Towns and Cities in Medieval England

Introduction

England was famously unurbanized in the medieval era, at least in comparison with much of the European continent. Outside of London, which did rank as one of the largest and most important economic centers in Europe, there were few English cities that could have stood with their continental counterparts in size, wealth, or political importance. Why, then, has there been so much scholarly fuss over the history of English towns? The rich documentation that survives for many urban settlements certainly provides at least a partial answer. But scholars have always had deeper reasons, ranging from the significance of urban constitutional experiments, which were especially important to early historians of town life, to the value of the goods that passed through their ports and gates and changed hands in their markets. Most of the work done in the past half century has focused on a handful of such central themes, with governmental arrangements, economic organization, and social relations being the most important. These themes reflect a conviction that the importance of towns was greater than their size alone would suggest. The literature addressing these and other issues does not, unfortunately, break neatly into discrete categories. As a result, there is considerable overlap among the works in the sections that follow. Treatments of the urban economy, for example, often include a detailed discussion of social organization, as do accounts of politics and government. At least one of the works in the Women section has important implications for the economy, while an article listed under Economy focuses on women. Likewise, the comprehensive approach found in individual town studies naturally includes a bit of everything. The boundaries between the categories used here are best regarded, then, as porous, and those wanting to learn about particular aspects of urban life should sample broadly.

General Overviews

Excellent surveys of British urban life abound. Both Palliser 2000 and Swanson 1999 make good starting points. Lilley 2002 and Nicholas 2003 are Europe-wide accounts that provide a broader geographical context and a sharper theoretical framework for understanding British developments. Both also contain substantial discussions of English material throughout their thematically organized chapters, and Lilley includes examples drawn from Wales and Ireland as well. A number of very strong surveys appeared in the midst of a vigorous revival of urban studies during the 1970s. They are represented here by Ennen 1979 (a Europe-wide account), Platt 1976, and Reynolds 1977. Though obviously dated, these works are still cited today. The contributions of archaeologists to urban history are surveyed in Schofield and Vince 2003, which provides an excellent introduction to the field and a succinct overview of current knowledge.

Ennen, Edith. The Medieval Town. Translated by Natalie Fryde. Europe in the Middle Ages 15. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1979.
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A remarkably balanced, wide-ranging survey of European urban life, originally published in German in 1972. Ennen emphasizes political organization and economic themes, but she also devotes chapters to the late Roman and early medieval periods, areas often left out of many compact surveys. The richest section, chapter 6, provides a panoramic survey of a wide range of urban settlements, beginning in Italy and moving north to include locations in Spain, France, Germany, Flanders, the Baltic, and Russia.
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Lilley, Keith. Urban Life in the Middle Ages, 1000–1450. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2002.
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Lilley’s account is a refreshing reevaluation of what had clearly become familiar territory by the 21st century. An urban geographer, Lilley starts not with urban origins or sociological theory, but with a discussion of ideas put forward by planners and architectural theorists. Chapter 5, which traces the evolution of urban morphology, is particularly valuable. Written for a broader audience than any of the other surveys listed here.
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Nicholas, David. Urban Europe, 1100–1700. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
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Nicholas’s brief overview emphasizes theoretical approaches to urban history, particularly those of Weber and of central place theory. The organization is thematic rather than chronological, reflecting the author’s view that there was no sharp break between medieval and early modern urban developments. Includes a welcome chapter on city walls and plans.
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Palliser, David M., ed. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Vol. 1, 600–1540. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
DOI: 10.1017/CHOL9780521444613Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The best starting point for a general introduction to British urban life in the Middle Ages. Although it lacks the consistent voice that only a single author can provide, it more than makes up for it in breadth, depth, and scholarly currency. The collection is divided into two large chronological sections (600–1300 and 1300–1540), each with nine thematic chapters written by leading experts. A third section contains regional surveys that include Wales and Scotland.
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Platt, Colin. The English Medieval Town. London: Secker and Warburg, 1976.
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A general account focusing on the 12th through 15th centuries. The heart of Platt’s brief survey is its extensive treatment of what the author describes as “urban landscape” in chapter 2. Town plans, spatial organization, walls, housing, and other structures all receive generous discussion, supported by drawings and photographs. There is a strong emphasis throughout on social and economic perspectives.
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Reynolds, Susan. An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns. Oxford: Clarendon, 1977.
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Unlike many of the other surveys, Reynolds devotes considerable space to earlier centuries of urban development, including the Anglo-Saxon. Particularly strong on the evolution of arrangements for governing.
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Schofield, John, and Alan Vince. Medieval Towns: The Archaeology of British Towns in Their European Setting. 2d ed. London: Continuum, 2003.
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An introductory survey of archaeological work on British towns. Though much of the material comes from England, the text is thick with the results of detailed research on towns throughout the British Isles. The second edition sets the British evidence more firmly in a European context. The authors are particularly concerned with establishing the value of archaeology for all those working on urban history. Includes numerous illustrations.
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Swanson, Heather. Medieval British Towns: Social History in Perspective. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999.
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Swanson’s concise survey, focusing on the central and late Middle Ages, moves briskly through the usual range of thematic topics in fewer than 150 pages. She has given the work a strong historiographic emphasis, with numerous brief but helpful references to the then-current literature. Wales and Scotland receive strong treatment, and there is some material on Ireland as well.
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Collections of Essays

