A Ward Level Economic Topography of Sixteenth-Century Coventry

ABSTRACT

Subsidy rolls of the 1540s and 1560s from the collection of Thomas Gregory, Coventry city clerk from 1528 to 1570, provide relative comparisons among Coventry’s wards over time. The various wards remained fairly consistent in relative wealth during the sixteenth century, and despite more diverse markets in the latter part of the century textiles still remained important. The central wards were the wealthiest, and wealth decreased moving towards the suburbs. The outer wards and suburbs were not necessarily poor, they just held few of the wealthiest merchants. The suburban wards of Spon and Gosford benefited from the growth of cap making. The incredibly wealthy wool and cloth merchants disappear by the mid-sixteenth century, but there is clear retention of the class of moderately wealthy gentry and merchants.

KEYWORDS:

• Coventry
• Tudor
• subsidy rolls
• taxes
• merchants
• textiles

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

¹ Coventry City Archive (CA), BA/H/17/A79/63a, Coventry Borough Archive, Corporation Administrative Records, From recorder to mayor about differences with subsidy-commissioners, 1545.

² Ibid.

³ A useful recent addition to the research in this topic assesses the performative aspects of these negotiations. See J. M. Adrian, Feting the Queen: Civic Entertainments and the Elizabethan Progress (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2021).

⁴ M. Hulton, Coventry and its People in the 1520s (Stratford upon Avon: The Dugdale Society, 1999); C. Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

⁵ Shakespeare Trust Archive (SA), DR10/1851 and DR10/1857 for 1546. DR10/1860 for 1564 and 1565.

⁶ M.Webb, Studies in Urban Space in English Towns (Ph.D. Diss., University of Leicester, 2019); M. Webb, ‘An examination of uses of late medieval urban social space: Coventry and Leicester’, Archaeological Journal, 178.2 (2021), 167–215.

⁷ There are no reasonable grounds to literally read censuses and subsidies from the wartime decade of the 1520s to try to claim that wealth as well as population had declined rapidly in the early sixteenth century. For discussion of the data, and the difficulties of using other types of evidence see, A. Dyer, Decline and Growth in English Towns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

⁸ The cap making craft had become prominent by the 1490s. Their guild rules were submitted to the city leet court in 1496, and a capper became mayor in 1504. A capmaker shows up in the Alien Subsidy Rolls during the mid-fifteenth century. Henry Capper, Dutchman, from Flanders was registered in Earl Street in 1450 (National Archives (NA), E179/235/29). Then in 1453 we find Henry Fleming, capmaker, from Flanders (NA, E179/235/53). One would like to consider his presence as a sign of the possible early roots of cap making in the city. As usual innovations in the textile industry coming from Flanders.

⁹ K. Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 126 and 155.

¹⁰ R. Berger, The Most Necessary Luxuries: The Mercer’s Company of Coventry, 1550–1680 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1993), pp. 59–81.

¹¹ See, for example, D. Loades, The Mid Tudor Crisis, 1545–1565 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1992).

¹² P. Clark, ed., Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) surveys the transitions highlighted in this section.

¹³ P. Withington, The Politics of Commonwealth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 3–13.

¹⁴ R. Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns in England: Politics and Political Culture, C.1540–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 7–10.

¹⁵ Hulton, pp. 20–4.

¹⁶ S. Rigby, ‘Urban Population in Late Medieval England: the evidence of the lay subsidies’, Economic History Review, 63.2 (2010), 393–417.

¹⁷ A. Dyer, ‘”Urban Decline” in England, 1377–1525’, in Towns in Decline, AD 100–1600, ed. by T.R. Slater (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2000), pp. 266–88.

¹⁸ We should also take note of the 1547 Chantry Returns which record a population of 7,000. The number is likely rounded, but previous commentators have assumed, based on Phythian-Adams’ literal readings of the 1520s censuses (5,600 in 1523, 6,600 in 1520), that the number was rounded up. I would argue that it is more likely rounded down based on a nuanced reading of the 1520s data. W.B. Stephens, ed., A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 8, the City of Coventry and Borough of Warwick (London: Victoria County History, 1969), p. 5.

¹⁹ A. Dyer, ‘Ranking Lists of English Medieval Towns’, in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Volume I, ed. by D.M. Palliser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 761. Behind London, Norwich, Bristol, and York. (Dyer ranks Coventry 7^th after Exeter and Newcastle in 1525, but he acknowledges the number is likely an underassessment).

²⁰ P. Slack, ‘Great and Good Towns, 1540–1700’, in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Volume II, ed. by P. Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 352.

²¹ R. Schofield, Taxation Under the Early Tudors, 1485–1547 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).

²² A. Fletcher and D. MacCullogh, Tudor Rebellions (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 24–6.

²³ R. W. Hoyle, ‘Taxation and the Mid-Tudor Crisis’, Economic History Review, LI. 4 (1998), 662–3.

²⁴ Hoyle, 666–7; J. F. Pound, ‘The Social and Trade Structure of Norwich, 1525–1575’, Past & Present, 34.1 (1966), 52.

²⁵ Hoyle, 657–8.

²⁶ Hoyle, 651–2.

²⁷ Hoyle, 659 and 673.

²⁸ Fletcher and MacCullogh, p. 27.

²⁹ Hoyle, 671–2.

³⁰ Slack, ‘Great and Good Towns’, in Cambridge Urban History II, p. 355.

³¹ Hoyle, 671.

³² Fletcher and MacCullogh, p. 137.

