Continuity and Change: The town, people
and administration of Nottingham
between c.1400 and c.1600

Judith Anne Mills, BA (Hons), MA

Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
JULY 2010

Abstract
This work is a study of continuity and change in Nottingham between 1400 and
1600. It looks first at the property, market, streets and common lands of the town
before examining population trends. It investigates the social structure of thetown, the wealth (or otherwise) of the people and the occupations they followed.
The administration of Nottingham is also considered, in particular its institutions:the Council, the courts and presentment juries, and the networks and relationships
which bind them together. It also looks at real and potential challenges to theauthority of these institutions and incidents of social unrest.
Finally, the research also identifies some of the stimuli to change, such as national
economic and demographic trends and the mid-sixteenth century imposition of theReformation.

Acknowledgements
Many people have played an, often intangible, part in the completion of theresearch for this thesis. First I want to thank staff and fellow research students in
the School of History at the University of Nottingham for their friendship andsupport. I also want to thank the staff and regular visitors at the Nottinghamshire
Archive for their interest in my work. Special mention must be made here of Dr
Trevor Foulds who kindly gave me access to his work on the Borough court rollsin advance of their on-line publication.
Thanks must also go to some individuals, and the first of these has to be Dr
Richard Goddard whose guidance and encouragement have been so important
over the last three and a half years. I should also mention my son, Ed, for making
my life interesting. Finally, I must, of course, thank my husband, Chris, for hispatience, tolerance, moral support and practical assistance, particularly withcomplicated databases, which has made this work possible.

Continuity and Change: The town, people and administration of
Nottingham between c.1400 and c.1600

Table of Contents
Charts Maps and Tables
Abbreviations

page
iii
v

Introduction

Continuity and Change
Sources and Methods
Documents
Methodology
Research questions

1
21
21
26
32

Part ITHE TOWN AND PEOPLE

Chapter One

The town – boundaries, buildings and spaces
Living space: boundaries and buildings
Trading places: markets and shops
Other trading places
The Guild Hall
Common Land
Conclusion

36
36
45
59
61
64
71

Chapter Two

Population and wealth
Population trends
National and local rankings by population
size
WealthLate fifteenth century taxes
The 1523-27 lay subsidy
Local and national comparisons of urban
wealthTudor tax avoidance and under assessment
The Lay Subsidies of 1571, 1593 and 1597
The social fabric of Nottingham
Conclusion

74
75
80

96
99
104
108

The craftsmen and tradesmen of Nottingham
The range of trades and crafts
Occupations and office holding
The major crafts and trades
Distribution
Cloth production, clothing and accessories
Food and Drink
Leather production and leather products

111
112
116
119
119
127
131
138

Chapter Three

82
83
87
92

i

The minor crafts and trades
Agriculture
Conclusion

142
151
153
155

Chapter Four

Conclusion to Part I

Part IIADMINISTRATION

Chapter Five

Local Government
Local administration before 1449
The 1449 Charter of Incorporation
Local administration after 1449
The mayor and aldermen
The common council
The chamberlains and sheriffs
The later sixteenth century
Civic responsibilities of the mayor and aldermen
Conclusion

163
163
171
176
177
181
182
183
184
196

Chapter Six

The Courts
The Borough court
The burgess court
The foreign pleas court
Court officers
Borough court juries
The Sessions court
Sessions court juries
The ‘Great Court’ and the Mickletorn jury
The Mickletorn jury and the Council
The Mayor’s court
Conclusion

198
200
202
206
208
211
212
218
223
229
232
233

Chapter Seven

Challenges to Authority
Mickletorn and Session jury presentments
Insurrection
Constitutional change
Conclusion

236
237
248
260
272

Chapter Eight

Conclusion to Part II

275

Conclusion

Continuity or Change?

281

Bibliography

291

ii

Charts, Maps and Tables
page
Chart 1: Nottingham Borough Records – Document Survival

22

Map 1: Nottingham c.1400-1600

37

Map 2: the common fields of Nottingham c.1400-1600

65

Table I: Estimates of population between 1377 and 1604

80

Table II: 1472-73 lay subsidy

83

Table III: 1473-79 levy

86

Table IV: 1524-25 lay subsidy

89

Table V: breakdown of 1524-25 subsidy payments

91

Table VI: Comparison of Nottingham and Worcester tax payers

92

Table VII: Comparison of average per capita tax paid in 1524-25

95

Table VIII: 1595 lay subsidy (incomplete)

100

Table IX: Number of occupations and people

113

Table X: Occupation Groups, 1400-1600: Number of workers in eachGroup and Group as percentage of known occupations

115

Table XI: Occupations of mayors

116

Table XII: Occupations of bailiffs, sheriffs and chamberlain

118

Table XIII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Distribution’ at 30 year
intervals

120

Table XIV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Cloth Production’ at 30
year intervals

128

Table XV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Clothing andaccessories’ at 30 year intervals

128

Table XVI: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Food and drink’, at 30
year intervals.

132

iii

Table XVII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Leather Production’ at
30 year intervals.

139

Table XVIII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Leather Products’ at
30 year intervals.

139

Table XIX: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Alabaster working’ at
30 year intervals.

143

Table XX: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Building’ at 30 year
intervals.

143

Table XXI: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Metal working’ at 30
year intervals.

145

Table XXII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Miscellaneous’ at 30
year intervals.

147

Table XXIII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Provisions’ at 30
year intervals.

149

Table XXIV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Services’ at 30 year
intervals.

149

Table XXV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Wood, horn and bone’at 30 year intervals.

150

Table XXVI: Mayors 1400-1450

166

Table XXVII: Constables holding other civic offices

220

Table XXVIII: East and West side jury members holding civic office

221

Table XXIX: Mickletorn jurors found sitting on Sessions juries

227

Table XXX: Mickletorn jurors found holding civic office

231

iv

Abbreviations

NA

Nottinghamshire Archive

Foulds online

Trevor Foulds, translation and calendar of the Nottingham BoroughCourt Rolls 1303-1457,
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/history/cuc/research/Online_Sources.php

PRO

Public Record Office

Statutes

The Statutes of the realm: printed by command of His Majesty
George III, (London, 1810-1822)

Stevenson

Stevenson, W H, (ed), Records of the Borough of Nottingham,
Vols. I-IV (Nottingham, 1882-99)

TNAThe National Archivev

Introduction: Continuity and Change
Research for this thesis was predicated on a simple truism that the world in 1600
was a very different place to that of 1400. This, of course, begs a number ofquestions: what changed, and its opposite, what did not change? How did itchange? Why did it change? How quickly did it change?
Broad-brush answers to these questions are provided by the way the years 14001600 are described and labelled by historians, although these descriptions vary
according to the focus of their work and the time they were writing. In the 1950s,
F J Fisher, an economic historian, described the years between 1350-1450 as aperiod of stagnation, while 1450-1750 were the ‘Dark Ages’ of economic history
because of lack of evidence.1 Forty years later, writing in particular on thedevelopment of towns, Christopher R Friedrichs also claimed that these years saw
little development, asserting that urban infrastructures – physical, administrativeand social – were all in place by 1450 and that ‘the truly creative and transforming
epochs in the history of the European city took place not during the early modern
era, but before and after it’.2 He justified his argument by saying that while theseyears saw some transformation, such as the growth of cities, the development ofmodern modes of government, the rise of science and the spread of capitalism,‘town-dwellers were only dimly conscious of what we can now recognise as
unidirectional changes’.3

1

F J Fisher, ‘The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. The Dark Ages in English Economic
History?’, in P J Corfield and N B Harte (eds), London and the English Economy, 1500-1700(London, 1990), p.134, first published in Economica, new series, 24 (1957), pp.2-18.
2
C R Friedrichs, The Early Modern City 1450-1570 (Burnt Mill, 1995), p.10.
3Friedrichs, Modern City, p.333.
1

In other words, these centuries did undergo change but at a level which did notaffect the everyday experiences of townspeople, whose frames of reference
remained constant, thus justifying claims of stagnation.
There are, however, alternative views. Catherine Patterson argues that ‘urban
places lay at the centre of much of the dynamic change occurring in the sixteenth
century.’4 Unlike Friedrichs, Patterson’s focus is not on overarching movements
such as the development of the modern state, but on changes which, although longterm and national, if not global, affected daily life. She summarises those changes
and their consequences as
Population rise, economic tensions, and increasing mobility ...
Religious reformation introduced new divisions into civic life andsignificantly altered many traditional expressions of civic unity andgovernance. At the same time, central government placed increasing
demands on urban officials, requiring, above all, that good order be
kept, despite forces of disorder in their midst.5
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, according to this argument, saw many
aspects of traditional life amended, if not overturned, in what Eugene F Rice
describes as ‘an intricate counterpoint of tradition and innovation, catastrophe andpromise’.6
These differences in opinion are reflected in the manner in which the years
between 1400 and 1600 are divided up for study. Patterson’s comments are
directed at the Tudor period, that is after 1485; Friedrichs’ at the early modern,which he places as beginning in 1450. Both follow the medieval, although whenthat ended is also open to question. Jan de Vries states that the modern, or more

4

C Patterson, ‘Town and City Government’, in R Tittler and N Jones (eds), A Companion to
Tudor Britain (Oxford, 2004), p.116.
5
Patterson, ‘Town and City Government’, p.116.
6
E F Rice, jnr, The Foundations of Early Modern Europe (London, 1971), p.ix.
2specifically the ‘early modern’, era began in 1500, fifty years later thanFriedrichs.7 A contrasting, if perhaps extreme, view is expressed by G R Elton
who, writing about the Renaissance, claimed that ‘Some historians of thought
trace the middle ages right through to the sixteenth century ... [to the point where]... predominately religious thinking is replaced by secular attitudes of mind’,8
while Paul M Hohenberg and Lynn Hollen-Lees refer to the years 1300-1800 as‘proto-industrial’, reflecting their focus on economic rather than intellectual
development.9 Something of a compromise is offered by Richard Britnell who
describes the years 1471-1529 as an ‘epilogue to the Middle Ages, or a prologue
to the Early Modern period’.10 This division, he regards as having ‘more to dowith the way in which historians specialise than with any intrinsic characteristicsof these particular years’,11 a sentiment which develops Susan Reynolds’s
assertion, made twenty years earlier, that the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had
rarely been studied together so as to explain the changes and continuities between
them.12 Whatever the pace, all approaches recognise that change happened.
Perhaps, in the framework of this study, the most apt description is provided by
Christopher Dyer who suggests that the later Middle Ages were an Age ofTransition.13 This period was, he argues, a time when urban populations finally
recovered their strength after the ravages of the fourteenth century,
entrepreneurialism and commercialisation advanced, and men and women no7

J de Vries, European Urbanization 1500-1800 (London, 1984), p.3.
G R Elton, ‘The Age of the Reformation’, in G R Elton (ed), New Cambridge Modern History,
Vol. II: The Reformation 1520-1559; second edition (Cambridge, 1990), p.1.
9
P M Hohenberg and L Hollen-Lees, The Making of Urban Europe 1000-1950 (Cambridge,1985), p.102.
10
R H Britnell, The Closing of the Middle Ages? England, 1571-1529 (Oxford, 1997), p.1.
11
Britnell, Closing, p.1.
12
S Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), p.141.
13
C Dyer, An Age of Transition? – Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages
(Oxford, 2005).
8

3

longer fitted easily into traditional definitions of the social order;14 he also
recognises that this transition was a long-term event or experience which ‘began
before 1300 and was complete only after 1800’.15
These different approaches emphasise two important points. First, that a ‘grandnarrative’ such as that given by Friedrichs and Dyer, which spans time and space,is necessary to reveal the pace and scope of change at a level that was notcomprehensible to contemporary observers, but is important to later understandingof the course of history. Such a narrative must, by its nature, overlook the details
that are the focus of more specific studies. Such detailed studies, which chophistory into digestible chunks and focus on short periods or particular events, arevital to the identification of influences on and mechanisms of change, but they,
perhaps inadvertently, place a stress on discontinuities rather than continuities.
The tension between these two viewpoints is one of the justifications for theapproach taken in this study, which is a meticulous analysis of events and smallchanges over a long period that allows their cumulative effect to be understoodand appreciated.
One of the characteristics of the years 1400-1600 is demographic decline andrecovery. Its consequences for the English economy and the urban environment is
the subject of a keen debate that began in the 1930s when Michael Postan
affirmed that ‘the decline of the corporate towns ... [was] ... another familiarfeature of the period’.16 This statement was reinforced in a later study by R B
Dobson of forty towns which, in 1377, had a taxable population of 1000 or
14

Dyer, Age of Transition, pp.11, 41, 242-43.
Dyer, Age of Transition, p.246.
16
M Postan, ‘Revisions in Economic History: IX – The Fifteenth Century’, Economic History
Review, 9:2 (1939), p.163.
15

4

more.17 Dobson considered that the ultimate cause of this decay was a ‘prolonged
and remorseless demographic attrition’ that reduced civic income from rents, tolls
and other sources of income, as well as personal wealth as the demand for
consumer goods diminished.18 The converse of this argument, however, was madeby A R Bridbury who, while not denying the demographic problems, maintainedthat there was considerable wealth held by urban communities and individuals.
Using the same sources as Dobson, he argued that taxable wealth had in generalrisen virtually everywhere by 1524 compared to 1334.19 He also contended thatthe wealthy would not have chosen to live in the ‘provincial towns of later
medieval England when they might so easily have exchanged it for the patrician
splendours and prospects of county society’.20 Another argument made by
Bridbury was that the re-edification Statues of the 1530s and 1540s, rather thanbeing official recognition of the depression of medieval towns, were evidence ofproperty speculation at a time when urban populations were beginning to growand legal title to dilapidated property was unclear.21 Unsurprisingly, thesecomments provoked considerably debate over the detail. Bridbury’s analysis oflay subsidies was questioned by S H Rigby who argued that these taxes either
exaggerated the degree of growth or that their evidence produced ‘an impressionof a re-distribution of wealth towards the towns, which would reflect the declineof the rural economy ... rather than any urban vigour’.22 Robert Tittler attacked
Bridbury’s contention that the grant of a charter of incorporation ‘added far more
17

R B Dobson, ‘Urban Decline in Late Medieval England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, fifth series, 27 (1977), p.2.
18
Dobson, ‘Urban Decline’, p.20.
19
A R Bridbury, ‘English Provincial Towns in the Later Middle Ages’, Economic History Review,
second series, 34:1 (1981). p.18.
20
Bridbury, ‘Provincial Towns’, p.19.
21
Bridbury, ‘Provincial Towns’, p.23.
22
S H Rigby, ‘Late Medieval Urban Prosperity: The Evidence of the Lay Subsidies’, Economic
History Review, new series, 39:3 (1986), p.416.
5

to the lustre and prestige of a town than to its substantive power and influence’,23
arguing that ‘many towns sought incorporation precisely as a means of regaining
past prosperity or forestalling a slide toward further economic decay’.24 A
compromise between this views is offered by, for example, T R Slater and James
Higgins, who affirm that while towns were in physical decline, their smaller
populations could create opportunities and enhance individual living standards
and that, although the period 1340 to 1530 was ‘bioculturally instable’ due torepeated outbreaks of plague, there were individuals of considerable wealth.25
Likewise Jennifer Kermode challenges not just Dobson’s but also David Palliser’s
contention that the evasion of office holding by York burgesses in the fifteenth
century, and a similar claim by Geoffrey Dickens for the early sixteenth century,
was a symptom of economic depression. Her own study of office holding in Yorkbetween 1470 and 1530
suggests that the evasion of office-holding was not at all
straightforward ... [and]... that far from being deprived of the servicesof the top rank of its citizens, York continued to be governed, as
before, by a mercantile plutocracy26
Where evasions did occur it was by the less wealthy, who held the second rank ofposts, not those at the top of the hierarchy. She also contends that at no point did
the cycle of office holding indicate that there was a shortage of candidates while,at the same time, the council ‘tried to ensure that men of common or vulgar
occupations did not proceed beyond the level of chamberlain’.27 Charles

23

Bridbury, ‘Provincial Towns’, p.11.
R Tittler, ‘Late Medieval Urban Prosperity’, Economic History Review, new series, 37:5 (1984),
p.552.
25
T R Slater and J P P Higgins, ‘What is Urban Decline: Desolation, Decay and Destruction, or an
Opportunity? in T R Slater (ed), Towns in Decline AD100-1600 (Aldershot, 2000), pp.1 & 2.
26
J I Kermode, ‘Urban Decline? The Flight from Office in Late Medieval York’, Economic
History Review, new series, 35:2 (1982), p.181.
27
Kermode, ‘Urban Decline?’, p.193.
24

6

Phythian-Adams in his in-depth analysis of recession in Coventry in the firstquarter of the sixteenth century, however, perceived the opposite situation,
claiming that there was a ‘glaring shortage of really substantial citizens’ and thatthe resulting breach was filled by ‘hitherto mistrusted victuallers’ and an‘increased reluctance of leading citizens to serve locally’.28
The arguments about urban and economic decline during the fifteenth and early
sixteenth century are complicated. All towns show symptoms of decline but some
may have prospered, or declined and prospered at different times, and someindividuals prospered whatever the fate of the town. The causes of decline or
growth may be national, such as the overall reduction in population or, as in
Coventry, a combination of poor harvests, epidemics and a failure of the textile
industry.29 Palliser’s warning not to accept conventional wisdom, and even whenconvention works not to accept that all the causes are the same, is perhaps
timely.30 There were short and long term variations, regional changes and shifts in
wealth and he suggests that the fifteenth century saw not decay, but a restructuringof towns that was the basis of urban and industrial growth in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries.31
The assertion that some individuals prospered whatever the prevailing economic
conditions raises the question of entrepreneurial, if not capitalist, activity.
Christopher Dyer has proposed that ‘capitalists and potential capitalists lived in
the fifteenth-century’ and their emergence was due to the need to ‘organise
28

C Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle
Ages (Cambridge, 1979), p.47.
29
Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, pp.52-63.
30
D M Palliser, ‘Urban Decay Revisited’, in J A F Thompson (ed), Towns and Townspeople(Gloucester, 1988), p.16.
31
Palliser, ‘Urban Decay Revisited’, p.18.
7

production in the midst of a market recession’ such as has been described above.32
Furthermore, these foundations of capitalism were given ‘freer scope’ in thesixteenth century by Protestant doctrines which emphasised frugality and hard
work, supported by economic recovery.33
A beneficiary of this economic recovery in the latter part of the sixteenth century
was the revival of market towns. Alan Everitt’s work has shown that although,overall, there were fewer market towns than previously, those that survived into
the later sixteenth century were expanding, and sometimes even specialising, inorder to meet new demands from internal trade. In parallel with this expansion,
local authorities were exerting greater control over market activity.34 Also, linked
to this expansion was a shift in trading patterns. Nigel Goose’s study ofColchester, for example, identified that while international trade became
concentrated on London, the town’s coastal and internal trade prospered and that
Colchester, like other provincial centres, benefitted from its enhanced roll as amarket centre where goods were collected, processed and distributed.35 At thesame time that commercial activity was developing, however, it is argued thatindustrial production, especially in textiles, moved from the urban environment

32

C Dyer, ‘Were There Any Capitalists in Fifteenth-Century England?’, in J I Kermode (ed),Enterprise and Individuals in Fifteenth-Century England (Stroud, 1991), p.21.
33
C Hill, ‘Protestantism and the Rise of Capitalism’, in F J Fisher (ed), Essays in the Economic
and Social History of Tudor and Stuart England in honour of R H Tawney (Cambridge, 1961),
p.21.
34
A Everitt, ‘The market towns’, in P Clark (ed), The Early Modern Town: A Reader (London,1976), pp.168-69 & 184-91.
35
N R Goose, ‘In Search of the Urban Variable: Towns and the English Economy, 1500-1650’,
Economic History Review, new series, 39:2 (1986), p.175.
8

into the countryside, although its control remained in the hands of urban
magnates.36
Discussions of economic and demographic fluctuations are often referred to as‘crises’ but as Friedrichs points out, this is an ambiguous term.37 For some ‘crisis’refers simply to economic change, and therefore the economic crises of the
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were brought to an end by the economic
revival of the 1570s. Others see a continuance which lasted well into theseventeenth century. Palliser notes in an article dealing with York between 1460
and 1640, that when this crisis occurred is, in itself, subject to debate.38 Paul
Slack and Peter Clark suggest a period between 1520 and 1660, Pythian-Adams
identified 1520 to 1570 after which some recovery occurred, or even 1450 to
1570; dates which clearly overlap with the discussion of late medieval decline or
growth.
Clark and Slack, however, also introduced the concept of a different sort of ‘urban
crisis’ through a series of publications during the 1970s.39 They argue that despite
improving economies, the overall urban condition did not recover because for themass of English towns there was still an underlying economic weakness which
resulted in political and social instability. Dyer’s potential capitalists are referred
to as ‘tycoons who monopolized large fractions of personal wealth’ so that,exacerbated by the influx of ‘subsistence migrants’ attracted to towns by the‘promise of employment, charity or crime’ the gulf between rich and poor
36

P Clark and P Slack (eds), Crisis and Order in English towns 1500-1700 : essays in urban
history (London, 1972), p.8
37Friedrichs, Modern City, p.275.
38
D M Palliser, ‘A Crisis in English Towns: The Case of York 1460-1640’, Northern History, 14(1978), pp.109-110.
39
for example, Clark and Slack, Crisis and Order; P Clark and P Slack, English Towns inTransition, 1500-1700 (London, 1976).
9

widened bringing with it serious social problems.40 For Clark and Slack this crisisof the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not economic depression but
social and political conflict. This conflict so thoroughly affected urban society that
towns
underwent major changes which transformed and to some extent
vitiated traditional urban life, affecting not only their economic anddemographic structure but their political and cultural make-up.41
The consequence of these changes was a ‘major collision of continuity andchange’. 42 Potentially this collision was serious and sometimes resulted inconfrontation between townspeople and the ruling elite.
This raises the question of power and status, things which, according to Clark andSlack, in early modern towns almost invariably coincided with wealth.43 But thiswas also the case in medieval towns. Fifteenth and sixteenth century urban
residents were well aware of social divisions. In fifteenth-century Lynn
townspeople were divided into potentiores, mediocres and inferiores; Lincoln
employed the same tri-partite division of great, middling and lesser, while Beverly
chose the simpler menes comunes and potentiores.44 Traditionally wealth andstatus was derived from the ownership of land, but this criteria could not apply tourban communities; in 1577, William Harrison identified four categories of urban
resident: gentlemen, who studied the law or medicine, citizens and burgesses who‘serve the commonwealth in their cities and boroughs, or in corporate towns’,
yeomen who were freemen, farmers or gentlemen with sufficient wealth to40

Clark and Slack, Towns in Transition, pp.92-93, 103, 114.
Clark and Slack, Crisis and Order, p.30.
42
Clark and Slack, Crisis and Order, p.40.
43
Clark and Slack, Towns in Transition, p.115.
44
D M Palliser, ‘Urban Society’, in R Horrox (ed), Fifteenth-century Attitudes: Perceptions ofSociety in late medieval England (Cambridge, 1994), p.140.
41

10

educate their sons, and ‘the fourth sort’ who were day labourers, some retailers
and artificers.45 In the mid-twentieth century, Lawrence Stone described a six foldsocial order, based on rural hierarchies, but which recognised four urban, ‘semiindependent occupational hierarchies, whose precise relationship to the basic
reference groupings was never fully clarified’.46 More recently, these groups havebeen described as the ‘middling sorts’, a term which draws on contemporary
terminology but is recognised by early modern historians ‘as meaningful andimportant a social category as, say, the poor or the gentry’.47 Medieval societies
were not equal and social divisions were usually based on wealth which, asDobson points out, ‘must have been fundamental to the way in which fifteenthcentury townsmen visualised their own social status and political power’.48 This is
an important point because, as alluded to in the discussion of the evasion orotherwise of civic office by mercantile plutocrats, the urban measure of status was
wealth which brought with it civic responsibility; this introduces the topic of town
government and oligarchy.
Oligarchy had always been a feature of urban administration and its nature has
been debated amongst medieval historians, particularly the quality of therelationship between an urban government and the townspeople. Peter Fleming
succinctly described the debate as being between historians, such as Susan
Reynolds and Gervase Rosser, ‘who argue for essentially harmonious urban
relations’ and others like Stephen Rigby and Rodney Hilton who ‘characterise
45

G Edelen (ed), William Harrison, 1534-1593: The Description of England: The Classic
Contemporary Account of Tudor Social Life (Washington and New York, 1994), pp.113-119.
46
L Stone, ‘Social Mobility in England, 1500-1700’, Past and Present, 33:1 (1966), p.18.
47
J Barry, ‘Introduction’, in J Barry and C Brooks (eds), The Middling Sort of People: Culture,
Society and Politics in England, 1550-1800 (Houndsmill, 1994), p.2.
48
R B Dobson, ‘Urban Europe’, in C Allmand (ed), New Cambridge Medieval History Vol. 7
c.1415-1500 (Cambridge, 1998), p.140.
11

medieval towns as being inherently factious’ because of the steep gradations of
power which existed in urban communities.49 Social disharmony was avoided,
according to Rosser, by the leavening of social organisations, particularly guilds,
which emphasised fraternal harmony and reconciliation and provided themechanisms through which conflict could be resolved.50 Rigby, while notnecessarily disagreeing with this view, places greater emphasis on the potential
for conflict that was inherent in the oligarchic system. Medieval townspeople did
not expect social equality, indeed the consensus was for rule by the ‘better sort’for the good of the community, but that rule could only operate with the consent
and co-operation of the community; local government was a balancing act
between oligarchic government and a community’s right to consultation.51
Clark and Slack, as discussed above, perceived the later sixteenth century as atime when the balancing act broke down and the social order changed. There weremany contributing factors, one of which was the relationship between the Crown
and local government. Just as local administrations relied on the co-operation of
the community, so the Crown relied on the support and co-operation of local
governments staffed by ‘small knots of reliable men in every town’ for theapplication and maintenance of the law.52 Tudor governments in particular werequick to bolster the power of civic oligarchies and interfere in town

49

P Fleming, ‘Telling Tales of Oligarchy in the Late Medieval Town’, in M Hicks (ed), Revolution
and Consumption in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2001), p.177.
50
A G Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late
Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33:4, Vill, Guild and Gentry: Forces of Community
in Later Medieval England (1994), p.432-33.
51
S H Rigby, English Society in the Later Middle Ages:Class, Status and Gender (Houndsmill,1995), pp.171-72.
52
Slack and Clark, Crisis and Order, p.22.
12

administration, giving corporations ‘new official powers in regard to economic
and social policy’.53
An important factor in the redefinition of the relationship between the Crown andlocal government was, according to Robert Tittler, the state imposition of a
Reformed church which put in place the mechanisms and processes which
eventually led to greater centralised control.54 As a consequence of this relianceand the greater powers given to local government, local oligarchies became
smaller and the social status of those in power became greater. In what hedescribes as a ‘new perspective’, Tittler claims that the destruction of institutions
which had promoted social harmony, exacerbated by the social and economic
problems of the middle years of the century, resulted in ‘hierarchy, structural
rigidity and political as well as economic and social polarization’.55 Prior to the
Reformation, Tittler argues, town officials – even aldermen and mayors – werenot ‘decisively different from the general run of freemanry.’56 The Reformation
was a threshold which led to greater social polarisation as
Political activity came to be characterized by more formally definedlabels, structures and constraints than by informally shared identities.
Vertical lines of social and political interaction while never absent,
proved more emphatic and forceful than ... [the] lines of an earlier
age.57This more rigid hierarchy led to conflict, which often found its outlet in attacks onmembers of the ruling oligarchies who ‘blurred the distinction between public

53

P Clark, ‘Introduction’, in P Clark (ed), Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. II, 1540-1840(Cambridge, 2000), p.5.
54
R Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns in England: Politics and Political Culture c.15401640 (Oxford, 1998), p.19.
55
Tittler, Reformation and the Towns, p.13.
56
Tittler, Reformation and the Towns, p.19.
57
Tittler, Reformation and the Towns, p.19.
13

trust and private advantage’.58 Civic elites, collectively and individually, wereaccused of leasing civic property to themselves on favourable terms, using theirregulatory powers to promote their own business, or simply dipping into the citytreasury, actions which ordinary citizens were quick to denounce.59
These social, political and economic crises are, according to the Clark and Slackand Tittler arguments, ‘universal problems’ which undermined the stability ofcities throughout early modern England, and indeed riots and civil discord wereprevalent across urban Europe.60 Steve Rappaport’s work on London, however,draws a rather different picture. Instead of the instability for which London was
supposedly notorious, he founda city inhabited by people and ruled by men whose response to those
problems was characterized more by adaptation than inflexibility, by awillingness to undertake remedial action rather than theunresponsiveness of an insensitive elite.61
He has suggested that a task for urban historians is to ‘explain why London, andperhaps other English cities as well, subject to the same pressures, did not suffer
similar consequences’.62 One reason put forward by Ian Archer, is that ‘thecountry had stumbled into the Reformation ... [which] ... was peaceful because it
was piecemeal’.63 This is an interesting comment to compare with Tittler’scontention that the statutory imposition of the Reformation had led to social
polarization and increased tension between local elites and the general run oftownspeople.
58

Friedrichs, Modern City, p.309.
Friedrichs, Modern City, p.309.
60
S Rappaport, ‘Social Structure and Mobility in Sixteenth Century London’, London Journal(1983), 9, part 2, p.107.
61
Rappaport, ‘Social Structure’, p.108.
62
Rappaport, ‘Social Structure’, p.108.
63
I W Archer, Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1991),
p.45.
59

14

Archer also questions the degree to which the commons and the elites wereseparated. Recent research has concentrated less on elites and more on thethe substructures of government, the parishes, wards and companies,
the cooperation of whose rulers was essential to the successful
implementation of the elite’s policies. 64
upon which local government was reliant. While not disputing that there weregreat disparities in wealth, Archer contends that the Aldermen of London were not
cut-off or ignorant of the social problems of the city. Rather, since a high level ofsocial mobility allowed individuals into an elite which contained few urban
dynasties, most members of the elite were first-generation residents with relativesof lower social status.65
Archer’s work, of course, centres on London which, because of its size, wealthand political significance, needs to be viewed as a special case. This does notmean, however, that his arguments do not apply elsewhere, only that they might
apply on a different scale. In a study of seven north-Norfolk parishes, Jan Pitman
argues that England was ‘a participatory society in which the state relied upon theactive cooperation of a broad range of the population to enforce legislation’.66
This, however, is very close to the argument made by Rigby that medieval
oligarchy was a balancing act between rule by the better sort and the co-operationof the commons, and therefore suggests a continuity of intent to maintainharmonious communal relationships which bridged the medieval into the earlymodern town. The difference being, perhaps, that Rigby’s medieval elite
depended on the support of the community while Archer’s early modern civic
64

Archer, Pursuit of Stability, p.14.
Archer, Pursuit of Stability, p.51.
66
J Pitman, ‘Tradition and Exclusion: Parochial Office Holding in Early Modern England, a Case
Study from North Norfolk, 1580-1640’, Rural History, 15:1 (2004), p.27.
65

15

leaders were supported by sub-groups which separated them in the social
hierarchy from the common townsmen and women.
This discussion of local politics and the relationship between the Crown and local
government must take account of the Reformations of the mid- to late-sixteenth
century, which although intended to amend religious practice had far wider
implications. The political consequences of the imposition of religious change
have been discussed above. The Reformations also brought greater civic
responsibilities, particularly for the care of the poor and the control of migrants
and vagrants, which as part of a circular argument about social relationships,
further emphasised the status of the ruling elites and the economic gulf between
rich and poor. Urban communities enlarged their property holdings through theacquisition of former ecclesiastical property, the income from which helped meetthe economic demands made by growing urban populations.67 There were also
cultural implications, whether these concerned attitudes to work mentioned aboveor the development of new forms of drama.68 There were probably many others.
Looking from the national to the local, the first history of Nottingham was
published in the eighteenth century.69 It was, however, an antiquarian record ofplaces and monuments, an approach also adopted by John Blackner for his earlynineteenth-century history, although he combined it with a description of
Nottingham’s commercial development.70 The mid-nineteenth and early twentieth67

Tittler, Reformation and the Towns, p.65.
A F Johnson, ‘Tudor Drama, Theatre and Society’, in R Tittler and N Jones (eds), A Companion
to Tudor Britain (Oxford, 2004), pp.430-447; P W White, Theatre and Reformation:
Protestantism, Patronage, and Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge, 1993).
69
C Deering, Nottinghamia vetus et nova or an Historical Account of the Ancient and Present
State of the Town of Nottingham (Nottingham 1751, reprinted 1970).
70
J Blackner, The History of Nottingham: Embracing its Antiquities, Trade, and Manufactures,from the Earliest Authentic Records, to the Present Period (1815, reprinted Otley, 1985).
68

16

centuries saw a flurry of histories of Nottingham all written, unsurprisingly for thetime, from the point of view of political history – that is the relationship between
Nottingham and the king – or a ‘great men’ standpoint with a focus on individual
notables.71 Consequently, a history of Nottingham written in 1920 reported thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries as ‘a singularly fruitless period in the history of
the town’.72 The War of the Roses apparently ‘passed lightly over the town’; theTudor period was ‘very disappointing’, when
Nothing of any note occurred locally during the reign of Edward VI
and Mary and only one event of importance can be recorded in thelong and peaceful reign of Elizabeth – and that an event which never
took place.73
Notwithstanding the growing interest in local history during the twentieth century,
the medieval and early modern periods are given little space in more recent
publications. In 1974, Emrys Bryson summarised the development of the town
from Henry II’s Charter of 1155-1165 to the reign of Charles I in two pages.74 It is
no wonder, therefore, that in 1984 Trevor Foulds wrote ‘Whilst other local[history] societies were busily engaged in their county’s medieval past … themedieval history of Nottinghamshire languished’ and by implication, so did thehistory of the town.75
This does not mean that medieval and early modern Nottingham has been totallyneglected. Between 1882 and 1899 the first four volumes of a nine volume set ofborough records were published; these have been a vital resource for this71

for example, W H Wylie, Old and New Nottingham (Nottingham, 1853); W H Wylie and J P
Briscoe, A Popular History of Nottingham (Nottingham, 1893).
72
E L Guilford, The Story of English Towns: Nottingham (London, 1920), p.33.
73
Guilford, Nottingham, pp.35-37.
74
E Bryson, Portrait of Nottingham (London, 1974), pp.49-51.
75
T Foulds, ‘Some “Medieval” Thoughts’, Nottinghamshire Historian, 33 (1984), p.16.
17

research.76 The interests of W H Stevenson, who edited these volumes, tended
towards the ‘constitutional’, that is the town’s relationship with the crown,
government, local administration and customs. As editor, Stevenson was notwriting an history of Nottingham but his comments in the Introductions to the first
four volumes influenced succeeding writers. For example, he devoted eight pagesof the Introduction to Volume IV to describing the evolution of the town’s council
and what he described as
the long contest between the Common Council and the commonalty ofthe town, the Council endeavouring to exclude the burgesses from allcontrol over their constitution, and the burgesses constantly opposing
these attempts.77
His lead has been followed by, for example, Duncan Grey and later by David
Marcombe who identified a ‘ruling cabal’ in opposition to ‘the broad mass of
citizens’ who waged ‘guerrilla warfare’ against civic leaders.78 These latter
remarks were made in A Centenary History of Nottingham, the most recent, andmost far reaching, history of Nottingham.79 The scale and format of this work,
which begins in the Neolithic and ends in the 1990s, however, inevitably meansthat no one subject or period is discussed in detail. Trades and occupations fromthe fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth centuries, for example, are described by Trevor
Foulds but not raised again until Adrian Henstock’s discussion of social andeconomic life from the end of the sixteenth into the eighteenth centuries. David
Marcombe’s discussion of the late medieval town concentrates on political change

76

W H Stevenson (ed), Records of the Borough of Nottingham (BR), Vols I-IV (Nottingham,
1882-99).
77
Stevenson, IV, p.ix.
78
D Grey, Nottingham Through 500 Years: A History of Town Government (Nottingham, firstpublished 1959, reprinted 1960); D Marcombe, ‘The Late Medieval Town, 1449-1560’, in J
Beckett (ed), A Centenary History of Nottingham, second edition (Chichester, 2006), p.92.
79
J Beckett and others (eds), A Centenary History of Nottingham, second edition (Chichester,2006).
18

and institutional religion, with a short discussion of the economy which focuseson the 1523-24 lay subsidy and burgess admissions.80 These understandable
limitations are acknowledged by John Beckett who, as editor, describes theCentenary History as a city biography which ‘must be, like biographies of people
who are still alive, an interim statement’.81 In other words, there is still muchwork to do on the history of Nottingham.
One of the themes of this current study is continuity, but as pointed out at the
beginning of this Introduction, breaking down history into digestible chunksemphasises discontinuity. This review has tried to some extent to reconcile these
discontinuities. Although treated separately in the literature, both medieval andearly modern towns were, for example, oligarchic and their elites dependent on
the support of the men lower in the social ranking in order to rule. The
maintenance of social harmony seen in medieval communities is also perceivablein the willingness, identified by Rappaport, of early modern administrations tocompromise and co-operate. Urban social structures and social status remained
hierarchical and predicated on wealth and the ability to hold civic office, while
wealth was generated by individual entrepreneurs who were to be found in bothmedieval and early modern communities.
The other theme of this work is change, and changes have also been identified in
the historiographic detail. The economy of medieval towns suffered fromdepopulation, and the movement of industry into the countryside. Early modern
80

T Foulds, ‘Trade and Manufacture’; A Henstock, S Dunster and S Wallwork, ‘Decline andregeneration: Social and Economic life’; D Marcombe, ‘Medieval Town’, in J Beckett (ed), A
Centenary History of Nottingham, second edition (Chichester, 2006), pp.72-83, 143-164, 84-106
respectively.
81
J Beckett, ‘Introduction’, in J Beckett (ed), A Centenary History of Nottingham, second edition(Chichester, 2006), p.1.
19

towns, on the other hand, had a growing population and, while manufacture
declined, the economic trend was towards local, domestic commerce anddistribution. Poverty, the fear of social unrest, the implementation of central
government legislation and a greater administrative burden led to an expanded
role for local government which became even more hierarchic, and social
distinctions between rich and poor became wider. The potential for conflict was
greater, and such conflict could be directed at both institutions and individuals.
This thesis looks in detail at three aspects of Nottingham: the town, its people andits administration, over a long period, in order to trace continuity and change andincrease historical understanding of the town during the transitional years of
1400-1600. It is hoped that this current research will add to the valuable work
already carried out and bring to light new aspects of Nottingham’s history.
Inevitably, there are obstacles and limitations to research of this type, one ofwhich is the availability of records which must to some extent dictate what it ispossible to research. Work for this thesis concentrated on the civic records of
Nottingham and because of lacunae in the record series which are described below
two major national events are not dealt with directly. The first parallels the datesof the Wars of the Roses so there is little evidence of the affect on the town ofthese politically unstable years. The same can be said of the second lacunae whichcoincides with the major events of the religious Reformations of Edward VI andMary I, and the settlement brought about in the early years of the reign of
Elizabeth I. This loss is emphasised by the Churchwarden’s accounts of St. Peter’s
Church, which are the only parish records to pre-date the Protestant20

Reformation.82 As summary accounts they provide little specific information, but
do run in an almost complete sequence from 1522 through to the 1540s. The
accounts for years of Edward VI’s reign (1547-1553), which saw significant
changes to traditional religion, are packaged together into a single statement of
total receipts and total expenditure, and the sequence only recommences in 1560
after the accession of Elizabeth. This implies a significant impact on parish
affairs, but does not reveal the detail. This lack of direct evidence does not mean,
however, that the Reformations have been totally ignored as what might bedescribed as the ‘side-effects’ of religious transformation are discussed asindicators of administrative and cultural change.
Sources and Methods
The Documents
The majority of the documents examined during this research are Nottingham’s
administrative papers held as part of the Nottinghamshire Archive (NA) collectionof Borough Records. The major categories of papers are shown in Chart 1 which
also highlights the increase in the number of available documents over time,
particularly of Hall books and financial records.
The survival rate of some of the document series, also indicated in Chart 1, ispatchy with two major lacunae especially in the Court records which form thebulk of the collection.

82

NA PR 21599.
21

22

The first of these, from c.1450 to c.1481 followed by another short break to
1491, corresponds to a period of economic instability and recovery for
Nottingham (see Chapters 1, 3 and 5). These years, though, also parallel theyears of the Wars of the Roses, and for this reason, very little is known about
the effect of these politically unstable years on Nottingham.
The second break in the records begins in approximately 1550, mid-way
through the reign of Edward VI until c.1571, after the Rising of the Northern
Earls which signalled greater national political and economic stability for
Elizabethan England. These were also problematic years which not only
experienced religious see-sawing, but also poor harvests and famine, epidemics
of sweating sickness and smallpox, and civil unrest. Again, because of the lackof records it is impossible to discover what direct effect these events had on
Nottingham. Even so, as long-running series, all the documents examined are
indicators of continuity and change so that even when there are gaps, therecords either side provide useful before-and-after ‘snapshots’ of the town.
It is not possible to say if these breaks in the record series, which coincide withsignificant national instability, are simple accidents or if they are in any way
connected to the economic and political circumstances of Nottingham during
the missing years. It is, however, also impossible to totally discount this
proposition.
In addition to the document series, there are manuscripts relating to individual
matters, such as a Royal Inquiry into the condition and maintenance of Leen
Bridge, agreements on tolls and a collection of documents relating to propertytransactions. Also part of the Borough Records are some late-sixteenth century
23

Churchwardens’ accounts for St Mary’s Church, probably included because themayor and aldermen audited the parish accounts. For the same reason, theaccounts of St Peter’s Church were also examined, although these are held aspart of the Parish not the Borough collection.
Another supplement to the Borough Record collection is fifteenth and sixteenth
century tax records held at The National Archives, an inclusion justified
because they were produced in Nottingham, by Nottingham officials and areabout Nottingham people.83 It was also possible to draw on work alreadycarried out on the accounts of the Guilds of St George and St Mary at St Peter’s
Church.
Many of these documents have, of course, been published in the first four
volumes of the Records of the Borough of Nottingham, either in full but moreusually as extracts. Stevenson gave his editorial criteria for selection as ‘notonly what is of interest to the curious, but whatever seemed to be of value forthe history of the town, its institutions, customs, etc.’.84 Even so, he was only
able to publish a fraction of the available material. Until 1450 the main sourceof information was the Borough court rolls, yet in 1401-2, for example, when
there were 170 suits, only two are published.85 He also frequently drew on the‘foreign’ rather than burgess pleas as these tend to be more interesting. Thereis, therefore, a considerable amount of unpublished material, although it isoften the unexciting, routine and sometimes dull information which,nevertheless, has provided vital evidence for this research.