Much of the crucial work in urban history has appeared in volumes of collected essays. The three listed here are particularly noteworthy for the range of topics addressed (Palliser 2006) and the long-term influence of the incorporated material (Thomson 1988 and Holt and Rosser 1990).

Holt, Richard, and Gervase Rosser. The English Medieval Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1200–1540. London: Longman, 1990.
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Holt and Rosser have gathered a dozen previously published essays from a variety of different scholars. Many of these are difficult to find outside of major research libraries, and some are genuine classics. Particularly worthy of note are Phythian-Adams’s “Ceremony and the Citizen,” (Phythian-Adams 1972, cited under Religion and Ceremony), Barron’s “Ralph Holland,” and Carus-Wilson’s “Stratford-upon-Avon,” but everything is worth careful reading.
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Palliser, David M. Towns and Local Communities in Medieval and Early Modern England. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006.
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Palliser assembled thirteen of his essays—three new and ten previously published—for this collection. The chronological range of the material is broad, running from the Anglo-Saxon period to the Tudor era. A new piece on town and village formation makes a helpful addition to the study of town planning. Two contributions to the debate over urban decline—one a study of York, the other a historiographic discussion—are also included.
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Thomson, John A. F. Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century. Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton, 1988.
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An influential collection of essays that emerged from a 1986 conference in Glasgow. The volume includes a number of classic pieces that remain essential reading, such as Rosemary Horrox’s essay on the “urban gentry” and Stephen Rigby’s account of “urban oligarchy” (see Rigby 1988 under Politics and Government). All nine contributions are noteworthy.
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Politics and Government

Much of the work on medieval towns done in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was concerned with issues of government, particularly the nature of the urban constitution. Those concerns faded by the 1960s, and during the revival of urban history in the decades that followed, the focus shifted to questions of economy and society. One political issue that did continue to receive attention was oligarchy, and an active discussion of what that term meant and whether it should be applied to English towns developed. Rigby 1988 and Reynolds 1982 provide a succinct introduction to that discussion. Notable in more recent work on urban government have been three themes: an effort to describe the social glue that held the polity together, an analysis of the relationships between urban rulers and central government, and investigation of popular protests and rebellions. McRee 1994, a discussion of peacemaking, and Shaw 2005, with its discussion of oligarchy, are examples of the first; Attreed 2001 and Liddy 2005 the second; and Cohn 2013 and Liddy 2015 the third. Rawcliffe 2013 focuses on health and environment, issues that were of great interest to urban governments. The sweeping study of Hilton 1992 covers economy and society as much as government, but it contains important insights on urban politics—it remains essential reading for a variety of topics. Additional work on urban government will be found in the studies of individual cities listed under Town and City Studies.

