English Economic History: Select Documents. Various

FINANCE AND FOREIGN TRADE

1.	Act abolishing Tenure by Knight Service, etc., 1660	670
2.	Navigation Act, 1660	670
3.	Proposals for Free Exportation of Gold and Silver, 1660	671
4.	An Attack on the Navigation Act, c. 1663	672
5.	Free Coinage at the Mint Proclaimed, 1666	674
6.	The East India Company and the Interlopers, 1684	675
7.	Foundation of the Bank of England, 1694	676
8.	The Need for the Recoinage of 1696	677
9.	Speech by Sir Robert Walpole on the Salt Duties, 1732	678
10.	Pitt's Sinking Fund Act, 1786	679
11.	The Suspension of Cash Payments, 1797	681
12.	Pitt's Speech on the Income Tax, 1798	683
13.	Foreign Trade in the early Nineteenth Century, 1812	689
14.	Debate on the Corn Laws, 1815	692
15.	The Corn Law of 1815	697
16.	Free Trade Petition, 1820	698
17.	The Foundation of the Anti-Corn-Law League, 1839	701
18.	The Bank Charter Act, 1844	702
19.	Debate on the Corn Laws, 1846	705

PART I: 1000–1485

       Table of Contents

SECTION I

       Table of Contents

      THE EARLY ENGLISH MANOR AND BOROUGH

      1. Rights and Duties of All Persons [Rectitudines singularum personarum], c. 1000—2. The form of the Domesday Inquest, 1086—3. The borough of Dover, 1086—4. The borough of Norwich, 1086—5. The borough of Wallingford, 1086—6. The customs of Berkshire, 1086—7. Land of the Church of Worcester, 1086—8. The manor of Rockland, 1086—9. The manor of Halesowen, 1086—10. The manor of Havering, 1086.

The task of reconstructing the economic life of Saxon England is not easy, and while the document translated below (No. 1) vividly analyses the obligations and rights of the various classes of tenants and officers on Saxon estates of the eleventh century, it raises many difficulties and is probably only true for the more settled parts of the country. It affords, however, clear proof of a high agricultural and social development; and though the exact significance of specific terms, and the status of different classes, may remain obscure, a comparison of the Rectitudines and the Gerefa[2] with later extents and custumals, and with Domesday Book itself, establishes the essential continuity of English economic life and customs, notwithstanding the shock of the Norman Conquest.

The further study of Domesday Book will undoubtedly yield valuable results supplementing the information derived from Saxon documents. While it is primarily a supreme example of the defining spirit and centralising energy of the conquering race, it is also a permanent record of England before and at the time of the Norman invasion. Especially, perhaps, is this apparent in the detailed descriptions of the boroughs, which at once set forth Saxon customs and illustrate the effects of the Conquest. The extracts given below are intended to show in brief, first, the methods both of the commissioners who conducted the survey, and of the officials who reduced the information to a common form;[3] second, the fiscal preoccupation of the government; third, the origin and character of the early borough, especially manifest in the case of Wallingford (No. 5), and fourth, the different classes of tenants, free and unfree. Of particular interest are the following features: the manner of levying the feudal army (No. 6), the evidence of the looser organisation of the Eastern Counties, and the greater degree of freedom prevailing among tenants in the Danelaw (Nos. 4 and 8), the ample franchises that might be enjoyed by a great Saxon prelate (No. 7), the saltpans of Worcestershire (No. 9), and the gildhall of the burgesses of Dover (No. 3).

      AUTHORITIES

      The more accessible writers dealing with the subject of this section are:—Kemble, The Saxons in England; Maine, Village Communities in the East and West; Seebohm, The English Village Community; Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, The Growth of the Manor, and, English Society in the Eleventh Century; Andrews, The Old English Manor; Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law; Ballard, The Domesday Boroughs, and, The Domesday Inquest; Round, Domesday Studies, and, The Domesday Manor (Eng. Hist. Rev. xv.); Stubbs, Constitutional History, and, Lectures on Mediæval History; Ellis, Introduction to Domesday Book; Gomme, The Village Community; de Coulanges, Origin of Property in Land; Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England; Petit Dutaillis, Studies Supplementary to Stubbs' Constitutional History.

      Almost the whole of Domesday Book has now been translated and