83

TNA, Medieval tax records database, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/
Stevenson, ‘Introduction’, I, p.viii.
85
NA CA 1299; Stevenson, II, pp.16-17.
84

24

Despite the amount of published material, the majority of documents were
examined in the original, the exceptions being a few which fall outside thetime-frame of the project and some one-off documents such as the Leen Bridge
inquiry which are both transcribed and translated in full in the publishedvolumes. Stevenson’s appendices of civic officials and street names, compiled
from the Borough documents, have also been used for simplicity. Since thepublication of the Borough Records a few documents have been re-dated andthe Mickletorn jury rolls have been re-catalogued with new reference numbers.
These are cited using the current NA reference number, not that given by
Stevenson. When only the published version of a document has been consulted,
it is cited in the footnotes by the NA reference followed by the publishedvolume and page number; documents examined in the original are cited by NAreference only. In addition to the published Borough Records, the Boroughcourt rolls to 1457 have been translated by Dr Trevor Foulds and sometimes
these have been used rather than the original Latin rolls. When this is the case
it is indicated in the footnotes as ‘Foulds online’ followed by the
Nottinghamshire Archives catalogue number.86
Special mention has to be made of two sets of documents compiled by William
Gregory and William Greaves. Gregory was the Town or Mayor’s Clerk at theend of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Many of Nottingham’s
early customs and ordinances have been lost because the town’s Red Book was
destroyed in the mid-eighteenth century. Gregory’s notes on the book, andnotes or copies of other documents, are therefore valuable, as are a similar set
86

Originally these documents were consulted as typescripts and I am grateful to Dr Trevor
Foulds for allowing access these. They are now available on-line atwww.nottingham.ac.uk/history/cuc.
25

of notes made by his great-nephew, William Greaves, in the 1670s. These
collections of papers are catalogued under the Nottinghamshire Archivereferences CA 4770 and 4771. Many have been published, but as with othercollections, originals have been consulted where appropriate.
Another set of documents which have been lost to Nottingham are lists ofburgesses; Greaves’ notes include a list of the total number of burgesses
enrolled each year but not their names. For that reason, a terrier drawn up in
1604 which includes a list of all burgesses living in that year, arranged by theyear in which they were enrolled starting in 1533-34, is another useful
resource.87
More detailed descriptions of all these records are given below and within themain text where relevant.
Methodology
The quantity of documentary evidence required a rigorous and systematic
approach to recording which was managed in two ways, to meet different
demands of the research.
Technical details about each document were first recorded using a pro-forma
document to ensure consistency and prevent accidental omission of detail.
These included the condition of the document (damage, conservation,
legibility), whether it was written in Latin or English on parchment or paper,
the size of the document (a slip, a single membrane or page, or a large book)and also whether all or any part had been published and if so the volume and87

NA CA 4635b.
26

page number(s). These were followed by transcriptions and/or translations of
relevant examples and illustrations. The pro-forma was also useful forrecording non-personal or anonymous information, such as payments totravelling players or unnamed paupers. Finally, the pro-forma was used tomake notes for future reference, such as suggestions for cross-referencing withother documents or potential uses of the information gathered. These notes not
only ensured that an accurate record of each document was kept but allowed
documents to be compared, the evolution of record keeping to be tracked andidiosyncrasies noted and accounted for. An example of how these notes wereused is the Sessions court presentments which, prior to 1505-6 were written up
by the Mayor’s Clerk, William Easingwold, in Latin. After his death thepresentments were written in English by a member of the jury. An earlyexample of these, in October 1505, was so badly written it is illegible – it is
one of the few unpublished presentments until mid-century.88 By 1587-88, theforeman of each of the juries was named, and it was he who probably wrote up
the now, highly legible, presentments.89 This small example illustrates not
simply a change in clerical practice but greater court organisation andimproved literacy.
The second approach was to record personal information about Nottingham
people in a comprehensive Access database which at the time of writing
comprises 6,790 individual names. A broad range of data was collected
including occupations, places of residence, tenancies and rents paid, property
ownership, tax assessments and payments, civic and other office holding (guild

88
89

NA CA 13a.
NA CA 51a, 52b.
27

officer, church official), appearances in court as plaintiff or defendant
including details of suits, memberships of juries, and some approximate datesof death (usually derived from court appearances by executors or a change ofstatus from wife to widow). There has been no attempt at family reconstructionin this study, but family relationships – husband, wife, father, mother, son,daughter – have been recorded when this information is available and are used
when relevant.
The database was interrogated using both simple queries, such as a list of all
jurymen, or through compound queries; the list of jurymen found through asimple query could be, for example, combined with details of theiroccupations, civic offices, tax payments, or any other permutation. These
analyses have been used extensively throughout the thesis in a variety of ways:
to track concentrations of occupations within certain streets as discussed in
Chapter One, the analysis of tax records in Chapter Two, and it also provided alarge amount of information for the discussion of courts and juries in Chapter
Six. The occupational analysis which is the subject of Chapter Three wascarried out using database queries, but for presentation purposes the data wereentered into Excel worksheets organised by occupational group linked to a‘master’ table of all occupations (Table X).
Working with a complex database is not unproblematic, particularly one thatwas constructed well before it was clear what analysis would have to be carriedout. For example, if a man was mayor on three occasions and a plaintiff in the
Borough court ten times, a query searching for mayors who were plaintiffs
would return thirty entries against his name. With hindsight, a slightly different

28design would have generated a more practical result. The problem wasovercome by exporting the data to Excel and manually editing the duplicate
entries. Although time-consuming, this had the advantage of providing adouble check for accuracy and the opportunity to remedy any anomalies that
had crept into the data collection.
All documents provided a range of information: tax lists supplied not justnames but assessments of wealth (but see Chapter Two for the drawbacks ofthese lists), frequently where men and women lived and occasionallyoccupations and family relationships. The changing form of the Mayor’s andHall books suggest developments in administrative processes (as do the
Borough court books) as well as containing many lists of town officials, juries,
burgesses and traders, while financial records indicate how the sources ofincome and areas of expenditure altered according to changing economic
circumstances. The survival rate of individual documents within most of theseries meant that it was possible to examine each in reasonable detail, but thequantity of the Borough court and Sessions court rolls and books, combinedwith the often repetitive nature of their contents, caused different strategies tobe adopted.
Borough court rolls and books: these are the longest running series of
documents. Until 1457 each roll comprises up to twenty-six parchment
membranes which record not only civil suits but also documents, mainly
property transactions, brought to the court to be enrolled. Until 1419-20 minor
court officials, known as ‘affeerers’ were listed at the end of many of themembranes and until 1422 appraisers, who valued goods in lieu of fines were29

similarly recorded. This practice died out after these dates, although later court
books occasionally list appraisers. For most years, the records are divided into
two courts: the burgess court for suits between Nottingham burgesses and theforinsec or foreign pleas court for suits when one or more of the parties was nota burgess, although they may or may not be resident.
After 1481 the court pleas were recorded in book form, one for burgess andone for foreign pleas, bound into one volume. Some of the volumes also
include slips of paper which are bills or accounts for debts, often for every day
commodities such as fish or bread, but sometimes for loans or money expended
on behalf of others. From 1596-97 the books contain very little detail of thesuits but they are indexed by name of plaintiff, indicating a development ofclerical practice.
Because of the volume of data, it was decided to make detailed records of the
Burgess court rolls and books at roughly ten-year intervals, survival rates
permitting. Particular attention was paid to those documents immediately
before and after the lacunae discussed above and in years such as the 1520s
which the experience of other towns suggested would have been particularly
difficult.
The records for the intervening years were also examined for occupational
details, revealing suits and interesting information, while specific individuals,
usually civic officials and other prominent burgesses, were given special
attention. The foreign pleas rolls were not recorded in detail, but were
examined using the same criteria.

30

Associated with the court records are jury lists. Some of the earlier court rolls
list jurors ‘in default’ because they had not returned a verdict, but the majorityof jury lists are in bundles of up to sixty slips of parchment, pierced through the
middle and bound together with a leather lace. Some are tucked into thebindings of the later court books but many have been separated from their
original court record. As well as listing up to twenty-four jurymen, each slip isheaded by suits that the jury was to hear, which could be as many as five, andoccasionally verdicts were noted on the reverse, although this is not common.
The bundles for 1494-95 were examined in detail, but this exercise proved tobe time consuming and revealed little information except the considerable
workload jury members had to deal with (discussed in Chapter Six), and was
not repeated.
Sessions court rolls: this court was instituted in 1449 when the town’saldermen were created Justices of the Peace. Although it could deal with themost serious felonies, the majority of its business was generated by three juries
which made presentments at each sitting. Each roll contains several documents
including writs or summonses to attend court (these are more frequent in theearly years and almost completely absent from later rolls), lists of presentments
and jury members, and occasionally lists of fines and pledges. Some rolls
comprise only one or two documents, while others consist of many more; theroll for 1589-90, for example, has twenty-eight separate pieces of paper andparchment.90

90

NA CA 51b.
31

Most of the presentment lists comprise only a few entries, so it was possible torecord all of them in the database, as were the names of all jurymen included in
the rolls up to 1500. Between 1500 and 1550 when the documents are more
prolific, and lists repetitive, the jury lists were sampled at roughly five year
intervals, again depending on survival rates. Although there are fewer
surviving rolls for the later sixteenth century they are more complete, usuallycontaining four lists for each jury. As these generally named the same group ofindividuals with few variations only two of the four were entered into the
database.
Research questions
The review of literature on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries revealed anumber of areas or research questions through which continuity and change inNottingham can be studied. The shifting economy featured heavily in thehistorigraphical discussions, and therefore the first question to be asked is what
affect economic change had on Nottingham’s commercial activities such as
markets, occupations, entrepreneurial enterprise, and on personal wealth? The
second, which is related, is to examine if these economic factors, combinedwith demographic fluctuations, affected characteristics such as the physicalappearance and social structure of Nottingham? The third area to beinvestigated is the town’s local government and here the question must be to
ask if Nottingham was more oligarchic at the end of the sixteenth century thanit was in the fifteenth and if so, what were the stimuli? The answers to thesefirst three questions underlie the fourth which asks if there was latent, if notactual, social and political tension in Nottingham, and if there were32

opportunities for co-operation between the burgesses and council? The finalquestion concerns continuity and change, and whether change was evolutionary
or if it came in abrupt shifts caused by specific influences?
The literature review also indicated that these areas of interest are interlinked,
so that the answer to one question is often dependent on the answers to others.
For this reason, no one chapter can answer a single question. The first two
research questions, which investigate economic and demographic change, arethe focus of Part I of this thesis which discusses the town and people of
Nottingham. Chapter One looks at the effect of economic and demographic
change on both the fabric of the town and common land, and on commercial
aspects of town affairs such as markets, shops and property rentals. Chapter
Two looks more closely at communal and personal wealth and population, andthe relationship between wealth, civic office and social structure. Chapter
Three considers the occupations followed by Nottingham people and how andwhy the patterns of employment changed over time. Chapter Six in Part II of
the thesis contributes further information on the town’s economic standing
through an examination of legal suits brought to the Borough court. In asimilar way, and reflecting the interdependencies of the topic, there are hints inPart I of social discord within the community, which is the subject of the fourth
research question.
The third and fourth research questions are the heart of Part II which focuseson the institutions of local government and challenges to authority. Chapter
Five looks at the development of Nottingham’s ruling institutions andconsiders the effect of economic and demographic change identified in Part I,33

on their constitutions. This chapter also considers the impact of theReformation on workload of these bodies, as well as changes to their authority
and responsibility. It also looks at social structure in relation to civic office andpersonal relationships and how these contribute to oligarchies. Social structureis also discussed in Chapter Six, which examines the development of the court
system in Nottingham and the institutional relationship between the courts andparticularly the presentment juries. All these topics are returned to in Chapter
Seven in relation to challenges to the authority of the Council, including
tensions between different sections of the community, incidents of direct
opposition and opportunities for co-operation between them. The final question
which concerns the pace of change, pervades all chapters.
Because all the five research areas are interdependent there is no one answer toeach question, but, it is hoped that collectively they provide some further
understanding of the town, people and administration of Nottingham in thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

34

Part I
Town and PeopleChapter One: The town – boundaries, buildings and spaces

Living space: boundaries and buildings
Physically Nottingham was not a large town, measuring approximately 1100
metres from west to east and about 500 metres from north to south, although it
probably extended to 750 meters by the middle of the sixteenth century. Its
western boundary was limited by the proximity of the Castle and its easternedge by the village of Sneinton, the boundary marked by the Long Hedge.91 To
the south it was bounded by the River Leen, with Broadmarsh and Narrow
Marsh being the most southerly streets. The northern boundary, however, wasless well defined. Official documents such as tax returns compiled by street inboth the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries92 or the Ward boundaries defined in
157793 suggest that Chapel Bar, Long Row, Great Smith Street and Goose Gate
were the most northerly occupied streets. As Map 1 indicates, though, thenorth-south roads of Cow Lane and Stoney Street projected beyond this line
and the Mayor’s books and presentations of affrays show decennaries for
Stoney Street and Cow Lane throughout the fifteenth century. As only parts ofthese streets were south of the Chapel Bar-Goose Gate line, it can be inferredthat there was some occupation to the north.94 In 1539, Margery Mellers,
widow of Thomas Mellers, bequeathed to John Williamson a ‘close and one
house lying in the Beck Lane’ which also lies to the north of Goose Gate.95

91

NA CA 1607.
for example NA CA 8019; TNA C179/159/155.
93
NA CA 3362.
94
for example NA CA 3942, 3955, 3350.
95
NA CA 4771.
92

36

Map 1: Nottingham c.1400 – 1600

37

Richard Banke’s map of Nottingham dated 1609 and John Speed’s map of 1610
both show housing along a road parallel to the Chapel Bar-Goose Gate line which
Deering notes was called Back Side in the eighteenth century.96 When this namecame into use is uncertain. In c.1631 Thomas Abbott was presented for laying
manure ‘by the malt milne on the Backsid’,97 but the late sixteenth century
Chamberlains’ rentals refer to the malt mill being on Chapel Bar.98 If this is thesame mill it was probably at the junction of the two roads and its change ofaddress suggests urban development after 1600, but not before.
There is some evidence that there was many undeveloped spaces in Nottingham.
In 1400 William Spicer released his right to waste land in French Gate99 and Cow
Lane; a piece of vacant land in Stoney Street called ‘the Wardhall’ was granted byJohn Ewer to William Clerk in 1402, and in 1416 John Tannesley’s property on
Stoney Street shared a boundary with a piece of vacant ground owned by Lenton
Priory.100 In 1401 and 1415 the mayor and community made grants of vacant landin Malin Hill and Castle Gate101 and in 1446 John Dorham was granted a grange
with a vacant piece of ground, again in Cow Lane.102 Castle Gate, Cow Lane,
Malin Hill and the north end of Stoney Street, as Map 1 shows, are all at theextremities of the town and point to the occupied area of Nottingham having
contracted at some time. The fact that transactions of vacant land were occurring,96

C Deering, Nottinghamia vetus et nova or an Historical Account of the Ancient and Present
State of the Town of Nottingham (Nottingham 1751, reprinted 1970), Plate 1, front. Now called
Parliament Street.
97
NA CA 3055, dated by Stevenson to c.1575 and published in Stevenson, IV, pp. 160-62, but
now re-dated to 1631-35.
98
for example NA CA 2172.
99
later called Castle Gate, Stevenson, ‘Appendix’, II, p.438.
100
NA CA 4425, Stevenson, II, p.401; Foulds online CA 1313; NA CA 1299.
101
NA CA 4425b, 4435b, Stevenson, III, pp.425-26.
102
Foulds online CA 1336.

38however, implies a demand for more land caused by an increase in population orby trading conditions which encouraged consolidation and investment.
In 1408 the Mickletorn Jury made fifteen presentments against townspeople forencroaching on common land, most commonly by marking off areas with tree
trunks but occasionally with walls, and there are four presentments for building
houses and another for a croft.103 Some named town officials, for example, Henry
Wilford (mayor 1398-99 and 1412-13) was presented for building a house oncommon ground, Robert Glade (mayor 1404-5, 1413-14 and 1419-20) for
building a wall. Thomas Mapperley (mayor 1402-3) was presented for using tree
trunks to mark out common ground on Orger Lane and Swynebarre and fordiverting the watercourse of the nearby Beck, presumably into this newly marked
out territory.104 While these incursions indicate a demand for land, for them tohave occurred in the first place hints that the areas had been under-used in the
recent past.
There is more substantial evidence for new building in the middle years of the
century. The most prestigious private enterprise was Thurland Hall, built in about
1458 for Thomas Thurland, a wealthy Staple merchant, whose role as mayor andMP will be discussed later.105 The town also invested in new building. In 1479
John Pool bequeathed to the town a piece of unused land (unum vacuum solum
sive peciam terrae vastatae) fifty-five feet in length next to the Guild Hall
between the highway and land owned by Robert English.106 The detailed
chamberlains’ books of 1484-85 and 1485-86 both include sums of money paid to103

NA CA 3011.
NA CA 3011.
105
J P Briscoe, Bypaths of Nottinghamshire History (Nottingham, 1905), p.3.
106
NA CA 4513, Stevenson, II, p.306.
104

39

build new tenements on this land. The first development was a tavern. Lath andplaster for the walls, stone for the floors, and an iron grid and two stones of leadto make a window cost 31s 3¼d including labour.107 The following year 76s 4d
was paid for materials and labour to build houses; the number of houses is not
given but there were five doors and at least one house had a chimney and a bay
window.108 This investment, however, was in property near the centre of town
adjacent to a market place, not the periphery of the town where there is evidence
that property was still unoccupied. Throughout the 1470s and 1480s St George’s
Guild accounts record unpaid rents and in 1493-94 a loss of 3s was reported on atenement in Hounds Gate for three quarters of a year ‘for want of a tenant’.109 By
1499-1500 the Chamberlains’ town rental show rents in decay for ‘want of
tenants’ for tenements in Chapel Bar, a piece of land called ‘the Roper Stakes’,110
a common lane between Bearward Lane and St James’s Lane, a common lanenear St John’s Hospital and a garden near the Bug Hills (near the Leen), again allareas on Nottingham’s boundaries.111
This trend continued into the sixteenth century. In the early 1520s the rental valueof property owned by St George’s Guild was 81s, but the Guild accounts record
losses of between 20s 1d and 41s, that is between a quarter and a half of its rents
lost. From 1526-27 until 1532-33, however, the Guild also spent between 5s 10d
and 37s 3d per year on property repairs.112 These repairs just precede the Reedification Statutes passed by Henry VIII between 1534 and 1544. Nottingham’s,

107

NA CA 1602.
NA CA 1603.
109
NA PR 21599.
110
possibly the Rope Walk, bordering the Castle grounds, Stevenson, ‘Appendix’, III, p.475.
111
NA CA 1660c.
112
NA PR 21599.
108

40

granted in 1535-36 was one of the earliest of these, preceded only by Norwich and
Lynn.113 These statutes, as Robert Tittler has pointed out, have been interpretedby, for example, Charles Phythian-Adams, as evidence of economic decline but
also by A R Bridbury and Alan Dyer as proof that the demand for housing wasincreasing and therefore that they mark a shift in urban economies.114
Unfortunately, pages in the Chamberlains’ account books for 1537-38 headed‘Reparations’, ‘Dekays’ and ‘Rents’ are all blank and there are no further accounts
until 1549, so there is no evidence of building work and it is, therefore, impossible
to test either of these arguments against Nottingham records.115
There is, though, evidence of increased building after mid-century, presumably inresponse to demand from a growing population. The demand for lime, necessary
for new building and repairs to existing property, increased. In 1549-50 thechamberlains leased eight lime pits; twenty-five years later in 1576-77 there areeighteen recorded in the Chamberlains’ rental.116 There was also some newbuilding, even on the peripheries. In 1573 the town rental records a ‘house new
buylded where a pynfolde was in the Narowe Marshe’ let to William Burton, twopieces of ground ‘new buylded’ let to Thomas Carne, a new shop let to John
Townrow while Edward Stanhope paid 8d for a building ‘upon a piece of groundof the high street on St Mary Gate’ and Robert Quarneby gave 4d for ‘void
ground parcel whereof ye lately buylded a newe gallery at the Swyne Green’.117 St
Mary’s Gate was reasonably central, but Narrow Marsh and Swine Green were on

113

Statutes, Vol.3, part 2, pp.531-32.
R Tittler, ‘For the “Re-Edification of Townes”: the Rebuilding Statutes of Henry VIII’ Albion:
A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 22:4 (1990), p.592.
115
NA CA 1607.
116
NA CA 2168, 2172.
117
NA CA 2172.
114

41

the town borders so this new building suggests at least in-filling if not expansion
in response to a growing population.
The growth of Nottingham was most likely due, as in other towns, to in-migrants
attracted by greater prospects for employment and marriage, facilitated by kinshipnetworks.118 Migration in the early sixteenth century, though, was stimulated by anumber of factors including, according to John Pound, ‘thousands of people’ whobecame unemployed after diplomatic relations with the Low Countries weresevered. This mobility of large numbers of people led, in 1531, to the passing of
the first of a series of Acts against vagrancy.119 The motivation for this legislation
was a fear of insurrection and disorder by poor, unattached migrants and concern
for the spaces that might allow such problems to ferment. In 1574-75 it wasreported in Nottingham that... ther his a great many of alle hosses in the backe lannes and vacandplases in this town that might be away and putt downe for they harbernoughti persons and many men [servants?] there fore we dayssyre of
the menndell of thos same120
Such complaints about ale houses and fear of public disorder were a consequenceof national legislation combined with a Protestant concern for immorality, butthey also indicate that the vacant places were being occupied by less thanwelcome residents. Similar concerns are found elsewhere: in the same year fourmen, including two aldermen, were presented at the Sessions court for building‘pawltre houses’ to the detriment of the town and one of these, Peter Clarke, was

118

P Clark and P Slack, ‘Introduction’, in P Clark and P Slack (eds), Crisis and Order in English
Towns 1500-1700: Essays in Urban History (London, 1972), pp.17-18; P Clark, ‘Migrants in the
City: the Process of Social Adaptation in English Towns, 1500-1800’, in P Clark and D Souden(eds), Migration and Society in Early Modern England (London, 1987), pp.269-71.
119
J Pound, Poverty and Vagrancy in Tudor England (London, 1971), p.39; Statutes, 3, part 3,
pp.328-32.
120
NA CA 49.

42

also presented for turning his barns into dwelling houses and ‘taking souch pepell
in as is a gret decaye to the towne’.121 Such developments indicate both somecommercial interest in renting property to in-migrants, but also social concerns
about their impact on the respectability of the town.
Plainly, the problems associated with poor in-migrants were beginning to makethemselves felt in a town with a rising population, but as yet, there seems to havebeen no significant over-crowding. This was probably because the earlier
reduction in population had left sufficient space to accommodate this growth,causing only a small expansion northwards into the street called Back Side. The
size and nature of the growth in the population of Nottingham will be discussed in
Chapter Two and some of the consequences, both positive and negative, of theinflux of outsiders into Nottingham are raised below and throughout the thesis.
The town, of course, was not the only landlord in Nottingham, but there are no
accounts relating to private owners to give a comparable picture of fluctuations inincome and investment. There is, however, a tax assessment made in 1504, whichlists ninety-two individuals and thirteen religious organisations with property inthe town.122 The greatest amount of property, valued at £33 15s 10d, was owned
by Thomas Samon. The Samon family had been prominent in Nottingham in theearly fifteenth century, but by 1500 had retired from the town and acquired
something of gentry status. Thomas Samon, who is given the title armiger or‘gent’,123 did not live in Nottingham and employed John Keterick as his warden or

121

NA CA 52.
S N Mastoris, ‘A Tax Assessment of 1504 and the Topography of Early Tudor Nottingham’,Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 89 (1985), pp.37-56.
123both terms found in NA CA 1383b.
122

43bailiff to manage his property.124 Thomas Thurland, grandson of the builder ofThurland Hall, was another absentee landlord owning tenements in Castle Gate,
Long Row, Goose Gate, Bridlesmith Gate, Fletcher Gate, and other places, valuedat £18 17s 4d.125 There were others, including members of the county gentry: Sir
Henry Willoughby owned tenements in Chapel Bar and lands in the fields valuedat £4 17s, Sir Gervase Clifton had land in Bridgford pasture and Sir William
Pierpont tenements in Hollowstone, both valued at £2.126
William Hegyn, the second largest property owner after Thomas Samon, was a
resident. Mayor of Nottingham on four occasions, he owned tenements in Castle
Gate, Friar Row, Swine Green, Stoney Street, Bridlesmith Gate, Wheeler Gate,
Hen Cross, Fletcher Gate, Walser Gate, by the town Dyke and at the Tithebarns aswell as four acres of arable land.127 He was also a Calais Staple merchant whose
goods were valued in 1500 at 300 marks.128 Whether resident, like Hegyn, or nonresident, like Samon, these men provide evidence for commercial investment inurban property and therefore of entrepreneurial activity.
In 1517, only thirteen years after this assessment, the Inclosure Commissioners
found fifteen houses and three cottages which had been allowed to become ruined,
including four owned by Thomas Clerk, one of Nottingham’s burgesses, threebelonging to Thomas Willoughby, an aldermen, and two by Richard Samon, later,
Sir Richard, and descendent of Thomas.129 Such neglect must have been promptedby the lack of tenants, discussed above, and is a another indication of the124

NA CA 1384.
Mastoris, ‘Tax Assessment’, p.44.
126
Mastoris, ‘Tax Assessment’, p.39.
127
Mastoris, ‘Tax Assessment’, p.44.
128
NA PR 21599, CA 7480i.
129
I S Leadam (translator), The Domesday of Inclosures for Nottinghamshire, Thoroton Society
Record Series, 2 (1904), pp.48-49. Samon has been transcribed as Gamon.
125

44

depressed economy of these years at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It alsosuggests that the re-edification of Nottingham in the 1530s was much needed.
Trading places: markets and shops
Buying and selling happened in many places within Nottingham, but the main
outlets were the town’s two market places. The smaller, called the Daily or
Weekday market, was held at Weekday Cross on the border between the English
and French boroughs near the Guild Hall and at the end of Fletcher – originally
Fleshhewer (butcher) – Gate where it met with Middle Pavement. It is possiblethat this market specialised in the sale of beef as the town’s bull ring abutted
Weekday Cross.130 In 1580 Laurence Worth was paid 3s 6d for mending the bullring and a further 2d for letting the bull’s blood, and John Oakland, the town’s
neatherd (cowherd), received 3d for ‘dressyng the bulle aft[er] the dog’.131
Presumably the bull ended up in the butchers’ stalls in the Weekday Market. This
association with butchers was not new, however, as ‘Gregory’s Notes’ on thecontents of the Red Book include an order or ordinance that in 1463 butchers were‘tyed to a certenty of tyme to stand in theyr shopps in Weekday Shambles’.132 In
1553 the Mickletorn Jury reported that two butchers’ shops on the Weekday
Market were fouling the street; in this case ‘shop’ may mean ‘stall’ as the
proposed solution was to move them to the other side of the street next to ‘Barytts
by the new wall’.133 This was probably Richard Barrett, a barker,134 who paid 12dto the chamberlains’ for a chimney on his house in 1552, which he must haveextended by 1575 because his payment increased to 2s for ‘a chymney and ij. out
130

NA CA 1619. Bears may also have been baited here.
NA CA 1619.
132
NA CA 4771, Stevenson, II, p.425.
133
NA CA 3013.
134
an alternate term for tanner.
131

45

castes or purprestures to his house agaynst Wekedey Crosse taken of thec[om]mon ground’;135 another example of investment in property, this time as anindication of personal wealth and status.
Mentions of a shambles or meat market in Nottingham records are usually taken
to refer to the shambles in the Saturday Market but some may actually mean the
Weekday shambles. The chamberlains’ accounts for 1485, for example, show apayment of 4d for repairs to a shop ‘at e westende of e Shamulles late in eholdyng of John Howett’.136 In 1478-79 John Howett was the decennary for
Middle Pavement, to the west of Weekday Cross, and therefore west of the
Weekday shambles.137 In 1499 he is noted as having rented two shoemakers’
stalls, but these were probably in the Saturday Market.138 This suggests he may
have been a corviser and therefore worked with leather goods, but it seems hedealt in a lot of products: in 1493 for example, he was described as a vintner andpresented to the Sessions court for selling sub-standard tiles, another example ofentrepreneurial activity.139
Two men living close to the Weekday Market – Richard Barrett and John Howett– have already been identified as working with leather and this relationship can betaken further. Through cross-referencing tax records which are organised by street
name against men with known occupations it can be shown that while crafts andtradesmen lived all over town, there are some residential patterns. At least threebutchers lived in Fletcher Gate in 1473. A similar exercise on later tax lists shows135

NA CA 2169, 2171.
NA CA 1602.
137
NA CA 3350.
138
NA CA 1660.
139
NA CA 6.
136

46

that there were also three in 1571 and four in 1582.140 Both Fletcher Gate andMiddle Pavement were omitted from the extensive 1524-25 lay subsidy (discussed
in Chapter Two), but there were three butchers living in Low Pavement which
joins Middle Pavement and the two streets may have been listed together. The
Weekday Market was also conveniently close to Broad Marsh and Narrow Marsh,
both areas well known for their tanneries, particularly in the caves.141 In 1473
three barkers or tanners lived in Narrow Marsh, in 1524-25 one tanner lived in
Broad Marsh and a further seven in Narrow Marsh, and in 1582 eleven tanners
who lived in The Marsh were listed as paying St Mary’s parish rate.142
There were butchers and tanners living in other streets but not in the same
concentrations: a barker lived in the Hen Cross/Timber Hill area in 1473 and justover a hundred years later another barker, William Knyveton lived on Timber Hill
where he paid St Peter’s parish rate.143 In 1524-25 a tanner lived in Hen Cross,near The Poultry and Saturday Market, and another lived in Walsar Gate, two
lived in Castle Gate in 1544-45 and one in Fisher Gate in 1582-83.144 There werebutchers in Stoney Street and Bridlesmith Gate in 1473-79 and one in Walsar
Gate in 1524-25. A butcher joined the two tanners in Castle Gate in 1544-46 andin 1582-83 there was a butcher in Chapel Bar, one in St Mary’s Gate and anotherin Stoney Street.145 Walsar Gate, St Mary’s Gate and Stoney Street are all close to
Weekday Cross. The Weekday Market with its shambles and the proximity of the
Marsh tanneries seems to have caused a concentration of butchers and tanners in
140

NA CA 4502, 4611; TNA E179/160/208.
T Foulds, ‘Trade and Manufacture’, in J Beckett (ed), Centenary History of Nottingham, second
edition (Chichester, 2006), p.78.
142
NA CA 4611, 8012; TNA E179/159/123.
143
NA CA 8012, M 399.
144
NA CA 4611; TNA E179/159/123, E179/159/155.
145
NA CA 4611, 8019; TNA E179/159/123, E179/159/155.
141

47

this area of Nottingham, suggesting some informal zoning of the town which may
reflect a continuity of practice. Noisome trades like butchery and tanning were
often found on the edges of towns, to keep the unpleasant aspects of the work
away from townspeople. Fletcher Gate, although reasonably central in thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was near the border of the older English
borough, and it is therefore possible that the connection between butchery andtanning and streets like Walsar Gate, Stoney Street, Fletcher Gate and the Marshes
was a long standing one.
In comparison to the Weekday market, tax payers who have lived in Timber Hillon the southern border of the Saturday Market in 1473-79, 1524-25 and 1571
include cordwainers, drapers, tailors and mercers, together with their apprentices,
but no butchers.146 To the north of the market on Long Row there were bakers,
barbers, cordwainers, drapers, fishmongers, mercers and tailors, together withvintners and inn keepers, and at the end of the sixteenth century, ropers andironmongers, but again no butchers.147 Likewise, only two tanners, William Cooksenior, who in 1577 paid St Peter’s parish rate when he lived in Timber Hill andWilliam Cook junior, who lived in Long Row and paid St Mary’s parish rate in
1582, are found near the Saturday Market.148 This mix of trades must reflect therange of products sold in the Saturday Market.
There was, of course, a shambles on the corner of the market where it met with
Cow Lane (now Clumber Street), but no butchers are identified as living in thestreets surrounding this market. The exception to this may be John Rose who have146

NA CA 8019, M 399; TNA E179/159/123.
NA CA 4611, 8019, M 399; TNA E179/159/123, E179/159/155.
148
NA CA 4611, M 399.
147

48

lived in either Low Pavement or Hen Cross.149 Rose was one of the richest men in
Nottingham and the only butcher to become mayor. It is likely, therefore, that hemanaged his butchery business but was not involved in its messier side, although
he lived close by, as both streets are near to the markets.
This raises the question of who traded in the Saturday Market shambles? The
records contain some clues. A list of stall holders dated 1558-59 named fifteen
men who held butchers’ stalls.150 Six of these are noted elsewhere in the Boroughrecords as butchers and four of them lived in Weekday Cross, Fletcher Gate andCastle Gate. Another, Robert Hunter, who rented two stalls, may be the same
Robert Hunter who was appointed as the mayor’s cook in 1557-58 so he wasinvolved in both the production and consumption of meat.151 The trade of Richard
Fish is not known. The remaining seven, however, are not found in any otherborough records. In 1577-78 the butchers presented a set of rules to the Council
intended to control their trade and two of the clauses specifically mention‘cuntrye’ butchers.152 In the same year, the Mickletorn jury called for a cover atthe end of the Shambles ‘for the bucschers of the co[n]tre that they may stand drye
vpon the Sayterdayes’.153 It is possible that the Weekday Market, which as its
name suggests, traded everyday except Saturday, was used by local, Nottingham
butchers while the shambles in the Saturday Market was at least partly tenantedby men from the county who came to town to trade, some standing outside andsome renting more permanent stalls. They must have been attracted to the town
because of the demand created by its increasing population.
149

NA CA 4570; TNA E179/159/123.
NA CA 7449.
151
Stevenson, ‘Appendix’, IV, p.417.
152
NA CA 4608.
153
NA CA 3014.
150

49

The rental received from the lease of market stalls is a useful indicator of the sizeof the market and also of changes in the town economy. The Chamberlains’accounts for 1435 record a Flesh House (the shambles) of sixteen bays, givingroom for thirty-two stalls which cost 4s 6d plus a penny for the king each year. To
the north of the Flesh House were ten bays for ten ‘fish boards’ which included aboard for the fishmonger’s servant to stand on, at a cost of 2s per year. There werea further ten bays or twenty stalls in the Drapery at 4s plus a penny for the king,and the account also mentions booths for corvisers and glovers, but the quantity
and rental value is not stated. In between these buildings were another sevenbooths with rents between 2s and 5s.154 By 1461-62, the rent of the butchers’ stalls
had increased to 4s 11d, and in addition there were thirty mercery stalls, twosmiths’ stalls, two turners’ stalls and six ropers’ stalls. There were also ten
shoemakers’ stalls, but only eight fish stalls.155 Some of these stalls were covered:
7s was paid in 1486 to tile the shoemaker’s booths and by 1499-1500 there wereeight covered and six uncovered fish stalls bringing rents of 2s and 1s
respectively.156
These rent increases and improved stalls imply an expansion to the market atroughly the same time as money was being invested into new tenements in the1470s and 1480s. By the end of the century, however, in the same way that houses
lacked tenants so too did market stalls. In 1499-1500, twelve of the butchers’
stalls were in decay ‘for want of tenant’, which resulted in rent reductions.157 The
chamberlains’ accounts for 1531 show that the rent of the thirty mercers’ stalls

154

NA CA 4448.
NA CA 1660a.
156
NA CA 1603, 1660c
157
NA CA 1660c.
155

50

reduced from 4s 3d each in 1499-1500 to 3s 3d and the uncovered fish stalls fell
from 12d to 6d. Nine corvisers’ stalls were now rented for 3s 4d compared to six
stalls at 4s 8d and one stall at 5s 4d in 1499-1500.158 The cheaper rents must havebeen an attempt to attract more traders at a time when, as discussed above, thetown was showing signs of economic depression and was experiencing a reduced
population.
The same account reports the loss of rents on two shops and four stalls because
they had been leased to burgesses in repayment for money loaned to thecorporation for a period of years which had not yet expired.159 This implies someshortfall in the town’s income, which may have been caused by an expensive legal
suit against Thomas Mapperley over the ownership of town land known as
Cornerwong, finally resolved in 1485.160
Most of the later sets of chamberlains’ rentals give little additional detail, but thestallage list or rental of 1558-59 mentioned earlier provides not just the number
and cost of stalls, but also the names of the people who rented them.161 In the
Spice Chamber, which in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries had beencalled the Mercery, there were twenty-six stalls, four less than previously rented
out, but three of these must have been larger than the others because they broughtin 5s rather than 3s 4d. The Chamber seems to have been divided into two areas,
one part being assigned to eleven glovers’ stalls. Two of these were rented toReginald Richardson but the remainder of the tenants took only one stall each.

158

NA CA 2166.
NA CA 1660c.
160
NA CA 1602 for costs; NA CA 4524, 4525, Stevenson, II, pp.398-400 for Award of
Arbitrators.
161
NA CA 7449.
159

51

Three are known to be glovers but one, Edward Samon, was the son of Anthony
Samon of Annesley Woodhouse and his tenancy is more likely to have been an
investment rather than his occupation. The occupations of the other tenants are
unknown.
The stalls in the other part of the Spice Chamber are not assigned to specificgoods, but some of the tenants can be identified as mercers. One of the larger
stalls was rented by Master Atkinson, who was probably William Atkinson, a
mercer who was mayor in 1546-47 and 1558-59. Another large stall was rented byThomas Atkinson, possibly a relative, who was sheriff in 1564-65. The third large
stall was tenanted by Thomas Clerk, who may have been sheriff in 1559-60.
Another tenant, John Cost, must have been a descendant of either John Cost,
mercer, or John Cost, draper, both of whom lived in Nottingham at the end of the
fifteenth century. Richard Askew, a mercer, rented two stalls for a total of 6s 8d
and Henry, Humphrey and William Walker all rented a stall each (they may or
may not have been related).
Like the butcher, John Rose, mentioned earlier, it is unlikely that men who held
civic office, such as William Atkinson, worked on these stalls themselves. They
may have employed men to sell on their behalf, or even sub-let. This certainly
must have been the case with one stall rented to Nicholas Glossop, a shoemaker
who in 1556-57 also rented a shop adjoining the shambles.162 Two women rented
stalls in their own right, although again they probably employed others or sub-let.
One of these was Elizabeth Fisher who rented one of the mercers’ stalls; she may
have been the widow of Richard Fisher, a litster, in which case she was elderly,
162

NA CA 2170.