³³ I. Archer, ‘The Burden of Taxation on Sixteenth-Century London’, The Historical Journal, 44.3 (2001), 611.

³⁴ R. G. Lang, ed., ‘Two Tudor Subsidy Rolls for the City of London, 1541 and 1582’ (London: London Record Society, 1993) <https://www.british-history.ac.uk/london-record-soc/vol29>; Archer, 607–9; Pound, 52.

³⁵ Pound, 54.

³⁶ Lang, ‘Two Tudor Subsidy Rolls’; Archer, 610.

³⁷ Pound, 53.

³⁸ Half or full fifteenths of 1429, 1430, 1445, 1474, 1488, 1492, and 1497. The amounts for the Fifteenths at the £50 level were (rounded): Cross Cheaping £7 10s, Earl Street, Gosford Street, Spon Street, Bishop Street £5 13s, Much Park, Jordan Well £5, Bailey Lane Smithford Street £4, Broadgate £2 10s. See, M. Dormer Harris, ed., The Coventry Leet Book (London: Early English Text Society, 1907).

³⁹ Loans in 1424, 1430, 2 × 1434(one for £50), 1435, 1444, 1449. The amounts for loans, and grants, for raising £100 were (rounded): Cross Cheaping £15, Earl Street, Gosford Street, Spon Street, Bishop Street, £11, Much Park, Jordan Well £10, Bailey Lane, Smithford Street £8, Broadgate £5. Dormer Harris, Leet Book.

⁴⁰ Hulton, Coventry and its People. I would like to thank Judith Bennett for discovering the errors and pointing them out to me, as well as for very generously making available access to digital copies of the original 1525 subsidy roll. The errors do not significantly effect totals or sub-totals. They generally consist of mistyped individual entries.

⁴¹ Hoyle, 653.

⁴² Hoyle, 657.

⁴³ Pound, 50.

⁴⁴ Hoyle, 671.

⁴⁵ See Leet Book, pp. 517, 541, 677–8, 725, 826.

⁴⁶ Webb, p. 223–6. For rentals revealing the same pattern see, D. Leech, ‘Stability and Change at the End of the Middle Ages: Coventry 1540–1525’, Midland History, 34.1 (2009), 6–8.

⁴⁷ Leet Book, pp. 236–52.

⁴⁸ The buildings and streets of this central area remained largely intact until the 1930s, when much of Cross Cheaping was demolished for redevelopment. Most of the heart of the city, including Saint Michael’s, was destroyed in the heavy bombing raids of November 1940 and April 1941. A lot of whatever survived disappeared in post-war modernization.

⁴⁹ K. Lilley, Medieval Coventry: A Study in Town Plan Analysis (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 1994).

⁵⁰ Webb, p. 63.

⁵¹ Webb, p. 61.

⁵² P. Coss and J. Lancaster Lewis, eds., Coventry Priory Register (Bristol: Dugdale Society, 2013), pp. 406 and 410.

⁵³ Webb, p. 62.

⁵⁴ Leet Book, pp. 674–5; Hulton, 170. It is not productive to overly stress exact numbers within the censuses due to their varying purposes and thoroughness. Instead I am comparing relative positions here.

⁵⁵ Hulton, p. 7.

⁵⁶ Another vital victualling trade, the bakers were evenly dispersed throughout the city as their baking services and products were needed immediately at hand to residents.

⁵⁷ Coventry Priory Register, pp. 41–3.

⁵⁸ Webb, pp. 57–9. These houses were owned by successful butchers and other victuallers as well as mercers and dyers.

⁵⁹ Leet Book, pp. 674–5; Hulton, p. 142.

⁶⁰ The 1485–86 Trinity Guild rental accounts reveal a high concentration of cottages on the southern edge of the city at the bottom of Broadgate, Earl Street, and Much Park Street wards. G. Templeman, ed., Records of the Guild of the Holy Trinity (Oxford: Dugdale Society, 1944), pp. 48–80.

⁶¹ Lilley, p. 239.

⁶² Webb, pp. 86 and 229; Leech, ‘Stability and Change’, 6–8.

⁶³ Coventry Priory Register, p. 45.

⁶⁴ Lilley, p. 298.

⁶⁵ Lilley, p. 291.

⁶⁶ Lilley, p. 313.

⁶⁷ I. Soden, Coventry: The Hidden History (Stroud: Tempus, 2005), pp. 108–9.

⁶⁸ Lilley, p. 312.

⁶⁹ See deeds in the Coventry city archive, CA BA/B/16/107, 332–4, 443. In 1482 the property was held of Cheylesmore manor by John Ruyton, a wealthy Coventry merchant, CA PA2557/1/4/3.

⁷⁰ CA PA2557/7/1/4/3.

⁷¹ Soden, pp. 109–10.

⁷² Lilley, p. 310.

⁷³ Hulton, p. 8.

⁷⁴ Webb, p. 72.

⁷⁵ Webb, p. 77.

⁷⁶ Soden, p. 10; Lilley, pp. 316–18.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Donald Leech

Donald Leech is a professor of history at the University of Virginia (College at Wise). His research focuses on change and continuity in towns across the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries using Coventry as the primary case study. Published articles include: ‘Enclosures and De-sacralization in Tudor Coventry, and the Foundations of Modern Urban Space’ (2021); “‘By the evidence of this city”: Enclosing Land and Memory in Fifteenth Century Coventry’ (2012); ‘Stability and Change at the End of the Middle Ages: Coventry 1450–1525’ (2009).