Attreed, Lorraine. The King’s Towns: Identity and Survival in Late Medieval English Boroughs. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.
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Attreed explores the relationship between crown and community in four royal boroughs: York, Norwich, Exeter, and Nottingham. The development of urban identity is a central theme.
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Cohn, Samuel K., Jr. Popular Protest in Late Medieval English Towns. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
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Cohn investigates the prevalence of popular unrest in English towns between 1196 and 1450 using chronicles, patent rolls, and scholarly accounts. His twofold aim is to demonstrate the frequency of urban protest and to identify its patterns. He makes regular comparisons with continental evidence, finding a number of noteworthy contrasts. In a field dominated by detailed local studies, Cohn’s macro approach provides a welcome alternative perspective; includes a large bibliography.
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Hilton, R. H. English and French Towns in Feudal Society: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511562464Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Hilton’s slim and provocative volume defies classification and could just as easily appear under Economy or General Overviews. It is not so much a comparative study of towns in two different countries as it is a comparison of urban and feudal society. Hilton notes parallel structures of power and social organization as well as the myriad economic and political connections that tied these worlds together and ultimately made them, in his view, more similar than dissimilar.
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Liddy, Christian D. War, Politics and Finance in Late Medieval English Towns: Bristol, York and the Crown, 1350–1400. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2005.
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Liddy’s examination of the relationship between the ruling elites of two provincial cities and the crown, along with Attreed’s earlier work, represents a new direction for and reinvigoration of the study of urban political history. Crucial to the development of the relationship that Liddy highlights was the crown’s need for support, especially financial, in the war with France.
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Liddy, Christian D. “Urban Enclosure Riots: Risings of the Commons in English Towns, 1480–1525.” Past and Present 226.1 (2015): 41–77.
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Liddy investigates the urban side of a form of popular protest more commonly associated with rural life. He finds that enclosure riots in communities such as York, Coventry, Southampton, Gloucester, and Nottingham had a chronology and etiology that distinguished them from rural actions. Paying careful attention to the language used to describe such episodes, Liddy argues that urban enclosure riots were rooted in conflicts between rank-and-file citizens and their more powerful brethren over rights of political consultation.
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McRee, Ben R. “Peacemaking and its Limits in Late Medieval Norwich.” English Historical Review 109.433 (1994): 831–866.
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McRee examines several political conflicts in Norwich between the 1360s and the 1440s, showing the various approaches that citizens took to dispute resolution. Local leaders successfully employed mediation and arbitration on several occasions, but those approaches failed when the behavior of citizens challenged the corporate foundations of community life.
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Rawcliffe, Carole. Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2013.
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Rawcliffe bills this substantial volume as “a preliminary sortie into uncharted territory” (p. 7), a much-too-modest description. Urban Bodies offers a sweeping reevaluation of urban health policies between 1250 and 1530, aimed at dismantling Victorian-era myths regarding public health and tolerance for filth in the Middle Ages. In chapters examining understanding of health and illness, protection of the urban environment, provision of clean water and wholesome food, and delivery of medical treatment, she shows that urban authorities took an active, rational approach to communal health.
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Reynolds, Susan. “Medieval Urban History and the History of Political Thought.” Urban History Yearbook (1982): 14–23.
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An incisive inquiry into the meaning of several terms associated with urban political life, namely borough, gild (guild), and oligarchy. The most important for subsequent discussion has been the last, which Reynolds argues has been misunderstood and misapplied by modern historians to medieval towns. Essential reading for work on government.
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Rigby, Stephen. “Urban ‘Oligarchy’ in Late Medieval England.” In Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century. Edited by John A. F. Thomson, 62–86. Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton, 1988.
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Rigby takes up the challenge posed by Reynolds’s discussion of oligarchy with a survey of late medieval political life, and the two articles should be read together. Examining evidence from a wide range of urban communities, he highlights the tension between the notions that the “better sort” should rule and that the “community” should have a voice in the political process.
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Shaw, David Gary. “Social Networks and the Foundation of Oligarchy in Medieval Towns.” Urban History 32 (2005): 200–222.
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Shaw takes a new approach to the study of oligarchy by applying network analysis to burgesses involved in litigation in Wells. This allows him to demonstrate the connections among burgesses of various ranks in a measurable way, and to expand our understanding of the social foundations of oligarchy.
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Economy