52

having been presented to the Sessions court in 1500-1 for buying malt in
Nottingham and selling it in Derby.163 The other was the unnamed wife (notwidow) of Athelstan Wood, who rented a glovers’ stall and must have operated inher own right.
In addition to the Spice Chamber there was the Drapery where ‘Master Coken’,
most likely Thomas Coughen, mayor in 1551-52 and 1559-60, rented a stall, andRobert Cocken or Coughen also had a stall here; both are recorded elsewhere as
drapers. Other known drapers with stalls in this building were Randall Glossop
and Thomas Barwell, but other tenants include Fabian Mellers, who also owned
an inn and Master Gregory, who may be John Gregory, mayor in 1561, although
he is listed by Stevenson as a tanner, not a draper.164 Finally, in addition to thebutchers’ stalls discussed above, five covered and five uncovered fishmongers
stalls were let, including two to Thomas Nix and one to William Nix, who weremembers of an established family of fishmongers.165
This analysis suggests that there were at least three types of stall holder. Some
traded directly from their own stalls, some were wealthy enough to employ others
to trade on their behalf and others, such as Anthony Samon or Nicholas Glossop,
were landlords, living off the income from sub-letting. Even more than property
ownership, these men are examples of commercial investors who lived off theincome of trade.
The converse of this commercial activity is highlighted in this analysis of stall
holders and market rents when the number of untenanted stalls is considered.
163

NA CA 10a.
Stevenson, ‘Appendix’, IV, p.419.
165
Other family members include Edward, John and Leonard, all fishmongers.
164

53

Following the lists of stall holders and rents they owed is a list of ‘decays’. Thisshows that £3 7s 1d was lost on four uncovered and two covered fish stalls andeleven butchers’ stalls, a further 20s for six stalls in the Spice Chamber and 52s
for thirteen Drapery stalls, or a total of £6 19s 1d, which is 38 per cent of the total
potential income and a significant sum.
In addition to the permanent stalls in the market buildings, there were thirty-two
stalls or pitches in the market place; in 1556-57 the potential income is given as£8 for thirty-two stalls at 5s each.166 Individual tenants are not listed so these stalls
were probably let on a casual basis to anyone coming to trade in the SaturdayMarket and each year the chamberlains report rents ‘lost’ or paid to the sheriffs
for Goose Fair.167
Some of the people who traded at these stalls could have been the men and some
women that purchased a licence to trade in the town, who are listed in the Mayor’s
rolls and books between 1414 and 1510. They followed a range of occupations
typically found in Nottingham (see Chapter Three), including baker, cordwainer,
tailor, tippler and weaver. Several women traded in this way, working as weavers,
seamstresses and tipplers, although one, Agnes Woodwall is listed as a barber.168
Until 1463 the amounts paid for licences ranged between 4d and 40d, women
generally paying at the lower end. After 1467 the cost of a licence became
cheaper, the most expensive being 2s in 1499 and only 1s in 1500, and the lowest
amount paid was 2d in both 1500 and 1510.169 The number of registered traders

166

NA CA 2170.
for example NA CA 1607, 7449.
168
NA CA 3350.
169
NA CA 4547, 3351, 3354.
167

54

also reduced from sixty-six in 1478 to twenty-two in 1510, in line with the
reductions in rent for market stalls and shops seen at this time.170
The 1558-59 stallage list, which breaks down the receipts for the market pitches
into week-by-week and quarterly sums, shows the degree to which the market wasunder used in this mid-century period. Rather than the £2 per quarter that was
expected, in 1558-59 the quarterly receipts wereMichaelmas
Christmas
Lady Day
Midsummer
Total

21s 10½d
20s 1½d
19s 11 d
21s 8½d£4 3s 7½d

or just over half what might have been expected. The loss in income of just under
50 per cent is rather more than, but consistent with, the lost rent from the lease ofstalls noted above. The income received though is an improvement on 1537-38
when a total of only £2 11s 11½d was recorded.171 This not only testifies to theeconomic problems of the earlier sixteenth century but suggests that the economic
upturn of the later sixteenth century had begun.
After 1558-59 there are further signs of improvement. In 1573-74, the rent of two
fishers’ stalls was revalued to 5s each increasing potential income to 22s but
otherwise the rental values remained the same.172 Decays, on the other hand, wereapparently diminishing. In 1568-69, although six uncovered and eight covered
fishers’ stalls and thirty-two butchers’ stalls were said to be in decay, the costs
were only 6d, 8d and 2s 8d respectively, that is 1d per year per stall. These losses
may actually be a nominal ‘decay’ paid to the sheriffs for Goose Fair; the same170

NA CA 3350, 3354.
NA CA 1609.
172
NA CA 2171.
171

55

list includes claims for 2s 5d and 14d for twenty-nine and fourteen stalls
respectively that ‘Master Sheriff had’.173 Further improvements in rental income
are shown in 1571-72 when the chamberlains’ account records only one fisher’s
stall in decay for 6d (half a year), a butcher’s stall in decay for 6d, three stalls in
the Spice Chamber in decay for 10s, and seven stalls in decay for 28s, an overallloss of 39s or approximately a quarter of the loss of thirteen years earlier.174
The same recovery can be seen in civic investment in the market. The SpiceChamber, Drapery and Shambles were permanent structures which, despite poorrents, were maintained and kept secure by the town chamberlains. In 1484-85, 1s
8½d was paid for tiles, lime and labour for the Mercery and 4d was paid for ironbands for the door between the Drapery and the Shambles, suggesting they wereinterconnecting buildings.175 In 1494-95, new fish boards were purchased and theDrapery was thatched, a carpenter was employed to work on the Shambles, hooks
and locks were fitted to the door and the ‘pale’ or fence around the Drapery andShambles was repaired.176 Further proof that the market was improving is givenby the increased spend on the market buildings. In 1568-69, 10 pounds of iron
was purchased for repairing the clapper of the bell in the Spice Chamber, and 24
stones 5 pounds of lead were bought for a cover for the louver over the bell.177 In
1571-72 three-quarters of lime was bought to repair the Cheese Cross and 300
tiles were acquired at a cost of 5s 1d for the Spice Chamber, which was tiled and173

NA CA 1611.
NA CA 1612.
175
NA CA 1602.
176
NA CA 1604.
177
NA CA 1611.
174

56

pointed for 5s 8d while its door, and the door to the shambles, were yet again
repaired and new hasps and staples attached.178
The request by the Mickletorn jury in 1577 for a cover at end of the shambles has
already been noted. Two years later the jurors asked that there should be somebylding mayde of the Tymbar Hill wythe the townes money and in
shorte tyme, by good p[ro]vesyon mayde, ye towne may reape a great
rente for the same and otha[r] plases as wel179
Such building was desirable to enhance the attraction of the town’s two annual
fairs, events which otherwise are rarely mentioned in the surviving town records.
This investment in the market spaces must have been in response to increased
demand from consumers for goods sold in the market and by traders for space inwhich to sell. The demand was a consequence of the growing population and amore prosperous economy. The value of civic investment in property was clearly
understood and exploited by the citizenry.
An interesting division within the Saturday Market was a wall which ran east to
west across the market place (see Map 1 above). It is first mentioned in 1530
when 8s was paid for pointing it.180 It has been suggested that this wall marked thedivision between the English and French boroughs, in which case it probably also
marked the division between the three parishes where they met in the SaturdayMarket.181 Speed’s map of 1610, however, marks the northern side of the wall as
being the corn market and Deering notes that in the mid-eighteenth century timber
and animals were sold to the south and grain, food, hardware and other178

NA CA 1612.
NA CA 3015.
180
NA CA 1608.
181
S N Mastoris, ‘The Boundary Between the English and French Boroughs of Medieval
Nottingham: A Documentary Survey’ Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 85 (1981), p.68.
179

57

commodities to the north.182 There are no firm definitions of this space in earlier
records but a Mickletorn presentment for 1589 notes that the corn market was so‘thronnge’ (crowded) that ‘Biers cannot passe threw’ and another notes that there
was a ‘beestmarket’ there,183 so it seems likely that Speed’s divisions applied atleast twenty years before he drew his map. Adjacent to the large Saturday market
was the Woman’s market where, as the street names – Hen Cross, Cheese Cross
and The Poultry – suggest, dairy products and poultry were sold.184
The configuration of Nottingham’s market spaces is consistent with evidence
found in other medieval and early modern towns. Graham Jones claims that thelarger a town the more market places it was likely to have, and these were
probably differentiated by both shape and the products sold there.185 Weekday
Cross and the adjacent streets of Middle Hill and High Pavement described aroughly triangular or a funnel shape, which Jones argues was associated withlivestock sales as the shape helped with herding animals and must have facilitatedmoving bulls into the bull ring if not into the market. Rectangular market places,such as found in Norwich and Loughborough, dealt in a mix of products and, as
Map 1 shows, Nottingham’s Saturday Market is almost rectangular and a great
range of products passed over its pitches, stalls and booths. The west side of theSaturday Market where it joins with Chapel Bar is, however, also a funnel shape.
If livestock were sold to the south of the market wall, again this funnel would help
control the flow. The sale of dairy products, according to Jones, was focused oncrosses surrounded by a circulation space, which seems to have been the case in
182

Deering, Nottinghamia, p.7.
NA CA 51b.
184
Stevenson, ‘Appendix’, III, pp.469, 472 & 479.
185
G Jones, ‘The Market Place: Form, Location and Antecedents’, in S Pinches, M Whalley and D
Postles, The Market Place and the Place of the Market (Leicester, 2004), p.3.
183

58

the Women’s market though they were perhaps hemmed in by the morepermanent market buildings close by.
Other trading places
Goods were sold in more places than just the markets. Some trading took place inprivate houses. In 1525 Thomas Derbyshire, William Worsley, George Hall andThomas Sherwood were presented to the Sessions court for ‘keeping markets’(that is, selling goods) in their homes. 186 Derbyshire, Worsley and Hall all lived in
Chapel Bar, one of the main routes into the Saturday Market. The occupations of
Worsley and Hall are not known, but Derbyshire is described as a minstrel andSherwood as an inn holder, so they must have indulged in a little side-trading as
well.187
There were also several shops listed in the chamberlains’ accounts and rentals
although, as with the butchers’ shops mentioned above, the term may indicate
permanent market stalls rather than spaces set aside for selling within houses orother buildings. In 1446, a grant of property to John Dorham enrolled in the
Borough Court mentioned five shops. Three were granted to him: two shops on
Smithy Row and one in the ‘Flesh Shambles’ in Weekday Market between shops
owned by Margaret Eastwood and Thomas Sutton of Mansfield.188 The proximity
to the markets calls into doubt whether these were shops or stalls. Robert Bercroft
was granted the ‘farm’ of a shop near the Drapery in 1452, again this may refer toa stall.189 John Flint leased a shop in the Shoemakers’ Booths for ten years
beginning in 1494 and in the same year a shop in the Saturday Market was let for
186

NA CA 26b.
NA CA 1384, 1392.
188
Foulds online CA 1336.
189
NA CA 4448, 4458, Stevenson, II, pp.362 & 409.
187

59

twenty years to John Pierson for £6 13s 4d.190 The same John, or possibly his son,still rented this shop in 1531 for 3s 4d annual rent. The 1499-1500 Chamberlains’accounts list a further three shops, all near the ‘butchers’ house’.191
On the other hand, there were some shops not associated with the market. In 1483,
Henry Champagne, a shoemaker was presented to the Sessions court forencouraging townspeople to make fraudulent wagers over shooting arrows acrossthe Leen from the front of his shop.192 In 1531 Sir Richard Trowell paid thechamberlains for a counter and bay window in St Peter’s Lane.193 Sir Richard ismost likely to have been the chaplain of St Mary’s Guild at St Peter’s Church,where he was also churchwarden, although Stevenson indexes him as ‘knight’.194
Either way, it is unlikely he traded directly, but probably sub-let. Four years later,
John Sladen, inn holder, took a lease for sixty years on void ground near
Bridlesmith Gate on which he undertook to build a shop with a chamber over it.195
Fifteen years later he rented this shop for 8d and the same accounts list a shop
against the Cheese Cross.196 Margery Mellers’ will of 1539 includes the bequestof ‘my shop and shops’ to John English, Nicholas English and Humphrey Bird. 197
These were, though, not the only shops in town. The Guild of St Mary at St
Peter’s Church, for example, owned a shop rented in 1515-16 by a Richard Smith,although which Richard is impossible to say.198

190

NA CA 1604.
NA CA 1660c.
192
NA CA 3.
193
NA CA 2166.
194
NA PR 21599; Stevenson, III, index.
195
NA CA 4875b, Stevenson, III, p.443.
196
NA CA 2167.
197
NA CA 4771.
198
NA PR 21599.
191

60

By 1576-77 thirteen shops are listed in the town rental, at least six of which do notappear in earlier rental lists. Christopher Basford, gentleman, rented a newly built
shop at the south end of the Weekday shambles and Anthony Heywood rented ashop which had formerly been the tollbooth at the Drapery. Robert Stanley, analderman, rented a shoemaker’s shop with a chamber over to the west of the
Drapery, Robert Sye was the tenant of two shops and a stables on the Saturday
market and Widow Jepson held a shop in Narrow Marsh.199 These new shops
were appearing at the same time that new tenements were being built and themarkets were showing signs of greater prosperity. Like market stall holders, someof the shop holders, like Christopher Basford, Robert Stanley and Robert Sye,
probably lived off the profits of trade or by sub-letting to others, rather than
trading in their own right. At the same time, landlords – whether the town or
private individuals like John Sladen – were taking advantage of a rising demand
for trading space and investing in new or improving old property, which are inthemselves indications of a changing economic environment.
The Guild Hall
Nottingham’s Guild Hall was located on Weekday Cross, near the Weekday
Market. It was here that the town’s business was conducted. Nottingham’s Charterof Incorporation granted in 1449 gave the burgesses the right to hold a Court in
the Guild Hall to hear plaints of debt, breach of covenant, trespass and otheroffenses, but this was a simple confirmation of existing practice for the BoroughCourt.200 It was in the Guild Hall that the chamberlains made their account of thetown’s finances to the burgesses, and where the assessment of goods for taxation

199
200

NA CA 2172.
Charter of Henry VI, Stevenson, II, p.194-95.

61

purposes was made.201 The Guild Hall was moreover the town’s prison. In 146364, a new padlock was purchased for the prison door at the same time as the gableend of the Hall was re-dawbed.202 It was also the place where, in 1597-98, theburgesses met to protest against the terms of the lease of the Tithe Hay, a meeting
which was foiled by the Council.203 The Guild Hall, then, was a communal space,
where burgesses participated in the government of the town and the seat of law
and justice.
In 1478-79, the Guild Hall was rebuilt or at least significantly modified, work
which required twelve carpenters who were supervised by twenty burgesses
including all the aldermen and several common councillors.204 Though an
expression of civic pride, this rebuild was also a commercial investment which
included the three tenements and tavern already mentioned together with a room
variously referred to as a parlour, shop or house. Given its location so close to the
Weekday Market, these were probably sound investments.
The parlour (parlorae) was rented to John Cragg in 1499-1500 for 10s.205 He wasa tippler, so probably sold beer from here, in which case the parlour may havebeen the tavern mentioned earlier.206 In 1549, the shop and tavern under theCouncil House were let on a twenty-one year lease to John English, mercer,207
who was probably the grandson of Robert English whose property had borderedthe vacant land on which the tavern had been built eighty years earlier.208 In 1556-

201

NA CA 3351, 4736.
NA CA 1601.
203
NA CA 3376.
204
NA CA 3350.
205
NA CA 1660c.
206
NA CA 3350.
207
NA CA 4878; Stretton MS XXX, Stevenson, IV, p.395.
208
NA CA 2168, 4513, Stevenson, II, p.306.
202

62

57 the same shop and tavern were leased to Robert Peverell, a surgeon, and fifteen
years later, William Stanshall, a butcher, rented the tavern.209 Stanshall also rented
a butchers stall in the Saturday Market, and like Robert Hunter, the cook
mentioned above, is another example of entrepreneurial activity within
Nottingham’s tradesmen, investing in both food production and its retail sale,
either as a raw product or finished dishes.210
In 1552-53, Ralph Bamforth, a tailor, rented a house and tavern ‘under thearmoury’ which, it seems, was also part of the Guild Hall.211 It is impossible tosay how much armour the town possessed but in 1557-58, John Sheperd was paid
6s 8d for ‘dressing’ the town’s harness and John Locksmith received twice thatamount in 1571-92. 212 Nottingham certainly owned a quantity of gun powder,used in celebrations and for scaring the birds in the fields, if not for warlike
activity.213 Finally, in 1576-77, the Wardens of the Tanners rented the house over
the tavern ‘being now the lether hall’. 214 This lease reflects the increasing
importance of tanning and leatherworking within Nottingham which is discussed
in Chapter Three. Whether the house, shop and parlour were the same space or not
is open to question but it seems likely to be the case, illustrating how flexible the
Guild Hall could be.
The Guild Hall had many functions. As was fitting for a town where markets andother trading activities were so important, it contributed to the rental income of
the town and it was also the place where the town’s weapons were kept. More209

NA CA 2169, 2170, 2171.
NA CA 4779.
211
NA CA 2169.
212
NA CA 1610, 1612.
213
NA CA 1613.
214
NA CA 2172.
210

63

importantly, though, it was the place where law was dispensed, decisions reachedand public announcements made. Its location on the border of the town’s twoboroughs was unlikely to be co-incidental and probably had great significance tothe town’s burgesses and Nottingham’s civic identity.
Common Land
Although the definition of a large town is that it has a range of occupations notdependant on agriculture, no medieval town was completely unconnected to farms
and farming. Men such as William Hegyn, mentioned above, owned farm land as
well as tenements in the town, which they leased in return for rental. The town
also owned much farm land managed for the benefit of its burgesses. As Map 2shows, beyond the town boundaries was a complex of communal lands
comprising fields, meadows, wood and coppice lying to the north and south of thetown.
Some of the land was farmed communally; the chamberlains’ accounts record thecost of labour and materials devoted to constructing and maintaining the hedges of
the Lammas fields which were partitioned for only part of the year, and to otherhedges and fences including the ‘long hedge’ which marked the boundary
between Nottingham and Sneinton.215 In 1463-64, 13s 6d was spent on twenty
man-days labour to hedge the wood, Eppersteynor216 and East Croft and a further
14s 4d for willows and ‘tinsel’ to make the hedges, while 16s 2d paid formaterials and carriage to make fences and ‘barreours’ [gates?].217

215

NA CA 1607.
probably near Trent Bridge, Stevenson, ‘Appendix’, II, p.438.
217
NA CA 1601.
216

64

Map 2: the common fields of Nottingham c.1400-1600218

218

This map is based on Richard Bank’s map of Sherwood Forest dated 1609 and is not to scale.

65

Similar payments are found in all the chamberlains’ account books; in 1494-95 forexample, there was more hedging at Eppersteynor and the lane to the coppice was
repaired and a new gate made.219 In 1568, whips and thorns were gathered forhedging at East Croft and the dyke in West Croft was repaired.220
Some of the labour may have been provided voluntarily by burgesses as in 1494
the chamberlains’ accounts show that bread, herring and ale was provided for‘boners’ [booners] working on Eppersteynor.221 This communal work continued
in the sixteenth century as the chamberlains’ accounts for 1571-72 record 4d paid
for bread and ale for the ‘common work’ at Butter Cross, indicating a continuityof traditional practices of communal work. 222
Much of the land was, nevertheless, ‘farmed’ or leased to individuals. The rentalof 1435 shows that Herbred Stener223 was leased to John Manchester senior forten years for £3 a year, John to fence it at his own cost. The same rental lists Little
Steynor, Rye Hill, Ingald Steynor and Nomans Part as all being leased for a year
for amounts ranging from 5s to 13s 4d.224 By 1499-1500 Hethbethsteynor wasleased to Richard Pykerd, then a common councillor but later mayor, for the sameannual sum of £3, and another steynor, possibly Little Steynor, was leased toWilliam Mascury for nineteen years for £4.225 Katherine Pykard, Richard’s
widow, was, in 1511, granted a lease of twenty-one years for ‘common groundand pasture called ‘The Water Wessh nere Samon’s Pasture’ paying 15s per year,219

NA CA 1604.
NA CA 1611.
221
NA CA 1604.
222
NA CA 1612.
223
probably Hethbethsteynor, a gravelly area near Trent Bridge, Stevenson, ‘Appendix’, II,
pp.439, 470-71.
224
NA CA 4448, Stevenson, II, p.356.
225
NA CA 1660.
220

66

provided she allowed free passage to burgesses’ cattle.226 The following year she
was fined for ‘dryvyng gret substance of catell of neette, kye and shepe thoro oure
medo, eyting our gresse, to the gret hurtte of owre medo and newsan[ce] to vsall’.227
In the mid-1480s, St George’s Guild benefited from the rent of a property called‘Ingersteynor’ which had been granted to the Guild by the Council for an
unknown period of years. This property first appeared in the Guild accounts in
1488-1489, but, as the previous two years’ accounts are missing it may have comeinto the Guild’s possession slightly earlier; it was no longer on the books in 1508.
The Guild accounts note that its ‘treasury’ contained an indenture for £21 loaned
to the Council. The inference is that Ingersteynor was leased in return for the loan,
so the length of the agreement could well have been twenty-one years or year foreach £1 of the loan.228 The Guild sub-let the land for 36s 8d per year rising to 40s
in 1497, so it got a good return on its money. The date of this loan coincides withthe lease of shops and stalls in return for loans to the Council, discussed above,and it is likely that this grant was part of the same money-raising exercise to covershort-falls in other income and the cost of the legal suit against Thomas
Mapperley.
The town’s meadows known as East and West Croft together with a small area
called the Hook were to the south of the Leen. In 1435 East Croft was ‘farmed’ toJohn Castle, John Lovot and John Fossebrook, for ten years for 14 marks while
West Croft was divided into four parts, each bringing 20s. Later these areas were226

NA CA 1383b, 4565, Stevenson, III, pp.438-39.
NA CA 3012.
228
NA PR 21599.
227

67

divided into burgess parts and the crops leased. In 1499-1500 the first crop of East
Croft brought £7 16s 8d and the second crop 45s 3d, and the lease of the pasturageof West Croft was worth £4. The same account also notes that 44s 2d was lostfrom the farm or lease of the crop of two and half parts of Eastcroft (ij partium etdimidiae in le Hoke de Estcroft) for lack of tenants and that a further 6s 6d had tobe ‘allowed’ to the chamberlains’ because Robert Tull, a husbandman, and Ralph
Pykard had been ‘visited with infirmities’ and were unable to work.229
Despite the lack of tenants at the beginning of the century, by 1531 East Croft was
divided into ten parts, each paying 15s for the first crop and lesser amounts for thesecond and third crop.230 This arrangement was reversed in 1552 when theCouncil ordered that East and West Croft should both be divided into four parts,
with four burgesses sharing each part.231 By 1573-74 East Croft was again divided
into ten parts, each occupied by three burgesses, but West Croft remained divided
into four, so a total of forty-four burgesses tenanted these meadows.232 Of these
forty-four, nine were widows of burgesses who had inherited their husband’s
burgess privileges. They include Widow Coughyn, most likely the widow ofRobert Coughen who had been sheriff in the 1560s. Widow Hasilrig was probably
the widow of Robert Hasilrig, mayor and Calais Staple merchant. Widow
Atkinson may have been Johanna or Joan Atkinson who lived on High Pavement
and paid 8s tax on lands to the lay subsidy of 1571.233 The other widows –Sybthorp, Goodwin, Wilson, Millington, Katherins and Cowper – could all berelicts of men whose names appear regularly in town records, at least as members
229

NA CA 1660.
NA CA 2166.
231
NA CA 3358.
232
NA CA 2171.
233
TNA E179/160/208.
230

68

of one of the town’s many juries, but often as sheriff or chamberlain. Like thewidows and wives who held market stalls, they most likely sub-let this land rather
than farmed it themselves.
As well as land, the town possessed a common bull which was over-wintered,possibly at Newark, at a cost of 3s 8d in 1503-4.234 Burgesses were allowed tokeep eight beasts in the common fields, although this was abused from time totime; Alderman Burton, for example, had fourteen in 1577.235 In 1432, Isabella
Barrett, wife of John Barrett, a butcher, was engaged to drive the cattle ‘of thetown of Nottingham’ to pasture but was not paid the 21d agreed. 236 Townspeople
also kept pigs: in 1410 Gilbert de Lamley’s herb garden was destroyed by John deColston’s pigs, there were pigsties in Malin Hill, Hollowstone and ‘the rock’ andin 1589 the vicars of Nottingham’s three parish churches were exhorted to eachkeep a boar for the benefit of the town. 237 The sixteenth-century Hall books
record the appointment of a neat (cow) herd, a swine herd, a pinder to managestrays, a woodward and a keeper of the meadows, though they might be known byother names.238 Thomas Parker was engaged as Keeper of the Sown Fields andWoods for which he received 15s in 1499-1500 for three quarters of a year. He
died part-way through the year and Milo Page was paid 5s for the remaining
quarter. In the same year John Catterick, who was the Keeper of the Meadows andFences received £2 and a gown worth 5s.239 Clearly, whatever the economic
position of the town, there was a considerable connection with the surrounding234

for example NA CA 1601.
NA CA 3014.
236
Foulds online CA 1323.
237
NA CA 3011, 3018; CA 4448, Stevenson, II, p.355; Foulds online CA 1306/I.
238
for example NA CA 3360, 3361.
239
NA CA 1660.
235

69

agricultural areas which continued throughout both centuries, and common land
was still in demand at the end of the sixteenth century.
It was suggested above that the many migrants arriving in Nottingham in the last
fifty years of the sixteenth century caused the town to expand northwards, but that
there were no indications of significant overcrowding in the streets. This is not thecase for common land and there were many complaints that there was insufficientcommon land to be shared around the increasingly large number of burgesses. The
division of East and West Croft, discussed above, was probably a consequence ofgreater demand from burgesses for a share of the common meadow. One solution
was for leased land to be recouped. In 1577 the Mickletorn Jury found that Master
Newton’s lease on West Steynor was void and recommended that the ‘pore
Bordgesses may have it for a cowe pastur’; they also asked for no more ‘foreign’burgesses, unless they paid £10 because there were already so many that the ‘pore
Burdgesses co[m]mons is eatten up’ and that any burgess not using his ‘part’ in
East or West Croft sub-let it to a burgess not a foreigner.240 Ten years later thesame jury requested that no foreigners should be allowed to have commons in thefields or meadows and six months after that presented Alderman Gregory for subletting his part of the last crop of East Croft to foreigners and for supporting aforeigner who wanted to enclose part of the open field to make a Lammas
close.241 These ‘foreigners’ were not the poverty-stricken vagabonds that
motivated national legislation to control vagrants, but men who entered the town
to trade as burgesses, or even wealthier men such as those listed in the 1599
subsidy return described in the next chapter, who owned land but did not take on

240
241

NA CA 3014.
NA CA 3016, 3017.

70

burgess responsibilities.242 The many presentments show a sympathy with theplight of poor burgesses, similar to that identified by Archer in his investigationsof London substructures.243 They were also the spur to burgesses to call forreforms to the composition of the Council, which are discussed in Chapter Seven.
Conclusion
This chapter, which addresses the first and second of the research questions, hasprovided many examples of the effect of economic change in Nottingham. These
indicate both a general pattern of economic decline followed by recovery andexpansion, and some, perhaps more local, fluctuations. The most clear indicator isperhaps market rentals. These increased in the first half of the fifteenth century,
when there was also some investment in the market as stalls were covered or tiled.
The latter part of the century and the early part of the sixteenth century, thoughshow a declining market when rents were reduced, particularly for mercers,
corvisers and fishmongers, and there were few tenants for butchers’ stalls. A
regional factor at this time was the strategy employed by the Council to fund theexpensive legal suit against Thomas Mapperley which led it to grant long leases in
return for loans and so reduced its annual income. In the later sixteenth century,
however, not only did rents begin to increase, but there were fewer, if any,
decayed rents and improvements were made to the market area which, in 1589-90,
was reported to be crowded.244
Demographic changes also had some consequences for the fabric of the town.
Rents of tenements and other housing follow a similar pattern to that shown by
242

TNA E179/160/249.
I W Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan England (Cambridge,1991), p.51.
244
NA CA 51b.
243

71

stall rentals, with some investment in new property in the 1480s, followed byreports of lost rents, insufficient tenants, and property in disrepair, which
eventually led to the re-edification statute of 1535-36. These depletions meant thatduring the fifteenth century the town had many vacant spaces, especially on its
boundaries. Investment in building until the end of the sixteenth century wasconcentrated into the central areas of the town, while the peripheries were vacantand in decay. Even the increase in population from the mid-sixteenth century
seems to have only resulted in in-filling in the central areas and some of the backlanes, with a small expansion to the north towards the end of the century.
The effect of population growth on the demand for common land, though, wasmore serious and, moreover, did not come from paupers and unskilled workers,
but from men with sufficient means to become burgesses. It resulted in subdivisions of meadowland, calls to recoup leased land, the condemnation of subletting to ‘foreigners’ and a growing tension between the Council and burgesses.
Most of these changes were gradual readjustments in response to market demands.
After 1570, though, the problems of in-migration and its consequences forcommon land appear in the records with increased frequency which may reflect
the speed of population growth that is the subject of the next chapter.
Some continuities have also been identified; residential patterns appear to beunaltered throughout both centuries, centring on the different uses of the market
places. The importance of agricultural land to a significant part of the community
is another consistent feature, as is the presence of men, and a few women, whoinvested in property, sometimes to the detriment of the burgess community.
Protests from this community suggest a tension between the needs of the less72

prosperous burgesses and the strategy employed by the Council to manage
communal land. This subject will be discussed in more detail in Part II.

73

Chapter Two: Population and wealth
Population change and personal wealth are two key measures used in the debate
concerning the decay or decline of towns in the later medieval period. The
ultimate cause of economic decline both for towns and individuals was, according
to R B Dobson the result of demographic attrition.245 The converse of Dobson’sargument, made by A R Bridbury and others, is that increases in taxable wealthperceived in the 1524-25 lay subsidy are evidence of individual wealth and an
expanding economy.246 Some of the implications of fluctuations in population
size (combined with economic change) such as the contraction and expansion of
the built-up areas, rent reductions and increases, and demands for common land,
were raised in the previous Chapter. This Chapter investigates the details of
population change, not just in terms of absolute numbers but also in comparison toother towns.
Estimates of population size are often based on tax returns, so it is also possible
assess personal affluence. Wealth was an important indicator of an individual’s
status within a town because, as Susan Reynolds points out, in a highly stratified
society ‘the rich had a duty to rule’.247 As well as carrying obligations, wealthprovided town governors with the opportunity to rule. Wealthy men, who wereable to employ agents to work on their behalf, had the time and financial

245

R B Dobson, ‘Urban Decline in Late Medieval England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, fifth series, 27 (1977).
246
A R Bridbury, ‘English Provincial Towns in the Later Middle Ages’, Economic History
Review, second series, 34:1 (1981).
247
S Reynolds, ‘Medieval Urban History and the History of Political Thought’, in S Reynolds,
Ideas and Solidarities of the Medieval Laity: England and Western Europe (Aldershot, 1995),
p.11.

74

resources to become community leaders.248 In return for this almost unpaid work
they were accorded some status as holding civic office brought with it somethingof the standing of county gentry.249 Another of the historiographic arguments isthat the later sixteenth century saw an increasingly wide social gap between therich and poor which became one of the contributing factors in social unrest.250
This chapter looks for evidence of affluence, or its opposite poverty, and assesses
the depth and social implications of any gap.
Population trends
Research on national trends of population change suggest that there was a slow
growth between 1377 and 1546 of 0.15 per cent per year, although as E A
Wrigley acknowledges, ‘Most scholars ... believe that the population was stagnant
until well into the fifteenth century’ with some suggesting the 1480s as a turning
point and some the 1510s, although Wrigley himself seems to favour the later
date.251 There must, however, have been fluctuations in this trend. As mentioned
in Chapter One, there seems to have been some increased demand for urban landat the beginning of the fifteenth century, albeit a rather short-lived one.
There are no accurate measures of either population or communal and individual
wealth for Nottingham, or most other towns, in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, but it is possible to make estimates. Exact population figures are hard to
calculate but some estimates have been made using the 1377 poll tax and 1524-25
248

T H Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977), p.306; R H
Britnell, ‘Sedentary Long-distance Trade and the English Merchant Class in Thirteenth-Century
England’, in P R Cross and S D Lloyd (eds) Proceedings of the Newcastle upon Tyne Conference
1993 (Woodbridge, 1995), pp.131 &133.
249
A L Brown, The Governance of late Medieval England, 1271-1461 (Stanford, 1989), p.126.
250
for example, R Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns in England: Politics and Political
Culture c.1540-1640 (Oxford, 1998), p.13.
251
E A Wrigley and R S Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541-1871: A
Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1981), p.566.

75

lay subsidy rolls. In 1377 Nottingham had 1,447 tax payers so that, using a
multiplier of 1.9, Alan Dyer has estimated a population of 2,749.252 Dyer has also
calculated the population of Nottingham using the 1524-25 subsidy based on 295
tax payers.253 Under assessment of this subsidy was common in the northMidlands, and there is evidence that about one-third of households in towns likenearby Leicester or, further afield, Norwich were omitted.254 To allow for thisunder assessment, Dyer has suggested that ‘a multiplier of 6.0-7.0 would probably
be about right in many cases’ which produces a population for Nottingham of
1,918, a figure he later adjusted to 2,220.255
The 1510s and 1520s have been identified as times of ‘crisis’. The years 1518-25
are described by Charles Phythian-Adams as having a particularly high mortality
rate which resulted in the population of Coventry falling by at least 15 per centbetween 1520 and 1523.256 David Palliser notes a similar decline in the populationof York hastened by epidemics in the early 1520s.257 In Nottingham, in addition toevidence from vacant property due to lack of tenants, discussed in Chapter One,
there is some circumstantial evidence to support the idea of a higher than normal
mortality rate in the early part of the sixteenth century which may account for252

A Dyer, Decline and Growth in English Towns 1400-1640 (Basingstoke, 1991), pp.64-5 &
p.74.
253
This figure is incorrect and should be either 296 or 298 depending which version of the tax rollis used; see below.
254
A Dyer, ‘Appendix: Ranking Lists of English Medieval Towns’, in D M Palliser (ed),Cambridge Urban History of Britain, I, 600-1540 (Cambridge, 2000), p.763; W G Hoskins,‘English Provincial Towns in the Early Sixteenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, fifth series, 6 (1956), p.17 republished in P Clark (ed), The Early Modern Town: A Reader(London, 1976), p.101; S Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns(Oxford, 1977), p.161.
255
Dyer, ‘Appendix’, p.764; Dyer, Decline and Growth, p.74; A Dyer, ‘“Urban decline” inEngland, 1377-1525’, in T R Slater, (ed), Towns in Decline AD 1000-1600 (Aldershot, 2000),
p.275.
256
C Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle
Ages (Cambridge, 1979), pp.52-57 & 190.
257
D M Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), p.212.

76

population decrease. David Marcombe reports that between 1517-22 there aretwenty-nine grants of probate surviving which is exceptionally high for the
town.258 The Borough court records provide supporting evidence for this; in 151819 the executors of eleven deceased burgesses appeared in the Borough court,
over twice the usual average of five.259 Rather more tangentially, Nottingham’sCharter of Incorporation of 1449 appointed seven aldermen for life, one of whom
was to be mayor, so that the post cycled around the same group of men at roughly
six year intervals. In the first thirty or so years of the sixteenth century, however,with the exception of John Williamson, John Rose and Thomas Mellers, few men
held the post of mayor more than once, and in one case a newly appointed
alderman died before he had time to become mayor. This suggests a high level ofmortality at all levels of society that coincided with the economic problems
already raised. These two factors contributed to some instability in the mayoralty
and therefore local government, which will be discussed in Chapter Five. Sucharguments, of course, do not negate Dobson’s assertion of individual prosperity.
At the end of the sixteenth century, using parish registers of baptisms, marriages
and burials, it has been calculated that the population of Nottingham was 2,920 in
1580, 3,440 in 1590 and 3,080 by 1600.260 The apparent decline between 1590
and 1600 may have been a consequence of repeated outbreaks of plague. In April
1593 Edmund Garland and Michael Bell were both presented at the Sessions court
for lodging their sisters knowing that they had come from towns where there was
258

D Marcombe, ‘The Late Medieval Town, 1449-1560’, in J Beckett (ed) A Centenary History of
Nottingham, second edition (Chichester, 2006), p.84.
259
NA CA 1392; lesser figures appear in for example NA CA 1383 (1508) & 1384 (1512) which
list five; NA CA 1397 (1525) lists four.
260
A Henstock, S Dunster and S Wallwork, ‘Decline and Regeneration: Social and EconomicLife’, in J Beckett (ed) A Centenary History of Nottingham, second edition (Chichester, 2006),
p.134.

77

plague,261 while in July of that year sixteen men, including two alderman, acommon councillor, a former chamberlain and a future sheriff were presented at
the same court for leaving town ‘against their oath’.262 Again, the death rate
appears to be high, with nineteen suits brought to the Borough court by executors
in 1594-95 and a further nine in 1597-98.263
Even so, these figures may be an under-estimate as the Archiepiscopal Visitation
records for Nottingham show that there were 2,360 men and women over the ageof sixteen in 1603.264 Wrigley estimates that between a quarter and a fifth ofadults were omitted from this survey and a further 35 per cent must be added toallow for children under the age of sixteen.265 Based on these figures the
population of Nottingham in 1603 was between 3,823 and 3,903, or about 800
more than the estimates derived from parish records. This implies that the figuresfor 1580 and 1590 may also be higher, but there are no reliable sources on which
to base revised estimates. If the lower estimates based on parish registers aretaken, the population increase of about 50 per cent was similar to that found inother towns. York for example, increased from about 8,000 people in the midsixteenth century to 12,000 by the early seventeenth, and Warwick also increased
by about 50 per cent. Leicester, on the other hand, saw only a 19 per cent rise
between 1509 and 1600.266 If the higher figures are taken, however, Nottingham
expanded at a more rapid rate than other towns, nearly doubling its population inseventy-five years. As raised in Chapter One, this large increase in residents
261

NA CA 52a.
NA CA 52b.
263
NA CA 1428, 1430.
264
A C Wood (transcriber) ‘An Archiepiscopal Visitation of 1603’ Transactions of the Thoroton
Society, 46 (1942), p.4.
265
Wrigley, Population History, p.569.
266
P Clark and P Slack, ‘Introduction’, in P Clark and P Slack (eds), Crisis and Order in English
Towns 1500-1700: Essays in Urban History (London, 1972), p.17.
262

78

coincided with the development of the Saturday market and new building as the
economy expanded, but they also occur at a time when concerns about poor
burgesses and the lease of common lands were being expressed and some of thetown’s resources stretched.
These population figures mark the start of the fifteenth and the end of thesixteenth centuries with one mid-point estimate, but still leave large gaps
particularly for the fifteenth century. Documents held in the Nottinghamshire
Archive (NA) provide some indication of population trends. The first is a lay
subsidy roll for 1472-73 which comprises the names of 151 freeholders. The
second, dated between 1473 and 1479, lists 347 men and women who contributed
to a tax described in the NA catalogue as a ‘levy’.267 The purpose of the levy is
unknown because the top of the document is missing and as a result the headingand (by comparison with the surviving sheets) perhaps thirty names are lost. The
amounts collected are small, ranging from ½d to 3s 4d, so it may record a local
collection and, given the date, it is tempting to suggest that it was to raise money
for the new Guild Hall built in 1478-79. There are twenty-eight names whichappear in both documents, consequently the two documents together record 470
tax payers which, with the thirty missing names, gives a total of about 500
individuals. The levy is organised by street so each named person probably
represented a household, some of which were small: Alice Helmesley and
Johanna Holand, for example, are shown as paying 4½d between them. For thisreason, and because of the number of tax payers recorded, a multiplier of 5 rather
than 6.5 (as used by Dyer for the 1524-25 lay subsidy) seems more reasonable,
267

NA CA 4502, Stevenson, II, pp.285-96; NA CA 8019. The dating of this document relies on
the inclusion of Lady or Dame Johanna Thurland whose husband, Thomas, died in 1473. She diedin 1479.

79

giving a population of 2,500; a lower multiplier of 4.5 would give a population of
2,250. Both estimates are slightly higher than Dyer’s estimates for 1524-25 but
less than the 1377 figure and so indicate at best a stagnation, and at worst a
gradual decline in population from the end of the fifteenth century to the midsixteenth century, contrary to national trends (which include rural populations) but
in line with other urban centres.
There are, unfortunately, no subsidy assessments for the earlier fifteenth century,
and while tax records in the form of national subsidies do exist for the sixteenth
century, they are damaged, incomplete, or targeted at the wealthier citizens.268
Despite these documentary inadequacies the surviving data does give a range of
figures across the 200 years of this study.
Table I: Estimates of population between 1377 and 1604
Year

1377

1472-791524-25

1580

1590

1600-4

Population
estimate

2749

2250 -2500

1918-2220

2920+

3440+

3080-3903

National and local rankings by population size
One of the uses of population estimates is as simple measures to differentiate
between small and large towns. As Christopher Dyer asserts, there is ‘widespread
acceptance that the population level of 2,000 divided small towns from large’.269
Using this measure Nottingham has been classified as a large centre together witheven larger towns such as London, York and Southampton;270 although the more268

for example TNA E179/159/155 (1544); NA CA 4623 (1595).
C Dyer, ‘Small Places with Large Consequences: the Importance of Small Towns in England,
1000-1540’, Historical Research, 75:187 (2002), p.2.
270
Dyer, ‘Small places’, p.3.
269

80

detailed examination of its population above shows that at times it was close to
the borderline.
Population size has also been used by Alan Dyer to produce national rankings ofmedieval towns at different dates, and, together with other indicators, by Jane
Laughton, Evan Jones and Christopher Dyer to devise a regional urban hierarchy
for three East Midlands counties: Leicestershire, Northamptonshire andRutland.271 Such rankings are useful indices against which Nottingham can beplaced in national and regional contexts to gain a greater understanding of thetown’s importance, or otherwise, to the locality and the country. Although theseare static measures, taken at a particular moment dependent on available sources,changes in ranking over time are an indication of alterations in town status.
Nationally, Alan Dyer ranked Nottingham at twenty-ninth by population size in1377 but only fiftieth by 1524.272 In a similar ranking of forty-three large towns
by John Patten, Nottingham is ranked twenty-fifth in 1334, does not appear at all
in 1524-25, but is rated twenty-first in 1660-70. These positions confirm a general
pattern of population decline until the mid- to late-sixteenth century, followed byconsiderable growth which, as suggested above, may have exceeded thatexperienced in other towns.273
At a regional level, the viewpoint is slightly different. Although Nottingham is notincluded in the Laughton, Jones and Dyer survey, a comparison with the findingsof that project show that with 1,447 taxpayers in 1377 Nottingham would have

271

Dyer, ‘Appendix’, pp.747-70; J Laughton, E Jones and C Dyer, ‘The Urban Hierarchy in thelater Middle Ages: a Study of the East Midlands’, Urban History, 28, 3 (2001), pp.331-57.
272
Dyer, ‘Appendix’, pp.758 & 762.
273
J Patten, English Towns 1500-1700 (Folkestone, 1978), p.42.

81

been third behind Leicester with 2,380 people and Northampton, which was only
slightly larger, with 1,477 townsmen and women. By 1524-25 Northampton andLeicester had swapped places for first and second position but if Nottingham had
been included, its 296+ taxpayers would again have ranked it third above
Stamford’s 240.274 In other words, until the mid-sixteenth century at least,
Nottingham’s ranking within the East Midlands was essentially unchanged despite
its falling population because all East Midlands towns suffered the samedegradation. There are no rankings for the later sixteenth century, probably
because of the idiosyncrasies of tax returns which will be discussed below, but it
seems likely that Nottingham’s population growth outstripped that of its nearest
neighbour.
WealthWealth is closely associated with social status and, therefore, with social
stratification. An analysis of tax returns, then, should give some indication not justof personal wealth but also of the social organisation of Nottingham. As withestimating populations, however, this assessment is not without problems because
avoidance and under-valuation of assets was ‘endemic’275 and must be taken into
account in any study of taxation records.
Until the late sixteenth century tax was paid communally, each town or village
paying a sum set in the fourteenth century according to a system known as‘fifteenths and tenths’. This fossilized system was insufficient to meet the needsof Tudor governments which experimented with other forms of taxation, but at thesame time regularly collected ‘fifteenths and tenths’.
274
275

Laughton, ‘Urban Hierarchy’, pp.340-41.
R W Hoyle, Tudor Taxation Records: a Guide for Users (London, 1994), p.30.

82

Late fifteenth century taxes
The earliest complete tax record for Nottingham is the lay subsidy of 1472-73.276
It was levied at one-tenth of freehold value and therefore automatically excluded
the majority of townspeople. As Table II illustrates, most of the total sum
collected was paid by only a few; eight people paid over one-third of the total(£16 3d), while over half the subsidy (£22 8d) was contributed by 10 per cent of
the population or only fifteen people, and 50 per cent of tax payers contributed
almost 90 per cent of the total tax.
Table II: 1472-73 lay subsidy% of tax tax
money (d)% of total
payerspayers £43 12s
collected
1%
2
1683
16.1
2%
3
2197½
21.0
5%
8
3843
36.7
10%
15
5288
50.5
25%
38
7619¼
72.8
50%
76
9329¼
89.2
75%
113
10156½
97.1
100%
151
10464
100.0
Source: NA CA 4502

Three of the eight people who made up the top 5 per cent of subsidy payers weremayors of Nottingham. Thomas Thurland, who paid the largest amount of 74s
1½d, was a Calais Staple merchant; he was mayor of Nottingham on nineoccasions from 1442 and MP six times. John Hunt with his wife Alice, and John
Mapperley, also with his wife (another Alice) contributed 28s 9d and 26s 7½d
respectively; both were mayors in the 1470s and 1480s. John Hunt was the son ofJohn Hunt, senior, who had also been a mayor and both were merchants. Anothersignificant tax payer was William Babington, son of Sir William Babington who
was Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and a relative (perhaps father) of Thomas

276

NA CA 4502, Stevenson, II, pp.285-96.

83Babington, the Recorder of Nottingham at the end of the fifteenth century. Twoother members of this wealthy group were Cecily Wentworth and Margaret
Alestre and it is likely that Margaret, who paid 65s 7½d for her freehold, was thewidow of Thomas Alestre, who had been mayor in the 1450s and 1460s and, likeThurland, MP five times.
A further four mayors are found in the next seven tax payers making a total ofseven mayors in the top 10 per cent of subsidy payers, but as this group included
three women, the true proportion is seven out of the twelve highest male tax
payers held the most senior civic office in Nottingham at some time between
1442-43 and 1477-78. Altogether, the subsidy list includes fifteen men who wereor would become aldermen (and therefore mayor), two common councillors andseventeen men who had been bailiff (pre-1449), sheriff (post-1449) or
chamberlain.
The lowest amount paid by a man holding civic office was 3¾d by Richard
Burton who had been chamberlain in 1471-72 and was a petty collector of thissubsidy.277 The smallest subsidy payment was a farthing paid by Henry Wilson, a
decennary. On the basis of freehold property only, not only does this subsidy
show the range in wealth of Nottingham people at the end of the third quarter ofthe fifteenth century, but also demonstrates, if rather simplistically, therelationship between wealth, office holding and social status. The wealthiest held
the most senior positions, the least wealthy the lower civic offices.
Because of the levy taken between 1473 and 1479 it is possible to make someobservations about the less wealthy townsmen and women of Nottingham at the277

NA CA 4502, Stevenson, II, pp.285-96.

