The RSS
History of Statistics Section held a one-day conference on Mediaeval Statistics (remotely) on 5 November 2021. The co-chairmen were Mark Casson of Reading University and Mike Hughes, the section vice chair.
The first speaker, Alastair Dobie of Edge Hill University, described monastic accounts. The monasteries were great landowners who safeguarded their assets using accounts. These cover receipts for a wide range of goods and services in cash and in kind, using standardised layouts. They were subject to regular inspection, and also to occasional royal and papal inquiries.
James Walker of Reading University described research on the Domesday Book. The data quality is usually good, but the text is very technical. Much more detailed information, particularly on incomes, comes from the Little Domesday Book which covers Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk. Arable production had grown strongly since 1066, comparable with growth during the Industrial Revolution.
Catherine Casson of Manchester University reviewed the urban property market. Legal reforms under Henry II made sales easier and these were recorded on indentures to prevent forgery; there is some information on interest rates. Much of the variation in property values is explained by characteristics of the property and its location, much less by the amount of land. Hot spots developed and the suburbs were particularly cheap.
Jordan Claridge of the LSE spoke on agriculture and commodity prices. The survival of the records is very good and there is a huge volume of information. Customary labour is accounted as rent (the peasants themselves didn’t keep accounts – they had no reason to). The Lay Subsidies stopped itemising details after 1334 because there had been some corruption.
John Lee of York University summarised the main sources of information about England’s population: taxes, the Domesday Book, the poll taxes of 1387 and 1381, and Lay Subsidies. There seems to have been substantial under-enumeration, particularly of women, children and the clergy, and Cheshire and Durham were exempt. These problems have suggested that the numbers counted should be multiplied by anything between 1.9 and 6.5. The best estimates are that England’s population around 1300 was 4.5 million but by 1450 it was down to 2-2.5 million.
Martin Allen of Cambridge University showed some of the evidence about the money supply. Recent legislation has led to very good survival of coins. Mint output is hard to estimate; this is best done from finds of dies, particularly of reverse dies. Peaks in silver output from mints were usually caused by recoinage; wastage declined because of export etc, and foreign coins were effectively excluded except during certain epidemics.
Tony Moore of Henley Business School and Reading University described private credit. There are few private sources of information; much comes from court records. Edward I’s Statute of Merchants introduced recognisances to improve debt collection, in order to attract foreign merchants. Wavelet analysis showed fluctuations in the relations between credit and coin, and also changes attributed to the Hundred Years War and the Black Death. Relations changed over time, as did the way in which debts were recorded.
Steve Broadberry of Oxford University spoke on measuring GDP. Manorial accounts are the key source for agricultural information, and there is far more data than for later periods. A high degree of volatility can be seen: both agricultural and industrial production trend downwards after the Black Death, though there is constant controversy over the preceding period. The subsequent recovery meant that the late 14th century was one of the two episodes of high growth which formed the path to the Industrial Revolution. Overall, industrial productivity grew fastest in constant price terms.
The general discussion which followed included the following topics: the classification of the church in the service sector, the different development of property hot spots in different towns, the sort of statisticians needed to communicate with historians etc, plenty of totals and sub-totals in manorial accounts making checking easy, and odd techniques in recording numbers.
Author
Peter Smith, meetings secretary, 11 November 2021.