Discussions of urban economic life have traditionally fallen into two large areas: the production of goods—encompassing materials, processes, and practitioners—and trade, both local and long distance. Pride of place has generally gone to long-distance exchange and the merchants who were responsible for it. The wealth they earned made them influential in their own communities, and often beyond. Chapter 4 in Miller and Hatcher 1995 provides an excellent introduction to this side of urban life, while Nightingale 1995 and Kermode 1998 offer detailed discussions. Scholars have recently devoted increased attention to the role of local and regional exchange, long assumed to be of relatively minor importance; Kowaleski 1995, a study of Exeter, provides the best example of this, demonstrating the extent to which local trade could support a smaller city. Kowaleski 1995 also devotes considerable attention to the urban workforce and the production side of the urban economy, as does Swanson 1989, a work on artisans.

Britnell, R. H. The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000–1500. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
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An extended interpretive essay that attempts to reinsert the influence of markets and commercial activity into the discussion of medieval economic change. Towns do not occupy center stage in this work, but they are, of course, an important part of the story, and Britnell’s work helps to place at least one aspect of urban economic activity in a broader context.
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Goddard, Richard. “Small Boroughs and the Manorial Economy: Enterprise Zones or Urban Failures?” Past and Present 210.1 (2011): 3–31.
DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtq058Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Urban communities of modest size have attracted considerable interest from historians since the 1980s (see Christopher Dyer’s survey in Palliser 2000, cited under General Overviews). Working at the farthest end of that spectrum, Goddard explores the history of Kineton (Warwickshire) and similar communities that straddled the urban-rural divide, arguing that they are best seen as commercial “enterprise zones” within a larger manorial economy rather than nascent, and eventually failed, towns.
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Kermode, Jenny. Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
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Kermode’s work on the merchants of northern England complements both Swanson’s study of artisans and Nightingale’s work on London. The bulk of this account focuses on merchants’ economic activity, but Kermode works toward a rounded portrait of northern merchant life, describing their role in government, religion, and social networks as well.
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Kowaleski, Maryanne. Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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A detail-rich study of Exeter and its economic hinterland, built up from a prosopographical study of taxpayers, creditors, and debtors. Kowaleski makes a strong case for the importance of regional (as opposed to long-distance) exchange. The reconstruction of the city’s occupational structure in chapter 4 is particularly valuable.
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Miller, Edward, and John Hatcher. Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts, 1086–1348. London: Longman, 1995.
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Miller and Hatcher’s volume can serve as an excellent introduction to English towns between the Conquest and the Black Death. It is certainly tilted toward economic matters, with detailed treatments of industry and trade, but the authors situate urban economic activity in a broad political and social framework. Extensive notes and bibliography.
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Munro, John H. Textiles, Towns and Trade: Essays in the Economic History of Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries. Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 1994.
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The volume collects eleven of Munro’s previously published articles (from 1966 to 1991) on textiles and the textile trade in northern Europe. The cities of the Low Countries occupy the foreground in these carefully crafted and always interesting essays, but England is a vital part of the story.
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Nightingale, Pamela. A Medieval Mercantile Community: The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London, 1000–1485. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
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Nightingale uses the variable fortunes of the Grocers’ Company and its antecedents to tell the story of London’s economic and political development across five centuries of medieval history. She stresses throughout the importance of the money supply for the state of the economy and the fortunes of the city’s traders as well as the changing locations of the Staple. Her work is much more than a company history; Nightingale provides a wealth of detail about royal economic policies and developments across England and Europe, neatly illustrating her claim that guilds need to be studied “in the widest context” (p. 556).
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Swanson, Heather. Medieval Artisans: An Urban Class in Late Medieval England. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
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Focuses on York during the 14th and 15th centuries, but draws comparative evidence from the published records of many other towns. Swanson studies the variety of economic activities undertaken by artisans and the place they occupied in urban society. Among the most important findings: the misleading nature of individuals’ craft identifications.
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Women