84

beginning of the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The levy taxed households at
low amounts. The largest payment was 3s 4d but the majority, 110 people, paid
between 1d and 2d and ten paid only ½d. There were twenty-eight people who
paid both the subsidy and the levy but there seems little correlation between
payments made to both. John Dalby paid 17s 1¾d to the subsidy but only 4d tothe levy while Richard Stevenson paid 18d for his freehold and 11d levy. The
largest levy payment of 3s 4d was made by Thomas Lovatt who also paid 15s 1dfor his freehold.278
As the levy comprised householders but very few freeholders the pattern of
payments is rather different from that of the subsidy. Even at this low level
however, there are disparities in wealth distribution. The top 5 per cent of tax
payers contributed less than 20 per cent of the total received, a smaller amountthan the top 5 per cent of freeholders, and the lowest quartile paid 6.5 per cent of
the total which is over double that paid by the same group of subsidy payers.
Nevertheless, as Table III shows, 50 per cent of taxpayers contributed 80 per centof the total tax collected which is not dissimilar to the proportion of freeholders
who paid the lay subsidy, indicating a degree of prosperity amongst the middlerank of townspeople.

278

NA CA 8019.

85

Table III: 1473-79 levy
% of tax
tax
money (d)% of total
payerspayers £6 14s 11½d collected
1%
3
84
5.2
2%
7
166
10.3
5%
17
304
18.8
10%
35
485
29.9
25%
87
881
54.4
50%
174
1290
79.7
75%
260
1515
93.5
100%
347
1619½
100.0
Source: NA CA 8019

The same differentials between rich and less rich clearly exist, even though they
are slightly less pronounced, and there is again some relationship with officeholding. At the date of the levy, no contributor had held a more senior office thanchamberlain, but nine would later become common councillors, with a higher
taxable income. Richard Fisher, for example, paid 7d to the levy; he became acommon councillor in 1500 when he was assessed as having goods worth £10 on
which he paid 2s 6d tax.279
Two of the levy payers, Edmund Hunt and Richard Mellers, who would both bemayor in the 1480s and 1490s, also paid the lay subsidy. Richard Alestre, mayor
in 1485-86, did not pay the subsidy, but his mother was probably Margaret
Alestre, the second highest subsidy payer and widow of Thomas, a former mayor
and MP. These are interesting observations which illustrates part of the ‘lifecycle’ of some burgesses whose ability to hold civic office, and therefore theirpersonal social status, increased with their wealth.
At the lower end of the scale, the levy lists twenty-five men who were or would
become decennaries compared to only ten freeholders who held this minor office,279

NA CA 7480i&ii.

86confirming the point made above that the less wealthy burgesses only qualified forthe less responsible civic offices.
The 1523-27 lay subsidy
One of the experimental taxes tried by the Tudors was the 1523-27 lay subsidy
granted by Parliament in April 1523. It was a complicated tax: in the first two
years land was assessed at 12d in the pound, movable goods worth over £20 at
12d in the pound and goods valued between 40s and £20 at 6d in the pound.
Wages over 20s were taxed at 4d in the pound. The latter two years targeted thebetter off; in 1525-26 the subsidy was paid only by those with lands worth £50 ormore at 12d in the pound and in 1526-27 goods valued over £50 were taxed at 12din the pound.280 The subsidy was, then, extensive and because it included many
wage earners as well as those with capital assets in the form of goods or land it is
the tax most commonly used for assessing both collective and individual wealth.
For Nottingham there are three versions of the subsidy for the first two years of
the collection. The first, dated 1523-24 is held at the Nottinghamshire Archive; itlists tax payers and the amount they paid for the first year of the subsidy.281 The
sum total of this collection is given as £50 8s 6d though there is an arithmeticalerror and the correct total should read £50 9s paid by 296 people. The second,
kept at The National Archive (TNA), records the assessments as well as theamount of tax paid. It is either a revised version of the first instalment or a list of
payments to the second instalment of 1524-25, but the top is much rubbed and thedates are illegible.282 It is longer than the Nottingham version listing 298 tax

280

TNA Notes: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/notes.asp?slctgrantid=241&action=3
NA CA 4570.
282
TNA E179/159/123.
281

87

payers, and helpfully it notes that many of the men shown as servant in the firstlist were apprenticed to the person listed above them. The third list is incomplete
comprising tax payers in just three streets and part of a fourth un-named one.283
All the lists are organised by street and when they are compared with Map 1 it isclear that a number, including Fletcher Gate and Middle Pavement have been
omitted. Whether this was deliberate or because the streets were grouped in someway, or because the residents’ worth had fallen below the minimum £1 valuation
is impossible to say.
There are considerable discrepancies between the two complete lists, in particularmany of the payments increased. Some of these increases were relatively small
but still significant. William Goldring, for example, is shown as paying 3s in the
Nottingham list and 5s in the TNA version, and William Pares 2s rather than 12d.
Other increases were far greater: according to the TNA list John Howes andWilliam Mabson both paid 20s compared to 8s entered in the Nottingham list;
Costlin Pykard’s tax increased from 9s to 30s and John Alanson’s from 12s to
40s. These variations can probably be accounted for because the first assessment
was based on the military survey of 1522 but some receipts were lower than thisearlier assessment, and there were other mistakes. Consequently more specificinstructions were sent to commissioners (now lost) which resulted in reassessments.284 There is one major discrepancy: the Nottingham roll lists John
Rose as living in Low Pavement paying £3 tax but he appears in the incomplete
list living in Hen Cross and does not feature at all on the complete TNA list. As he
was mayor in 1526-27, Rose was not dead so he was either accidentally omitted

283
284

TNA E179/139/455 part 2.
TNA Notes.

88or deliberately avoided paying. The overall effect of the re-assessment was toincrease the number of Nottingham tax payers to 298 and the total amount of tax
paid to £56 6s 2d, that is £5 17s 2d more than the Nottingham list. If John Rose
had been included, the total collected would have increased to £59 6s 2d.
Table IV shows that, as in 1472-73, there was a great difference between thehighest and lowest tax payers, the pattern for 1524-25 being, if anything, steeper
than the earlier payment. One per cent of tax payers contributed almost 20 per
cent of the total collected, and 2 per cent or six people payed almost a third. This
supports the argument that individuals prospered even when other evidence
suggests the town was suffering considerable problems.
Table IV: 1524-25 lay subsidy% of tax tax
money (d)payerspayers £55 6s 2d
1%
3
2640
2%
6
4440
5%
15
8100
10%
30
10112
25%
74
11830
50%
149
12828
75%
224
13218
100%
298
13514

% of totalcollected
19.5
32.9
69.9
74.8
87.5
95.0
97.8
100.0

Source: TNA E179/159/123

The relationship between wealth and civic office is yet again emphasised as all six
men who make up the top 2 per cent of tax payers had been mayor. They wereJohn Williamson, a draper who paid the highest tax amount of £5, Thomas
Mellers, a merchant, and Thomas Willoughby, a tanner, who both paid £3 andRobert Hasilrig, a merchant, Robert Mellers, a bell founder, and William
Parmatour, a tanner, who all paid 50s. To them should be added John Rose, who
was a butcher. This range of occupations is in sharp comparison to the highest tax
payers of 1472-73, the majority of whom were merchants or the widows of89

merchants; a shift in the occupational profile of Nottingham’s mayors which is
discussed in Chapter Three. In total, ten of the top fifteen tax payers had been or
were shortly to become mayors of Nottingham and a further two had beenchamberlains. Of the next fifteen there was one more mayor and a further four
men who would become mayor in the next decade, a common councillor and four
men who had been either sheriff or chamberlain or both. In other words, twentytwo of the thirty people who made up the top 10 per cent of tax payers in 1524-25
held one of the town’s senior offices. Furthermore, 95 per cent of the total tax
collected was paid by 50 per cent of the population, a larger proportion than thatseen in the 1470s, implying that disparities in the distribution of wealth weregrowing.
At the lower end of the scale were 133 people who paid at the lowest rate of 4dfor either goods or wages. Many of these are noted to be apprentices, nine ofwhom are found in later Nottingham records as burgesses. Others paid tax on
wages at a higher level and were journeymen or other employees. The highest
wage earner was John Woolley who paid 20d, placing him within the top 25 percent of tax payers. He is listed immediately below Emma Seliok, probably thewidow of Richard Seliok, a bell founder. In 1530 Woolley appeared in the
Borough court as a burgess when he was also described as a bell founder, so in
1524-25 he was almost certainly a journeyman working for Emma. His progressfrom apprentice to journeyman to full burgess status is another example of the‘life-cycle’ or personal social mobility experienced by burgesses.
Because taxation levels were based on a sliding scale it is possible to break thecollection down into bands of wealth as in Table V, below. Although this90

breakdown gives similar results to the previous analysis it highlights the
distribution of wealth more accurately, particularly at the lower end of the scale.
Table V: breakdown of 1524-25 subsidy payments
Number of% of% subAssessment
tax payers
total
total
Goods £50+
5
1.7
Goods £40-9
3
1.0
Goods £30-9
4
1.3
Goods £20-9
7
2.3
6.4
Goods £11-19
Goods £10
Goods £8
Goods £6-7
Goods £5
Goods £4
Goods £3-4

12
7
5
6
6
13
18

4.0
2.3
1.7
2.0
2.0
4.4
6.0

22.5

Goods £2-3
Goods £1

68
96

22.8
32.2

55.0

Wages £2+
Wages £1

2
43

0.7
14.4

15.1

Lands £6-16

3

1.0

1.0

Total

298

100

Only a small number, fewer than 6.5 per cent of the tax paying population, owned
goods assessed at £20 or more and only 1.7 per cent had goods worth over £50.
Twenty-two per cent of tax payers were assessed at between £3 and £19, but thelargest group, or 55 per cent of the tax paying population, comprised those withgoods valued at the lowest level of £1-3, with wage earners representing a further
15 per cent. It was mentioned above that it is generally thought that this tax
omitted approximately one-third of the poorest residents, which means that below
the 70 per cent who made up the lowest earning tax-payers was a further 30 per
cent of the total population on or near the poverty level.

91

Local and national comparisons of urban wealth
Using the breakdown of the 1524-25 lay subsidy it is possible to make somenational comparisons. An analysis of the same subsidy collected in Worcester, forexample, shows a very similar pattern for the higher valuations, but a considerable
difference at the lower end of the scale.
Table VI: Comparison of Nottingham and Worcester tax payers
Worcester*
Nottingham
Number of tax
298
499
payerspercentage of total
percentage of total
taxpayers (rounded) taxpayers
Goods £50+
Goods £20-49
Goods £3-19
Goods £1-2
Wages
Other

2
5
22
55
15
1 (lands)

1
5
29
19
34
11 (profits)*Source: A Dyer, The city of Worcester in the sixteenth century, p.175.

The large number of wage earners in Worcester, 34 per cent compared to 15 percent in Nottingham, was a result of the dominance of the cloth industry in that
town.285 Nottingham, though, had many more people with goods valued between£1-£3. As will be discussed in the next chapter there was no dominant industry in
Nottingham at this time because the production of cloth, leather and metal
working employed roughly equal proportions of the known workforce.
Consequently, compared to Worcester, there were many more small, independent
craftsmen who paid tax at this level. At the same time, with 2 per cent of tax
payers owning goods valued over £50 Nottingham had a proportionately larger
group of wealthy men.

285

A Dyer, The City of Worcester in the Sixteenth Century (Leicester, 1973), p.105.

92

Although Exeter, as a port, was a much more prosperous town than either
Worcester or Nottingham, Wallace MacCaffrey’s breakdown of tax payers showsa similar pattern of wealth distribution, albeit with much higher payments. Three
per cent of the population paid tax on goods worth £100 or more and a further 3.5
per cent paid for goods worth between £40 and £100. Twenty-one per cent had
goods valued between £5 and £39 and the remaining 78 per cent comprised wage
earners and those with goods worth between £1 and £4.286 A similar set offindings occur in Southampton, where 3 per cent of the taxable population wereassessed for goods worth £40 or more and 50 per cent had goods or wages of£1.287 Taking into account the lower threshold of £40 (rather than £50 in Table
VI), these figures are not dissimilar to Nottingham’s analysis, despite
Southampton having favourable trading concessions to support its economy.288
All four towns, notwithstanding their differences in population, size and economic
base, show the same distribution of wealth, with a few rich men at the top and abroad base of minimum tax payers at the bottom.
Communal wealth, measured by the total sum paid in taxation, like population,
has been used to rank towns, both nationally and regionally. The number ofcomparisons which can be made is, however, limited as there are few sufficiently
comprehensive taxes. The findings must also be treated with care because, as Alan

286

W T MacCaffrey, Exeter 1540-1646: The Growth of an English County Town (Cambridge,1958), p.249.
287
C Platt, Medieval Southampton: The Port and Trading Community, AD1000-1600 (London,1973), p.265.
288
Platt, Southampton, pp.169 & 172.

93

Dyer has pointed out, such taxes reflect the size and wealth of the business
community not the population as a whole.289
The 1524-25 lay subsidy has been used by Alan Dyer to rank the top one hundred
towns by taxable wealth. Nottingham, however, is not included in this ranking,probably because it is classed with towns like Derby and Doncaster as being
either under-assessed or lacking credible data.290 Yet based on even the lower
payment of £50 9s Nottingham should stand somewhere between Devizes (ranked
seventy-fourth, paying £50) and Guildford (ranked seventy-third, paying £52). On
the higher payment of £55 6s 2d Nottingham would be promoted to between
Alton (ranked sixty-seventh, paying £55) and Cirencester (ranked sixty-sixth,
paying £58), and even higher if John Rose’s missing payment is included. If both
payments are under-assessments, then Nottingham’s ranking would be higher still.
Even so, this represents a considerable decline in wealth compared to its ranking
in 1334 when Nottingham stood at twenty-five, above Northampton (twentynine), Worcester (thirty-six) and Leicester (thirty-eight).291 Like the population
rankings, these comparisons suggest that Nottingham’s status declined
considerably between the fourteenth and the early sixteenth century.
Looking regionally, neighbouring towns that are included in Dyer’s ranking are
Leicester, ranked at twenty-ninth paying £107 in subsidy, and Northampton,ranked thirty-ninth paying £91. Both these town had far larger populations than
Nottingham and a per capita estimate of wealth better represents their relative
positions.

289

Dyer, ‘Appendix’, p.765.
Dyer, ‘Appendix’, pp.765-67.
291
Dyer, ‘Appendix’, pp.755-56
290

94

Table VII: Comparison of tax paid per capita in 1524-25
town

tax paying
tax
population

per capita

Leicester*

427

£107

60.1d

477

£91

45.8d

298

£55 6s 2d

44.5d

Northampton*§

Nottingham*Source: A Dyer, ‘Appendix’, Cambridge Urban History, Vol. I, pp.761-2 & 765-6.
§
Source: TNA E179/159/123

From this rather crude comparison, it seems that early sixteenth-century
Nottingham was not only considerably smaller than its closest neighbour,
Leicester, but its per capita average was also noticeably lower. Nottingham has avery similar per capita figure to Northampton, which had an even larger tax
paying population than Leicester. In other words, while Nottingham was not asprosperous as Leicester it was economically on a par with much larger
Northampton, probably because of the wealth of a few individuals.
From these various comparisons and rankings it becomes possible to describe
Nottingham in national terms as a town which, despite its small size, had
sufficient wealth to rank it somewhere in the third quartile of the top one hundred
towns ranked according to wealth. Regionally, it was level with much larger
towns such as Northampton and in both cases, its position must have beenstrongly weighted by the number of wealthy men who made up the top 1 or 2 percent of the population. Below these wealthy men were a large group of craftsmen
and a few women who comprising the majority of tax payers and below themwage earners, many of whom as apprentices would go on to become craftsmen. At
the lowest level were those who were too poor to be taxed at all.

95

Tudor tax avoidance and under assessment
It has been noted several times that John Rose was omitted from the TNA list of1524-25 lay subsidy. Rose is associated in several Nottingham documents with
two other mayors, John Williamson and Thomas Mellers. In particular the three
men were accused of ‘imbeseling’ or falsifying the returns for the fourth
instalment of the 1523-27 subsidy which taxed only those men with goods worth£50 or more. Having been assessed at ‘l pownd[es] a pese and su[m]m of thesubstans of lv pownd[es] and aboue’ they returned ‘nichil’,292 a claim supportedby the certificate of assessment for this year which declares there were no
chargeable persons in Nottingham.293 This is despite both versions of the earlier
instalments showing that John Williamson, for example, paid tax on goods worth£100. Interestingly, the original entry against his name in the TNA roll has beenscratched out and a new figure written over, though this may simply have beencorrecting a clerical error. If this was an under-assessment it further adds to theargument that some individuals prospered in the adverse conditions, and to anincreased disparity between rich and poor.
The problem of tax avoidance was not just limited to Nottingham. The end of
Elizabeth’s reign is noted for its high levels of taxation and also for the underassessment across the country. When calling for a new subsidy in 1593, William
Cecil, Lord Burghley, claimed that there was one wealthy shire where no one wasassessed as holding land worth more than £80, and no one in London wasassessed at above £200 and only eight above £100.294 Ironically, William Cecil
himself was persistently assessed at only 200 marks, and it is thought that large
292

NA CA 4736.
TNA E179/91/101.
294
J E Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments 1584-1601, Vol. 2 (Norwich, 1957), p.310.
293

96

numbers of people avoided paying tax altogether.295 This must be borne in mind
when evaluating later Tudor taxes.
In towns like Nottingham the majority of taxes were collected on the value ofgoods, but these valuations were not based on an inspection or inventory. Instead
assessments were, as Hoyle puts it, ‘bunched together’ in amounts which
represented ‘creditworthiness’ or the amount of money a man might realise fromhis business assets, which included debts and money on loan.296 It is easy to see,then, that a butcher like John Rose or a draper such as John Williamson might
own many assets but have problems raising the coin needed to pay his tax. Hoyle
comments that a taxpayer in the 1520s faced the problem of
converting his debts into specie at a time when confidence hadprobably evaporated in the face of expected war and the disruption ofinternational trade which preceded it297
Furthermore, Hoyle postulates that by reducing capital, taxation contributed to theeconomic downturn of the 1520s and again in the 1540s because it limited thecapacity of merchants to trade and promoted economic conditions which made itdifficult for a new set of merchants to emerge.298 The discussion of occupations in
the next chapter certainly shows a decline in the number of merchants in
Nottingham across the sixteenth century, and it may be that tax burdens
contributed to this.
The sliding scales used to assess some Tudor taxes may also have inadvertently
added to the problem of under assessment, if not deliberate avoidance, by

295
296

Hoyle, Tudor Taxation Records, p.30.
R W Hoyle, ‘Taxation and the Mid-Tudor Crisis’, Economic History Review, 51:4 (1998), pp.6-

7.
297
298

Hoyle, ‘Taxation’, p.10.
Hoyle, ‘Taxation’, pp.23-24.

97

providing useful limits or boundaries for assessment. The subsidy granted in 1543
(to be paid in 1544, 1545 and 1546), for example, had four levels. Men withgoods valued at 20s paid 4d in the pound and those with goods worth between £5and £10 paid 8d in the pound. Assessments between £10 and £20 incurred tax at
16d in the pound and anything over £20 at 2s in the pound.299 The 1544 subsidy
roll for Nottingham lists 124 people but unfortunately is damaged particularly tothe right hand side so that many of the amounts of tax paid and some of thevaluations are missing.300 From the eighty-five entries that are legible it isapparent that assessments were ‘bunched’; there are four assessments at 20s andtwelve at 40s, but only one at 15s. There are assessments at £3, £4, £5, £6, £7, £8,£9 and £10 but not at fractions of pounds, and only two assessments between £10and £20. One of these was Nicholas Bonner who was assessed at £16. He was abaker who had been chamberlain in 1541-42 and would be common councillor by
1550. There are four assessments at £20; Robert Lovatt, Thomas Hobbs, Thomas
Coughen and John Collinson, all of whom were mayor in the 1540s. The
relationship between wealth and civic office holding is still apparent in this tax,
but the fact that no one was assessed at a higher rate suggests that £20 was seen as
the top limit at which anyone was prepared to be assessed. The alternate, andunlikely, explanation being that individual wealth had fallen considerably sincethe 1520s.
The occupations of the four wealthiest men were woolman, ironmonger, draperand baker respectively, showing yet again the shift in the source of wealth noted
above. It not only provides further evidence in support of Hoyles’ contention that

299
300

TNA Notes: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/notes.asp?slctgrantid=247&action=3
TNA E179/159/155.

98

heavy taxation undermined merchant activity, but also that the gap they left wasfilled by other traders, dealing in a wider range of goods.
It is not clear if tax assessments were public knowledge. The declarations of thevalue of goods owned by Rose, Williamson and Mellers were made in the‘Gildhall and Councellhowse’, but the concern of the Mickletorn jury whichaccused them of embezzlement was not so much that fraud had been carried out
but that it should not be known more widely as this would be to the detriment of
the borough.301 Thirty years later, William Atkinson, one of the aldermen, wasaccused of revealing the council’s ‘sekreyt cownselle’ concerning the subsidy,302
although who he revealed it to is not said. In 1579 the Mickletorn jury requested
that the burgesses should hear the ‘ende and reck[n]inge of aney subsedey whenaney is’, but this may be a reminder to the Council that they were ultimately
answerable to the burgess community.303 The fact that the bunching seen in 1544
(and later) subsidies seems to apply to all tax payers, suggests it was with theconsent of the community, but it is possible that knowledge of the details werelimited to a few officials.
The Lay Subsidies of 1571, 1593 and 1597
The subsidies of the later sixteenth century were less complicated than those of1523-27 and 1543-46, although they comprised two sets of taxation. The first,
granted by the Commons, was for payments of fifteenths and tenths. The second,ordered by Parliament, applied to goods valued over £3 and lands over 20s, paidin instalments according to a scale.

301

NA CA 4736.
NA CA 47c.
303
NA CA 2765.
302

99

In 1593, the Commons granted six fifteenths and tenths. The list of payments tothe second instalment of the 1593 collection, held in the Nottinghamshire
Archive, is, unfortunately, incomplete, comprising 245 tax payers in three of thetown’s seven wards. 304 Although this tax was based on ‘fifteenths’ there are signsof bunching as two men paid 8s, one 7s, nine 5s and so on, with ninety-one people
paying 4d, and two paying 3d and 2d. This bunching, and the incompleteness of
the roll, may account for the rather flatter pyramid shape evident in Table VIII,
nevertheless, 50 per cent of tax payers still contributed 86.4 per cent of therevenue. The incompleteness of the 1595 roll also means that many of the town
officers are missing, even so there were two mayors, two common councillors andthree sheriffs in the top 10 per cent of tax payers.
Table VIII: 1595 lay subsidy (incomplete)% of% of tax tax
money (d)totalpayerspayers £16 13s 2dcollected
1%
2
192
4.8
2%
5
416
10.4
5%
12
836
20.9
10%
25
1476
36.9
25%
61
2696
67.4
50%
123
3455
86.4
75%
184
3757
94.0
100%
245
3998
100.0
Source: NA CA 4623

The 1571 and 1597 subsidies were more selective as they taxed only the mostwealthy at higher rates. The former was collected over two years at the rate of 20din the pound for goods worth more than £3 for the first year and 12d in the pound
for the second. Lands valued at 20s or more were taxed at 2s 8d.305 The later

304
305

NA CA 4623.
TNA, Notes, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/notes.asp?slctgrantid=263&action=3100

collection was made at the higher rate of 2s 8d for goods and 4s for lands, to becollected in four instalments.306
The list for the 1571 collection is compiled by street and comprises fifty-sevenmen and six women who paid these higher rates of tax.307 Five of the women paidon goods valued at either £3 or £4, but one, Johanna Atkinson, paid for lands
valued at £3. Eighteen people paid 5s tax on goods worth £3, twenty-five on
goods valued at £4 and eleven for goods worth £5. The highest tax payer was
William Coke, a merchant whose goods were worth £10 for which he paid 14s.
He lived on Wheeler Gate, but did not hold any office, there is no record of him
appearing in the Borough court and it is possible that he was not a burgess. The
second highest payment of 10s for goods worth £6, was made by Ralph Barton
who lived on St Mary’s Gate; he may have been the town’s Recorder in whichcase also resided at Grey’s Inn.308 There were seven people who paid tax on land,
three at the lowest level of 40s, two at £3 and one each at £4 and £5. Three ofthese are given the title ‘gentleman’, two of whom lived on Long Row and thethird on Great Smith Street which is its continuation.
In total, fourteen tax payers lived on Long Row, including four mayors, twocommon councillors and five sheriffs. With occupations such as draper, roper,
ironmonger and baker, they were living close to their business outlets. There were
only three tax payers living in Narrow Marsh, but all three were tanners and all
became mayor. In total, thirteen mayors, seven common councillors, two coroners
and fourteen sheriffs paid this tax. If the landowners and women are taken into

306

TNA, Notes, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/notes.asp?slctgrantid=277&action=3
TNA E179/160/208.
308
NA CA 1611.
307

101

account, this leaves fifteen men who, though paying tax at the same rate as the
town leaders did not hold any civic office. John Woodson, for example, paid tax
on goods worth £4, but the most active part he played in town administration was
to sit on one of the Session court presentment juries,309 and the same can be said
about other members of this group such as Roger Brown, Robert Briggs and John
Fribus. The implication of this is that there was a group of men, who thoughreasonably prosperous, chose not to put themselves forward for office, although it
is likely they were burgesses.
The 1599 instalment of the 1597 subsidy was collected by parish and lists only
fifty-seven tax payers, less than in 1571, but the assessment were of higher
value.310 The three highest assessments for goods were allocated to Humphrey
Bonner (valued at £5), Anker Jackson and Peter Clerke (both valued at £4).
Bonner, Jackson and Clerk were all mayors in the 1590s, and the other fouraldermen in this decade all paid tax on goods valued at £3. Also paying at this rate
was Elizabeth Gelstroppe, widow of a former mayor, and there were eightchamberlains and four common councillors in the group.
Bonner, Clerke, Jackson, and one other alderman, William Freemen wereaccorded the title ‘gentleman’ (generosus) and there were another five men
described as gentleman who paid tax on goods valued at £3. These latter,
however, are not listed in the 1604 terrier which named all burgesses living in thatyear, and none held any civic office.311

309

NA CA 48c, 49.
TNA E179/160/249.
311
NA CA 4635b.
310

102

There were a further eight men who were taxed on lands worth between £2 and£5. The only one to be listed as a burgess in the 1604 terrier was John Kyme,
described as a yeoman.312 He, as will be discussed in Chapter Three, was also thesubject of complaints by the town millers.313 Nothing is known about two of thetax payers; a third, John Atkinson, brought a suit in the foreign pleas court against
John Holt, but otherwise he is absent from the Borough Records.314 Marmaduke(Marmaducus) Gregory, ‘gentleman’, may have been related to John Gregory who
had been mayor four times between 1561-62 and 1586-87, and John Brownlow
may have been the son of John Brownlow, mayor five times between 1567-68 and
1589-90. If so, they represent a sideways step socially from the top of the urban
ladder onto that of the gentry, where they joined two other tax payers: Edward
Stanhope (later Sir Edward)315 and Philip Strelley, both members of local county
gentry.
The presence of ‘gentry’ in town was not new in the sixteenth century. In 1446,
Margaret, Lady of Bingham, paid 5s rent for a messuage in Hen Crosse, and in
1472-73 Henry Pierpont, knight, and Robert Strelley, knight, paid 4¾d and 5¾drespectively for their freehold to the lay subsidy.316 In 1504, as mentioned in
Chapter One, Sir Henry Willoughby, Sir Gervase Clifton and Sir William
Pierpont all held property in the town, although they were probably absentee
landlords.317 There were also townsmen who aspired to gentry status, the Samonand Thurland families, mentioned in Chapter One, being two examples. What is312

NA CA 4635b.
NA CA 59.
314
NA CA 1428.
315
A Henstock, ‘The Changing Fabric of the Town, 1550-1570’, in J Beckett (ed) Centenary
History of Nottingham, second edition, (Chichester, 2006), p.111.
316
Foulds online CA 1336; NA CA 4502, Stevenson, II, pp.285-96.
317
S N Mastoris, ‘A Tax Assessment of 1504 and the Topography of Early Tudor Nottingham’Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 89 (1985), p.39.
313

103

perhaps different is that in the later sixteenth century, the honorific ‘gentleman’
was according to men whose qualification was their civic status, not their county
land holdings. Furthermore, while the Samons and Thurlands moved out of town,
the Stanhopes and Strelleys were moving in. Adrian Henstock reports thatbetween 1590 and 1640 at least twenty-five ‘members of the county gentry chose
to live in Nottingham’.318 Nottingham in 1600 was not yet the ‘fashionable centre’that attracted ‘urban gentry’ that it was to become in the third quarter of theseventeenth century, but it appears that the foundations were being laid.319
The social fabric of Nottingham
The discussion so far has focused on those men and a few women who were
wealthy enough to pay tax, highlighting the relationship between wealth, civic
office and social status. This is a relatively straight-forward and hierarchicalassessment of the social structure of Nottingham, but, as men like William Cokeand John Woodson have indicated, there was a section of the community who,
although economically on a par with the civic leaders, did not take a major part incommunity government.
There are other groups of people which are almost invisible in the town records.
One of these, surprisingly, was professional men such as lawyers and clerics.
William Harrison identified lawyers as ‘gentlemen’,320 and some are named in the
Borough court records, particularly after 1550, a trend also noted nationally.321
Christopher Bamford, John Marriott, Thomas Clarke, Thomas Conners and Roger
318

Henstock, ‘Changing Fabric’, p.114.
Henstock, ‘Changing Fabric’, p.114.
320
G Edelen (ed), William Harrison, 1534-1593: The Description of England: The Classic
Contemporary Account of Tudor Social Life (Washington and New York, 1994), pp.113-119.
321
R O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450-1800 (Harlow, 2000), pp.116 &
173.
319

104

Goddard are all named as attorneys in 1578.322 Christopher Bamford may be thesame Christopher that was the Sheriff’s Sergeant in 1574-75 and who, as ayounger man, was presented to the Sessions court for playing illegal games.323
Roger Goddard lived in Broadmarsh and paid St Peter’s parish rate of 4d.324
Otherwise there is no record of any of these men.
Another important, if not necessarily numerous, section of society must have been
the clergy of Nottingham’s three parishes churches, and their associated guilds,
fraternities and chantries. Occasionally they appear in the Borough court: John
Plough, junior, Rector of St Peter’s for example, was prosecuted for debt fivetimes in 1542 for amounts between 12s and 52s 4d.325 He had succeeded his
uncle, John Plough senior, as Rector. John senior had, in 1525, had acquired theright to choose his successor, which he passed to his brother, Christopher Plough,father of John junior. This younger John was a Protestant who fled to Basle when
Mary succeeded to the throne in 1553.326 Whether the appointment was simply
family favouritism or an indication that there were some families in Nottingham
with Protestant leanings at this early date, is uncertain.
As well as the churches, there were two friaries within the town boundaries: theCarmelites or Whitefriars near what is now Friar Lane, to the west of Market
Square and Friars Minor or Greyfriars, to the south in Broadmarsh. Again,
members of these convents rarely appear in Nottingham records. After theirdissolution, apart from the physical presence of friars in Nottingham, another322

NA CA 1426.
NA CA 47a.
324
M 399
325
NA CA 1419.
326
P Hoare, The Rectors of St Peter’s Church, Nottingham (Nottingham, 1992), p.14.
323

105

noticeable absence would have been the loss of the friary bells: those belonging to
the Whitefriars were sold to Robert Skoles, a pewterer and the Greyfriars bell waspurchased by Humphrey Querneby, bell founder, and one of Nottingham’s
mayors.327
Despite the paucity of evidence, it seems clear that these men were all at the top
end of the hierarchy. The men and women at the other end of the scale are evenmore invisible. Some of them were ‘aliens’, that is not born in England or Wales,
who were required to pay an alien tax. In the fifteenth century, nine women andsixteen men from Scotland and Brabant paid this tax. Some were householders
and so must have been well established in the town.328 Some of the women wereseamstresses and others are described as ‘servants of William Nottingham’.329
There is one instance of an alien becoming a ‘denizen’ of England. In 1432,
Nicholas Plumptre, alias Braban or Ducheman, petitioned the king for denizenshipon the grounds that he had lived in England for over thirty years and married an
English woman. The Plumptre family were wealthy merchants; it seems likely hemarried into that family and adopted his wife’s name .330 He became a bailiff inthe same year, showing his new status both as a naturalised citizen and as amember of an influential family.
Aliens were also required to pay the sixteenth-century lay subsidies at double thestandard rates, or a poll tax if they had no assets.331 There are, though, no lists of327

TNA E117/12/4.
TNA E179/159/86, E179/159/91, E179/159/100.
329
TNA E179/159/89.
330
TNA SC8/96/4764.
331
TNA, Notes, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/notes.asp?slctgrantid=277&action=3
328

106

aliens in Nottingham for this century, which probably reflects the decline of thewool and textile industries which will be discussed in the next chapter.
Nottingham was also home to many men and women whose existence is only
noted by their presentment in the Sessions court for minor social misdemeanours,
from scolding to harlotry and petty theft to gambling, some of which are discussed
in Chapter Six.
Finally, mention must be made of the many migrants who entered Nottingham.
The migration of much needed labourers, apprentices, servants and professional
men had long been a feature of medieval life and, like the alien community, werea positive addition to the town. Without it, towns like Nottingham would not havebeen sustained.332 The rapid expansion of Nottingham from the mid-sixteenth
century must have been the consequence of in-migration, but increasingly thepoorest were perceived as an unwelcome threat to civic stability. National
legislation required that migrants were controlled and Nottingham’s aldermen
were frequently reminded by the burgesses of this responsibility.333 None of
Nottingham’s records name poor migrants, but refer to them as vagrants andvagabonds who frequented ale houses and back lanes.334 Those who were lucky
enough to have a permit to travel from one town to another received small sumsof money to help them on their way.335 The financial burden of poor migrants wasof concern. Suspicious strangers who stayed longer than three days and could not
explain how they intended to maintain themselves were either driven from town

332

P Clark and D Souden, ‘Introduction’, in P Clark and D Souden (eds), Migration and Society in
Early Modern England (London, 1987), p.24.
333
NA CA 3014, 3015.
334
NA CA 49.
335
NA CA 1626, 1627.

107

or kept in prison.336 In 1579, to reduce the town’s financial responsibility for
maintaining the poor, it was suggested that landlords who let space in the lanes topoor and potentially migrant workers, should be bound to the mayor ‘in a goodround somme of money to dyscharge the townye yf they leve aney chyldren behinde them’.337
These few, sometimes non-specific, examples, demonstrate that although thesocial stratum of Nottingham appears to be a simple hierarchy based on civic
responsibility and wealth, the social fabric of Nottingham was more complex andcolourful than administrative documents might, at first glance, suggest.
Conclusion
This chapter has continued the investigation of indications of demographic change
begun in Chapter One. The assessment of the scale of population change in thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries has shown a gradual decline throughout the
fifteenth century, although evidence of demand for land in the 1410s, presented in
Chapter One, may reflect a small, temporary increase at a time when there are no
tax lists or other sources which indicate population change. There is evidence thatthe early years of the sixteenth century saw a sharp decrease in population,
reducing it to the point at which Nottingham’s status as a town is questionable.
This coincided with, and was probably one of the causes of, the economic
problems identified in the previous chapter. The rapid increase in population,
which coincided with economic recovery in the last half of the sixteenth century,is clear even if the exact rate of growth is less easy to determine.

336
337

NA CA 3018.
NA CA 3015.

108

This chapter has also looked at the range of wealth held by the townspeople, fromthe richest to the least wealthy tax payer. The strategies adopted after the midsixteenth century to ameliorate the burden of national taxation make it difficult toassess the true differentials between tax payers, but all the analyses indicate apyramidal hierarchy with a few, wealthy men at the top and many craft andtradesmen, whose earnings just qualified them for taxation purposes, at the base.
A more detailed analysis of the men (and a few women) who paid tax describes asocial hierarchy, which was consistent over both centuries, whereby the wealthiest
held the most senior civic office and therefore had the greatest social status. Those
who paid the lowest tax were unlikely to hold any but the most minor civic office.
This differential may have been emphasised in the later sixteenth century as town
officials were increasingly classed as ‘gentlemen’ on the basis of their civic officealone. The number of county gentry who took up residence also contributed to thechanging social fabric of Nottingham.
An assessment of the lot of the very poorest, though, is difficult because they arein general invisible in the records. One observable change is perhaps that in thefifteenth century aliens and others who could contribute to the town’s economy
were accommodated. In the sixteenth century the social and financial
consequences of poor migrants resulted in regulation. It is, therefore, possible toinfer an increasing gap between the richest and the poorest, although not toquantify it.
One less obvious aspect of social status is life-cycle or personal social mobility of
individual men who, as they progressed from apprentice to burgess, increased
their earning capacity. Some of these were able to advance to sheriff, common

109councillor and a very few to alderman and mayor. As will be discussed in Chapter
Five, however, the latter progression, though dependent on wealth, may have had
other prerequisites as well.
While this chapter has looked mainly at wealth in terms of taxation and status, thesource of that wealth has been mentioned two or three times, particularly the shift
in the types of occupation followed by the town’s elite, the number of small
craftsmen and lack of dominant industry in the early sixteenth century. The
modification in the occupational make-up of Nottingham, and the factors whichcaused these adjustments, is the subject of Chapter Three.

110Chapter Three: The craftsmen and tradesmen of Nottingham
This chapter investigates the affect that fifteenth and sixteenth century economic
realignments, combined with demographic changes, had on the occupational
structure of Nottingham. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, England’s
economy was based on the export of both wool and finished cloth, but this was
not to continue, and there were implications for towns like Nottingham. The
contributing factors were a collapse in the export of wool in the mid-fifteenth
century combined with a bullion shortage which affected the availability ofcredit.338 This collapse was balanced by an increase in the export of finished cloth
which reached record levels in 1549-50, causing over production and glut.339 At
the same time, the Calais Staple lost much of its status and financial power owing
to heavy taxation, loss of markets and competition from finished cloth or‘draperies’.340 In 1527 members complained that the Company’s 400 ships had
been reduced to 140 and that ‘the poore and middle sort be decayed and declyned
and the best and richest dayly decay and declyne after all’.341 The north east andeast midlands were also affected by a shift of shipping from eastern ports to
London and the south coast, and towns weathered the storm by adapting to the
new circumstances.342

338

J Hatcher, ‘The Great Slump of the Mid-Fifteenth Century’, in R Britnell and J Hatcher (eds),
Progress and Problems in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), p.241; J I Kermode, ‘Money andCredit in the Fifteenth Century: Some Lessons from Yorkshire’ Business History Review, 65:3
(1991), pp.500-1
339
A F Sutton, The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130-1578 (Aldershot, 2005),
p.420.
340
E E Rich, ‘Introduction’, The Ordinance Book of the Merchants of the Staple (Cambridge,1937), pp.13-14.
341
Rich, ‘Introduction’, pp.9-10.
342
R H Britnell, ‘The economy of British towns: 1300-1540’, in David Palliser (ed), The
Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol.1: 600-1540 (Cambridge, 2000), pp.318-19; N R Goose,‘In Search of the Urban Variable: Towns and the English Economy, 1500-1650’, Economic
History Review, new series, 39:2 (1986), p.170.
111

All of Nottingham’s records contain some information about individual
occupations but the amount is partly dependent on document survival and partly
on scribal idiosyncrasies; some clerks were more consistent at noting occupations
than others and are most dependable only when occupation is used to differentiate
between two men with the same name, for example, John Cost, mercer, and John
Cost, draper. It is possible to make assumptions about an individual’s occupation,
but this can be misleading as the lists of stall holders discussed in Chapter One
highlights. The following analysis is, therefore, based on specific statements, thatis when a person is said to be a mercer, butcher, tanner and so on. Consequently,
the number of people with identified occupations, as Table IX shows, is between
25 per cent and 50 per cent of the number of people found in any given decade.
The range of trades and crafts
One definition of a town is that it has an array of trades and crafts not dependanton agriculture.343 Christopher Dyer argues that small towns, that is those with apopulation of 2,000 or less, supported twenty to thirty occupations, compared to
fifty or more in large towns.344 Northampton, for example, had 477 tax payers in
1524 and seventy trades.345 Yet, as John Patten points out towns and people were
not static but ‘subject to cyclical movements in the economy, various secular
economic trends, and inflationary pressures from time to time’, so this statistic canonly be a guideline.346

343

C Dyer, ‘Small Towns 1270-1540’, in D M Palliser (ed), Cambridge Urban History of Britain,
Vol.1: 600-1540 (Cambridge, 2000), p.505.
344
C Dyer, ‘Small Places with Large Consequences: the Importance of Small Towns in England,
1000-1540’ Historical Research , 75:187 (February 2002), p.8.
345
J Laughton, E Jones and C Dyer, ‘The Urban Hierarchy in the Later Middle Ages: a Study of
the East Midlands’, Urban History, 28:3 (2001), p.344.
346
J Patten, English Towns 1500-1700 (Folkestone, 1978), p.148.
112

Table IX, below, records the number of occupations found in Nottingham records
and the number of people to whom an occupation was assigned. As individuals
can appear in the records for many years, sometimes spanning two decades,
occupational totals were calculated by decade but at thirty year intervals to allow
for generational change, with the addition of the last decade of the sixteenth
century to both ‘balance’ the range and take into account information derived
from the 1604 terrier which listed all burgesses alive in that year, by the year of
their enrolment.347
Table IX: Number of occupations and people
DecadeNumber ofoccupations

Number ofpeople withoccupations

1400-091430-391460-69
1490-99
1520-291550-59
1580-89
1590-99

42
45
51
69
45
34
48
56

197
166
202
557
251
137
221
403

Number ofpeople indatabase for
decade
745
350
420
912
552
328
560
1118

From this evidence, Nottingham must be ranked as a large centre despite somelow figures which can be attributed to record survival. The lowest figures occur inthe early part of the fifteenth century, when the only available records are those of
the Borough court where occupations were not regularly given. In contrast, thefew records that survive from the 1460s include Mayor’s books, which list traders
and burgesses and hence produce comprehensive lists of trades and crafts. The
high figures of 1490-99 and 1590-99 reflect the richness of the sources in those
decades.

