¹⁰⁹ C. Barron, ‘Richard Whittington: The Man Behind the Myth’, in Studies in London History, ed. by A. E. J. Hollaender and William Kellaway (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1969), pp. 197–250; J. Sherborne, William Canynges, 1402–1474 (Bristol: Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 1985).

¹¹⁰ Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 2, p. 432; Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 3, pp. 459–60.

¹¹¹ Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 3, p. 303.

¹¹² Mastoris, ‘Tax assessment of 1504’, p. 44; Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 2, p. 289; Stevenson, Nottingham, Vol. 3, pp. 256, 285, 317, 428, 431, 434–6; Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 74.

¹¹³ Hodgkinson, Account Books, pp. 44, 48, 68–9.

¹¹⁴ Hodgkinson Account Books, pp. 53, 65.

¹¹⁵ Hodgkinson, Account Books, p. 74.

¹¹⁶ Hodgkinson Account Books, p. 74; for a similar circumstances in Walsingham see, K. Farnhill, ‘The Guild of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Priory of St Mary in Walsingham’, in The Parish in Late Medieval England: Proceedings of the 2002 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by C. Burgess and E. Duffy (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2006), pp. 138–9, 142.

¹¹⁷ See, for example, Hodgkinson Account Books, pp. 24–25, 53.

¹¹⁸ Hodgkinson Account Books, p. 74; Mastoris, ‘Tax assessment of 1504’, p. 44.

¹¹⁹ The donated rents represented 56.1% of the guild’s portfolio.

¹²⁰ NA, PR 21,599/3, f 28; Hodgkinson Account Books, p. 74.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Tranfield Scholarship, University of Nottingham.

Notes on contributors

Richard Goddard

Richard Goddard is associate professor of medieval history at the University of Nottingham. He has written extensively on the economic and social history of later medieval England with particular reference to medieval towns, their courts and their economies, credit and debt, medieval recession and medieval women. Recent books include, Credit and Trade in Later Medieval England (Basingstoke, 2016) and Town Courts and Urban Society in Late Medieval England, 1250-1500 (Woodbridge, 2019), co-edited with Teresa Phipps.

George Smalley

George Smalley completed his MA at the University of Nottingham, graduating with a distinction in 2016. His postgraduate research was funded by a Tranfield Scholarship. His research interests are primarily concerned with the economy of the later medieval England, and particularly with the recession of the fifteenth century. He is currently the Head of History at St. Bede’s RC High School in Blackburn.