Excluded from civic office and only rarely permitted membership in craft organizations, women were also largely absent from historical accounts of urban life until the 1980s. Yet, as Goldberg 1992 has documented for York, and Kowaleski and Bennett 1989 have for London’s silk workers, women were quite active in the economic life of towns and cities. Karras 1996, an account of the sex trade, adds an important and (at least for England) largely unexplored dimension to that picture. The most recent accounts have returned to the centrality of marriage, not just for women’s lives but as basic sources for social and economic organization. Hanawalt 2007 considers the deep roots of women’s economic contributions, examining the role of marriage and inheritance in the flow of wealth, while McSheffrey 2006 focuses on the social lessons of London marriage practices. Either work would make an excellent starting point.

Goldberg, P. J. P. Women, Work, and Life Cycle in a Medieval Economy: Women in York and Yorkshire c. 1300–1520. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
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Goldberg examines the effect of changing economic conditions on the working lives and marital choices of women in and around York. Making extensive use of poll tax returns, wills, and ecclesiastical court records, he builds a quantitative argument for a period of expanding opportunity and personal choice after the Black Death, followed by decline in the 15th century.
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Hanawalt, Barbara A. The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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Hanawalt examines the lives of London women from birth forward, with particular concern for the economic roles they played. Although she considers their roles as servants, artisans, and independent businesswomen, her principal argument is that marriage and inheritance practices made women an essential conduit for the circulation of capital. Readers will also want to note her conception of London’s “self-limiting patriarchy.”
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Karras, Ruth Mazo. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
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Karras sets English attitudes toward and practices of prostitution in a broad context—legal, social, cultural, and religious. Her use of the continental literature to explore the ways in which the English sex trade differed from its counterparts across the Channel is particularly illuminating.
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Kowaleski, Maryanne, and Judith M. Bennett. “Crafts, Gilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years after Marian K. Dale.” Signs 14 (1989): 474–488.
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Kowaleski and Bennett provide a comparative overview of the place of women in craft fraternities. Their focus is London, and their starting point is Marian Dale’s 1933 article (reprinted immediately following their essay) on women in London’s silk industry. Among other concerns, they try to understand why the London women, unlike their counterparts in some continental cities, never formed a gild.
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McSheffrey, Shannon. Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
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A highly accessible and nuanced account of marriage in the last half of the 15th century. McSheffrey uses a variety of court records to explore the making, conduct, and expectations of marital bonds within London society, and she pays attention to the roles of men as well as women.
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Town and City Studies

The appeal of constructing deep, well-rounded pictures of single communities has proven very strong for urban historians. Such studies typically encompass economic life, government, and social organization, and they often take up other topics as well. Anyone interested in reading about urban economy, for example, should consult these works as well as those more narrowly focused on economic issues. As the dates of publication indicate, town studies flourished in the 1980s and 1990s, influenced partly by the success of earlier village studies as well as the need to investigate more deeply the question of urban decline in the 14th and 15th centuries. Phythian-Adams 1979 and Rigby 1993 are particularly associated with the debate over urban decline (though by no means limited to that issue). Keene 1985, a study of Winchester, shows the depth of knowledge that can be achieved using a topographic approach.