347

NA CA 4635b.
113

Although this simple count of occupations allows Nottingham to be classified as alarge town it says little about the types of trade or craft carried out or how thesechanged in response to social and economic pressures. By breaking occupations
down, as in Table X, it is evident that at the beginning of the fifteenth century
there were three dominant occupational groups: food and drink, cloth production
and the making of leather goods which together comprised over 50 per cent of the
known occupations. Associated with the latter two groups are the manufacture ofclothing and accessories and the tanning and processing of hides into leather
which made up almost another 20 per cent of the workforce. A fourth group,
distribution, is perhaps less significant in terms of absolute numbers as it
employed few people compared to manufacturing crafts, but is economicallyimportant because it comprised the mercantile trades whose members were often
the wealthier sections of the population.
Many of these occupational groups were still significant at the end of the sixteenth
century, but their relative positions had altered. By 1600, the manufacture ofleather and leather goods and the sale of foodstuffs were the more importantcommercial activities employing 63.8 per cent of the identifiable work force,
while cloth production had reduced to 4.2 per cent, and distribution (including
merchants and mercers) was only 5.2 per cent.

114

Table X: Occupation Groups, 1400-1600: Number of workers in each group and Group as percentage of known occupations
1400-09%1410-19%

1420-29%1430-39%

1440-49%

1450-59%

1460-69%

1470-79%1480-89%

1490-99%

alabaster industry

Occupational Group

0

0.0

0

0.0

1

0.7

1

0.6

1

0.7

1

0.9

1

0.5

4

1.4

4

2.6

11

2.0

building

11

5.6

5

2.7

5

3.6

17

10.2

15

10.5

7

6.4

18

8.9

35

12.5

17

10.9

35

6.3

cloth production

33

16.8

35

18.7

22

15.9

18

10.8

10

7.0

16

14.5

36

17.8

45

16.1

26

16.7

83

14.9

clothing and accessories

18

9.1

20

10.7

11

8.0

14

8.4

11

7.7

9

8.2

34

16.8

20

7.1

8

5.1

52

9.3

distribution

21

10.7

29

15.5

26

18.8

24

14.5

18

12.6

14

12.7

16

7.9

14

5.0

15

9.6

24

4.3

food and drink

40

20.3

38

20.3

19

13.8

25

15.1

34

23.8

20

18.2

36

17.8

63

22.5

33

21.2

122

21.9

leather production

19

9.6

15

8.0

17

12.3

16

9.6

12

8.4

8

7.3

10

5.0

12

4.3

12

7.7

26

4.7

leather work

28

14.2

26

13.9

16

11.6

22

13.3

23

16.1

13

11.8

24

11.9

32

11.4

12

7.7

80

14.4

metal working

14

7.1

10

5.3

10

7.2

11

6.6

8

5.6

7

6.4

16

7.9

30

10.7

14

9.0

54

9.7

other

4

2.0

2

1.1

4

2.9

7

4.2

1

0.7

6

5.5

2

1.0

8

2.9

6

3.8

31

5.6

provisions

1

0.5

0

0.0

4

2.9

2

1.2

4

2.8

2

1.8

1

0.5

3

1.1

3

1.9

13

2.3

services

4

2.0

4

2.1

1

0.7

7

4.2

3

2.1

4

3.6

8

4.0

7

2.5

2

1.3

13

2.3

wood horn and bone

4

2.0

3

1.6

2

1.4

2

1.2

3

2.1

3

2.7

0

0.0

7

2.5

4

2.6

13

2.3

197

100

187

100

138

100

166

100

143

100

110

100

202

100

280

100

156

100

557

100

total

1500-09%1510-19%1520-29%1530-39%1540-49%

1550-59%

1560-69%

1570-79%

1580-89%

1590-99%

alabaster industry

Occupational Group

7

1.7

4

1.0

1

0.4

0

0.0

0

0.0

0

0.0

0

0.0

0

0.0

0

0.0

0

0.0

building

9

2.2

15

3.6

3

1.2

2

0.8

3

1.3

1

0.7

3

6.4

11

7.6

12

5.4

21

5.2

cloth production

51

12.3

56

13.5

22

8.8

22

9.3

17

7.1

12

8.8

4

8.5

9

6.2

8

3.6

17

4.2

clothing and accessories

45

10.9

50

12.0

28

11.2

23

9.7

17

7.1

7

5.1

1

2.1

2

1.4

9

4.1

21

5.2

distribution

26

6.3

28

6.7

20

8.0

19

8.0

22

9.2

12

8.8

6

12.8

16

11.0

17

7.7

21

5.2

food and drink

85

20.6

74

17.8

63

25.1

55

23.2

68

28.6

43

31.4

14

29.8

42

29.0

60

27.1

114

28.3

leather production

26

6.3

22

5.3

19

7.6

15

6.3

22

9.2

19

13.9

6

12.8

17

11.7

34

15.4

41

10.2

leather work

79

19.1

78

18.8

53

21.1

48

20.3

41

17.2

22

16.1

7

14.9

29

20.0

48

21.7

102

25.3

metal working

46

11.1

42

10.1

23

9.2

22

9.3

22

9.2

6

4.4

2

4.3

8

5.5

14

6.3

28

6.9

other

15

3.6

13

3.1

11

4.4

21

8.9

13

5.5

3

2.2

2

4.3

4

2.8

5

2.3

8

2.0

provisions

4

1.0

6

1.4

1

0.4

2

0.8

6

2.5

4

2.9

1

2.1

2

1.4

7

3.2

11

2.7

services

7

1.7

13

3.1

3

1.2

3

1.3

2

0.8

4

2.9

1

2.1

2

1.4

3

1.4

6

1.5

wood horn and bone

13

3.1

14

3.4

4

1.6

5

2.1

5

2.1

4

2.9

0

0.0

3

2.1

4

1.8

13

3.2

413

100

415

100

251

100

237

100

238

100

137

100

47

100

145

100

221

100

403

100

total

115

115

Occupations and office holding
One gauge of how the occupational groups were re-aligned over time is to
examine the occupations of the mayors.
Table XI: Occupations of mayors
1400-1449
merchant
draperfisherironmonger
mercervintner

No.
9
1
1
1
1
1

unknown
total

1500-1549
tannerbaker
drapermerchant
bell founderbutcherfishmonger
gloverironmonger
litstervinterwoolman

12
26

No.
5
3
3
3
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1

unknown
total

4
27

1450-1499
merchant
bell founder/brasierbakerdraperfishmonger
imagemakervintner
unknown
total

1550-1600
tannerbaker
barbercordwainer
inn keeper
mercerroper
gloverironmonger
merchant

No.
7
2
1
1
1
1
1
6
20

No.
4
3
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1

unknown
total

1
21

Table XI makes clear that in the first half of the fifteenth century the mayoralty
was dominated by merchants with the allied trades of draper and mercer. This
dominance continued into the second half of the century, but with the introductionof manufacturing in the form of bell founding. By the first half of the sixteenth
century the shift towards manufacturing was becoming more pronounced as116

tanners had now joined bell founders as major office holders, and the victuallingtrades were collectively well represented. By the end of the sixteenth century, therange of occupations followed by mayors was much wider than 200 years
previously. Although not an accurate measure, this grouping indicates a more
mixed economy for the town led by the leather trade and the production and saleof food and drink, which is investigated further below.
An analysis of the occupations of the town’s bailiffs, sheriffs and chamberlains(Table XII below) shows a similar pattern, although the number of different
occupations is far greater. This mirrors the general redistribution of occupations
listed in Table X and again shows that leather production and leather processing
outweigh the other occupational groups. A comparison between Table XI and XII
also reveals that men who followed trades such as weaver, wright, smith, cutler orchandler, might become a chamberlain, but did not become mayor. This may be
because these occupations were not sufficiently profitable, but as will be
discussed below, they were also the smaller, manual and less prestigious trades.
As the economy improved, despite the growing population and greater number ofoccupations (fifty-six by 1590), the range of trades followed by sheriffs andchamberlains was less than it had been in 1400-1450, suggesting a narrowing of
the occupational hierarchy. It is interesting to note that although many butchers
became sheriff or chamberlain, only one, John Rose became mayor. His
appointment coincided with a time of economic difficulties and low population, as
discussed in Chapter Two, and administrative instability which will be discussed
in Chapter Five. He may have been the best or wealthiest man available at the
time.
117

Table XII: Occupations of bailiffs, sheriffs and chamberlain348
1400-1449
merchant
cordwainer
fisher/fishmonger
drapermercertailortanner/barker
gloverskinner
spicerbutcherchapmancutlerhosierlitster
mercer/merchantroper
shearmanwalkerwright

No.
6
5
5
4
3
3
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1

unknown

44
89

total

1450-1499
bakerdraperbutcher
cordwainer
mercertanner/barker
inn keeper
tailorfisher/fishmonger
grocer/taverner
image makersmith
vintnerbarberbuilderchandlerchapmancutlerfurbisher
girdler
gloverlitsterpottersaddler
weaverwrightyeomanunknown
total

No.
10
7
5
5
5
4
3
3
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
35
101

1500-1549
cordwainer
bakermercertanner/barker
butchertailordraperironmonger
weaverbell founder
fisher/fishmonger
gloverinn keeper
litstersmithbaker/yeoman
corrier
fletchergoldsmithmillerwheelwright

No.
8
7
5
5
4
4
3
3
3
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1

1550-1600
cordwainer
butchertanner/barker
ironmonger
baker
mercerfisher/fishmonger
gloverdraperjoinervintnerbarberhusbandman
inn keeper
saddler
spurrier
yeoman

No.
12
10
10
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1

unknown

30
90

unknown

15
90

118
348

The occupations of men who went on to be mayor have been omitted to avoid double counting.

total

total

The major crafts and trades
Distribution
This term, which draws together merchants, mercers, ironmongers and spicers aswell as pedlars and chapmen, describes one of the most important occupationalgroups. There were, of course, great economic and social differences between amerchant and a pedlar with many gradations in between. An agreement of c.1300
between the burgesses of Nottingham and the Prior of Lenton allocated stalls tomerchants attending Lenton Fair according to status
the better class amongst the better, the middle class amongst the
middle, the smaller amongst the smaller, each one according to his
condition, as is contained as above in the case of cloth merchants,
apothecaries, pilchers, and mercers.349(meliores inter meliores, medii inter medios, minores inter minores,
quilibet secundum condicionem suam, sicut continetur ut supra demercatoribus
pannorum,
apothecariorum,
pellariorum,etmercenariorum)
In the early 1400s, this group comprised a minimum of 10 per cent of the known
occupations of Nottingham people but by 1600 this had declined to just over 5 percent. As well as experiencing a gradual decline there were changes to thecomposition of the group.

349

NA CA 4672, Stevenson, I, pp.60-61.
119

Table XIII: ‘Breakdown of occupational group ‘Distribution’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
chapman/pedlar
coal driver
hardwaremanironmonger
mercermerchant
spicerstallholder
woolmantotal

1400-09
1

1
8
8
3

21

%
4.8
0
0
4.8
38.1
38.1
14.3
0
0

1430-39
3

100

24

2
7
9
3

%
12.5
0.0
0.0
8.3
29.2
37.5
12.5
0.0
0.0

1460-691

1490-99

1

%
6.3
0.0
0.0
6.3
6.3
68.8
6.3
0.0
6.3

100

16

100

24

1
1
11
1

1
1
3
14
5

%
0.0
4.2
4.2
12.5
58.3
20.8
0.0
0.0
0.0

1520-291550-59

1
1

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
15.0
60.0
15.0
0.0
5.0
5.0

100

20

100

3
12
3

1580-89
2

1

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
41.7
41.7
8.3
0.0
0.0
8.3

12

100

17

5
5
1

7
7
1

%
11.8
0.0
0.0
41.2
41.2
5.9
0.0
0.0
0.0

1590-99
1

100

21

5
14
1

%
4.8
0.0
0.0
23.8
66.7
4.8
0.0
0.0
0.0
100

120

Table XIII, above, indicates how the balance between the different types of
distributor altered over time. The dominant group in the early 1400s wasmerchants, many identified as Calais Staple merchants who therefore dealt
internationally. They were closely followed by mercers, that is men who dealt infine finished cloth especially velvet and silk, although they handled other items aswell including linen.350 By 1600 there was only one man who called himself amerchant but there were fourteen mercers and, as will be discussed below, thedistinction may not have been clear by this time.
In the middle of the century there were at least three Calais Staple merchants in
Nottingham, Thomas Thurland, Thomas Alestre and John Plumptre.351 They were
all mayors of Nottingham and Thomas Thurland, as noted in Chapter Two, wasthe highest tax payer in 1472-72, closely followed by Thomas Alestre’s widow;
John Plumptre was probably dead by the time the tax was collected. The midfifteenth century slump in the export of wool may explain why there was only one
man, William Hegyn, specifically named as a Staple merchant at the end of the
century. He was, nevertheless, still wealthy. As well as owning a considerably
amount of town property, noted in Chapter One, he was assessed in c.1500, as
having goods worth 300 marks (£200).352 Other merchants, who may or may nothave been connected to the Staple, were Edward (or Edmund) Hunt, John Huntsenior and John Hunt junior. Again, all three were mayors and significant tax
payers.

350

C Corêdon with AWilliams, A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases (Cambridge, 2004),
p.190.
351
PRO, Calendar of Close Rolls, Vol. VI, p.15.
352
NA CA 7480ii. The document is undated, but it must have been compiled after 1494 as John
Hunt junior, omitted from the list, was dead by that date but before 1510 as William Hegyn diedsometime before then.

121At the beginning of the sixteenth century there were only two Calais Staple
merchants in Nottingham, Robert Hasilrig and William English. Both weremayors and both appear in the top 10 per cent of tax payers in the 1524-25
subsidy, but Hasilrig paid only 50s in tax, half of that paid by John Williamson, adraper and therefore part of the trade which undermined the Staple. The other,
William English, paid the even lower amount of 6s 8d.
These men, whose business meant that they made contracts and agreements awayfrom Nottingham, rarely appear as plaintiffs or defendants in the Borough court as
its remit was limited to ‘trespasses, covenants, contracts, ... arising or done within
the liberty aforesaid and the precinct of the same town’.353 The converse of thislimitation is that the more frequently a merchant used that court to settle hisbusiness disputes the more likely it was that he traded locally. Despite being
described as a Staple merchant, Robert Hasilrig’s many appearances in court
suggest that much of his business was local. Thomas Mellers, described simply as
merchant, made ninety-one appearances in the Borough court as plaintiff,
implying that his market was domestic and general. Few complete plaints arerecorded but even the briefest details show the range of his activities. In theburgess court of 1510 he sued Henry Hobbs, furbisher, on three occasions, twicefor 5s and once for 10s, John Rose, butcher, for 3s 9d, Thomas Wilkinson,
corviser, for 19s 2d and Miles Craggs, a mercer for 50s.354 In 1512 he twice sued
William Hydes, a mercer, once for 20s and once for 40s, in 1531 he asked that
Walter Traves ‘render’ three pieces of gold price 10s,355 in 1533 Richard Yates
owed him 10s 6d and a pound of wool value 4s, and he prosecuted John Shepherd,
353

Charter of Henry IV, Stevenson, II, pp.4-5.
NA CA 1383b.
355
NA CA 1405.
354

122

armourer, for 15s 6d.356 In the foreign pleas court he had dealings with Henry
Orston of Brinsely, Robert Oxenfield of Wakefield, William Taylor of Wollaton
and John Fisher of Dunington in Lincolnshire.357 Fisher was an ‘oilman’, but there
are also several suits for corn, malt or wheat.358 In 1535, he bequeathed the
majority of his estate to his widow, Margery.359 Her will, dated 1539, includes abequest of ‘my shop and shops with all parcell and parcells of wares gold andsilver sterling belonging thereto’.360 He was, therefore, trading in a wide range ofgoods from precious metals to foods but not specifically or extensively with woolor cloth. He has already been identified in Chapter Two as one of the men who
prospered despite the apparent impoverishment of the town, and it was probably
this diversification which led to his success. It does, however, suggest that thedefinition of ‘merchant’ had changed in response to economic circumstances. It
also suggests that, despite the recession, there were a sufficient number of wealthy
men and women to buy his wares.
The only man to be described as a merchant by the end of the sixteenth century
was Humphrey Bonner, who is also given the appellation ‘gentleman’.361 He wasmayor in 1593-93, 1600-1 and 1607-8 and in 1599 he paid the largest amount oftax, 13s 6d on goods valued at £5. He was almost certainly also descended from
Nicholas Bonner, mayor in the 1560s.
As the number of merchants diminished, the number of mercers rose from eight tofourteen, although like merchants, the goods they traded in altered over time, so
356

NA CA 1409.
NA CA 1382, 1384, 1404a, 1406.
358
for example NA CA 1400, 1406.
359
NA CA 4771.
360
NA CA 4771.
361
TNA E179/160/249.
357

123

that the terms may have become almost synonymous. In 1431, Simon Ilkeston amercer, was sued by John Lovell for £5 3s for dying a light silk known as cendal
or sendal,362 and in 1512, another mercer, Thomas Byrkes prosecuted the executorof Thomas Turner, a tailor, for 10s, probably for cloth purchased by him.363 By
the 1530s and 1540s, though, the range of goods dealt with by mercers had
broadened. Brothers John and Nicholas English, both mercers, always appear
together in the Borough court, and in 1544-45 they sued Humphrey Quarneby for£24 14s 7d for hops, dried and fresh fruit (including a pomegranate worth 12d),sugar and sugar candy, spices and a variety of cloths including say (a mixture ofwool and silk), fustian (a mix of flax and cotton), linen and russet (a homespun
cloth).364 They were nephews of Thomas and Margery Mellers, and the main
beneficiaries of her will. Humphrey Querneby, who was a bell founder, was also
related to Thomas and Margery and jointly inherited an interest in their shops, so
this suit probably concerns some inter-family or business partnership dispute.365
Some of the items listed in this suit were expensive, which again suggests that
there was a market for luxury items.
The other sub-group which grew over the 200 year period was ironmongers,which dealt in domestically produced iron and iron products.366 In the fifteenth
century no more than three are found in the town records but over the sixteenth
this number rose to as many as seven in one decade. As a group, it also grew inimportance; although there was one mayor who was an ironmonger in 1412-13,
362

Foulds online CA 1322/1.
NA CA 1385.
364
NA CA 1421.
365
Querneby married Elizabeth Mellers, who, according to a grant dated 1548 was the daughter ofRobert Mellers (NA CA 4591, Stevenson, IV, p.395). Stevenson, probably incorrectly, claims she
was daughter of Thomas Mellers (Stevenson, IV, p.126, footnote 2).
366
H Swanson, Medieval Artisans (Oxford, 1989), p.67.
363

124

no sheriff or chamberlain is known to have been an ironmonger in the fifteenth
century, but there were eight sheriffs and one mayor in the last half of thesixteenth.
In December 1578-79, Thomas Cadman, James Hartley and Robert York brought
two prosecutions in the Queen’s Court at Westminster, the first against Thomas
Nix and the second against Roger Owldmey or Owldmell, for practising asironmongers without having been apprenticed against a Statute made in January
1563.367 Although prosecuted in a central court, the full account of these two suits
is written in retrospect at the beginning of the Borough court book for that year, so
clearly the cases held some significance. Nothing is known about Owldmey but
Thomas Nix was one of a family of fishmongers (see Chapter One). He had been
trading as an ironmonger for eleven months before this intervention, for which he
was fined the not insignificant sum of £22 (that is 40s per month of illegal
trading), particularly as in 1571-72 his goods had been assessed for tax at £4.368
This may indicate the degree of under-assessment already discussed. Why afishmonger would begin to trade in iron products is open to question, but it musthave seemed a profitable venture.
The three men who brought the case were ironmongers of some importance:
James Hartley had been sheriff in 1567-68, Robert York was sheriff in 1580-81
and Thomas Cadman had been both sheriff and chamberlain and was to become acommon councillor; he was elected as aldermen but refused the position.369 The
prominence given to these cases may simply be because the mayor, William Scott,367

NA CA 1426; Statutes, Vol. 4, part 1, pp.414-22.
TNA E179/160/208.
369
NA CA 3368.
368

125

who was also an ironmonger, decided to clamp down on unlicensed activity in his
own trade, supported by three other influential ironmongers. Probably as aconsequence of this court action, and to enforce the statute, an order was made in
the following March that apprentices in all crafts should enrol their indentures,and that new apprentices should only be admitted ‘bye consente of the Wardens of
the occupacyon’.370 As a result, the Hall Book for 1578-79 records ninety-six
apprentices indentured to burgesses of the town, many of which are retrospective,
dating back three or four years.371 Whatever the reasons, the effect of both theseactions was a greater regulation of trading conditions.
Chapmen or travelling salesmen comprise only a small proportion of this group,
but the enrolment of Adam Jackson as a burgess in 1580 is an interestingdevelopment as he paid £1 for his burgess fee instead of the usual 6s 8d.372
Presumably market demand for his wares which were probably less expensive
than those traded by Mellers or the English brothers, stimulated by a growing
population, was sufficient to warrant him paying this comparatively high amount.
The composition of the Distribution group, then, although economically strong,with many wealthy members, modified over time in response to the changing
economic conditions which saw the decline in importance of the wool trade andthe expansion of local markets to meet the demand of an increased population,
causing merchants and mercers to adapt their trade and deal with local markets
rather than international ones.

370

NA CA 3363.
NA CA 3363.
372
NA CA 1619.
371

126

Cloth production, clothing and accessories
One of the reasons given for the decline in the wool trade was an increased
demand for finished cloth. For the fifteenth century, the production of clothcomprised about 16 per cent of the total known workforce in Nottingham (seeTable X), while the associated group of clothing and accessories employedapproximately 10 per cent. The sixteenth century, however, saw a gradual decline
in these occupations both relative to other occupations and in terms of absolute
figures, probably the consequence of a number of circumstances including adecline in textile exports and the migration of cloth production into more rural
areas that was experienced nationally.373
Although, as Table XIV shows, weavers comprise about a third of the known
workforce involved in cloth production at the beginning of the fifteenth century,
this may be a low estimate as few became burgesses, and therefore had little cause
to use the Borough court, and many were women. Another reason to suggest thatthe numbers should be higher is that the Weavers’ Guild is one of the few known
craft guilds of the town. It was also one of the few acknowledged by Henry II andconsequently the craft paid 40s a year in return for the right to produce all dyed
cloths for a radius of ten miles of Nottingham.374

373

A Dyer, Decline and Growth in English towns 1400-1640 (Basingstoke, 1991), p.27; Swanson,
Artisans, pp.30 & 39.
374
Stevenson, III, p.58 footnote 1.

127

Table XIV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Cloth Production’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
bondlace weaver
bulkercoverlet makerdraperdyer/litster
shearmanspinstertapiter
walker/fuller
weaver/webster

1400-091430-39

1
7
11

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
18.2
24.2
0.0
0.0
3.0
21.3
33.3

total

33

100

6
8

1460-69

4
5

%
0.0
5.6
0.0
16.7
16.7
11.1
0.0
0.0
22.2
27.7

18

100

1
3
3
2

1490-99

2
12

%
0.0
2.8
0.0
27.8
2.8
25.0
2.8
0.0
5.5
33.3

36

100

1
10
1
9
1

1520-29

14
29

%
0.0
0.0
2.4
19.3
14.5
10.8
1.2
0.0
16.9
34.9

83

100

2
16
12
9
1

1550-59

4
5

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
27.3
22.7
9.1
0.0
0.0
18.2
22.7

22

100

6
5
2

1580-89

2
2

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
58.3
0.0
8.3
0.0
0.0
16.7
16.7

12

1550-591

7
1

1590-99
1

2
1

%
0.0
0.0
25.0
25.0
12.5
0.0
0.0
0.0
25.0
12.5

2
8

%
5.9
0.0
0.0
29.3
5.9
0.0
0.0
0.0
11.8
47.1

100

8

100

17

100

%
14.3
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
85.7
0.0
0.0

1580-89

%
0.0
11.1
0.0
0.0
0.0
88.9
0.0
0.0

1590-99
1
1

%
4.8
4.8
0.0
4.8
0.0
85.6
0.0
0.0

100

9

100

22

2
2
1

5
1

Table XV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Clothing and accessories’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
cap knitter/makerhatmakerhosierjerkin makerseamstresstailorupholdervestment maker

1400-09

total

18

3

15

%
0.0
0.0
16.7
0.0
0.0
83.3
0.0
0.0

1430-39

100

14

5

9

%
0.0
0.0
35.7
0.0
0.0
64.3
0.0
0.0

1460-69

1490-99
3
11
1

3
27
1
1

%
0.0
0.0
5.9
0.0
8.8
79.4
2.9
2.9

100

34

100

52

2

1
36

%
5.8
21.2
1.9
0
1.9
69.2
0
0

1520-29

100

28

28

%
0
0
0
0
0
100
0
0
100

6

7

1

8

1
18

100

128

The comparatively low status of weaving and weavers is demonstrated by the few
weavers who pay tax, normally at a low rate. John Wood is the only weaver
identified as paying the 1472-73 subsidy at 2½d for a tenth of his freehold; he isalso the only weaver to be listed as sheriff. More significantly, despite its
inclusiveness only four weavers paid the 1524-25 lay subsidy, two paying 12d
each and two the minimum of 4d each for movables.375
Economically, then, weavers were at the lowest end of the scale and they probably
saw little improvement over the period; moreover the lot of some workers may
have worsened. In 1599-1600, the Wardens of the Weavers presented three men to
the Sessions court (or possibly the Great Court, see Chapter Six for discussion) for‘for occupienge the occupation of a wevver, contrary to an order set dow[n]’; thethree men were fined 10s each.376 Four years later a petition was sent to theSessions court (or Great Court) by a group of poor weavers who were notburgesses, complaining that those weavers who were burgesses ‘put us downe
from woorking, theirby to worke the utter undoing of us and of our poore
famelies’.377 As they were not members of the burgess community they could notlook to the Guild for support and had to appeal to the town’s good will. Both theseexamples illustrate both the degree to which weaving was under stress in
Nottingham at this time and the protectionist attitude by burgesses towards theircraft, similar to that of ironmongers twenty years earlier.
Walkers or fullers (who washed and treated cloth) and shearmen (who finished thecloth), both of whom make up a comparatively small proportion of the known

375

NA CA 4570.
NA CA 55.
377
NA CA 60, Stevenson, IV, p.275.
376

129

workforce, seem to have a similar economic position as weavers, paying little tax
and rarely holding civic office: William Sherman (shearman) was bailiff in 142829 and John Horspole (walker) in 1430-31. None are known to have held civic
office after him. In contrast dyers or litsters, who may have controlled at least partof the production process, were more successful: John Howes paid 8s towards the1524-25 subsidy and was mayor in 1528-29, Robert Fisher was a common
councillor and Robert Mody became sheriff and chamberlain twice in the 1520s.
The borderline between the manufacture of cloth and the production of clothing isblurred. In 1546 Rauff Bamforth, Thomas Pinchware, and Robert Sherwood, alltailors, were also described as ‘guardians’ or ‘wardens’ of the Craft of Kersey
Weavers.378 Like cloth production the trade in clothing and accessories declined
between 1400 and 1600, but this may be due to the disappearance of crafts such as
hat and cap makers and hosiers from the later records. Tailors, on the other hand,consistently comprise approximately 80 per cent of the workforce. Also involvedin clothing and accessories are some of the few women whose occupations are
known: Agnes Whitehead who was from Scotland, Gudrun Ireland and Grekyn[Gretchen?] Duchman, all seamstresses, paid taxes as aliens during the 1450s and1460s.379
Another trade associated with cloth production was the drapers who not only dealt
in finished linen cloth in the domestic market but are often associated with both
tailors and with the whole process of cloth production.380 Drapers were socially
important until the mid-sixteenth century with five becoming mayor between

378

NA CA 1413.
TNA E179/159/86, E179/159/91, E179/159/100.
380
Swanson, Artisans, p.48.
379

130

1400 and 1550. This mid-century date, however, marks a cut-off point as no
draper became sheriff or chamberlain after Thomas Barwell in 1568-69. The
decline of drapers was matched by the rise in importance of mercers which was
discussed above, and there may have been overlaps between the two trades, as therange of goods handled by Thomas Mellers and the English brothers implies.
At the end of the sixteenth century, there are two interesting additions to theworkforce. The first is Thomas Rogers, a jerkin maker, and the second Roger
Clerke, a bondlace or bobbin lace weaver.381 These makers of luxury items were
probably attracted to Nottingham because of its importance as an regional market
place and the number of wealthy gentlemen who, the tax records suggest, weretaking up residence.
Food and Drink
This dominant group consistently made up at least 20 per cent and usually far
more of the known workforce across the two centuries of this study (see Table X),
but it comprised many different occupations. By 1600 it was the largest of all theoccupational groups.
As Table XVI shows, the largest two occupations were butchers and bakers. Fromthe mid-fifteenth century the number of bakers may be disproportionately high as
most Mayor’s or Hall books include a list of licensed bakers meaning they are
more visible than other occupations. Those listed were, of course, the masterbakers who owned the business but employed jobbing bakers to carry out the
work.

381

NA CA 3371, 4624, Stevenson, IV, p.244.

131

Table XVI: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Food and drink’, at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
baker / baxster
butchercook
fisher/fishmonger
grocerinn keeper
hosteller/osteller
ale house keeper
tavernermillermustard maker
poulterer
saltertippler / brewer
victualler
vintner

1400-09
7
17
3
7

%
17.5
42.5
7.5
17.5
0.0

1430-39
3
12

5

12.5
1

1

0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
2.5

1

4.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
4.0

total

40

100

25

100

8

%
12.0
48.0
0.0
32.0
0.0

1460-69
10
8
1
8
1

%
27.8
22.2
2.8
22.2
2.8

1490-9949
221520-29
27
15

15
3

%
40.1
18.0
0.0
12.3
2.5

0.0

2

5.6

14

11.5

9

2

0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
11.1
0.0
5.6

36

100

4

%
42.9
23.8
0.0
12.7
0.0

1550-59
20
12

%
46.5
28.0
0.0
11.6
0.0

1580-89
21
20
1
8
1

%
35.0
33.3
1.7
13.3
1.7

1590-99
43
41
2
14

%
37.7
36.8
1.8
12.3
0.0

8

12.7

5

11.6

3

5.0

5

4.4

2

3
1
6

7.4
0.0
0.0
0.0
2.5
0.8
4.9

1

2.3
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0

3

2

5.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
1.7
0.0
3.3

3

1

3.2
0.0
0.0
0.0
3.2
0.0
1.5

4

2.6
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.9
0.0
3.5

122

100

63

100

43

100

60

100

114

100

8

2

5

1

1

132

The number of bakers grew through the fifteenth century in proportion to otherknown trades, and there is an increase in actual numbers in the 1590s, although
the proportion seems reduced as other trades become more visible. Always
significant, bakers make up over one-third of this group of the 1590s. From 1500,
bakers held senior civic office, including six mayors and many sheriffs andchamberlains.
Baking is one of the few trades in which women can be seen to play a major role.
In 1499-1500, Isabella Hollingworth was admitted as a baker and John Slothwick,
another baker, stood surety for her, and she for him.382 Later, in 1527-28, Agnes
Kirby was prosecuted with other town bakers for using ‘foghtted’ [fetid] wheat.383
Three more widows were added to the lists of enrolled bakers after 1581-82.384
Butchers appear to be less numerous than bakers but because there are no annual
enrolments they are less visible and so may have equalled or, towards the end of
the sixteenth century, even exceeded the number of bakers. They held civic officeless often than bakers, but again this changed over time. Five butchers became
sheriff or chamberlain in the fifteenth century, but thirteen took these offices inthe sixteenth. Only one butcher, John Rose, became mayor in the 200 years of
this study, holding the office in 1513-14, 1520-21 and 1526-27, and it has alreadybeen posited that his appointment was a consequence of the economic problems
and political instability of the early sixteenth century, identified in earlier
chapters.

382

NA CA 4547.
NA CA 28.
384
NA CA 3365, 3371, 3373.
383

133

In 1577-78, the Mickletorn jury requested a number of improvements to themarket place, including a cover on the shambles so that country butchers could
shelter from the rain.385 In the same year, a set of rules was presented to theCouncil detailing the terms under which a butcher could trade. These stipulated,
how many animals could be kept in the meadow and prohibited the branding ofother men’s sheep and the slaughtering of neat (cows) in the market place. Aninteresting offshoot of the Reformation is the inclusion of clauses which banned
the selling of ‘wayre’ on the Sabbath and prevented any butcher from going out of
town, or sending his servant out of town, to ‘fetche anne wayre’ on the Sabbath.386
There are two clauses specifically against ‘cuntrye’ butchers. One ordered thatthey had to supply tallow for every three beasts killed, and the final and longest
clause stipulated that country butchers should not open their stalls before teno’clock to allow the wardens time to examine the meat to ensure it was fit to eat.
These rules are an example of increased control over both the quality and terms oftrade for this important foodstuff, at a time when the expansion in the size of thetown and an increasing demand for meat must have been apparent. They precede
the prosecution against Thomas Nix by one year and are another example ofgreater regulation of trading conditions in the town.
The term fisher and fishmonger may be synonymous although sometimes a
distinction is made, for example the Borough court roll of 1417-18 describes
Thomas Thomworth as fishmonger but a few entries later William Webster is said
to be a fisher.387 Table XVI show that fishers and fishmongers had always been

385

NA CA 3014.
NA CA 4608, Stevenson, IV, pp.180-82.
387
Foulds online CA 1312.
386

134

less numerous than butchers, a fact supported by the number of market stalls
devoted to them, but fishing seems to have been of some commercial significance.
In 1467, John Castle, a fisher, Richard Burton, a grocer and Henry Hegyn,butcher, subscribed to a bond of 100 marks for the lease of the fishing at the Weiron the Trent for the continuation of a lease taken by Castle’s father.388 John Castle
senior had rented not only the weir but also a ‘fish garden’ in which he made‘stews’, and with John Lovat, who may have been a tanner, and John Fosbrook, abutcher, held the lease of meadowland in East Croft for which they paid 14 marks,
thus combining fishing with the raising and sale of beef.389 Almost a hundredyears later, Thomas Smith took the ‘common fishing’ on a lease of twenty-one
years for 26s 8d; he also paid 3s for the Friar Pool and 2s for a shop on the
Saturday Market, and so ‘owned’ both the production and distribution of his
goods.390
There are comparatively few inn keepers, taverners or hostellers recorded but thismay be because inn keeping was often a secondary or supplementary occupation.
Fabian Mellers, a draper, inherited an inn called ‘The White Hart’ from his stepfather, John Heskey, both were mayors in the last half of the sixteenth century.391
In 1573-74, William Wilson, a baker, rented a tavern and garden on Chapel Bar
combining the supply of food and drink, John Woodson rented a second tavern on
Chapel Bar and there was a tavern under the Council House tenanted by William

388

NA CA 4492, Stevenson, II, pp.258-61.
NA CA 4448, Stevenson, II, pp.355-56.
390
NA CA 2168.
391
NA CA 4770.
389

135

Stanshall, a butcher.392 A previous tenant of this tavern was John English, mercer
and heir of Margery Mellers.393
Closely related to brewing, and to baking, is milling. There were several mills
around Nottingham. Some belonged to the Crown; in 1435 for example, Thomas
Wolf was sued by Geoffrey Kneveton, Steward of the Castle for unpaid rent, andby William Hostler for money loaned to help him obtain the lease in the firstplace.394
Nottingham had at least one horse mill of its own; in 1463-64, 12s was spent on
new mill stones for it.395 By 1500 there were two horse mills, one in Fair Maiden
Lane and one on Chapel Bar which brought in £3 6s 8d and 53s 4d respectively.
Tenants of the Chapel Bar mill include Nicholas Haa or Hay396 and his son,
Matthew, who is recorded as the tenant in 1549-50 when he also rented the tavern
on Chapel Bar.397 The exact location of the mill on Fair Maiden Lane is unclear
because in 1531 it is said to be on Barker Gate and let to Margaret Stytheholm but
in 1549-50 it was in Goose Gate and let to Nicholas Arman. 398 These three streets
run parallel to each other and greater accuracy was probably unnecessary in therental list. By 1573, however, this mill was replaced in the rental by a malt mill on
Castle Gate, leased to John Woodson who, as mentioned above, was also thetenant of both a tavern and the mill on Chapel Bar.399 Like Thomas Smith, the392

NA CA 2171.
NA CA 2168.
394
Foulds online CA 1327.
395
NA CA 1601.
396
NA CA 2166.
397
NA CA 2167, 2168.
398
NA CA 2166, 2168.
399
NA CA 2171.
393

136

fisher, these millers had business interests which combined both production andconsumption.
There was a third mill, on Narrow Marsh, and by 1576-77 a new water mill had
been built on the Leen, let to William Gelstroppe for 40s.400 Gelstroppe was atanner, so this mill may have been used in the treatment of leather rather thangrain, or it may be another example of diversification and entrepreneurial activity.
Milling, however, was not always profitable. In 1603, Thomas Greene, Robert
Bennett, Randle Freeman and William Fletcher, petitioned the Council
complaining that their tenancies were expensive because of the number of newmills recently set up.401 One of these mills was owned by Master Kyme, almost
certainly John Kyme, noted in Chapter Two as both yeoman and gentleman;402
another had been set up by Master Collinson, possibly Ralph Collinson, son ofJohn Collinson, baker and alderman, and a third mill was owned by James Scott, aglover. The largest complaint, however, was laid against ‘one Dawson, who is a‘mere straunger and noe Burgesse’.403 The petition, like that of the poor weavers thefollowing year, was presented through the Sessions court and is yet anotherexample of the stresses on the community of Nottingham at a time when agrowing population made commercial investment in processes such as milling
attractive, to the detriment of the less prosperous townspeople. This investment,
though, is further evidence of entrepreneurial diversification in response to an
expanding market for food and goods.

400

NA CA 2172.
NA CA 59, Stevenson, IV, pp.265-67.
402
NA CA 4635b; TNA E179/160/249.
403
NA CA 59, Stevenson, IV, p.265-66.
401

137

Leather production and leather products
As outlined in Table XVII, overall the proportion of men working in the
production of leather in 1600 was roughly the same as in 1400, although there wasa dip from the end of the fifteenth century to the second quarter of the sixteenth
century to between 5 and 7 per cent of the total known workforce (Table X). In
absolute numbers, this stability actually represented a growth in numbers fromnineteen to forty-one. But this increase also reflects a change in the balance ofcrafts within the group, or at least the way they were recorded. Until the midfifteenth century the number of men described as skinner equalled or even slightly
exceed the number of barkers or tanners and there was a scattering of‘corriers/curriers’ who turned hard red leather into softer black leather.404 By 1600
there are no entries in Nottingham records for skinners and curriers, although theircrafts may have been absorbed into the now dominant one of tanner.
In the 1510s and 1520s, when the number of leather producers was at its lowest, anumber of men were presented to the Sessions court for buying and barking sheep
skins. Some, like Harry Hopkin and Thomas Kirby, were tanners. Others, such as
Richard Dalberbury and William Mabson were corvisers or glovers. Many wereprominent townsmen, like William Bendbow, a common councillor, Thomas
Willoughby, mayor in 1518-19, William Parmatour, mayor 1527-28 and 1534-35,
and John Yates, mayor 1536-37.405

404
405

Swanson, Artisans, p.58.
NA CA 14c, 15b, 19a, 20c, 21a.

138

Table XVII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Leather Production’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
corrierskinnertanner/barker
total

1400-09
1
11
7

%
5.3
7.9
36.8

1430-39
4
7
5

%
25.0
43.8
31.3

1460-691

1490-99
2
1
23

%
7.7
3.8
88.5

1520-29
1
1
17

%
5.3
5.3
89.4

1550-59
1

9

%
10.0
0
90.0

19

100

16

100

1580-89

18

%
5.3
0
94.7

10

100

26

100

19

1590-99

34

%
0
0
100

41

%
0
0
100

100

19

100

34

100

41

100

1550-59%

1580-89%

1590-99%

Table XVIII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Leather Products’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
cobbler / shoemendercollar makercordener /cordwainer /corviser / shoe
maker / suter
gloverpouchmaker /purserparchment makersaddler

1400-09%1430-39%1460-69

6

0
21.4

3

0
13.6

1

total

28

100

22

100

24

%

1490-99%

1520-29

%

2

3.8

0

0

0

4

5.0

0

0

0

1

1.3

0

0

0
0

0

1

4.5

1

2.1

14

50.0

13

59.1

19

79.2

50

62.5

37

69.8

11

50.0

26

54.2

58

56.9

8

28.6

6

27.3

4

16.7

15

18.8

8

15.1

8

36.4

17

35.3

37

36.3

3

3.8

1

1.9

0
4.1

7

0
8.8

5

0
9.4

2

0
9.1

1
3

2.1
6.3

1
6

0.9
5.9

100

80

100

53

100

22

100

48

100

102

100

0

0

0

139

Why this should be is uncertain as the number of people involved in theassociated leather working trades began to grow at this time. This expansion may
reflect a growing demand for leather goods which the tanners were unable tomeet, but the increase in leather workers includes men who are described ascobbler or shoe mender.406 It was also a period when the rents of shoemaker’s
stalls had been reduced (see Chapter One), probably to attract more craftsmen. All
this indicates that, at a time when the economy seems to have been at an all-time
low, the demand was for goods at the lower end of the scale.
Tanning demanded a high level of capital investment in stockpiles of hides andmaterials and from the end of the fifteenth century tanners were the dominant andwealthier group.407 Nine tanners, compared to six bakers and four merchants,
became mayor in the sixteenth century and a further fifteen became sheriff orchamberlain.
The Tanners had a guild or fraternity, although very little is known about it. It
may have had a quasi-religious function as a memorandum in the Hall book of1502-3 says any man selling insufficiently tanned leather should give 4d to thecommon box and 4d ‘to their seid light’.408 In 1546 property belonging to theTanners, which had an annual rental value of 98s 10d, was granted to the town inreturn for an annual payment of 40s.409 Given the date of this grant, shortly
before the dissolution of chantries, guilds and other religious groups, it is likely

406

for example NA CA 14c, 20b, 1378, 3354 and elsewhere.
L A Clarkson, ‘The Organization of the English Leather Industry in the late Sixteenth andSeventeenth Centuries’, Economic History Review, second series, 13, p.248.
408
NA CA 3352.
409
NA CA 2168; C Deering, Nottinghamia vetus et nova or an Historical Account of the Ancientand Present State of the Town of Nottingham (Nottingham 1751, reprinted 1970), p.346.
407

140

that the Tanners were disposing of their property for the benefit of the town rather
than having it seized by the Crown.
Like leather production, leather working shows growth in numbers so that by
1600, as Table X shows, it was the second largest occupational group employing
25 per cent of the known working population, an increase of almost 11 per centover 1400, with most growth occurring after 1550. The greatest number of men inthis group were employed as corviser or cordwainer – synonymous terms forshoemaker. Parallel to the shoemakers were the shoe repairers or cobblers who
first appeared in the 1470s but disappeared from the records by 1540,
approximately the same period that cheaper leather was being tanned.
The second largest section of the trade was the glovers which, although always
significant, increased from 28.6 per cent of all known leather workers to 36.3 percent in the last quarter of the sixteenth century (see Table XVIII), an increase inboth relative and absolute terms compared to shoemakers, presumably in response
to a growing demand for their goods from the enlarged market.
The remainder of the crafts within this group – saddlers, purse or pouch makers
and collar makers – remained relatively constant. A new development for
Nottingham, though, was the enrolment as burgess in 1600 of a parchment maker,
especially as the town records had been written on paper for at least 150 years,
which suggests an interest or demand for more expensive materials by some of thetownspeople.

