II.The Transformation of the Old Towns
From the mid-fifteenth century to the mid-sixteenth century,almost all the large county towns had experienced a period of crisis.But the crisis had provided the old towns with opportunities to change their traditional virtues brought from the Middle Ages.Consequently,as Rosser and Holt have argued‘the sixteenth century witnessed the transformation of the medieval town in all fundamental respects’.[8]The urban economy developed along three new lines from 1500 to 1750:commercialization;openness;and specialization.
There were three ranks in urban hierarchy of England:small and medium towns;provincial or county towns;and the capital,London.In all cases the transformation from medieval town to modern city was more or less in line with the three developments outlined above.
a.The small and medium towns
There were around 650-700 towns in England falling into this category.The population of a small town was less than 1000 around the year 1500,and not more than 2000 people in early eighteenth century.Some small towns only had about 500 people,most of which were small market towns scattered around the country.
These small or medium towns witnessed many economic changes during this period.Commercially,a small town was the nucleus and the outlet of local market.It transported local products,e.g.,corn and wools,to distant markets,and imported necessaries into the local market.A town acted as a distribution centre of local products and the goods from distant markets.For instance,in Banbury(Oxfordshire),the Thursday market was divided into several sections:Ox Market,Sheep Market,Horse Market,Flax Chipping,Swine Market,Corn Market,etc.[9]During the reign of Elizabeth,St.Neots(Cambridgeshire)was a specialized market which transported barley produced in neighbouring areas of Bedfordshire,Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire to London and other distant markets.Doncaster in Yorkshire was one of the largest wool markets in England.In the late seventeenth century,Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire was a collecting place for local hosiery goods,from where they were transported to Gloucester or Bristol.[10]The retail functions were developed in these towns as inns and shops,which had emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
As for the service function of small towns,there emerged more and more occupations for local people.This meant that the previously loose ties between the towns and the surrounding countryside had become increasingly tighter.Many higher-level occupations such as apothecaries or booksellers had filtered down gradually from the larger centers into the smaller towns.[11]
In the industrial sector,the small towns in the rural industrial areas had produced special manufacturing outputs,such as woolen and nails for the domestic and international markets.Consequently,they become specialized,operating as one-industry towns.The woolen industry became synonymous with Chipping Campden,Tewksbury in the West Country,Lavenham,Worstead in East Anglia,with the iron industry prominent in Dudley,Walsall and Wolverhampton in the West Midlands.
b.The provincial or county towns
There were about 100 provincial or county towns.Each county had at least one type of such town.The population of a provincial or county town was generally more than 2,000,although the populations of some provincial towns like Bristol,Norwich,York,Newcastle and Exeter were over 10,000.Table-2 shows some estimates about the population of some provincial towns in the sixteenth,seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Table-3 is the‘ranking of towns by taxable wealth:the subsidy of 1524-1525’,which shows the top 100 towns in sixteenth century England.It chiefly reflects the size and wealth of the business community in each town,and is only indirectly related to population sizes.
The county town was the industrial and commercial centre of a shire,or a larger region.It possessed the characteristic of‘generalized economy’.There was a gradual increase in numbers and types of occupations in these towns,with occupations more specialized and sophisticated progressively.For example,in York,the largest town in northern England,various new crafts emerged,including bookbinders,booksellers and stationers,soap boilers,tobacco-pipe makers,clock and cabinet makers,dancing masters and musicians,and others.This growth reflected a rising standard of comfort,and was even luxury in towns.Furthermore,it also reflected a growing tighter connection with outside world.Moreover,the functional model of serving rural areas in a town's economy changed to a new pattern of urban-leading economy.
Table-2 Populations of English provincial towns from 16th century to 18th century
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Source:John Patten,English Towns 1500-1700,pp.100,103,106,109.
Table-3 Ranking of Towns by Taxable Wealth:the Subsidy of 1524-1525[12]
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The foreign trade rights of many local seaports had been deprived by London in the sixteenth century,especially the woolen export trade.For instance,cloth exports from such diverse places as Devon and Yorkshire were handled by London merchants,who had better access to continental goods to be exchanged than did the regional merchants of Exeter and York.[13]In 1540s,the volume of cloth export by provincial ports was lower than 15,000 in totals,whereas the volume of woolen export by London was nearly 100,000.In the early seventeenth century,local ports had regained the woolenexport privileges,thus at the year 1640 the volume of short-cloths exported by local seaports increased to 40,000 cloths,whereas London's short-cloth export decreased to 87,000.[14]
The economy of some great towns was specialized.For example,Norwich became a textile town,well known for manufacturing‘New Drapery’in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.In 1670,it was the largest provincial town with a population of more than 20,000.Bristol had become again a trade city,standing as an important port of the Atlantic trade and Ireland trade in the second half of seventeenth and the eighteenth century.It ranked second in the English urban hierarchy by the mideighteenth century,with a population of more than sixty thousand in 1760.
Most importantly,all these towns could trade freely with others.Their monopolized markets and commercial spheres were opened to all merchants at home and abroad.This was one of the major indicators of modernization in the urban economy.
c.London
From 1500 to 1750,London had grown very quickly.Its population grew tenfold during this period.By the year 1700,London was the largest city in Western Europe,nearly 20 times the size of the second city of England.
Table-4 Estimates of Population of London[15]
English economic development in the first half of sixteenth century was based on the creation and the prosperity of the London-Antwerp axis.This fact explains why southern England,particularly south eastern England,became the richer and more active region during that period,sucking in people,goods,and trade.Many provincial traders found themselves unable to compete against the increasingly rich and powerful London merchants.Consequently,other previously strong and important ports such as Bristol saw its commercial influence decline.A similar fate befell other ports such as Hull,Boston,and Sandwich.As a consequence of this,some of these towns even developed alternative trades,such as the coastal trade of coal and cereals to supply the rapidly growing population of London.[16]
The privileges granted by the Crown meant that London controlled more than 80% of English export trade,especially in wool and woolens exports.From the 1530s to the 1570s,cloth exports from London ports occupied three quarters of the entire country's woolen export.[17]In 1559,93 per cent of the total customs value on cloth export was collected at London's port.[18]In the mid-seventeenth century,40 per cent of the country's corn exports came from London.[19]London was also the country's main importing trade port,and occupied about four fifths of the volume and value of the whole country's import trade.[20]It was also the largest distribution centre of inland market system.London led the national market system forward to the international or world market network.
The 16th and 17th centuries witnessed the forming of the town system of England.Local towns were the nodes of the national urban network,which in turn provided the framework of the national economic system.Being at the top of urban hierarchy,London became the nucleus of the network,and gathered most of the wealth for the Kingdom,and lured more and more entrepreneurs from all around the country.For instance,among 172 mayors of London city from the year 1480 to 1660,158 were immigrants from other areas of the country.Among thousands of the most important merchants of the city,the rate of the London-born was under 10 per cent.[21]Table-5 shows that the majority of London's apprentices came from outside the city,with the rate of the London-born being very low.To some extent,London regarded other parts of the country as its‘economic colonies’,or all parts of England as its hinterlands.In other words,the national economic system in the 16th and 17th centuries was just a London Economic System.London had become one of the largest,busiest,and wealthiest metropolises in the world.As Cipolla claimed,‘When a man is tired of London he is tired of life,for there is in London all that life can afford.’[22]
Table-5 Geographical Origins of Apprentices in Some London Companies,1630-1660[23]