Barron, Caroline M. London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People, 1200–1500. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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Barron’s account fulfills a longstanding need for an up-to-date overview of medieval London. She focuses on the practice of government, and the chapters on courts, officials, and guilds in Part 3 are the book’s strong point. Other sections address relations with royal government, London’s economy, charity, and the environment. Valuable appendices list city officeholders.
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Bonney, Margaret. Lordship and the Urban Community: Durham and its Overlords, 1250–1540. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
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Bonney’s study of church-dominated Durham treats topography and physical development, including buildings, economic structure, and the administration of justice. It provides a useful case study of a city in which relations between citizens and their overlords were marked more often by cooperation than conflict.
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Carlin, Martha. Medieval Southwark. London: Hambledon, 1996.
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A comprehensive study of London’s near neighbor to the south. Carlin provides a detailed reconstruction of urban growth, economic activity, and civic administration from the 13th through mid–16th centuries. Particularly worthy of note are the chapters on topography and occupations.
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Keene, Derek. Survey of Medieval Winchester. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985.
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A colossal effort of topographic reconstruction, tracing the development of Winchester from 1250 to 1550. The first volume provides a general history of the city during that period, tilted toward land, tenements, and buildings but touching on government, population, and economy as well. The second volume contains much of the digested source material: a gazetteer tracing the known history of every tenement and a biographical register of all property holders.
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Phythian-Adams, Charles. Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
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Rich with archival detail, Phythian-Adams’s influential work is deeply connected to the debate over urban decline. Less a general history of Coventry than a careful analysis of changes in population and social structure during the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Desolation of a City effectively traces the contours of decay and assesses its impact on urban society.
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Rigby, S. H. Medieval Grimsby: Growth and Decline. Hull, UK: University of Hull Press, 1993.
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Grimsby was never a large settlement, even by English urban standards, with a medieval population that peaked at about two thousand and fell to less than half that by the 1520s. Focusing on the 13th through the early 16th centuries, Rigby traces the town’s changing economic fortunes and political evolution in an admirably straightforward manner. Especially worthy of note is the final chapter evaluating Grimsby’s late-medieval decline.
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Rosser, Gervase. Medieval Westminster, 1200–1540. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989.
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Rosser mines the rich archives of the abbey to chronicle the development of this important town during the central and late Middle Ages. Most noteworthy is his approach to the question of community. Rosser argues that the manor court, parish, religious fraternities, and charities provided a sense of cooperation and common purpose that, at crucial moments, brought inhabitants together and limited conflict.
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Shaw, David Gary. The Creation of A Community: The City of Wells in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.
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Shaw’s well-rounded study of this small western cathedral city pays particular attention to the meanings of community in a seigniorial borough. He applies the Wells evidence to historiographic debates over urban decline, oligarchy, and popular religion.
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Religion and Ceremony

Urban residents experienced religion and the institutions associated with it in a variety of ways: they attended religious services and were baptized, confessed, and married in their parish church; they joined religious fraternities, went on pilgrimages, and left testamentary bequests for the health of their souls; they fought—legally, and sometimes physically—with ecclesiastical authorities. The range of that experience is reflected in Tanner 1984, a book on Norwich, and in the articles collected in Slater and Rosser 1998. The conduct of religiously inspired ceremony adds yet another dimension to their experience. Historians have placed ceremonial practice, particularly that associated with Corpus Christi, at the heart of community identity in the medieval town. The ways in which ceremony reflected and actively shaped that identity emerge in important articles such as James 1983 and Phythian-Adams 1972, in the contributions in Hanawalt and Reyerson 1994, and in Rubin 1991.