141

The minor crafts and trades
The remaining crafts and trades, as Table X shows, collectively comprise no morethan 25 per cent of the known workforce, and as individual occupations, each
employs less than 10 per cent of the total, some considerably so. Nevertheless,several included a few wealthy men and are indicators of change in the town’s
economy.
Alabaster Carving: the carving and decorating of alabaster, usually for religious
artefacts, was an important industry in Nottinghamshire and carved alabaster was
also exported across Europe.410 In the town, though, it comprised at most only 2
per cent of the known workmen (see Tables X and XIX). Some carvings wererichly decorated, and carvers like Nicholas Hill must have worked on a large
scale: in 1491 he employed William Bott as his agent, supplying him with ‘fifty
eight heads of Saint John the Baptist, part of them in tabernacles and in niches, tosell’ and in the same year William owed Nicholas 10d for painting and gilding
three alabaster salt-cellars.411 In 1530, John Nicholson sued John Cottingham for
10s for not painting a head of John the Baptist with the ‘half of a quarter’ of gold
both of which he had supplied.412 Only one alabaster worker, called animagemaker, Walter Hilton, became mayor; his son, Edward or Edmund, became
a common councillor and another, John Spencer, was chamberlain in 1487-88.
The early influence of the Reformation on this rather specialist industry can beinferred from the disappearance of alabaster men from the Nottingham records
after 1530.

410

T Foulds, ‘Trade and Manufacture’, in J Beckett (ed), A Centenary History of Nottingham,
second edition, (Chichester, 2006), pp.79-80.
411
NA CA 1374.
412
NA CA 1401.

142

Table XIX: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Alabaster working’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
alabasterman
imagemaker

1400-09

total

0

%

0.0

1440-49

1

%
0
100

1

100

1430-39%100
01490-99
2
9

%
18.2
81.8

1520-29
1

%
0.0
100

1

100

11

100

1

100

1490-991
41520-29

%
0
66.7
0
0
0
0
33.3
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

1550-59

%

10

%
2.9
11.4
0
0
17.1
0
17.1
0
5.7
2.9
0
14.3
0
28.6

35

100

3

100

1

1460-69
1

1

%
0
100

1

100

Table XX: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Building’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupationbuildercarpenter / carver
glasierjoinermason
nailerpainter / stainer
plasterer
pointersawyerthatchertiler/slater
turnerwright1400-091430-39
1

1
1
6

%
0
9.1
0
0
18.2
0
0
0
0
0
0
9.1
9.1
54.5

total

11

100

1

2

1460-69
3

10

%
5.9
0
0
0
17.6
5.9
0
5.9
0
0
5.9
0
0
58.8

4
1
1
1
1
1
1
5

%
16.7
0
0
0
0
0
22.2
5.6
5.6
5.6
5.6
5.6
5.6
28.6

17

100

18

100

3
1
1

1

6
6
2
1
5

2

1

1

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
100
0
0
100

1580-89

1590-99

1

%
0
0
8.3
25.0
16.7
0
16.7
0
0
0
8.3
16.7
0
8.3

12

100

21

1
3
2
2

1
2

1
2
11
2
1

1
3

%
0
4.8
9.5
52.4
19.5
0
4.8
0
0
0
4.8
14.3
0
0
100

143

Building: the building trade was perhaps the largest of these lesser crafts but also
the most volatile; at its lowest in the 1550s it represented less than 1 per cent of
the town’s known work force but at its height in the 1470s, as Table X shows, itreached 12.5 per cent, though this is a consequence of a list of twelve carpenters
who worked on the new Guild Hall in the Hall book for 1478-79.413 In thisdecade there are also seven painters or stainers and three tilers, who may also haveworked on the Guild Hall and the other buildings which being erected at this time.
Some of the low figures can be attributed to the lack of detail in the surviving
records as building workers are often un-named. In 1485-86, for example, thechamberlains’ accounts list a variety payments for work on the ‘new tenantries’
near the Guild Hall made to anonymous sawyers, carpenters, plasterers andwrights.414
Metal working: as Table X shows, at the beginning and end of the period of thisstudy metal working comprised about 7 per cent of the known workforce, butgrew mid-period to 11.2 per cent. This mid-period increase is to a great extent due
to the greater visibility of bell founders, particularly the Mellers family. Richard
Mellers became sheriff in 1472-73 and was mayor in 1499-1500 and 1507-8. His
wife, Agnes, founded Nottingham’s Free School in c.1512.415 He was father ofRobert Mellers, another bell founder who was mayor in 1521-22, and of thelitigious merchant Thomas Mellers. He was also grandfather-in-law to Humphrey
Querneby and great-grandfather of Johnn Gregory, both mayors later in the
century, and so was the root of the extensive family network discussed earlier.

413

NA CA 3350.
NA CA 1603.
415
NA CA 4771, Stevenson, III, pp.453-56.
414

144

Table XXI: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Metal working’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
armourer / gestronmakerbell founder /brasier / potter
blacksmith
cutlerfurbisher
girdlergoldsmithlead beater /plumberlocksmithlorimerpewtererpinnersmith
spurrier
tinker

1400-09

total

14

%

1430-39

0
1
1

1

1
10

7.1
0
7.1
0
0
0
7.1
0
0
0
7.1
71.4
0
0
100

5
1

1
1
1
2

11

%

1460-69

%

0

1

6.3

45.5
0
9.1
0
0
0

3

18.8
0
0
0
0
6

9

0
6.3
6.3
0
0
43.8
12.5
0

1
2
4
4
19
6
1

1.9
3.7
0
7.4
7.4
35.2
11.1
1.9

100

54

100

0
9.1
0
9.1
0
9.1
18.2
0
100

1

1
1

7
2

16

1490-99

4
1
2
1

%

1520-29%1550-59%

1580-89%

1590-99

%

0

2

8.8

1

16.7

3

21.4

1

3.6

16.7
0
7.4
1.9
3.7
1.9

6

26.2
0
4.3
0
4.3
0

1

16.7
0
0
0
0
33.3

1
1

1
7
1
1

0
13.0
0
0
4.3
30.5
4.3
4.3

23

100

3

2

2

6

0
0
0
0
0
0
33.3
0
100

2
3

1

1
4

14

0
14.3
21.4
0
0
0
0
7.1
0
0
0
7.1
28.6
0
100

11
8

1

1
1
1
4

28

0
39.3
28.6
0
0
3.6
0
3.6
0
3.6
0
3.6
14.3
0
100

145

Although bell founding was clearly an important trade, no bell founders are
specifically named after the death of Humphrey Quarneby in the 1560s. The town,
however, benefitted from other metal work, including the prestigious crafts ofarmourer, goldsmith, pewterer and spurrier.416 Numerically the major trade at theend of the fifteen century was smith, and in the later sixteenth century,
blacksmith, when there were seven new burgess enrolments in this trade after
1590.417
Miscellaneous: this ‘catch-all’ category, listed in Table XXII comprises
occupations which do not easily fit in the other groups. The largest is that oflabourer or workman, with nineteen being recorded in the 1490s. Labourer likeservant may mean many things, and although never highly paid, there were some
who were reasonably prosperous. Six labourers enrolled as burgess in the first halfof the sixteenth century, paying 6s 8d for their freedom and four labourers paid
the 1473-79 levy and three paid the 1524-25 subsidy at the rate of 12d for theirmovables.418 Nor were labourers restricted to handling small amounts of money.
In 1498 James Wilson prosecuted Nicholas Wildgoose, a smith, for 10s 11d and ayear later, William Shevington, a mercer, for 15s 8d.419

416

Laughton, ‘Urban Hierarchy’, p.344.
NA CA 4635b.
418
NA CA 3355, 3356b, 4589, 8019; TNA E179/159/123.
419
NA CA 1378, 1379.
417

146

Table XXII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Miscellaneous’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
bookbindercarter / carrier
clock makerharperlabourer /workmanlantern maker
minstrelpiper
shethervirginal maker
wait
total

1400-09
1

2

1

4

%
0.0
25.0
0.0
0.0

1430-391460-69

1

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
16.7

50.0

5

83.3

2

0.0
0.0
25.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
100

0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
6

100

%
0
0
0
0

1490-99

100

27

0
0
0
0
0
0
2

100

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0

1520-29

90.0

9

1

0.0
3.3
0.0
3.3
0.0
3.3

30

100

1
1

2

11

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0

1550-59

81.8

3

0.0
18.2
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
100

3

%
0
0
0
0

1580-89

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0

1590-99
1

100

2

40.0

3

37.5

0
0
0
0
0
0

1
1

3

0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
60.0

12.5
12.5
0.0
0.0
12.5
0.0

100

5

100

8

1

1

%
12.5
0.0
12.5
0.0

100

147

This group also comprises several musicians who resided in Nottingham including
a piper in the 1400s, a harper in the 1430s, a minstrel in the 1470s and 1480s andtwo more in the 1520s and 1530s. The town also employed three waits, some ofwhom are named in the town accounts; they received a fee of 20s and wore alivery including a collar which cost 15s.420
Perhaps the most interesting development in this group in the last decade of thesixteenth century is the enrolment as burgess of a book binder, a clock maker, alantern maker and a virginal maker. These specialist crafts, like the lace makerand parchment maker already mentioned, must have been attracted to the town in
response to a demand for luxury goods created by people wealthy enough toafford these expensive items.
Provisions and Services: these two groups, shown in Tables XXIII and XXIV,
include apothecaries, barbers, surgeons, chandlers, rope makers and, in the 1580s,
a saltpetre man. Although they never account for more than 5.5 per cent of theworkforce, at the end of the sixteenth century these groups supplied four mayors.
This contrasts with the fifteenth century when only three men from these groups
achieved the rank of baliff/sheriff or chamberlain, and suggests an improved
status for both individuals and trade.
Wood, Horn and Bone: this last group which comprises coopers, cartwrights,
wheelwrights, bowyers and fletchers at its largest comprised just over 3 per centof the known working population. No one practicing any of these trades held asenior civic office and none paid tax even in the inclusive 1524-25 subsidy.

420

NA CA 1601a, 3352.

148

Table XXIII: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Provisions’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
apothecarychandler /candleman /tallow chandler /wax chandler
rope makersaltpeter man
total

1400-09%01430-390%01460-690%0.0

1490-991%
7.7

1520-29

%
0

0.0

7

53.8

1

100

1

100
0

2

100
0

1

100
0.0

5

38.5
0.0

1

100

2

100

1

100

13

100

1550-591%
25.0

1580-891%
14.3

1590-99
2

%
18.2

0.0

1

14.3

1

9.1

0
0

3

75.0
0.0

4
1

57.1
14.3

8

72.7
0.0

1

100

4

100

7

100

11

100

1520-293%
100

1550-593%
75.0

1580-89
3%100

1590-99
6

%
100

0
0

1

25.0
0.0

100

4

100

Table XXIV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Services’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
barberdoctor / physician/ surgeon
leech

1400-09
4

total

4

%
100

1430-395%
71.4

1460-697%
87.5

1490-99
12

%
92.3

0
0

0.0
28.6

1

12.5
0.0

1

2

7.7
0.0

100

7

100

8

100

13

100

3

0
0
3

100

0
0
6

100

149

Table XXV: Breakdown of occupational group ‘Wood, horn and bone’ at 30 year intervals.
Occupation
bowyerbowstring maker
cartwrightcooperfletcher
shuttle maker
wheelwrighttotal

1400-09

1
2
1

4

%
0.0
0.0
25.0
50.0
25.0
0.0
0.0

1430-39

100

2

1
1

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
50.0
50.0
0.0
0.0

1460-69100

0%1490-99

2
9
2

0

13

%
0.0
0.0
15.4
69.2
15.4
0.0
0.0

1520-29

100

4

1
3

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
25.0
75.0
0.0
0.0

1550-59

1580-89

1

%
0.0
25.0
0.0
0.0
50.0
0.0
25.0

100

4

100

1

2

1590-99
1

1

%
0.0
0.0
0.0
50.0
25.0
0.0
25.0

6
1
1
4

%
7.7
0.0
0.0
46.2
7.7
7.7
30.8

4

100

13

100

2
1

150

Agriculture
One of the definitions of a town is that its economy was dependent on trade andcommerce rather than agriculture, but it was established in Chapter One thatmany, if not all, burgesses were associated in some way with farming the common
land surrounding the town. This association, however, was a secondary activity
and so the number of people recorded with agricultural occupations is small –usually the neat herd, swineherd and pinder already mentioned – and for somedecades there are no records of agricultural workers in the town at all.
When agricultural occupations are stated it is usually because there is a businessconnections with the town. There are, for example, three husbandmen identified in
Nottingham records. Thomas Staniland was enrolled as a burgess in 1502 withJohn Cragg and Robert Stables as sureties.421 Cragg was described as a tippler in
1478 when he paid for a licence to traffic, but by 1500 he was sufficiently
important to be included in the list of men who elected the mayor.422 He may havebought grain from Staniland. There are at least five Robert Stables in the records
at this time; one was a yeoman, one a tailor presented in 1517 for keeping thirty
beasts in the meadow, and another an inn keeper who was presented for regrating
corn in 1527, so again a possible trading connection.423 One of the sureties foranother husbandman, Charles Milner, enrolled as burgess in 1534, was Nicholas
Dorman, who leased one of the town mills in 1552-52, again a possible businessaffiliation.424 The last husbandman, Simon Pykard, was presented to the Sessions
court in 1593 for leaving the town when there was plague in Nottingham, ‘against

421

NA CA 3352.
NA CA 3350, 3351.
423
NA CA 22, 20a, 22b, 28.
424
NA CA 2169.
422

151

his oath’.425 He had been sheriff in 1580-81 and, despite his seemingly ruraloccupation, lived in St Peter’s parish where he paid the parish rate.426
There were also several men described as yeoman who became burgess and again
their sureties reveal their trading connections. In 1467, John Newland became aburgess and one of his sponsors, John Spencer, is known to have been a baker.
Thomas Wass who is described as both yeoman and baker became a burgess in
1499 with William Bytheway and John Down, also bakers, as sureties.427 When
Barton Ferrer became a burgess in 1513 his sureties were John Doubleday andJohn Durrant or Doret again both bakers.428 This association of yeoman and bakeris broken, however, in 1547 as Thomas Chetwin’s surety as burgess was James
Mason, a tanner.429 The following year William Chetwin was enrolled and one ofhis sureties was Hugh Smith, a saddler, which suggests they supplied livestock or
raw hide, rather than grain.430
The enrolment of yeoman as burgess became more common in the sixteenth
century; the list of burgesses living in 1604 shows that at least seven yeomen wereenrolled in Elizabeth I’s reign, five in the last ten years.431 One of these was John
Kyme already noted as setting up a mill to the detriment of poor millers and who,
in 1599, paid 8s tax on his land.432 He can probably be described as a protocapitalist, investing in all aspects of the production process and taking advantage
of an expanding domestic market.

425

NA CA 52b.
NA PR 21599.
427
NA CA 4547.
428
NA CA 3355.
429
NA CA 4589, Stevenson, IV, p.3-4.
430
NA CA 4590 Stevenson, IV, p.5-6.
431
NA CA 4635b.
432
TNA E179/160/249.
426

152

Conclusion
This chapter has identified a number of changes in Nottingham’s occupational
structure which all stem from the economic and demographic changes of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The most obvious are the decrease in the numberof international merchants and the dwindling textile trade, both outcomesstimulated by decline in the international trade in wool and finished cloth. To
compensate for these losses, manufacturing, in the form of bell founding and later
leather processing, came to the fore, while merchants, mercers and drapers
adapted to supply the domestic market.
These adaptations were measured and evolutionary. In the early sixteenth century,
when every indicator suggests Nottingham’s economy was at its lowest, the town
possessed a range of small craftsmen, with no dominant industry. By 1600, theproduction of leather and leather goods were important industrial sectors which
was only outnumbered by the production and sale of food and drink which
supplied a larger population. The market expansion though was not just in basic
commodities as Nottingham’s potential for success as a market centre is indicatedby the enrolment as burgesses of manufacturers of luxury products such as lace,musical instruments, books and clocks.
The converse of this prosperity is the presence of impoverished workers, such as
the weavers and tenant millers who suffered because of commercial investment
and self-regulation, that seems to have been a feature of the later sixteenth andearly seventeenth century. Such regulation may mirror a growing culture ofcontrol following the example of central government, but it also implies anincreased need in the face of a growing population to organise and regiment.

153

Attention has been drawn to entrepreneurial, if not capitalist, activity on several
occasions, but as many date to the 1400s, these were not ‘modern’ phenomena. In
the fifteenth century, however, such activities were ‘vertical’ developments:
fishers leased stews and sold fish; millers also tenanted inns, and so on. In thesixteenth century there is evidence for greater diversification exhibited by men
such as Thomas Mellers, the English brothers, William Gelstroppe and John
Kyme. The motives behind each example of diversification were a response todiffering economic conditions. Mellers traded during a time of recession in a wide
range of goods, including some luxury products to meet the demands of the few
wealthy men who could afford them. Kyme, on the other hand, invested in adeveloping market for food products stimulated by the growing population.
It was established in Chapter Two that there was a relationship between wealthand civic responsibility, and this chapter has shown that this led to a hierarchy ofoccupations that limited the potential to hold civic office to just a few of the moreprestigious trades. During the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, whenthe economy was weaker, in order to find sufficient candidates for civic office therange of acceptable occupations became larger, and then contracted again as the
economy improved, but with a different composition. As sources of wealth shiftedfrom merchant trade to manufacture so the civic leaders were more likely to beindustrialists than merchants but, overall, the relationship between wealth andcivic office remained unchanged.

154

Chapter Four: Conclusion to Part I
Part I has examined the economic development, demographic change, social
hierarchy and occupational structure of Nottingham between 1400 and 1600.
There are many overlaps between these topics and this chapter aims to draw them
together in a consideration of the research questions posed at the beginning of thisthesis.
The first of these questions asked what economic changes could be detected in
Nottingham’s commercial ventures? In Chapter One the changes in market andproperty rentals and evidence for new building described, in general terms, aneconomy which contracted throughout the fifteenth century. This was followed by
an expansion from the middle of the sixteenth century, as fewer rents are seen tobe ‘in decay’, the market areas refurbished and town leaders encouraged to invest
additional facilities. The occupational analysis in Chapter Three mirrored thesetrends. One of the most observable movements is the altered trading interests ofmerchants, which was a consequence of national and international factors that saw
not just a diminution in the export of wool and textiles but also a shift of this trade
towards London and the south. A long-term outcome of the loss of mercantile
trade was the increased importance of tanning and leather crafts, both in terms ofwealth and civic status, and in the numbers employed in the business. Shrinkageof the textile industry saw a proportional increase in the number of small
craftsmen, particularly at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth
centuries, a development reflected in the 1524-25 lay subsidy which shows thatthe majority of tax payers fell into the bracket occupied by small, independent
craftsmen. The most successful occupations, though, involved the production and155sale of foodstuffs. The entry into the burgess rolls of the late sixteenth century ofmen employed in book binding, and lace, clock, musical instrument making aswell as other luxury products is a clear indication of the growing importance ofNottingham as a market centre.
This same analysis named several men who could be called entrepreneurs, if not
capitalists in the strictest definition of the term. They, however, were not a newphenomenon. Fifteenth century examples range from men like John Howes who
appears to have dabbled in leather, wine and building materials, to the rentier
activities of men like Thomas Samon and William Hegyn. Some men, like John
Castle, the fisher, and John Woodson, the miller, participated in both the
production and sale of foodstuffs. The sub-letting of property, whether market
stalls or common fields, was also a common activity, throughout the period. Whatis observable, though, is that by the end of the sixteenth century the investment
was on a bigger scale. Whereas John Castle leased fish stews and a market stallfrom the town for an annual rent, John Kyme and others set up new mills incompetition not only to one another but to the town’s tenant millers.
The financial benefits of such investment are difficult to calculate because the‘bunching’ seen in later tax lists prevents any sensible assessment. What it ispossible to say is that Nottingham was always the home of many wealthy men. In
the fifteenth century these comprised the Staple merchants such as Thomas
Thurland and William Hegyn, and members of families like the Samons, Alestresand Plumptres whose names appear as the highest tax payers and regularly in thelists of mayors. Even at the lowest point in both economic and demographic
terms, men like John Rose and John Williamson and the extended Mellers family

156

prospered. Where comparisons are possible, Nottingham’s wealthiest people areon a par with men from other towns, both regionally and nationally. A side-effectof this individual wealth is that the town compares well with other local
communities, even though its population was smaller. Nottingham continued to
produce wealthy businessmen at the end of the century, but as with commercial
investment, some of the features were transformed as it became no longer simply
a place where money was made, but also a centre which attracted men who
already had money and status.
Another commercial development at the end of the sixteenth century was thegreater regulation of trade such as the stricter enforcement of statutes and the selfregulation of the butchers. Although the former actions were imposed by central
government, their local implementation shows that there was an intention tomaintain standards in the face of growing demand and potential for profit, which
was probably also the aim of the latter provisions.
Although some of these economic changes were as a result of evolving trends ininternational, national and regional trade, others were fuelled by population
fluctuations. The detailed analysis in Chapter Two showed that, like the economy,
there was a gradual decline in population through the fifteenth century, followedby an upswing in the later sixteenth century which saw the population rise by atleast 50 per cent, and possibly 100 per cent, in seventy-five years, due to inmigration. This rapid growth was one of the stimuli to the expansion of themarket, improved rental income and investment in new building, both of shops
and of lower quality housing for the poorer migrants. At the end of the sixteenth
century such building resulted in the filling up of back lanes with paltry houses

157and converted barns, and some northward expansion. Evidence of population
shrinkage in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries means that the town’s‘footprint’ was little altered. The same cannot be said for common agriculturalland. Either commercial investment or an early fifteenth-century population
fluctuation saw some incursions into common land, but these were relatively
minor compared to the problems caused by the size and rate of the sixteenth
century population increase. Meadowland in East and West Croft was divided andsubdivided, while the Sessions court and Mickletorn juries requested that
restrictions were placed on sub-letting and that leases should not renewed so thatland could be recouped. Although ‘poor burgesses’ are the motivation for thesepetitions, they were not the poor migrants subject to so much Tudor legislation asthese had no entitlement to common land. Instead they were men with a trade orcraft sufficient to permit them to buy their civic freedom. Such men had always
entered the town, but the analysis of both population and occupations indicatesthat the numbers were considerably greater by the end of the sixteenth century,
thus stretching a limited resource. This dependence on common land and the
produce of agriculture is a prime example of continuity within the town’s
economy, even in a period of commercial development.
The analysis of wealth in Chapter Two brought to light the relationship between
wealth and civic office. This relationship remained unbroken despite shifts in thesources of wealth suggesting that there was no stigma attached to manufacturing,
providing a man was able to generate sufficient wealth to divorce him from the
day-to-day necessities of his trade. But only a few men achieved this level ofaffluence and a further analysis of the range of occupations followed by civic

158

officials indicates that there was a hierarchy of trades that prevented some menever achieving office. The rigidity of this hierarchy was relaxed when social andeconomic problems made it difficult to find suitable candidates for office, but was
tightened again when circumstances were more favourable. On economic
measures alone, then, town administration was concentrated into the hands of justa few of the most prosperous burgesses.
Wealth and civic office brought with them social status and are, consequently,
useful in establishing a social hierarchy. Only a few wealthy men held the mostsenior offices, while the poorest did not achieve office at all. Yet there was adegree of personal social mobility. The 1473-79 levy and the 1524-25 lay subsidy
both comprise many townspeople whose income or assets must have beenminimal, yet some would later achieve a respectability as burgesses, and a few
achieved higher status. There were also gradations within the occupational groups,
although they probably also reflected personal wealth. The agreement with thePrior of Lenton spelt out the ranks of merchants, but similar inequalities are
implicit in tax returns and lists of ‘master’ bakers.
This definition of social status, however, is not universally applicable as there
were people who fell outside the defined boundaries. Not all wealthy men aspired
to or attained civic office, at least at the end of the sixteenth century, and a few
already possessed gentry status before they entered the town. The presence ofsuch affluent men compared to the influx of migrants, whether these were poor
burgesses or even poorer general labourers and vagrants who frequented the ale
houses, suggests a widening social gap between the top and bottom of Nottingham
society.

159

The question of social and political tensions in Nottingham has not been dealt
with directly so far, but greater social distinctions give some indication that these
existed. As a result of economic and demographic changes there was discontent
between tenant millers and poor weavers and the men who threatened theirlivelihood, while concern for the plight of poor burgesses saw the burgesses in
opposition to the Council over the management of common assets.
There is little evidence for rapid alterations in the fifteenth century in any aspectof the town discussed so far. Both population and economy, and the consequences
they have for the town, show a gradual decline over time, despite somefluctuations at in the 1410s and 1480s, which may have been hardly perceivable tothe men and women living in Nottingham during these years. There are, though,many indications that the beginning of the sixteenth century saw a more rapid
depletion of population, particularly through high mortality, which had a knockon effect for the local economy, exacerbated by excessive taxation. The speed of
growth at the end of the sixteenth century must have been much more
pronounced, although because of the missing records in the middle years of the
century it is not clear when the recovery began.
All the features discussed above, whether they concern the changing occupationsof civic leaders, better rental incomes, the widening gap between rich and poor, or
the social and political tensions that resulted from it, all come to the fore in thelast thirty years of the century. They must have been sufficiently visible to all
townspeople that some were able to commercially exploit the developments,
while others were motivated to raise concerns over social issues. These concerns

160were voiced through the Sessions and Mickletorn juries, two of the bodies thatwere part of Nottingham’s administrative structure, which is discussed in Part II.

161

Part II
Administration

Chapter Five: Local government
Frequent mention was made in Part I to Nottingham’s civic officers – the mayor,
aldermen, common councillors, sheriffs and chamberlains – who together were
responsible for the administration of Nottingham. The relationship between thesegroups was defined partly by royal charter and partly through local custom. It is
generally argued that as the sixteenth century progressed, local administration
became increasingly oligarchic and structured, while at the same time its
responsibilities and authority grew.433 This chapter investigates the stages ofdevelopment of Nottingham’s local government and its responsibilities, and where
possible identifies the factors which stimulated change, whether these were local
or national, economic, social or political. It also looks at the degree to which
Nottingham’s administration was oligarchic, and at some of the men who
comprised that oligarchy.
Local administration before 1449
By 1400, the administration of Nottingham was firmly established as lying with amayor supported by two bailiffs. It is most likely that this administration grewfrom the guild merchant, granted to Nottingham in 1189, but how closely theguild was related to the mayoral office is ambiguous. Even though the Boroughcourt met in the Guild Hall, a guild merchant is mentioned only once in the
Borough court records, when in 1365 it was noted that John Burre had been
accepted into the guild in the chamber of Robert de Hopwell. Hopwell was mayor

433

R Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns in England: Politics and Political Culture c.15401640 (Oxford, 1998), p.19.

163

in 1365-66 and, it must be assumed was master or alderman of the guild.434
Stevenson interprets this to mean that entrance into the guild was synonymouswith enrolment as a burgess.435 It is, however, not surprising that Hopwell would
hold both posts given that the most distinguished men would always hold the most
responsible and prestigious positions.
In 1399, a Charter of Richard II not only ratified the right of the mayor andbailiffs to hear all disputes about rents, property, trespass, covenants, contracts
and so on within the town, but the town was granted the right to appoint four
‘upright and lawful men’ (quatuor probiores et legaliores homines) to hear suitsbrought under the Statute of Labourers, effectively making the mayor and four of
his peers Justices of the Peace.436
In 1411-13 Nottingham experienced disturbances and insurrection resulting fromthe election of the mayor. The details surrounding these disturbances will be
discussed in full in Chapter Seven, but in the context of this chapter they expose amodification in local administration. Edward I’s Charter of 1283-84 had granted
the right to elect a mayor and bailiffs to all the assembled burgesses.437 By 1411
an electoral college of forty-eight comprised of former mayors and bailiffs and thecurrent mayor had taken on this responsibility.438 This amendment to electoral
procedure is an unmistakable indication that by the beginning of the fifteenth
century Nottingham’s council was a closed institution. From this time on the434

NA CA 1275, Stevenson, I, pp.188-89. Stevenson translates the phrase se receptur’ fuisse ad
gildam mercatorum as ‘should have been’, a later translation by Trevor Foulds is that Burre ‘had
been’ accepted into the guild, which makes more sense.
435
Stevenson, II, pp.x.
436
NA CA 4166, Stevenson, II, pp.1-12.
437
congregatis burgensibus utriusque burgi eiusdem villae; Stevenson, I, pp.58-59.
438
TNA C145/292/24-26, translated in PRO, Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, Vol. 8,1399-1422 (1968), p.469.

164

mayor and bailiffs were chosen by men who had previously held civic office, notthe whole burgess community. Furthermore, as Table XXVI below shows, withnine exceptions, all the mayors elected in the first half of the fifteenth century(and probably the latter half of the fourteenth, although this study has not lookedat these in detail) had previously held the post of bailiff, thus restricting eligibility
and political authority even further.
As indicated by this Table, in general there was an interval of about ten years
between a burgess’s appointment as bailiff and his first year as mayor. Hugh de
Lyndeby for example, was bailiff in 1390-91 and mayor in 1400-1 and Robert
Glade was bailiff in 1396-97 and mayor eight years later in 1404-5. Two mayors
appear to have held the post of chamberlain rather than bailiff. One, Robert
Squire, may have been bailiff in the 1370s when there are missing records, theother is Henry Wilford whose election as mayor for a second time in 1412-13
resulted in the insurrection already mentioned.
The ten year gap between appointments as bailiff and mayor allowed a burgess toaccumulate some wealth which, as discussed in Chapter Two, was a prerequisite
for mayoral office. It also allowed time for a man to accrue some seniority
amongst his peers, business experience, familiarity with town administration andpersonal maturity, but there were exceptions to this pattern.

165

Table XXVI: Mayors 1400-1450(years in office before 1400 and after 1450 in brackets)
Mayor
Years in office
Bailiff
Hugh de Lyndeby
1400-11390-91
Robert Squire1401-2(1384-85, 1390-91)
Thomas de MaperleyThomas de Stanley
Robert Glade
Thomas Kay
John SamonJohn de Plumptre(sen)John de Alestre

John de Tannesley
John del HethHenry de Wilford
William Stokes
Richard Taverner439

1402-31403-41404-5, 1413-14,
1419-20, 1423-24
1405-6, 1415-16
1407-8(1383-4, 1396-7)
1408-9(1385-86, 1394-95,
1395-96)1409-10, 1414-15,
1420-21, 1426-27,
1430-311410-11(1399-1400)
1411-221412-13(1398-99)
1416-17, 1425-6
1417-18

Chamberlain

MP439

Occupation

Relationships
executors: John Heth and Simon Ilkeston(both mayors)supervisor of will: William Stokes (mayor)

1381-821385-86
1396-971412

mercer1394-95
1381-82

draper/merchant1373-74

merchant

father of Richard Samon (mayor)
grandson of John Tannesley (mayor)
father of John (junior) (mayor)

1402-31422, 1424

merchant

son of Nicholas Alestre
father of Thomas Alestre (mayor)

1395-961412

merchant

grandfather of John Samon (mayor)
executor: Richard Taverner (mayor)

1397-981408-91396-97, 1401-2
1377-78

draperironmonger
merchant
vintnerfather of John Wilford (chamberlain)poss. related to John Wilford, merchantsupervisor, Robert Squire’s will
executor: John Tannesley willcompiled from T Bailey, Annals of Nottinghamshire, a History of the County of Nottingham, including the Borough, Vol. 1 (London, 1859), pp.291-324 & History of
Parliament: Register of the Ministers and the Members of both Houses, 1439-1509 (London, 1938), pp.668-69.
166

MayorRichard SamonThomas Poge (Page)

John Plumptre (jun)William Brodholm
William Halifax
John Etwell
John Orgrave

Thomas Alestre

William Webster
Thomas Thurland(Thirland)

Robert Rasyn
Geoffrey Knyveton

Years in office1418-19, 1422-23,
1428-29, 1432-33,
1439-40(1451-52)
1421-22

Bailiff
1414-151427-28, 1437-38,
1445-46(1454-55)
1429-30, 1434-35
1431-32, 1440-41
1433-34
1435-36, 1441-42
1449-50(1456-57)
1436-37, 1444-45(1452-3, 1461-62
1469-70)
1438-391442-43, 1447-48,
1448-49(1450-51, 1453-54
1458-59, 1459-60
1462-63, 1463-64)
1443-441446-471415-161417-18
1423-241419-20

Chamberlain

MP439
1420

1419, 1420,
1422, 1423,
1427
1430, 1436

Occupation

Relationships
son of John Samon (mayor)
great-grandson of John Tannesley (mayor)

Calais Staple
merchant

son of John (senior) (mayor)

1421-221436
1428, 1429

merchant

1432-22

1441, 1448,
1449 (x2),1467
1424-25
1441, 1448,
1449 (x2),1450, 1461

1434, 1446
1421-22

Calais Staple
merchant

son of John Alestre (mayor)

fisherCalais Staple
merchant‘gent’‘Constable’ of
Nottingham
Castleexecutor of Queen Joan of Navarre

167

Richard Samon, for example, was bailiff in 1414-15 and mayor only four years
later in 1418-19, but he was the son of John Samon and grandson of John
Tannesley, both of whom had been mayor at the end of the fourteenth and in theearly years of the fifteenth centuries.440 He was probably also descended fromJohn Samon who had been mayor in the 1360s and an earlier Richard Samon,
mayor in 1355-56. Another example is father and son, John and Thomas Alestre.
John Alestre was enrolled as a burgess in 1395,441 became bailiff in 1402-3 andwas appointed mayor seven years later in 1409-10. His son, Thomas, became
mayor in 1436-37 and was Member of Parliament for Nottingham in 1441, butthere is no record of him being bailiff.
Another man who had not acted as bailiff was Geoffrey Kneveton or Kneton.442 In
1432 he appeared in the Borough court as Seneshcall or Steward of Lord
Fitzhugh.443 Deering describes him as being Constable or deputy to Ralph
Cromwell, Governor of the Castle, and in 1435 he was named as co-plaintiff with
Joan, Queen of England in six suits for debt.444 After the death of Joan, he andThomas Bugge, esquire, were named co-executors of her Will, again pursuingsmall debts through the Borough court.445 Kneveton had been chamberlain in
1421-22 and was elected mayor in 1446-47, after the death of Joan, possibly on
the basis of his Court connections. John Etwell, who was mayor in 1433-34, is440

NA CA 1302; Foulds online CA 1320.
NA CA 3942.
442
Stevenson uses Kneveton but the more frequent spelling, as noted by Trevor Foulds is Kneton.
443
Foulds online CA 1323.
444
C Deering, Nottinghamia vetus et nova or an Historical Account of the Ancient and Present
State of the Town of Nottingham (Nottingham 1751, reprinted 1970), p.184; Foulds online CA
1325.
445
Foulds online CA 1329/II.
441

168

also given as a co-plaintiff with Queen Joan, for small debts for hay.446 He had,though, also been bailiff and MP for Nottingham.
It seems then, that in addition to the wealth established in Chapter Two as theoverriding qualification for mayoral office, family and political connections also
played a key role in selection for mayor, sometimes allowing a short-cut throughthe normal route to office.
A second conclusion which can be drawn from Table XXVI is that repeated officeholding was common if not the norm. In the first fifty years of the fifteenth
century there were twenty-six mayors in total, only ten of whom held the office
for a single year. Of these Thomas Mapperley, Thomas Poge or Page,447 John
Etwell and Robert Rasyn had all represented Nottingham in Parliament, before adecree of 1436-37 ordered that all MPs should have previously held mayoral
office.448 This technicality though only reinforces the concept that politicalconnections, or political utility, also governed mayoral elections.
Another common feature of this group of office holders is that they were chosen
to witness documents, usually property transactions, which form part of the
Borough Records collection. A few of these transactions were witnessed by men
who were family friends or neighbours of one of the parties, but the majority weresealed or attested either wholly or partially by men who had at least held the postof bailiff and more usually mayor. In 1404-5, for example, John Alwyn was
granted a messuage in Belward Gate by William and Agnes Shypwryght.449 The

446

Foulds online CA 1322/II.
Poge in NA CA 1317; Page in TNA C/241/299/6.
448
NA CA 4771, Stevenson, II, p.424.
449
NA CA 1303.
447

169

conveyance or ‘charter’ was brought to the Borough court to be enrolled where it
was witnessed by the mayor, bailiffs and seven others. Two of these, William
Misterton and Henry Smith of Gamston, held the messuages either side of theproperty in question but the remaining five witnesses were John Samon, John
Tannesley, John Plumptre, Henry Wilford and John Albeyn. John Albeyn isperhaps the odd one out as he does not appear to have a connection with John
Alwyn, the Shpywryghts or to have held civic office, the other four, however, had
all been mayor.
A survey of conveyances shows that John Samon witnessed a total of thirty-threeproperty transactions, John Tannesley forty-two, John Plumptre twenty-three andHenry Wilford fifteen, in addition to those documents they signed in theircapacity as mayor or bailiff. Other former mayors who were frequent signatories
were William Stokes who witnessed twenty-three documents, and Thomas Kay or
Cay and John Alestre whose names appear at the end of twenty-five transactions.
Most of these are documents enrolled in the Borough court, yet, as established in
Chapter Three, these fifteenth-century merchants rarely brought cases to thatcourt, so it cannot simply be that they were present because they had suits inprocess. Rather, by witnessing such documents, these men were acting on behalfof the community in an unspecified but recognised capacity. By 1446 this samegroup when not acting as mayor probably comprised the committee of twelve
who, with the current mayor, was authorised to
end and dispose of as they thincke meete of all things belonginge to
the Commynaltie of the towne without interrupcion or contradiccionof any person within the towne450450

NA CA 4771, Stevenson, II, p.424.

170

Furthermore, the institution of this committee probably reflected a long-standing
arrangement whereby former mayors acted as councillors to the current mayor. Its
importance to the town at this date is, however, difficult to assess because allreference to its existence have been lost except for brief notes taken at the
beginning of the seventeenth century by William Gregory.451 Its existence,
however, is evidence for yet further narrowing of burgess participation in local
government as the responsibility for decision making moved from the burgess
community to a committee.
The administration of Nottingham, by 1449, was then already closed. Candidates
for mayor were limited to wealthy men often with family and politicalconnections. Burgesses participation had been reduced by the appointment of acommittee which made decisions on behalf of the community and the election of
new officers was restricted to a group of forty-eight men who had already held acivic office of some significance. This structure had been reached through small
accretions of authority which had become custom, but these were about to become
more formal.
The 1449 Charter of Incorporation
One reason for looking so closely at this first fifty years of the fifteenth century isthat in 1449 Nottingham received its Charter of Incorporation and was given
county status.452 The most important provision made in the Charter in relation to
the mayoralty and local administration was the creation of seven aldermen who
were to hold this office for life and who would take turns as mayor. After this date
it is possible to see the role cycling around the group of aldermen approximately
451
452

Stevenson, I, p.xi.
Charter of Henry VI, Stevenson, II, pp.186-209.

171

every six years. These aldermen were also created Justices of the Peace authorised
to hear cases of felony, and, as recognition of their status, granted the right towear a livery equivalent to that of the mayor and aldermen of London.453 As
Caroline Barron points out, it was the wearing of livery that marked London
aldermen from their fellow men, providing an ‘outward and visible sign of thespecial status of the wearer’.454 If that was the purpose of livery in London, it
must have had a similar, if not greater, effect in Nottingham, marking out a few
men as members of a social and political elite.
This Charter is normally regarded as the pinnacle of success for late medieval
Nottingham, but a more detailed examination of the circumstances that surroundthis important award reveals a rather different picture. The effect of the fifteenth
century slump and restricted credit facilities on the textile industry was discussed
in Chapter Three. There is evidence that Nottingham suffered from the same
economic pressures experienced by Yorkshire wool merchants identified by
Jennifer Kermode.455 Richard Goddard, through an analysis of the suits for debt
brought to the Borough court, has noted a ‘cooling of the local economy and areduction in the volume of trade’ in Nottingham from the 1420s.456 Barrie Dobson
has described the period after 1450 as a time of ‘massive evasion of civic
office’,457 which saw the richest men avoiding their civic duties, though this may

453

uti valeant togis, capiciis, et collobiis de una secta et una liberata simul cum furruris etlinaturis collobiis illis convenientibus eisdem modo et forma prout Major et Aldermanni Civitatis
nostrae London ununtur, Stevenson, II, p.205.
454
C Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People (Oxford, 2004), p.145.
455
J I Kermode, ‘Money and Credit in the Fifteenth Century: Some Lessons from Yorkshire’,
Business History Review, 65:3 (1991) pp.475-501.
456
R Goddard, ‘Surviving recession: English Borough Courts and Commercial Contraction, 13501500’, in R Goddard, J Langdon and M Müller (eds), Survival and Discord in Medieval Society:
Essays in Honour of Christopher Dyer (Turnhout, 2010), p.81.
457
R B Dobson, ‘Urban Decline in Late Medieval England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, fifth series, 27 (1997), p.13.

172not be a straightforward correlation. Jennifer Kermode, for example, has argued
that in York the wealthiest continued to hold office while evasion occurredamongst the lesser tradesmen and craftsmen, which seems also to have been thecase in Nottingham.458
The lack of records between 1455 and 1481 means that it is not possible to say
how widespread the problem was, but in 1461-62 John Dalby, who may havebeen a mason, paid £6 13s 3d to be excused office, while John Pool and Robert
Howett of whom nothing else is known paid £5 6s 8d and £5 respectively to be
exonerated from the office of sheriff.459 In the same period there are examples ofmen holding these mid-level offices for two consecutive years: Thomas Bradmer
held the post of chamberlain in both 1450-51 and 1451-52, Thomas Brampton
was chamberlain for two consecutive years in 1459-60 and 1460-61 and John
Coke succeeded him in 1461-62 and 1462-63. Prior to this, it was not unknown
for a burgess to hold the post of sheriff or chamberlain on two occasions, but it
was rare and there was usually a gap of ten years or so between each appointment.
That some men were appointed in consecutive years suggests that were no othersuitable candidates. The inference, therefore, is that middle-ranking burgesses felt
less financially able to hold office, which in turn supports the impression that the
town’s economy in the mid-fifteenth century was unhealthy, for some people atleast.
In contrast, at the mayoral level, the richest man in Nottingham, Thomas
Thurland, seems to have actively sought office, or been sought out. Although

458

J I Kermode, ‘Urban Decline? The Flight from Office in Late Medieval York’, Economic
History Review, new series, 35:2 (1982), pp.181-82.
459
NA CA 1660.

