I.English Towns in 1500
At the beginning of the sixteenth century,England was still underdeveloped by the standards of the contemporary developed countries,such as Italy,the Low Countries,France,and southern Germany.The level of urbanization of England was lower than that of continental countries,although the numbers of English towns was about 800.According to The Cambridge Urban History of Britain,Britain inherited from the middle ages,an established cadre of 800-900 towns.[1]In Joan Thirsk's Chapters From the Agrarian History of England and Wales,the numbers of the towns with market were calculated 742(See Table-1)[2],but the urban population in England was still proportionately low.The majority of English towns contained no more than 1500 people.[3]England's one substantial commercial city,London,was overshadowed in wealth and size as well as in political and cultural consequences by the great cities of continental Europe.It was about the same rank as Verona or Zurich,[4]ranked as the secondary cities of Europe at most.Furthermore,the size of towns throughout the country was small.It took merely two or three hours to walk through any town.
The English urban economy was,around the year 1500,still at the Middle Ages level,with the following traditional characteristics:
1)There was not an overall structural town-system.Connections and interactions between towns were lacking.Almost every town had developed individually and separately,with a few small market-systems linking some of the towns.These separate urban networks were all regional,and were not integrated on a national level.
Table-1 The Distribution of Towns with Market in England 1500-1640[5]
2)The main economic function of most towns was to serve the surrounding countryside and the town itself.Consequently,they were‘generalized central places’in that they were deeply embedded in the countryside,with only London as the obviously exception.[6]Generally,a town and its surrounding areas constituted a kind of economic and social circle,which revealed a strong rural ambience.Although the town was the centre of the circle,its economic connection with the neighbouring countryside was superficial,just a market place for the exchange of local manufactures and agricultural surplus.According to Holt and Rosser,‘The assimilation of urban to rural social structures was underlined by a further distinctive trait of the medieval English town,which was the relatively undeveloped nature of urban industry’.[7]
3)The economic hinterlands of English towns were limited in scope,meaning that the radius of radiating zone of a market town was usually seven to twelve miles,and that a farmer was able to go to market and return home in one day;and the sphere of influence of county town normally was limited to one shire.Some regional industrial and commercial centres such as Bristol,Coventry or York might have stretched their economic power to two or three counties.Even London's economic influence only spread to the Home Counties,and did not extend to most of the shires in the North,the Midlands,or even the West Country and East Anglia.
4)There was a traditional market area in each town,with privileges of monopoly in commerce from the town's charter,granted by Kings or by Lords.The doors of the towns were closed usually to the outside merchants and the distant goods.Only several seaports had maintained loose ties with foreign markets or other English seaports,mainly for the export of raw materials like wool or local products such as woolens or cereals.