Hanawalt, Barbara A., and Kathryn L. Reyerson. City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe. Medieval Studies at Minnesota 6. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
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An important collection of articles on urban ceremony from an NEH-sponsored conference in 1991. The geographic focus of the pieces ranges across western Europe, with four of the articles dealing substantively with English settings: Lawrence Bryant on royal entries in Paris and London, Sheila Lindenbaum on the midsummer watch in London, Ben McRee on the ceremony of religious guilds, and Lorraine Attreed on practices of welcome.
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James, Mervyn. “Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town.” Past and Present 98.1 (1983): 3–29.
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Perhaps the single most important article on urban ritual in the past half century. Focusing on Corpus Christi celebrations in provincial towns at the end of the Middle Ages, James discusses processions, plays, and urban social organization. He finds “creative tension” between “wholeness” and “differentiation,” and shows how plays helped to maintain a delicate social balance.
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Phythian-Adams, Charles. “Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry, 1450–1550.” In Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700: Essays in Urban History. Edited by Peter Clark and Paul Slack, 57–85. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972.
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Phythian-Adams’s influential article demonstrates the tight integration between Coventry’s ceremonial round and its social organization. He argues for a bifurcated ceremonial year, with a “ritual half” stretching from Christmas to midsummer, followed by a “secular half.” Thickly documented, relentlessly comparative, and still thought provoking.
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Rubin, Miri. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
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Rubin takes an anthropological approach to understanding Eucharistic language and symbolism. Her focus is not on towns, and she ranges well beyond England, but urban historians will find the material on fraternities, processions, and drama in chapter 4 valuable.
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Slater, T. R., and Gervase Rosser, eds. The Church in the Medieval Town. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
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The papers in this volume cover a wide range of subjects, from lay-clerical disputes in Hereford and the role of the church as a consumer, to the development of parish boundaries in Worcester and Gloucester. Particularly valuable are the discussions of the influence of monastic houses on urban development by T. R. Slater and Keith Lilley, focusing on St. Albans and Coventry, respectively.
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Tanner, Norman P. The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532. Studies and Texts 66. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984.
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A comprehensive survey of religious life in this important provincial city. Tanner examines the city’s clergy—secular and regular—as well as its network of parish churches, but he focuses on the laity. Topics include anchorites, beguinages, pilgrimage, prayers for the dead, guilds, the cult of the saints, heresy, and testamentary bequests. There is also a chapter on conflicts between citizens and the cathedral priory. Many useful appendices.
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Urban Decline

A vigorous debate about the economic fortunes of provincial towns developed in the later 1970s, influencing the direction of urban studies for more than a decade. Proponents of decline, such as R. B. Dobson and Charles Phythian-Adams, argued that many provincial towns suffered an extended recession during the 15th and early 16th centuries (see Dobson 1977 and Phythian-Adams 1978). The cheerful contrarian is A. R. Bridbury, who sharply challenged the evidence for declining urban fortunes in Bridbury 1981. The nature of that evidence—much of it circumstantial and difficult to interpret—has made firm conclusions elusive, and the debate has now waned without a definitive result. The best introduction to the dispute is Dyer 1991, but there is much to be learned about urban life and the use of surviving evidence from the individual articles.

Bridbury, A. R. “English Provincial Towns in the Later Middle Ages.” Economic History Review 34 (1981): 1–24.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.1981.tb02003.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Bridbury takes a contrarian position in this fast-moving review essay, arguing that proponents of decline have ignored inconsistencies and taken too much evidence at face value. Best read together with Dobson 1977 and Phythian-Adams 1978.
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Britnell, R. H. Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
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Colchester experienced expansion and contraction over the last two centuries of the Middle Ages, and Britnell analyzes the causes and effects of both. Although his focus is on economic changes and the book makes an important contribution to the discussion of urban decline, Britnell devotes considerable attention to the evolution of city government, and the volume could be included under Town and City Studies as well.
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Dobson, R. B. “Urban Decline in Late Medieval England.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 27 (1977): 1–22.
DOI: 10.2307/3679185Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Dobson’s wide-ranging survey of urban fortunes in the later Middle Ages helped to spark the debate over urban decline. The essay reviews a wide range of evidence—travelers’ and chroniclers’ accounts, urban construction, avoidance of civic office, tax assessments, and falling population, for example—to make a strong circumstantial case for declining fortunes among provincial towns.
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Dyer, Alan. Decline and Growth in English Towns, 1400–1640. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 1991.
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-08853-9Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In this short volume, Dyer provides a succinct overview of the historical debate over urban decline. He sets the issue of urban fortunes in a broad context, and his bibliography goes well beyond the principal works of the controversy. Useful appendices show the rising and falling fortunes of various towns in tabular form.
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Phythian-Adams, Charles. “Urban Decay in Late Medieval England.” In Towns in Societies: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology. Edited by Philip Abrams and E. A. Wrigley, 159–185. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
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One of the early articles, along with Dobson, to propose decline as a leading theme for late medieval urban history. Based on his survey of a broad range of provincial towns, Phythian-Adams identifies ceremonial costs as an important component of decline and locates the peak of the crisis in the early 16th century.
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