173

repeated office holding, as already discussed, was the rule there was generally agap of six to ten years between each occasion. This interval was a constant until
those years immediately before and after the 1449 Charter was granted. Although
Thurland was never bailiff he became mayor nine times in twenty years,
sometimes holding the post for two years consecutively. He was also Member ofParliament for Nottingham on five occasions often in the same year that he wasmayor, the first of these being 1442-43. He was again mayor 1447-48 and 144849 and MP in both Parliaments of 1449 and again in 1450-51.460 He was joined on
all these occasions by Thomas Alestre and their attendance at both Parliaments of
1449 means that they must have been instrumental in negotiating the Charter ofIncorporation granted by Henry VI. Thurland’s influence was again called uponwhen the Charter was ratified by Edward IV in 1462.461 He was appointed mayor
in both 1458-59 and 1459-60, MP in 1461-62 and mayor again in 1462-63. This
ratification cost the town two marks to the Hanaper and £17 in expenses toThurland.462
Thomas Thurland and Thomas Alestre together with John Plumptre, anothermayor who had represented Nottingham in Parliament, were all Calais Staple
merchants.463 Their business interests and that of other mayors of the 1440s and1450s such as Richard Samon who are also referred to as merchants, must havebeen affected in some way by the mid-century downturn. For them, the Charter
brought great benefits since before 1449 they would have been financially liable
for the town’s affairs whereas incorporation gave them protection from this460

History of Parliament: Register of the Ministers and of the Members of Both Houses 1439-1505(London, 1938), pp.668-69.
461
Charter of Edward IV, Stevenson¸ II, pp.246-47.
462
NA CA 1660.
463
PRO, Calendar of Close Rolls, Vol. VI (1939), p.15.

174threat.464 Robert Tittler has argued that charters of incorporation, rather than being
luxuries afforded by prosperous towns, could be a means of shoring up a failing
economy, and this may have been the situation in Nottingham.465 The wording of
the Charter acknowledges that Nottingham had been incorporated ‘under a certain
form’ for a long time, so its grant simply formalised the protection it alreadyoffered.466 It is impossible to say whether the Charter was sought by Thurland andhis colleagues in order to support the economy or protect a system of local
government that was under threat from a lack of willing candidates, but it wasprobably not acquired to celebrate the town’s success.
Nottingham’s Charter of Incorporation is simultaneously a symbol of continuity
and a marker of significant change within Nottingham. What should be clear fromthe account above is that the Charter only specifically mentioned civic offices thatwere new to the town – the aldermen and the sheriffs – and even these roles wererooted in existing structures. David Marcombe in his discussion of late medieval
Nottingham claims that themain weakness of the [1449] charter was that it did not define the roleof the burgesses and commons in the corporation or make the rulingcabal accountable to the broad mass of citizens467
The definition which Marcombe rightly identifies as missing from the Charterprobably seemed unnecessary to Thurland and his colleagues as the relationships
were already defined by custom and tradition, and therefore part of a continuity of
government. At the same time, by reducing the number that comprised the ruling464

M Weinbaum, The Incorporation of Boroughs (Manchester, 1937), p.xxiv.
R Tittler, ‘Late Medieval Urban Prosperity’, Economic History Review, new series, 37:4
(1984), pp.551-54.
466
quae est et a diu extitit villa sub certa forma corporata, Charter of Henry VI, Stevenson, II,
pp.188-89.
467
D Marcombe, ‘The Late Medieval Town, 1449-1560’, in J Beckett (ed) A Centenary History of
Nottingham, second edition (Chichester, 2006), p.92.
465

175

group from the mayor and twelve, as in 1446, to the mayor and six, the Charter
created a formal divide between the aldermen and the remaining six. The
remnants of the original committee became known as common councillors and soby omission rather than design the Charter created a lower house or company in a
new and undefined two-tier system of local government.
Even though the Charter concentrated authority into the hands of a small group ofmen, and was thus another step towards a closed administration, it also provided
stability and continuity of rule, two highly desirable features of government.
Politically, it ensured that the town was managed by a small group of wealthy andexperienced men, who in return for shouldering this burden, were granted adegree of financial protection and the additional incentives of the near-gentry
status accorded to Justices of the Peace and a livery of the highest order.
Following Incorporation there may have had some economic improvement
because, as discussed in Chapter One, market rents increased in the 1460s andthere was investment in new building in the following decade. This improvement,
though, was short-lived as the economic and demographic problems of the early
sixteenth century took hold.
Local administration after 1449
The administration of Nottingham after 1449 comprised three groups. The first,
instituted by the Charter, was the group of seven aldermen who took turns to standas mayor. The second was the common council which formed a lower tier ofadministration and the third was the group of former chamberlains and sheriffs
which acted as an electoral college. This structure remained in place until the176early years of the seventeenth century, although there were some amendments
over time.
The mayor and aldermen
Unsurprisingly, as the institution formed by the Charter the least changed group
was the aldermen. Even so, they were not unaffected by the economic anddemographic changes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One change, alreadybeen noted in Chapter Three, is that in line with the changing economic base of
Nottingham, civic officers increasingly derived their wealth from manufacturing
trades, although their role was as owners not operatives. Other changes were more
personal.
The first alteration is that the three families which had dominated the mayoralty atthe end of the fourteenth and throughout the early fifteenth centuries – theAlestres, Plumptres and Samons – all but disappeared after 1450. For example,
John and Thomas Alestre were mayors on a total of ten occasions after 1409-10,
but Richard Alestre was mayor only once in 1485-86. Another Thomas Alestre
was mayor in 1512-13; dying in office he was the last Alestre mayor in thiscentury. Likewise John Plumptre, mayor for the final time in 1454-55 was the last
member of his family to be mayor, although Nicholas Plumptre was Mayor’s
Clerk in the 1570s.468 Richard Samon was also the last member of his family to bemayor, first holding the post in 1418-19 and on five other occasions. Of his
descendants, Thomas Samon, who was the largest property owner in Nottingham
in 1504 was said to be ‘of Annesley Woodhouse’ and therefore not a town

468

NA CA 3360.

177

resident.469 He was also described as armiger while Richard Samon, who only
appears in the ‘foreign pleas’ of the Borough court is described as knight.470 They
were not the only family to assume some of the aspects of gentrification. Despite
being mayor and MP with great frequency, Thomas Thurland was simultaneously
Lord of the Manor of Gamston.471 His son, Richard, married Alice, daughter ofThomas Neville; she was a granddaughter of Sir William Babbington, Chief
Justice of the King’s Bench and, after Richard’s death she married Sir Gervase
Clifton.472 Richard and Alice’s son, Thomas, was mayor in 1484-84 and 1490-91
but the family is absent from the administrative records from then on. They are,perhaps, examples of wealthy men who chose the ‘patrician splendours’ of thecounty rather than the recessionary problems of urban living, testifying to both thefinancial opportunities offered by Nottingham, and the social ambitions of its
wealthiest residents in this later medieval period.473
They were replaced by new men, some of whom also established dynasties albeit
short-lived ones. The Hunt family was prominent for a while between 1460 and
1500: John Hunt senior was mayor in the 1460s and John junior and Edmund or
Edward Hunt both mayors in 1470s and 80s. Thomas Hunt, who may or may not
be related, was a legal adviser to the town particularly during a dispute between
Nottingham and Retford, going so far as to consult Domesday Book in thematter.474 He also acted for Nottingham in an expensive legal dispute against John

469

S N Mastoris, ‘A Tax Assessment of 1504 and the Topography of Early Tudor Nottingham’Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 89 (1985), p.39; NA CA 1383b.
470
NA CA 1400.
471
University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, Ne M 56.
472
S Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian England: The Greater Gentry of Nottinghamshire(Oxford, 1991) p.237.
473
A R Bridbury, ‘English Provincial Towns in the Later Middle Ages’, Economic History
Review, second series, 34:1 (1981), p.19.
474
NA CA 4441, Stevenson, III, p.266.

178

Mapperley over a piece of ground called Cornerwong.475 Another Thomas,
however, son of Edmund and like his father a merchant, did not take on any civic
responsibilities.476

Perhaps the richest mayor of this post-1485 period was William Hegyn, a Calais
Staple merchant whose goods were valued in c.1500 at 300 marks for which hepaid 50s tax.477 He was a Nottingham man and his father and brother, both Henry,
were butchers. William died before 1508 and his executor was his son, anotherWilliam.478 William junior was sheriff in 1509-10 but did not achieve any higher
office as he too died sometime before 1515.479
William junior’s death epitomises the problems that hit the mayoralty in the early
sixteenth century. Seven of the men appointed as mayor in the late 1510s andearly 1520s held the post only once and one newly appointed alderman died
before he had the chance to become mayor. A consequence of this was that thestability which the 1449 Charter should have provided was undermined. Only
three men, John Williamson, John Rose and Thomas Mellers, had any longevity
as mayor. It seems, then, that the economic and demographic problems of thisearly part of the sixteenth century, already identified in Chapters Two and Three,were joined by political instability which must mark a low-point in the history of
Nottingham.
One family which seems to have escaped and even prospered from the problemsof the 1510s and 1520s was the Mellers. Richard Mellers became mayor for the475

NA CA 4533, Stevenson, II, pp.397-98.
NA CA 4544b, Stevenson, III, p.431.
477
NA CA 7481i & ii.
478
NA CA 1382.
479
NA CA 1387.
476

179

first time in 1499-1500; he was succeeded by his sons Robert and Thomas and inturn by his grandson-in-law, Humphrey Quernby who was also MP for
Nottingham in 1554 and 1562480 and then by his great-grandson John Gregory.
Another grandson, Fabian, became a common councillor, served as coroner andwas appointed alderman but resigned in 1586-87 before he became mayor due tohis wife’s ill health; he was dead by 1589-90.481 Fabian’s mother had taken John
Heskey as a second husband. Although he had not held any other office, he was acommon councillor by 1551 and became mayor in 1557-58, but died in office.482
It seems his pathway to the mayoralty was eased by his new family connections.
Later sixteenth-century networks include the Bonner and Alvey families, whenfather was succeeded by son.
There are several observations to be made about these examples of dynastic
success or failure. The first is the social mobility demonstrated by the dominantfamilies of the early fifteenth century who acquired gentry status through theacquisition of land and their civic roles as Justices of the Peace. The second is thatin addition to wealth as a pre-requisite for civic office (as established in Chapters
Two and Three) family networks were useful, if not essential, levers. Both thesefactors contribute to the social distinctions that separated the community leadersfrom the rest of the burgess community, and even further from the non-burgess
groups. The third observation is that the political instability of the early years of
the sixteenth century which was a consequence of the high mortality rate ofaldermen and the resultant ascendancy of three men, must have reinforced the480

Bailey, Annals, Vol. II, pp.443 & 470.
NA CA 3368, 4614.
482
NA CA 4477.
481

180

economic difficulties. As will be discussed in Chapter Seven, their time in office
was marked by friction if not factionalism.
The common council
The common council developed from the 1446 committee of ‘mayor and twelve’omitted from the provisions of the 1449 Charter. Following the creation of sevenaldermen the remaining six men became common councillors and Gregory notes
that, after 1463, orders were made in the name of the mayor and the common
council.483 It is probably on this basis that Stevenson headed extracts from the
Mayor’s books as ‘Minutes of the common council’ which is misleading as thistitle is not given in the original manuscripts. In 1552, the orders were made by themayor and aldermen, with the consent of the common council while in 1594 only
the order is noted and not who made it.484 Nevertheless, these examples show thatthe role of the common council was to ratify the work of the aldermen on behalfof the wider community, thus excluding common burgesses from day-to-day
decision making. Councillors were also involved in matters that affected the
security of Nottingham. For example, in 1499-1500 four common councillors
were part of the committee which heard a deposition for treasonable language and,one hundred years later, townsmen were interrogated by common councillors
about their role in an attempt to overturn the decisions of the mayor.485
As an undefined group, the common council probably was unsatisfactory.
Certainly, in 1600 the Mickletorn complained that councillors had been chosen to
confer with the aldermen ‘for the good of the Commons and in steade of the483

NA CA 4471, Stevenson, II, p.425.
Stevenson, IV, pp.100 & 239. See NA CA 3358 & 3374 for original MSS.
485
NA CA 4547, 3376.
484

181

commeneres’ but neglected this duty; the mayor was asked to issue an order thatany councillor absenting himself without good reason should be expelled.486 This
complaint, though, was made during a period of negotiation which led, a few
years later, to a merger of councillors with chamberlains and sheriffs to form anenlarged council, and so cannot necessarily be taken at face value.
The chamberlains and sheriffs
Under the terms of the 1449 Charter the office of bailiff was replaced by that ofsheriff; two were elected every year. The post of chamberlain, however, was notpart of the Charter’s provisions. For most of the fifteenth century it was usual fora man to be appointed as bailiff or sheriff and then as chamberlain about ten years
later. This pattern changed over time so that by the end of the sixteenth century it
was the norm for men to be chamberlain first and sheriff a year, or at most two
years, later. It may be that this change in the order of progression was anenticement to take on the onerous role of chamberlain in order that they could
progress to the more formally constituted and possibly prestigious one of sheriff.
The Mayor’s book for 1499-1500 includes a list of twenty-two sheriffs followedby the word ‘crymsyn’, referring to their red livery.487 The term ‘Clothing’ used todescribe the group of former chamberlains and sheriffs who elected the mayor
derives from this livery, although it is only used after 1578.488
While the 1449 Charter stated that the aldermen and sheriffs should be chosen by
the burgesses it is clear that, as before, elections were limited to a relatively small
group of men. The first surviving list of electors which dates from 1495-96 shows

486

NA CA 3020.
NA CA 4547.
488
NA CA 3363.
487

182

that the group comprised forty-eight former chamberlains, seven aldermen, sixcommon councillors, the Recorder and two coroners, as well as the newly electedsheriffs and chamberlain, or a total of sixty-six men.489 The number of this groupwas, however, flexible as a similar document for 1500-1 lists sixty men, while theHall book for 1512-13 records the aldermen, common councillors and just thirtysix others.490 This smaller group reinforces the argument made above that theeconomic and demographic problems of the 1510s and 1520s had political
implications, among them this much reduced group of electors. Another indicationthat this was a politically difficult time for Nottingham is that it was a period
when, yet again, men held the office of sheriff and chamberlain in consecutive
years, or even both offices in the same year. Thomas Morton, for example, waschamberlain in 1510-11 and both chamberlain and sheriff in 1511-12, and Robert
Mody held both posts in 1522-23, as did James Mason in 1529-30. There may nothave been enough men with the right experience to make up a bigger electoral
group. Although chamberlains and sheriffs had specific duties, their role aselectors gave them civic responsibility long after they had finished their year in
office which made them part of extended ruling group. The end of the sixteenth
century saw calls to formally recognise this role, something that was finallyachieved at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The later sixteenth century
In contrast to the earlier part of the century, the last thirty years of the sixteenth
century saw a more stable mayoralty. All the mayors from 1570, with the
exception of Robert Stanley and Robert Marsh held the office at least twice. John

489
490

NA CA 4544c.
NA CA 3351, 3355a.

183

Gregory was mayor on five occasions between 1561 and 1586 and Robert Alvey
may have held the post four times between 1573 and 1594, although Alvey senior
might have been mayor before 1588 (the year he died)491 and Alvey junior afterthat date. Similarly, John Brownlow was mayor five times.492 Richard Hurt,
Richard Morehagh, Humphrey Bonner and William Freeman who were all
appointed aldermen during the 1590s show a similar longevity through the first
fifteen to twenty years of the seventeenth century.
As in earlier years, there are some dynastic elements to these names. The Alvy
family is noted above, and John Gregory has already been mentioned as adescendant of Humphry Querneby and Richard Mellers, while Humphrey Bonner
was almost certainly the son of Nicholas Bonner, mayor in the 1560s. In Chapter
Two it was pointed out that several of them are given the honorific ‘gentleman’,and therefore the attributes of gentrification, yet another example of social
separation.
Another factor in this separation, it is argued, was the growing responsibilities andauthority of local administration, ensuing from an increasingly centralised
government,493 and it is these developments of civic responsibility which are
explored next.
Civic responsibilities of the mayor and aldermen
As officers of the town the mayor and aldermen were responsible for protecting
Nottingham’s assets in the form of property (land and houses) owned by the town

491

NA CA 4613.
Stevenson, ‘Appendix’, IV, p.418; in one year his name is given as Brownlay.
493
P Clark, ‘Introduction’, in P Clark (ed), Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. II, 15401840 (Cambridge, 2000), p.5.
492

184

and its income from tolls and market fees. In 1452, for example, it was agreed thatthe merchants of Coventry and Nottingham should be free from toll in eachtown.494 As both towns were probably in economic decline in the middle of the
fifteenth century, it is likely that this agreement was intended to boost trade andprotect the merchants who made up the council. In 1480, when Nottingham was
beginning to make some economic recovery, the mayor pursued the burgesses ofRetford for unpaid tolls.495 In 1516, when the incomes of both town and Priory
were probably much reduced, an agreement was reached with the Prior of Lenton
about tolls and the letting of booths and shops at Lenton Fair to Nottingham
burgesses, again probably to boost trade.496
When necessary the town went to court to enforce its rights. The 1480s, forexample, saw the protracted dispute with John Mapperley over a piece of landcalled Cornerwong, already mentioned several times. As well as the services ofThomas Hunt, whose role was mentioned above, this complicated case required
an exemplification of the deeds by the Archbishop of York, a deputation from theMickletorn jury to the Prior of Shelford who at one time had held the deeds, andthe engagement of Master Fitzwilliam and Master Robert Molyneux as legal
council.497 John Mapperley petitioned the king and the dispute was arbitrated on
his behalf by Sir Gervase Clifton and Sir Charles Pilkington.498 The legal
expenses of the case totalled £14 15s or 55% of the total town expenses for that494

NA CA 4472b, Stevenson, II, pp.362-65.
NA CA 4516, Stevenson, II¸ pp.310-17, CA 4516b, 4562, 4517c, Stevenson, III, pp.426-27.
496
NA CA 4568, Stevenson, III, pp.345-52.
497
NA CA 4522, Stevenson, II, pp.340-46; NA CA 4534, Stevenson, II, pp.392-94; NA CA 4731,
Stevenson, II, pp.396-97.
498
NA CA 4532, Stevenson, II, p.395-96; CA 4524, 4525, Stevenson, II, pp.398-400.
495

185

year.499 Some of the costs were probably met by loans in return for long leases
granted by the town as pointed out in Chapter One.
The collection of rents owing on town property was one of the chamberlains’
duties, but management of leases was the mayor and council’s responsibility. The
town rentals, which begin in 1531, show that Nottingham owned considerable
property ranging from gardens, particularly on the south and west near Greyfriars
and the Castle, barns in Barkergate, houses, tenements, fishing rights, mills,
booths and shops, as well as the crops from East and West Croft which were let toburgesses.500 This portfolio of property increased over time. The commercial
development of land next to the Guild Hall, bequeathed by John Pool has been
discussed in Chapters One and Two.501 At about the same time, in 1469, John
Mapperley enfeoffed land on Ryehill for the use of the town.502 Seventy years
later, in 1543 Elizabeth Gelstroppe bequeathed the corporation two stables, amessuage on Fishergate and another on Smithy Row. A further three messuages
on Barkergate were to be used as bede houses, and a garden and house on
Fairmaiden Lane was given with the particular request that 8d from the rent was
paid each year to the Common Sergeant for overseeing the bede houses.503 She
also left two gardens with the condition that the mayor use their rent to pay forlights on the altars at St Mary’s Church and St Peter’s or, if this was not allowed
by law – injunctions issued in 1536 and 1538 had condemned the use of lights andimages – for the maintenance of the Trent bridges. The transfer of the Tanners

499

NA CA 1602; L Attreed, The King’s Towns: Identity and Survival in Late medieval English
Boroughs (New York, 2001), pp.140-41, Table 6, note 2.
500
NA CA 2166.
501
NA CA 4513, Stevenson, II, pp.304-308.
502
NA CA 4496, Stevenson, II, pp.276-79.
503
NA CA 4581, Stevenson, III, pp.394-398.

186

property just prior to the Chantries Act, described in Chapter Three, is anotherexample of such nervousness.
The Reformation, which was the source of Elizabeth’s fear for her lights, bothbenefitted the town and added to the workload of the mayor, aldermen andchamberlains. As a result of the Chantries Act of 1547, the charitable foundation
which maintained Hethbeth Bridge (as Trent Bridge was called until the later
sixteenth century) was disbanded. Where formerly the mayor and aldermen had
only appointed the collector of alms and auditing the Bridge Warden’s accounts,
they became responsible for ‘mending, sustaining, and repairing of their bridges
over the water of Trent’.504 To replace lost charitable donations the lands
belonging to the Chantry of St Mary and the former Hospital of St John were
given to the town by Edward VI in 1550-51, for the support of the Trent
Bridges.505 The lands of St John’s were extensive; in addition to the buildings andgrounds there were thirty acres of arable land, four acres of meadow, and ahundred acres of pasture with their appurtenances.506 St Mary’s Chantry brought
to the town tenements in Fisher Gate, Lister Gate, Goose Fate, Stoney Street,
Fairmaiden Lane and St Mary Gate; closes near Goose Gate, a shop in the
Shambles on Middle Pavement and a barn with tenements in Barker Gate whichin 1504 had been assessed for tax at £8 13s 4d.507 The Tanners’ gift similarly
added to the property portfolio and financial responsibilities of town officials.

504

NA CA 4493, Stevenson, II, pp.264-267; for example NA CA 1902; NA CA 4176, Stevenson,
IV, pp.14-21.
505
NA CA 4176, Stevenson, IV, pp.14-21.
506
NA CA 4593, Stevenson, IV, p.23.
507
Mastoris, ‘Tax Assessment of 1504’, pp.39 & 43.

187

The mayor and aldermen as Justices of the Peace were, however, also officers of
the sovereign, responsible for maintaining the law and keeping the peace. As wellas presiding over the town’s courts, which will be discussed in Chapter Six, they
made ordinances to ensure the town was in good order. Some are recorded in the
Mayor’s and Hall books, but most have been lost because Nottingham’s Red
Book was severely damaged by fire in the mid-seventeenth century.
They were also responsible for implementing and administering central legislation
which became increasingly prolific during the sixteenth century. Between 1509
and 1603 there were ninety-seven statutes in the Statute Book conferring powers
specifically on mayors and other town officials, and virtually no statutes limiting
their power.508 The prosecution of Thomas Nix and the registration of apprentices,
discussed in Chapter Three, are examples of the implementation of statute. The
growing number of lay subsidies which had to be assessed and collected, andlegislation designed to control vagrants and beggars are yet more. The
chamberlains’ accounts for 1568-69 include four payments made to messengers or‘pursuivants’ bringing proclamations; one is described as being about the lottery,another concerns ships and the French and a third is carried under the Great
Seal.509 There are also two payments for making notice boards for displaying
these proclamations, suggesting improved literacy.510 Other accounts containsimilar payments.
So far the responsibilities of the council have been discussed in terms of town
administration, but the mayor and aldermen were also expected to represent
508

R Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns in England: Politics and Political Culture c.15401640 (Oxford, 1998), p.240.
509
NA CA 2168.
510
NA CA 1610.

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Nottingham’s worth and dignity through ceremonial and social duties. Charles
Phythian-Adams has argued for a ‘pre-Reformation dichotomy of the year’.511 He
describes the months between mid-summer and Christmas Eve (25 June – 24
December) as secular when there were few, if any, public occasions. The second,‘ritualistic’, half of the year, was characterised by processions and ceremonies,
many connected to religious festivals, and culminated in the observance of Corpus
Christi,512 which, as Mervyn James points out was a visual representation of the‘structure of precedence and authority’ in a town.513 The extent of Nottingham’s
Corpus Christi procession is unknown because the only surviving fragmentary
evidence is found in the accounts of St George’s Guild, which list the cost of
banners and torches and the purchase of beer and cheese to feed the carriers.514
There were other processions, although again the evidence is limited. The
chamberlains’ accounts for 1530-31 list the costs of the ‘Gate’ or procession to
Southwell on Whit Monday (6 June).515 Payments were made for plates, dishes,
dancers, ale, fabric for the Morris Men’s coat as well as a sum to Robert Damportfor carrying the cross. The total was 17s 7d, but this may have included somecosts for May Day celebrations.516 Such activities were replaced after the
Reformation by more extensive May Day activities. The chamberlains’ accounts
for 1568-69 and 1571-72 record the costs for dancers and waits who brought in

511

C Phythian-Adams, ‘Ceremony and the Citizen: the Communal Year at Coventry, 1450-1550’,
in P Clark and P Slack, Crisis and Order in English Towns 1500-1700 (London, 1972), p.73.
512
Phythian-Adams, ‘Ceremony’, pp, 73-74.
513
M James, ‘Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town’, Past andPresent, 98 (1983), p.4.
514
J A Mills, ‘The Guild of St. George, the Parish of St. Peter’s and the Town of Nottingham:
1459-1546’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 111 (2007), pp.82-83.
515
C R Cheney, A Handbook of Dates for Students of British History, new edition revised by M
Jones, (Cambridge, 2000), p.209.
516
NA CA 1608.

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May Day, as well as gunners and gun powder which added to the festivities.517
They are omitted from later accounts, though, perhaps because of Protestantdisapproval of such revelry.
There were other ceremonial occasions; under the 1449 Charter, Nottingham’saldermen were granted the same gowns, hoods and cloaks as that worn by themayor and aldermen of London as a livery.518 Notes on Nottingham’s Red Book
show that both the aldermen and the Clothing were to wear their livery at
Michaelmas after the election of the new mayor and the Saturday following inprocession and at mass, both occasions which fall into the ‘secular’ part of theyear.519 They were also to wear it at Christmas, Candlemas and Easter, again inprocession and at mass.520 By the sixteenth century, the aldermen’s wives(‘aldersis’) also had a livery and were exhorted to wear it ‘as hath bene vsed ofaunsiant costome one suche daies as is usiall and apontyd’.521 The dignity oflivery was clearly something the town desired, to the point that the Mickletorn
jury of 1599 requested that ‘M[aister] Mayor shalle nott walke the towne witheoutt his gowne and tippette’.522
Probably more idiosyncratic of Nottingham was the Mayor’s Fishing, althoughwhen it was held is never mentioned and therefore whether it fell into the ‘secular’or ‘ritualistic’ part of the year is unknown. This annual event is mentioned in the517

NA CA 1611, 1612.
Charter of Henry VI, Stevenson, II, p.205.
519
NA CA 4770, Stevenson, III, pp.448-49 and footnote 3. The use of the word ‘Clothing’suggests a post-Reformation date (see above), but the list is an eighteenth-century copy of extracts
from the Red Book, destroyed by fire in that century. The original list, which Stevenson dates toHenry VII, may not have used that term.
520
NA CA 4770.
521
NA CA 3014.
522
NA CA 3020.
518

190

Red Book523 but what it entailed is only traceable through the town’s accounts. It
is first mentioned in the chamberlains’ accounts for 1464-65 when 2s 6½d was
paid for the ‘fishers that laboured’, 12d for fishing line and 4d for two fishers fortwo days at 4d per day.524 By 1485 the event had extended to three days and theexpense increased to 8s 9d which included not just the cost of line and labour but
the purchase of white and red herring, salt fish, oil, salt, bread and ale and thepayment of 4d to a man to watch the pole after ‘þe fift nyght aft[er] hit was
kut’.525 A more lavish version of the meal may have occurred in 1494, although it
is referred to as the mayor’s dinner. The menu, which included turbot, salmon,
pike, ling fish, cinnamon, saffron, sugar, mustard, bread and ale cost, 31s 8d. The
accounts show two receipts against this cost; 14s was received at the dinner and 6s
8d was paid for the fishing poles – presumably they were sold off after theoccasion – leaving 11s ‘lost’.526
Entertaining was clearly part of the mayor’s duties as other dinners hosted by him
are found in financial statements. The 1503-4 accounts alone record 2s for the
Mickletorn feast, 5s 5d for a breakfast held in a chapel of St Mary’s for a meeting
between the mayor and aldermen, Master Pierpont, Master Beryn and Master
Neville, and 7s for wine, flour, pepper and other spices when the king’s gift ofvenison was eaten.527 The visiting Assize judges were regularly wined and dined;
the chamberlains’ accounts for 1558-59 show 12d was paid for a ‘pottell of wyne
gyffen to the Justice of the Contrey at the Cessions holden at Not[tingham] at

523

see note 87 above.
NA CA 1601a.
525
NA CA 1603.
526
NA CA 1604.
527
NA CA 1601.
524

191

Mighelmasse’.528 In 1572-73, 5s 2d was spent on two gallons of wine and two
pounds of sugar for the Justices of Assize at Lenton and a further 5s 2d for morewine and sugar when the mayor and aldermen breakfasted with the Justices.529
Above these more formal occasions, the mayor was responsible for providing
popular entertainment for the community. There is a note in the Red Book which
may date from the reign of Henry VII that the mayor should give his brethren‘knowledge of ev[ery] bere baityng and bull baiting within the town to see thesport of the game aft[er] the old custom and usage’.530 Other than this,information about town entertainment appears in the chamberlains’ accounts fromthe end of the sixteenth century. As part of the growing use of statute, an Act of1572 designed to control the movement of vagabonds required that the mayor
licence visiting troupes, which is perhaps why so many appear in the accounts
around this date.531 In that year alone, as the list below shows, there was someentertainment sponsored by the council in every month except September, which
saw the election of new civic officials, and December and April. The latter
exceptions were perhaps because Advent and Easter fall at these times andprobably reflect changing cultural practices in line with Protestant sensibilities.532
It is evident from the accounts, though, that there were more public‘entertainments’ in the earlier, ritualistic part of the year when traditionally
ceremonial events took place.

528

NA CA 1610.
NA CA 1610, 1612.
530
NA CA 4470, see note 87 above.
531
S Keenan, Travelling Players in Shakespeare’s England (Houndmills, 2002), pp.4-5.
532
Easter Day fell on 6 April in 1572. C R Cheney (ed), A Handbook of Dates for Students ofBritish History, new edition revised by M Jones (Cambridge, 2000)
529

192

The accounts for 1571-72 include the following payments533£
20-Oct20-Oct16-Nov
16-Nov
20-Nov
02-Jan06-Jan11-Jan09-Jan09-Jan20-Jan20-Jan22-Jan16-Feb02-Mar
16-Mar
19-Mar26-MarSir Thomas Cocken’s musicians
Wakefield waits
Derby waits
Newark waits
Lord Willougby’s musicians
six minstrels
Leeds waits & Barton on Humber waits
Leicester waits
Derby and Codnor waits
Earl of Shrewsbury’s bearward
Earl of Worcester’s players
Sir Richard Stapleton’s players
Sir John Gresley’s musicians
Sir William Holles’ musicians
Master Forman’s minstrels
Chesterfield waits
Master Pollyt’s musicians
Lord Monteagle’s bearward
Leeds waits
Wyle of Wymeswold for baiting a bull

Sunday after
May Day
23-May23-May07-Jun07-Jun12-Jun17-Jun29-Julgunners, dancers and others, and gun powder
Queen’s Players
Annesley and Cropwell Players
Dancers at Clifton Bridge
Dancers from Kinoulton
Radford Waits
Lord Monteagle’s players
Newark waits
a poor man for showing a strange beast
20-Aug Earl of Leicester’s players
20-Aug Grantham waits

s

d
8
8
1
1
1
1
1
6
6
3
1
1

8
4
6
10
4
8
8
4

4
6
1
5
6
2
1
1

4
8
1
1
6

4
8
6
6

10
6

The accounts for 1568-69 show a similar list, but subsequent accounts indicate adecreased in the number of ‘players’ who visit the town. In 1586-87, for example
the accounts include only two specific payments for players: one for 13s 4d given
to the Queen’s players and musicians and one to Thomas French and his fellows,
although there are thirty-four payments for musicians, minstrels and waits, almost
double that of fifteen years earlier.534

533
534

NA CA 1612.
NA CA 1626.

193

The appearance of troupes of players in Nottingham is an intriguing development.
It is generally thought that Protestantism was opposed to dramatic performance,
but this is really only the case in the last twenty or so years of Elizabeth I’s reign.
In the 1540s, troupes such as the King’s Men, the Duke of Somerset’s Men andthe Lord Admiral’s men presented Protestant-oriented drama, and despite attempts
at suppression by Mary and Philip, such works continued to be performed.535 The
Earl of Leicester’s players and the Queen’s players, which were both inNottingham in 1571-72, were distinguished groups. The Earl of Leicester was
known to have been at the forefront of Protestant propaganda, so at least one of
the groups visiting Nottingham on a regular basis probably performed plays andinterludes with a Protestant message. 536 The Queen’s Men, on the other hand,were ‘a tool of government policy’ and it is suspected that they may have acted asspies for Walsingham.537 The fall-off of visiting troupes in the 1580s must reflect
a Protestant-inspired change of attitude to players, although the increased numberof musicians suggests that the appetite and audience for entertainment was notdiminished.
The 1586-87 accounts reveal another aspect of the new responsibilities for local
administration, and of the social problems of the later sixteenth century.538 Ten
pages of this account are devoted to ‘Presents and Rewards’. Some of these wereto musicians and players and others to local worthies, but there are ninety
payments made to poor men and women passing through the town. Some of these535

P W White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage, and Playing in Tudor
England (Cambridge, 1993), p.58.
536
White, Theatre and Reformation, p.63.
537
A F Johnson, ‘Tudor Drama, Theatre and Society’, in R Tittler and N Jones (eds), A
Companion to Tudor Britain (Oxford, 2004), p.441.
538
NA CA 1626.

194

were to soldiers lamed or maimed while in service; seventeen had been fighting in
Ireland, twenty-six in Flanders and eight are unspecified. There were also sevenpayments made specifically to men who had suffered losses due to fire. The
majority of other payments were to poor men, women and children passing
through, usually with a passport. They are often blind, deaf or crippled – one wasbrought into town on a cart, another in a barrow – and some have a guide. The list
includes a lame man and his guide travelling from Cambridge to Bath, two poor
scholars from Oxford and three poor maidens going to London. There was apayment of 12d to a poor man in the Bars (the lock-up) for debt, some collections
for the hospitals in York and Beverley and 10s was given towards a collection at
the request of Sir Gervase Clifton. Only one recipient is named: Whitehead, a
glover, and his children received 6d, and it is possible that he is the only
Nottingham resident to receive such a payment. Excluding the 10s paid to the
Clifton collection, the town expended in excess of 44s 7d on the poor.539 Althoughinsignificant compared to the £10 6s paid for a fat ox for the Earl of Rutland, thisis still a large sum for which the town would receive no practical benefit.
In the following year thirteen pages are given over to ‘presents and rewards’ andagain these include many payments to the poor, sick and transitory. One
interesting entry is for 6s 8d given to ‘a souldiar whose name was Johnsone, forand towarde the Ransomynge of a Captayne beine taken prysoner’.540 These few
examples give some idea of the mobility, and poverty, of the population in late
sixteenth-century England, and it is perhaps no surprise that local and central
governments were keen to control poor migrants.

539
540

A few of the entries are obscured by conservator’s tape.
NA CA 1627.

195

Conclusion
There can be no doubt that in 1400 Nottingham’s local government was oligarchic
comprising a mayor, two bailiffs and an undefined and informal, but powerful,group of men. As well as governing the town, several also represented it in
Parliament. Furthermore, in the absence of tax returns for the early fifteenth
century, their occupations indicate that they were, as their successors would be,
the wealthiest men, many of whom were connected to each other through family
networks while others had links to the royal court. The 1449 Charter did not
introduce a new system of government, but simply ratified and formalised theexisting oligarchic structure. In doing so it reinforced and formally defined the
responsibility of a small group of men and recognised their new authority throughtheir appointment as Justices of the Peace and the status of a prestigious livery.
Once in place this structure remained unchanged until the end of the sixteenth
century.
One continuity in local government is the existence of family dynasties andnetworks, even if the families themselves evolved or moved on. Entry into themayoralty was restricted by wealth, but family networks such as the Samons andAlestres in the early fifteenth century and the Alvys and Bonners at the end of thesixteenth made it even more exclusive. The only time this additional pre-requisite
for mayoral office was relaxed was in the early sixteenth century when theprevailing economic conditions resulted in instability and the need to widen thefield of potential candidates. Even so the Mellers family network extended into
four generations. This argues for a degree of social separation on the grounds of
not just wealth and civic status, but through the exclusivity of family networks

196

that exercised political influence. This, however, is as perceptible in the fifteenth
century as it is in the sixteenth, if not more so.
In contrast, there is considerable evidence that the authority and responsibility of
the Council developed over time, particularly after the mid-sixteenth-century
Reformation. The Council not only managed more property but was responsible
for a wide range of activities from maintaining the Trent bridges to executing
legislation, and authorising entertainment to controlling beggars. These greater
powers of regulation can only have emphasised the authority of the Council, andwith it the personal status of its members and their families. Unlike the provisionsof the 1449 Charter which were essentially a ratification of existing practice, thecentral government imposition of greater responsibilities and greater authority atthe end of the sixteenth century must have been felt by all Nottingham residents.

197

Chapter Six: The Courts
The previous Chapter looked at the Council’s responsibility for town management
and administration, but much of the mayor’s power derived from his role as legal
arbiter. He presided over the Borough court and made judgements on all mannerof social misdemeanour, from the pettiest of theft to major felony. One of the aimsof this Chapter is to look at the work of Nottingham’s courts to extract further
details of the affects of social, economic, demographic and political change.
Courts were not simply places where justice was administered, they also offered
opportunities for burgesses to participate in the management of their community
through minor court offices or membership of the presentment juries that reported
to the mayor and aldermen. In this they are Nottingham’s equivalent to thesubstructures of local government identified in London by Ian Archer.541 This
Chapter, therefore, also examines the composition of these juries and theirrelationship to each other and the courts to further evaluate the social complexitiesof the town. It also looks briefly at the administrative procedures of these courts toinvestigate Robert Tittler’s argument that bureaucracy and administrative
professionalism expanded to keep pace with social and economic change and thatthe ‘end of the middle ages ... had a great deal to do with political andadministrative change’.542
Nottingham’s right to administer its own justice came through the accretion ofprivileges granted in a series of charters. These were first defined in Edward II’s

541

I W Archer, Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1991),
p.14.
542
R Tittler, ‘The End of the Middle Ages in the English Country Town’, Sixteenth Century
Journal, 184 (1987), pp.472-73.

198

Charter of 1314 which allowed the mayor and bailiffs to hear all actions
pertaining to Nottingham burgesses without interference from the king’s justices,to which was added the return of writs under Henry III’s Charter of 1355. 543 Yet
more independence was achieved in 1399 by Henry IV’s Charter which granted tothe mayor and Recorder and ‘four other upright and lawful men’ the authority tohear ‘all matters, plaints, defaults, causes and articles that pertain the office ofJustice of the Peace of Labourers and Artificers’ and retain the ‘fines andamercements, issues and profits arsing from the same justice-ship’.544 By 1400,
then, the mayor and bailiffs of Nottingham were able to deal with all types ofcrime except felony in their own right subject, of course, to them applying theking’s law.
Full judicial authority was finally granted in 1449 with the Charter ofIncorporation which made the newly created aldermen Justices of the Peace withthefull power and authority to inquire, hear and determine as well all
manner of felonies, murders, trespasses and misprisions as all mannerof other causes, plaints, contempts and evil deeds, and other things
whatsoever that do pertain or may or ought hereafter to pertain to any
Justices of the Peace within our realm545
If, as argued in the last chapter, the Charter of Incorporation was intended toprovide financial protection for Nottingham’s wealthy merchants it also conferredbenefits such as the title Justice of the Peace, which brought with it considerablesocial status.

543

NA CA 4160, Stevenson, I, pp.76-81; CA 4155, Stevenson, I, pp.40-41
NA CA 4166, Stevenson, I, p.9.
545
potestatem et auctoritatem ad inquirenda, audienda et terminanda tarn omnimodas felonias,
murdra, transgressiones et mesprisiones, quam omnimoda alia causas, querelas, contemptus etmalefacta, ac cetera quaecumque, quae ad aliquos Justitiarios Pacis infra regnum nostrum
Angliae, Charter of Henry VI, Stevenson, II, pp.202-3.
544

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The Borough court
The jurisdiction of the Borough court was limited to ‘trespasses, covenants,
contracts, affairs and cases whatsoever, arising or done within the liberty
aforesaid and the precinct of the same town’.546 As the longest establishedinstitution, Nottingham’s Borough court has the most extensive records, albeit
with some significant breaks in the series, particularly in the middle of the
fifteenth century and again in the mid-sixteenth.
The form of these records probably changed more than any other of Nottingham’s
documents. Until 1455 court records were written on parchment and each rollcomprised many membranes. The entries reflect the running order at each sitting,recording suits in default for lack of plaintiff, defendant or jury, suits where thedefendant acknowledged the fault and those referred to inquest when he or she did
not. New suits were normally entered at the end of each membrane in the form of‘X complains of Y. Plea of debt, trespass ...’. The full plaint was only recorded
later, probably when the defendant appeared in court to answer the accusation.
When the series recommenced in 1481, these practices had changed radically. The
parchment rolls were replaced by paper books; this may have been to reduce cost,
although at this date all paper had to be imported as there were no paper mills in
England.547 The details recorded were greatly reduced comprising simply the
initial formulaic statement ‘X complains of Y’ followed by a gap of a third to halfa page into which the full plaint was sometimes entered and occasionally the
defendant’s response. Many pleas, however, were left blank, the plaint being
546

quam de transgressionibus, conventionibus, contractibus, negotiis et querelis quibuscumque,infra libertatem praedictam ac procinctum ejusdem villae emergentibus sive factis, Charter ofHenry IV, Stevenson, II, pp.4-5.
547
D McKitterick, ‘The Beginning of Printing’, in C Allmand (ed), New Cambridge Medieval
History, Vol. VII, c.1415-1500 (Cambridge, 1998) p.287.

200

either inserted into the book on a separate slip of paper or omitted completely.
The books are written in what Stevenson describes as a ‘sprawling hand’ and theomission of plaints is attributed by him to carelessness on behalf of the clerks.548
This change in record keeping practice has also been noted in Colchester as eithera tactic to reduce administrative workload or because the cheapness of paper(despite it being imported) allowed ‘clerks to slip into more ephemeral andinformal styles of recording’.549
At the end of the sixteenth century clerical practice changed yet again. From 1596,
although the ‘X complains of Y’ formulae was retained, the amount of debt or
damages claimed was often omitted and instead of the formal plaint the space
below was filled with a record of the legal process, such as dates on whichdocuments were received by the court. The suits were also indexed by thesurname of the plaintiff which required numbering the folios, something which
had not happened in previous years, and there is a contents list written on the backof the 1596-97 book which still bears its original parchment cover.550 All this may
seem minor or even irrelevant detail, but these changes are an indication of thegrowing professionalism in Nottingham’s approach to administration.
There were, essentially, two Borough courts both presided over by the mayor andbailiffs, or after 1449 the mayor and sheriffs. One, which sat regularly every two
weeks, heard suits between burgesses. The other heard suits between burgesses
and resident non-burgesses and non-resident men and women, referred to as‘foreigners’. This court sat irregularly but equally frequently probably coinciding
548

Stevenson, III, p.x.
R H Britnell, ‘Colchester Courts and Court Records, 1310-1525’, Essex Archaeology andHistory, 17 (1986), p.139.
550
NA CA 1429.
549

201

with markets and fairs. Both courts dealt with cases of debt, trespass, detention of
goods and breach of contract.
The burgess court
Over the 200 years of this study, the work of the burgess court changed very little,
although the number of cases and the balance in the type of suit evolved overtime. In 1401-2, there were 170 pleas brought by 113 plaintiffs; 145 of these were
for debt, fifteen for trespass, seven for detinue and three for breach of covenant.551
By 1421-22, there were only 120 suits brought by eighty plaintiffs, the majority
were for debt.552 The last complete burgess court roll which dates from 1449-50
comprises only sixty-seven pleas brought by forty-four plaintiffs; fifty-five of
these were for debt, nine for trespass, two for breach of covenant and one isunspecified.553 Sixty years later in 1511-12, the number of suits was about thesame, with sixty-seven pleas and sixty-five plaintiffs.554 Both these decades havealready been identified as economically difficult for Nottingham, when lessbusiness would have been transacted, leading to fewer suits being brought tocourt.
These symptoms are still recognisable five years later since, although the numberof suits increased to eighty-two, there were only fifty-two plaintiffs andconsequently many claims and counter-claims. Henry Stepar, for example, sued
Christopher Hegyn on three occasions and was sued in return once. He was also
sued by Thomas Mellers, who appeared seven times as plaintiff in this court.
Robert Shemeld brought three separate suits against John Lokay, William
551

NA CA 1299.
NA CA 1317; Foulds online CA 1318.
553
NA CA 1338.
554
NA CA 1384.
552

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Bendbow went to court twice against Richard Turner, who was also in debt toRichard Dalderbury.555 It seems that, in this difficult decade, business was beingtransacted between a smaller group of men, who went to court more frequently.
Such litigation probably did little to improve the popularity of, say, Thomas
Mellers, with less wealthy burgesses.
The demographic problems of the early sixteenth century, noted in Chapter Two,
are illustrated by a rather complicated set of suits which occurred in 1518. Roger
and Agnes Wade, as executors of Richard Langford, her late husband, sued Alice
Copeland widow and executor of Richard Copeland.556 Roger and Alice sued
Agnes for 14s 6d and Agnes counter-claimed for 9s 4d; both debts probably
ensuing from business conducted between the now deceased husbands. Roger andAlice were also pursued for debt by Thomas Langford, who must have been
related to Alice’s late husband. Agnes and Alice were not alone in acting as
executors as in this year six other people were suing or being sued as
representatives of deceased burgesses.
The 1520s were also identified in Chapter Five as a time of economic instability,
and the consequence of this is seen in the Borough court book for 1526-27 which
comprises only twenty-eight pleas made by nineteen plaintiffs.557 These plaintiffs
include some of the most prosperous Nottingham men, including Thomas Mellers,
Thomas Hobbs and Robert Hasilrig, all aldermen. The records show that on sevenoccasions the court was convened but no new pleas were entered. This does notmean, of course, that existing suits were not heard on these dates, only that no555

NA CA 1392.
NA CA 1392.
557
NA CA 1398.
556

203

new suits were recorded. This court, however, follows immediately after paymentof the first two installments of the extensive 1523-27 lay subsidy which, asmentioned in Chapter Two, Hoyle suggests contributed to the economic downturnof the 1520s because it reduced the amount of coin in circulation. It is notunreasonable to propose that the lack of business in the Borough court wasconnected in some way to this taxation. The following year, the number of cases
increased to a more healthy seventy-nine, indicating the temporary nature of theepisode.558
The trend of decline in the number of suits brought to court continued across the
sixteenth century but an interesting change observable in the last twenty-fiveyears is the number of cases of trespass matched by a decline in pleas of debt. In
1578-79 only thirty-one new pleas were entered, thirteen of which were fortrespass.559 Trespass was also involved in twenty of the fifty-six suits brought in
1581-82, twenty-nine of the forty-eight cases in 1594-95 and sixty-one of theseventy-seven pleas in 1598-99. 560 Why this decrease in pleas of debt should
occur is unclear given the apparently thriving market and increased population,
but Chris Briggs’s work on debt litigation in the fourteenth century has shown thata court’s reputation for success or failure in debt recovery ‘served ... to encourage
or to discourage new debt plaints’.561 The decline may well reflect a distrust in theability of the court to deal effectively with debt. This degree of trust or distrust,558

NA CA 1399.
NA CA 1426.
560
NA CA 1427, 1428, 1430.
561
C Briggs, ‘Manor Court Procedures, Debt Litigation Levels, and Rural Credit Provision in
England, c.1290-c.1380’, Law and History Review, 24:3 (2006): para 54.
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/24.3/briggs.html
559

204

however, also affected the willingness of men to give credit562 so in an apparently
buoyant economic other factors may also have operated. One of these may be thatdebt was increasingly referred to the central law courts and another may be achange in legal practice: until the mid-sixteenth century the majority of cases weremade by the plaintiff and defendant in person, after this date it became the norm
for attorneys to represent both parties, making legal proceedings more formal andexpensive.563
Another perceivable change in the burgess court is the size of debt: in 1401-2 thelargest suit was brought by John Ward against Thomas Kay for 13s 6d for wine,
and most of the other pleas in that year were between 6d and 20d.564 In 1505, thelargest sum demanded was £18 owed by John Wales to John Rose, and there wereother large amounts: William Hegyn sued Henry Brentingham for £3 10s andJohn Rose for £4 6s 8d, and John Nicholson complained that John Cottingham
owed him a head of John the Baptist and 10s worth of gold.565
Mid-century, none of the pleas are exceptional, but the end of the century is in
sharp contrast to these earlier records. Despite there being fewer cases overall,
burgess pleas in 1598-99 include suits against Edmund Jowett, as executor ofRichard Green, for £170, George Stockley and Richard Wood for £70, Thomas
Beck for £20 while John Stanley was sued for a silver salt worth £7 10s andsixteen silver spoons worth £6 8s.566 The much briefer record of plaints means,regrettably, that the details are not known. Small increases in the amounts claimed
562

C Briggs, Credit and Village Society in Fourteenth-Century England (Oxford, 2009), p.18.
R O’Day, The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450-1800 (Harlow, 2000), pp.116 &173.
564
NA CA 1299.
565
NA CA 1401.
566
NA CA 1430.
563

205

for debt can be accounted for by price inflation which prevailed throughout the
sixteenth century, but these much larger sums indicate that large scale business
transactions were taking place. The increased cost of litigation may have reduced
the number of small claims, nevertheless, these transactions reinforce, yet again,
the idea that the town’s economy was flourishing and even suggest that thefoundations were being laid for Nottingham to becoming a prosperous retail
centre in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.567
The foreign pleas court
The foreign pleas court was identical to the burgess court except that it heard suits
in which one or more of the parties were not Nottingham burgesses. It always
handled more suits than the burgess court. Like the burgess court, there are small
shifts in the details of the cases, the most obvious being the distances whichpeople travelled in order to trade in Nottingham.
The foreign pleas roll of 1431-32 lists men hailing from ninety-two places outside
Nottingham; some, like Arnold, Beeston, Bramcote, Gedling, Lenton and
Sneinton, are now part of the Nottingham conurbation. Others such as Cotgrave,
Ilkeston, Mansfield, East Leake and Hucknall are up to twenty miles away. Much
further afield are Alrewas (near Lichfield) Coventry, Derby in Lancashire (nowWest Derby, Liverpool), Leicester and London.568 The court rolls for the rest of
the 1430s show men from Bourne in Lincolnshire, Chesterfield, Grimston in
Leicestershire, Lincoln, Scarborough, Sheffield, Wakefield and York, as well as
many places close by, although the lists are shorter comprising about forty

567

A Henstock, ‘The Changing Fabric of the Town, 1550-1750’, in J Beckett (ed), A Centenary
History of Nottingham, second edition (Chichester, 2006), pp.121-23.
568
Foulds online CA 1322/II.

206

towns.569 Sixty years later foreigners still travelled from about forty different
locations, but the distances were much smaller. In 1508 the most distant placesnamed are Garthorpe (near Melton Mowbray) and Heather (south of Colville)
both in Leicestershire, while Coventry, Kettering and Newark are the furthestplaces mentioned in the records for 1512.570 By the 1530s the lists of places had
reduced considerably; in 1532-33 only fourteen places are named, the furthest
being Mansfield and Grantham.571 The following year there are three men from
London and a Frenchman in town, but the list does not get any longer.572 The endof the century shows no change in this pattern of few, relatively local traders,though a Francis Southworth, goldsmith from London was sued by Stephen
Bampton for £26 in 1598-99.573
All these suits reinforce the arguments made in Part I regarding the changing
nature of Nottingham’s economy and the status of its market. In 1400,
Nottingham drew in people from considerable distances; the furthest travelled
may have come to the fairs and the closest to the weekly market or maybe to live
and work, for a while at least. The discussion of market rentals in Chapter One
established that the market waned in the early sixteenth century, as the national
and local economy contracted and Nottingham’s population was probably at its
lowest. As a result traders travelled less distance to market. The revival of thetown’s overall economy is confirmed by the amounts of money sued for in theburgess court discussed above, but the shorter distances travelled by market
traders suggests that they came in response to demand from the increased
569

Foulds online CA 1327, 1328/II, 1331.
NA CA 1382, 1385.
571
NA CA 1406.
572
NA CA 1408.
573
NA CA 1430.
570

207

population. Whatever the cause, a strong local market was developing, a factwhich corresponds closely to national trends identified by Alan Everitt.574
Many aspects of the Borough court – whether burgess or foreign – remained
unchanged between 1400 and 1600. Even the administrative change after 1449
when the court was presided over by the mayor and sheriffs instead of bailiffs wasa simple change of title, not personnel or function. The type of cases presented tothe court was the same, and the procedure also probably changed very little. There
were, though, some changes in the detail: records were kept differently, thenumber of cases contracted while the sums of money involved increased, andpeople came to the ‘foreign pleas’ court from much smaller distances, and manyof these adjustments were a consequence of changing economic and demographicpressures.
Court officers
Apart from the mayor and bailiffs/sheriffs presiding over the Borough court, there
were two sets of minor officials who appeared regularly in the records of the earlypart of the fifteenth century. The first is affeerers who decided on fines anddamages. They always worked in pairs, so potentially fifty-two could be named ineach year. The second is appraisers who valued goods taken in lieu when theguilty party was unable to pay in cash. Appraisals were usually carried out by fourmen but happened irregularly so there is no guide to how many might have been
appointed in any one year. Changing clerical practice means that after 1419-20
affeerers were no long listed and appraisers also disappeared after 1422-23, apartfrom the occasional entry in the later sixteenth century.
574

A Everitt, ‘The Market Towns’, in P Clark (ed), The Early Modern Town: A Reader (London,1976), p.169.

208

One of the most complete records occurs in 1419-20 when forty men were listed
as affeerer, some being named twice.575 There were also seventy-two entries forappraisers but only forty-six names. With three exceptions the affeerers werechosen from the list of plaintiffs bringing new suits to each court. The most likely
reason for these exceptions is that the potential candidates were thought
unsuitable or, perhaps, inexperienced. In one instance, two affeerers were chosenfrom men who already had suits in process but on that occasion only two newsuits had been brought to the court, so potential candidates were limited. In thesecond instance the court bailiff acted as affeerer. Some consideration ofsuitability must have been made as in 1421-22 there were 130 men named asplaintiff or defendant, making this degree of repetition unnecessary unlessappropriateness for office was taken into consideration.
Some men seemed to have specialised in holding these minor offices. Robert
Woodborough appeared nineteen times as affeerer and ten times as appraiser
between 1400 and 1401,576 Richard Alwyt is listed five times as affeerer andthirteen times as appraiser between 1401 and 1419, and John Yle acted four times
as an affeerer and ten times as an appraiser between 1401 and 1413.577 There ismore information on some men than others. John Bryan, for example, an affeerer
five times and appraiser twice, was also a decennary, responsible for controlling
and reporting public arguments and street fights.578 Decennary lists for the earlypart of this century only survive for 1407-8 and 1414-15 but thirty-six of the men
named in these two documents can be found acting as either affeerer or appraiser
575

Foulds online CA 1315, 1316.
NA CA 1298, 1299, 1300, 1301, 1303, 1304/I, 1305.
577
NA CA 1299, 1300, 1301, 1302, 1304/I, 1305; Foulds online CA 1306/I, 1308, 1309, 1312,
1313.
578
NA CA 1302, 1303, 1304/I, 1305, 3943.
576

209

between 1400 and 1421.579 Given the disparity in survival rates between thedecennary lists and the court records, this is likely to be a significant
correspondence and which must reflect their social standing in the community.
This status though must have been relatively low as only thirty-one of the 435
men named as affeerer or appraiser in the first twenty-five years of the fifteenth
century were later elected bailiff and none were elected as mayor. Unlike some ofthose mentioned earlier, the men who did become bailiff usually only appeared
once and never more than twice in these minor offices, and there are often several
years between the minor post and the major one. Thomas Strete, for example, wasboth affeerer and appraiser in 1400 and bailiff in 1412.580 This interval is similar
to that which elapsed between a man becoming a sheriff or chamberlain and his
appointment as mayor; or the normal gap between repeated office holding, as
noted in Chapter Five, and marks yet another stage in the personal social mobilityof a burgess.
This mobility though, as these few progressions suggest, was limited to only asmall proportion of the community. It seems that the boundaries identified in
Chapter Three, which prevented certain occupational groups from progressing
from beyond sheriff, also operated at this lower level. Factors such as maturity
may have counted, but were probably outweighed by measures of worth in theform of wealth and occupation. It suggests the existence of a finely nuanced social
structure which did not simply divide the rich from the poor, but the marginallyprosperous from those just above or just below them, expressed through court
responsibilities.
579
580

NA CA 3943, 3944.
NA CA 1298; Foulds online CA 1307.

210

Borough court juries
The records of the Borough court show that going to court could be a timeconsuming activity as one or other of the parties, or even sometimes the jury,
failed to attend when summoned, thus repeatedly delaying the verdict.
Furthermore, it could demand substantial commitment from burgesses over andabove attending the hearing of their own suits.
Whether in the burgess or foreign pleas court, if a plea was contested a jury wasempanelled to hear the case.581 There are many bundles of Borough court jury
lists, some tucked into the bindings of the court books, some separated from thelegal record. Each bundle comprises up to sixty slips of paper, pierced in thecentre and tied through with a leather thong. Each slip is headed by the suits thejury was to try, which could be as many as five, followed by a list of fifteen toeighteen jurymen, some of whom were sworn and some not. The verdict arrived at
is sometimes noted on the back of the slip but often it is not; whether this means averdict was not delivered or simply was not recorded will never be known.
Two bundles of jury lists survive for 1495, but as the legal process could be
protracted, some of the cases were probably initiated in the previous year. The
smaller bundle records thirty-five juries empanelled to hear seventy-five burgess
inquests.582 The jurymen were effectively a self-selecting group drawn from men
who were active as either plaintiff or defendant in the Borough court and each one
sat on several juries. Thomas Johnson was sworn on eight juries and heard
twenty-two suits, although he was ‘talesman’ or reserve for three of these, Henry581

T Foulds, J Hughes and M Jones, ‘The Nottingham Borough Court Rolls: the Reign of Henry
VI (1422-57)’ Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 97 (1993), pp.77-78.
582
NA CA 7332.

211

Hobbs was empanelled seven times but sworn on only four juries, Stephen
Townsend was listed nine times, Christopher Benson eight, James Brasenby six
and so on.
The longer, foreign pleas, bundle for the same year comprises fifty-three jury lists
for about 145 inquests (the top slips are faded and in places illegible) and ingeneral the same group of men appear.583 Henry Hobbs sat on two juries, Stephen
Townsend on six, Christopher Benson and James Brasenby both sat on five. As aconsequence of going to court, these men had effectively volunteered to take on aconsiderable amount of work.
Occasionally, however, the jury seems to have been specially chosen. One jury
was empanelled to hear three suits, one of which was between Sir Henry Gray,
Lord of Codnor and Henry Newham. The list of jurors comprised twenty-fournames instead of the usual fifteen-eighteen. 584 Of these, twelve had been or were
to become senior civic officers, many of whom rarely appeared on a Boroughcourt jury. It seems likely that they were chosen specifically to hear Sir Henry’scase.
The Sessions court
The Sessions court, created by the 1449 Charter, was presided over by the mayor
and a quorum of aldermen, in their newly acquired role as Justices of the Peace. It
met quarterly but could be held more frequently if necessary to hear felonies forwhich a king or queen’s jury was convened.585 The majority of its work, however,came through three presentment juries; one from the east side or English borough,583

NA CA 7333.
NA CA 7333.
585
for example NA CA 8d, 26b, 53.
584

212

one from the west side or French borough and a jury of constables which reportedon misdemeanours and social misbehaviour. Their presentments follow waves ortrends that mirror the concerns of the townspeople. In 1484, for example, elevenpeople were presented for keeping a brothel; in the 1510s there were twenty-threepresentments for barking or tanning sheep or horse skin and from the 1540s,
responding to the series of statutes for the treatment and relief of the poor andbeggars which began in 1531, there were many presentments for harbouring
vagrants.586
An interesting administrative development is the format of the presentment lists.
Until the end of the fifteenth century, the presentments lists were written in Latin,
probably by William Easingwold, the Mayor’s Clerk whose signature appears at
the end of some of the documents. He died shortly after the turn of the century
and from this time the presentments are written in English, by a member of thejury. This has consequences for record keeping as the presentments for 1505, forexample, are illegible (it is one of the few sets of presentments made at this timethat Stevenson did not publish).587 By the end of the sixteenth century, thepresentments are much clearer, and some even carry the name of the foreman of
the jury who probably wrote up the presentment list, implying a greater degree ofliteracy than at the beginning of the century.588
The Sessions presentments are some of the few documents in which theconsequences of the Protestant Reformation can be directly observed. After 1573
there are thirty-six presentments for not going to church, four for scolding in

586

Statutes, Vol. 3, part 2, pp.328-32 & 558-62.
NA CA 13a.
588
for example NA CA 51a.
587

213

church and one, against ‘Gud wyffe Bottere’, for allowing her geese to honk
during divine service.589 In 1588 Edmund Richardson was presented for ‘keeping
secret persons who do not come to church’ and two years later William
Parmatour, one of the sheriff’s sergeants was accused of ‘receiving strangers andsuspected persons during service time’.590
This number of presentments is interesting as the Archdeaconry Act Books list
only five people as being recusant.591 In May 1587, Margaret (Margery) Morey or
Morehagh, Alice Collinson and Henry Dand were reported to the archdeacon by
St Mary’s churchwardens. Margaret was the wife of Richard Morehagh a common
councillor who became mayor in 1594-95. She had already been presented twice
to the Sessions court in 1587-88.592 Her husband had also been presented to theSessions court once in that year, but was not reported to the Archdeacon. Henry
Dand, who had been sheriff in 1558-59, was presented to the Sessions court threetimes for not attending church. Alice Collinson, daughter of John Collinson who
had been mayor in 1552-53 and 1563-64, does not appear in the Sessions rolls, but
Robert Collinson, an apothecary who may have been related, was presented fivetimes in 1587, 1593 and 1594 for non-attendance at church, and was fined 20s in
1593.593
John, Winifred and Rachel Skevington and James Halltoye and his daughters,
Ann and Francis, were all repeatedly presented to the Sessions court in 1587-88 at
the same time as Margaret Morehagh and Henry Dand, but not to the Archdeacon.
589

NA CA 46, 48, 51a, 52a&b, 53, 55.
NA CA 51a, 53.
591
R F B Hodgkinson, ‘Extracts from the Act Books of the Archdeacons of Nottingham’Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 30 (1926), pp.15-16. Hodgkinson claims that these are theonly entries he was able to find relating to recusants in the town.
592
NA CA 51a.
593
NA CA 51a, 52a&b, 53.
590

214

The reason for so many Sessions presentments in 1587-88 may be related to aheightened sensitivity to threats from supporters of the Catholic Church as Mary,
Queen of Scots, was executed in February 1587 and the ongoing war with France
and Ireland. The risk of invasion from Spain was also known, although the
Spanish Armada did not sail until in July 1588, after the Archdeacon’s visit.
Non-attendance at church is a signal that the Reformation was not well received
by all Nottingham people. There are, however, subtle indications to be found in
the language of the presentments that its teachings were being absorbed into theculture. In 1583-84 Robert Labrar was presented for ‘keping unlawful games in
his howse upon the Sabboth day in evening prayer tyme’ and John Labrar for‘kepyng his prentices locked in a howse and there working upon the sabboth
daye’.594 Before 1550 misdemeanours such as gambling, drinking and unruly
behaviour were described as ‘keeping misrule’.595 After this date the phrasing ofaccusations changed. In April 1588, Bartholomew Manby, Nicholas Wilson andRobert Webster were presented for keeping an ale house and ‘evil company’ andin 1593 William Kingston, a tiler, and John Garle, a labourer, were accused of‘viteling unbound and keeping evil rul’.596 More serious moral issues werereported using even stronger language. In October 1574 the west side jury
presented ‘Henry Oldfelloe bellfounder for mayntayn[ing] his dawghtar w[i]thin
his house as a common brothel contrarye to the lawse of god and the peyuce[peace]’.597 In January 1575, the east side jury made a similar accusation,
presenting

594

NA CA 50b.
for example NA CA 8d, 9, 14b&c, 16.
596
NA CA 51a, 52b.
597
NA CA 49.
595

215

… Henry Oldfelloe bellfounder on the longe Row for keeping andmayntaynyng a dawhtar of his as a common hore or strumpet w[i]thin
his dwelling house w[hi]ch dawghter is well knowne at this p[re]sent
tyme to be w[i]th chilled w[hi]ch is bothe odius unto god and his peopleof this towne598
What happened to Oldfellow and his daughter is not divulged but George
Wilkinson a blacksmith of Wheeler Gate was imprisoned for tippling, unlawful
games, entertaining men’s servants and also because he… doeth kepe howse with a woman under the p[re]tence to maryeherr, w[hi]ch hee dothe nott, and haythe so contenued with herr of
longe tyme, contrarye to Godes lawes and the Quenes…599
All these presentments show an awareness of, and sensitivity to, not just the law
but also to the teachings of the reformed church and a keenness to ensure that the
town and its people complied with both.
All three juries reported almost identical offences. In addition to unruly behaviourand non-attendance at church these included market offences, impeding the
highway, misuse of the town’s common lands, petty theft, playing games such as
tennis, quoits and bowls, gambling, vagrancy and harbouring vagrants, and manyother social misdemeanours. Two butchers, John Rose and Robert Wales, forexample, were presented by the constables in 1496 for forestalling the market andselling oxen and sheep to London butchers, and the west side jury presented Joan
Litster for buying grain and re-selling it in smaller measures.600 William Atkinson,
Ann Wynsell and John Helryc were named in the constable’s presentment of 1555
for ‘pouring muck at the Church stile’ while Laurence Debdale, the Common

598

NA CA 49.
NA CA 50a.
600
NA CA 7b, 7a.
599

216

Sergeant, was rebuked by the east side jury for allowing muck to collect.601 All
three juries made presentments against men, including some of the aldermen, wholeft town in 1593 to avoid plague.602
Complaints against town employees like Laurence Debdale were not uncommon,
Humphrey Bird, the Mayor’s Sergeant-at-Mace was presented in 1573 because‘he wylnott take no penes in ys offysse, as other offyser hathe done be fore ys
ty[me]’,603 but the Sessions juries also complained about town officers. The
chamberlains of 1500, John Rose and John Williamson, were admonished for notmarking the town boundaries and in 1543 the mayor was reminded that he should
control the salt and oatmeal sellers because they were selling in incorrect
measures.604 The 1531 and 1536 Acts against vagrancy made local authorities
responsible for the impotent poor with the power to prevent them wandering fromtown to town.605 In January 1545 the east side jury presented the justices – whowere, of course, the aldermen – for not searching their wards for ‘valiaunt
beggars’ and who were requested to authorise their constables to make suchsearches.606 Perhaps more seriously in 1556, William Atkinson, one of thealdermen, was accused of revealing the Council’s ‘sekreyt cownselle’ concerning
the subsidy.607 The oath taken by the alderman has been lost, but common
councillors swore to ‘observe and keepe the Maires counsell’ and aldermen would

601

NA CA 47a&b.
NA CA 52b.
603
NA CA 48c.
604
NA CA 41a.
605
J Pound, Poverty and Vagrancy in Tudor England (London, 1971), p.40.
606
NA CA 43a.
607
NA CA 47c.
602

217

have made a similar promise; clearly this was a serious charge.608 Other
complaints against councillors and aldermen will be discussed in Chapter Seven.
Sessions court juries
The establishment of the Sessions court shows a transition in the manner in which
misdemeanours were reported. Prior to 1449 decennaries reported twice a year to
the mayor. The oldest surviving presentments, which date from 1370-71 or 137879, concern only abuses against the assize of ale for a whole year.609 The next two
sets of presentments date from 1395-96; the first concerns affrays – fighting or
scolding – and the second, dated six months later, names men and women forforestalling the market, selling incorrect measures, tippling without a licence andother market offences.610 After 1449, these offences were reported quarterly to theSessions court.
Over time the terms decennary and constable became synonymous. Twenty-sevenof the thirty-five men who made up the constables’ jury for 1467-68 are listed in
the Mayor’s books of 1459-60, 1463-64, 1467-68 and 1478-79 as decennary.611
After 1525 the Hall books, which replaced the Mayor’s books, only refer toconstables. With this change of title, the responsibilities of the constables seem tohave expanded from reporting assaults and market infringements to dealing withgambling, brothel keeping and general bawdiness, and receiving stolen goods,
although they continue to report dung heaps. They were also required to patrol thestreets for beggars and vagabonds, organise the watch and find post-horses for the
town’s use – an activity that may not have been popular as Thomas Reeve,608

NA CA 4770, Stevenson, ‘Appendix: Greaves papers’, III, p.447.
NA CA 1280, Stevenson, I, pp.200-7.
610
NA CA 3942, Stevenson, I, pp.292-309.
611
NA CA 1b, 4478, 3955, 3350, 4494.
609

218

Mistress Cockyng, Peter Clark, Harry Cost and John Hunt were all presented for
calling the constables ‘knaves and villains’ when the were asked to give up theiranimals.612
Decennaries, who normally worked in pairs, had been responsible for one or two
streets. There were thirty-three listed in 1395, thirty-five in 1407, thirty-two inboth 1459 and 1463 and thirty-nine in 1478; the varying numbers may mirror
changes in the size of population.613 By the end of the sixteenth century theconstables were allocated to one of the town seven wards and reported to thealdermen of that ward. After 1583-84 the constables’ jury lists in the Sessions
court rolls were organised by ward.614 There were four constables to each ward,
making a total of twenty-eight, nine less than one hundred years earlier despite thelarger population and an apparently increasing workload. This suggests that theconstables were better organised than previously, supporting the earlier
proposition that by the end of the sixteenth century town management was
becoming more administratively professional and efficient.
Although the constables now reported to the Sessions court, what is clear from
Table XXVII below is that they rarely held the posts of chamberlain or sheriff.
When men did progress to the higher office there was usually the same ten or
more years interval identified in other progressions to higher office: Hugh Cook
was a constable in 1452 and chamberlain in 1466-67, Edmund Jowett wasconstable in 1575 and sheriff in 1587-88. The gap was somewhat shorter in theearly sixteenth century, Laurence Wirehorn was constable in 1525 and sheriff in

612

NA CA 48.
NA CA 3842, 3943, 4478, 3955, 3350.
614
for example NA CA 51a, 52b, 53, 55.
613

219

1528 for example, but this may be because of the much lower population and the
difficulty in appointing new town officers, described in Chapter Five.
Table XXVII: Constables holding other civic offices
total
jurors
1452
1467
1499
1509
1525
1549
1566
1575
1594*

23
35
35
37
23
25
25
37
25

number who becomechamberlain, sheriff,
common councillor
or mayor
3
3
2
1
4
4
1
3
0

percentage
13.0
8.6
5.7
3.7
17.3
16.0
4.0
8.1
0

*men on this jury may have held civic office in the seventeenth century which has not beensurveyedThis pattern is different from that seen in an analysis of the east and west sidejuries, where the trend is for an increasingly large proportion of these jurists to be
drawn from the group of men who would go on to hold the more senior civic
offices. As Table XXVIII shows, in the fifteenth century about one-third to onehalf of Sessions jurors went on to become chamberlain, sheriff or hold an evenhigher office. In the last third of the sixteenth century this proportion had risen to
two-thirds.

220

Table XXVIII: East and West side jury members holding civic office
total
jurors
1452
1467
1499
1509
1525
1549
1566
1575
1594*

48
47
68
69
43
44
45
62
48

number who becomechamberlain, sheriff,
common councillor
or mayor
16
25
29
27
12
17
28
39
25

percentage
33.3
53.2
42.6
39.1
27.9
38.6
62.2
62.9
52.1

*more men on this jury may have held civic office in the seventeenth century which has
not been surveyed

One conclusion to be drawn from this is that there was a social difference between
the constables’ and the east and west side juries. An examination of theoccupations followed by constables shows that they were employed as weavers,
tanners, ropers, labourers and similar trades identified in Chapter Three as being
the lower paid and less important, while the east and west side juries include
merchants, mercers, bell founders, fishmongers and inn keepers, that is thewealthier trades. Overall, this difference did not change across the 150 years forwhich records are available, but the percentage of constables who becamechamberlains was highest in 1452 and 1525 while the opposite applied to east andwest side jurymen in the same years when the number progressing to higher officeis less. The decades surrounding these dates were identified in Chapter Five as
times of political instability, when men held civic office in consecutive years. The
appointment of men from a lower social status to fill gaps accents the severity ofthe economic and demographic circumstances. The general pattern of progression,
though, is yet more evidence for finely delineated hierarchy throughout civic
society.

221

A second observation is that the membership of the east and west side jurieschanged very little from court to court and, as a general rule the same men werechosen year after year. John Anyan appeared on all the east side jury lists sampled
between 1496 and 1514, and Edward Edmondson is recorded as sitting on botheast and west juries fifteen times between 1545 and 1576. 615 Even when there aregaps in the record series, as there are at the end of the sixteenth century, this holds
true. Nicholas Baguley, William Kneveton, George Newbold, Thomas Reeve andmany others all appear regularly in the Sessions jury rolls between 1575 and1600.616
A third, and important, point is that because as many as two-thirds hold some kindof civic office, the majority of the east and west side jurors, particularly at the endof the sixteenth century, were drawn from the same social group as town officials,
and therefore from only a small proportion of the burgess population. The 1604
terrier lists 375 burgesses alive in that year.617 Nottingham’s population in 1604
was greater than the 1570-80s, nevertheless, the inference is that the fifty or somen who sat on east and west juries were drawn from less than 20 per cent ofburgesses, who themselves were a fraction of the total population. Furthermore,
the bigger the population, the more proportionally select the group became, as thepercentage of jurors moving on to higher office became larger.
This, of course, leaves a substantial proportion of the juries who did not become
civic officials, but further analysis shows that many held some other responsibility

615

NA CA 7b, 8a,b,&c, 9a&b, 13c, 14c, 15b, 20b, 43a, 45a, 48a&c, 49, 50a, 1383b, 7330/1,
7330/6, 7330/4.
616
NA CA 49, 50a, 51a, 52b, 53, 55.
617
NA CA 4635. There may have been more as some names have been crossed through, possibly
later.

222

within Nottingham. Michael Bonner, Edward Goodwin and Richard Alenson were
all Woodwards and William Morey was a Sheriffs’ Sergeant. The ‘searchers’ of
the market were well represented: William Humphrey for the tanners, Thomas
Alynson for the glovers, John Anyan (amongst many others) for the bakers,
Richard Smith and Steven Stout, both for the fresh and sea water fishers andfishmongers.618 William Goldring was a guardian of the Shoemakers and Thomas
Barrow of the Tailors guild.619 Both were also chamberlains of St George’s guild,
as were other Sessions jurists Thomas Shepard and Christopher Benson, andMaurice Orrell was a guardian of the Free School.620 There are some jurists forwhom nothing is known – some were identified in Chapter Two – but it seems
clear that the majority held some responsibility in Nottingham, even it was not themost senior civic office. The east and west Sessions juries were, then, highly
selective and exclusive bodies drawn from the top ranking burgesses and therefore
part of the elite of Nottingham’s civic society.
The ‘Great Court’ and the Mickletorn jury
The name of the Mickletorn jury is said to derive from Magnum Turnum, or Great
Tourn, to which the jury reported twice a year.621 The Magnum Turnum or Great
Court was the Leet court of Nottingham responsible for maintaining the peace,
electing constables, enforcing the assize and keeping the highways open.622 It wasprobably one of Nottingham’s oldest institutions.

618

NA CA 3352, 3358, 4547.
NA CA 1386, 1393.
620
NA PR 21599.
621
Stevenson, ‘Glossary’, I, p.448; ‘mickle’ is Anglo-Saxon for ‘great’.
622
M K McIntosh, Controlling Misbehaviour in England, 1370-1600 (Cambridge, 1998), p.36.
619

223

Perhaps because of the name, Stevenson appears to have regarded the Mickletorn
jury and the Great Court as the same body. For example, in 1308 Isolda Arundel
was arrested by the decennaries for theft. She was tried in the Borough court andthe court roll records that she was first presented by the decennaries to the Great
Court (per disenarios ad Magnum Turnum) but Stevenson headed the publishedentry as ‘Presentment by the Decennaries at the Mickletorn’, presumably because
he assumed the Court and the jury were the same body.623 He gives a similar
heading to a list of decennary presentments made in April 1396, although thepreamble to this presentment states that it was made at ‘The Great Tourn held
before John de Plumptre, Mayor …’.624 The decennary list is immediately
followed by the presentments of a ‘Great Tourn’ jury comprising twenty-fivemen, made on the same date.625 The decennaries and the Mickletorn evidently
were two separate bodies that both reported to a Great Court. It is true that by
1407-8, the decennary presentments are grouped with the assize of bread andclassed as part of the Mayor’s roll, while the Mickletorn lists are in a separate
document, nevertheless the offences they present, including the assize of bread,fall within the responsibility of the Great Court and the separation may be more an
accident of history and later cataloguing rather than a deliberate, contemporary
act.626
There are only four surviving Mickletorn presentments that pre-date the Sessions
court. The roll of July 1395 comprises blanket accusations such as623

NA CA 1251b, Stevenson, I, pp.67-69.
Magnum Turnum tentum coram Johanne de Plumptre, majore ..., NA CA 3942.
625
Praesentationes Magni Turni, NA CA 3942.
626
NA CA 3943, 2761a.
624

224

all the bakers are guilty because they take too much from the common
people ... all the butchers sell meat which has been kept too long ... all
the fishers ... sell fish which are dead and have been kept too long627
These are followed by complaints against individual offenders about blockages toKing’s Highway, common lanes and the River Leen, fouling of streets andwaterways, and building on common soil. Its companion roll from April 1396
follows the same pattern while the rolls for October 1407 and April 1408 arechiefly concerned with blockages to the highway and building on common
land.628 Later rolls include presentments or reports on problems such as blocked
gutters, unpaved or damaged streets, repairs needed to the pillories and stocks andthe number of animals to be kept in the meadow. People as well as things were
presented: in 1553 complaints were made against the school master because ‘there
hath bene dyvers men afore hus and hath co[m]plenyd of hym: where fore we
desyer you to haue hym chaunged’ and it was pointed out that Master [Humphrey]
Quarnby was disqualified from being a School Warden because he was married toa granddaughter of the founder.629 There is one example in the Mickletorn
presentments of the consequences of the Reformation. In 1588, the Mickletorn
jury asked that the mayor, all the Council and the Clothing set an example for thetownspeople and attend the ‘most Godlye exercise of preachinge’ every Friday.630
The mayor was asked to enforce this attendance by writing a special order. This
compulsion implies a lack of enthusiasm for Protestant practice from some of theCouncil, and as the request was made in the same year that the Archdeacon visited
Nottingham it may have been a token gesture to conformity.

627

NA CA 3942, Stevenson, I, pp.268-83.
NA CA 2761a.
629
NA CA 3013.
630
NA CA 3017.
628

225

Stevenson states that the Sessions court ‘encroached very considerably’ on thework of the Mickletorn jury and, on the face of it, the presentments of the three
sessions juries would seem to support Stevenson’s contention.631 It is, though, acontention based on the assumption that the Great Court and Mickletorn jury were
the same body. If, as argued above, they were different bodies, there isconsiderable documentary evidence to suggest that the Sessions court simply
absorbed the work of the Great Court after 1450.
There are no Mickletorn rolls between 1408 and 1512, and there is a further forty
year gap until the next roll of 1553. All Mickletorn presentments after this datewere originally filed with the Session court rolls; Stevenson admits that heseparated and renumbered them.632 There are still, in fact, some remnants of theGreat Court and Mickletorn jury in the Sessions rolls. In 1506-7 there is a list offines made in the ‘Great Court’ and the Sessions roll for 1589-90 contains two
Mickletorn presentments which Stevenson must have overlooked.633 This laterroll comprises thirty presentments, most of which concern streets in decay for‘wannt of pavinge’, but Edward Decon was considered unworthy to be the neat
herd and another presentment criticised ‘M[aster] Alderman gregorie & M[aster]
Alderman Alvie for macking leasses to them selves giving noo p[ro]ffit to thetowne’ although this has been crossed through.634 There are also lists ofMickletorn jurors retained within the Sessions rolls for 1587-88 and 1593, and the631

Stevenson, III, p.xiii.
Stevenson, IV, p.xxi.
633
NA CA 13c, 51b.
634
NA CA 51b.
632

226

1599 roll includes bills which list the costs of ‘processes’ issuing from the various
Sessions juries, including the ‘Le Magnum Tourn’.635
Further evidence is provided by the constables’ juries which, as already pointed
out, evolved from the decennaries. Their presentments, comprising infringementof assizes and market abuses as well as disturbances of the peace, fell into thepurview of the Great Court. But perhaps even more conclusive proof that
Mickletorn jury was part of the Sessions court is that the majority of Mickletorn
jurors were also members of the east and west side presentments juries. Table
XXIX below shows the number of Mickletorn jurors named in surviving lists thenumber who were also members of Session juries.
Table XXIX: Mickletorn jurors found sitting on Sessions juries
Date
Mickletorn
Sessions
1553: Easter
24
17
1577-78
46
30
Easter and Michaelmas
1579-80
Easter and Michaelmas

45

41

1587-88
Easter and Michaelmas

4339

1593-94: Easter

24

23

The jury met twice a year, at Easter and Michaelmas; it usually comprised twentyfour men, although not all were sworn. Normally the Easter jury comprised a
different group of men from the Michaelmas, but the same men sat at Easter or
Michaelmas. Thomas Huthwaite, for example, sat on the Easter juries of 1577-78,
1579-80, 1587-8 and 1593-4, while William Piggen was a member of theMichaelmas jury for the same years. Occasionally one man sat on both juries,
Robert Hallam, for example was a member of both Easter and Michaelmas juries
635

NA CA 51a&b, 55.

227

in 1577.636 There are, of course, missing lists but despite this, as the Table shows,at least two-thirds of the Mickletorn jurors are known to have sat on the Sessions
court panels. In 1587-88 when the Sessions roll contains all the juries for thatyear, only four of the Mickletorn jurors did not serve on either the east or west
jury.637 In other words, the two juries were essentially the same group of men,with the same set of concerns. It is no surprise, therefore, that they presented
similar sets of complaints.
There were differences in the work of the two juries. The Sessions juries of 158788, for example, presented five men for walking the streets and ‘misusing theQueines subiecttes’, quarrelling with the watchmen, tippling, keeping an alehouse,regrating and depositing manure.638 The Mickletorn presentments of April 1588
name twenty-six men for a variety of offences from ale house keeping toencroaching on common land and subletting to ‘foreigners’ but there were also
twelve reports of areas of the town needing repairs and a request that a new Usher
be appointed to the School.639 Other Mickletorn jury rolls note lanes and streetsneeding paving, gutters scouring and walls mending. They also request
improvements such as covers over the shambles and St Anne’s Well, theacquisition of post horses, new buildings on the Saturday market and the purchaseof new land.640 There is clearly some overlap, but in general the Sessions jury
presentments concern disturbances of the peace while the Mickletorn’sconcentrate on town management, both areas formerly the responsibility of theGreat Court.
636

NA CA 3362.
NA CA 51a.
638
NA CA 51a.
639
NA CA 3017.
640
NA CA 3014 & 3015.
637

228

The Mickletorn, however, did have a special status and there was a ceremonial
aspect to its meetings. The chamberlains’ accounts for 1485-86, 1494-95, 1505-6
and 1529-30 all include 4s to cover the cost of two Mickletorn dinners while in1556-57, 8d was paid for bread and ale at the Mickletorn.641 Part of thisceremonial may be because its presentments were made during a perambulation of
the town which started at the Leen and its progress through the town would havebeen visible to all townspeople; resident, non-resident, burgess and nonburgess.642
Rather than encroaching on the Mickletorn jury as Stevenson suggests, by the
middle of the sixteenth century, if not earlier, the Sessions court had absorbed
both the personnel and the responsibilities of the Great Court, and may have evensat as the Great Court rather than the Sessions court on occasions. It is possibly
this aspect of the Sessions court that allowed a petition to be addressed to thecourt by the residents of Barker Gate asking it to take action to control the antisocial behaviour of one of their neighbours, for presentments to be made by the
Wardens of the Weavers, for poor weavers to ask for redress against oppression
by richer burgesses, and tenant millers to complain of unfair competition fromwealthy mill owners.643
The Mickletorn jury and the Council
As the Mickletorn jury and the Sessions court juries comprised the same men,many of whom became sheriffs and chamberlains, and some common councillors,

641

NA CA 1601, 1602, 1604, 1608, 2170.
for example NA CA 3013 & 3014.
643
NA CA 51a, 55, 59, Stevenson, IV, p.265-67, 60, Stevenson, IV, p.275.
642

229

it is worth considering the nature of the relationship between the Mickletorn and
the Council.
The earliest list of Mickletorn jurors dates from 1395. Very little is known about
the seventeen men listed; some were named in the Borough court from time totime; one was a hosier, while another, John de Wilford was either a butcher or amerchant.644 If he were the merchant he became chamberlain in 1409-10, but if hewere the butcher he was an affeerer in 1401, 1402 and 1404 and decennary of
Fletcher (Fleshhewer) Gate in 1407.645 Another five of the seventeen weredecennaries and four appear as affeerers, but none are listed as bailiffs. Thissuggests that this jury was drawn from the group of upright craft or tradesmen thatheld minor responsibilities in the Borough court, but did not aspire to civic office.
There are no jury lists for the fifteenth century, but in 1485 four men, John Cost,
Ralph Hill, Edward Hilton and John Stokes, the school master, were chosen from
the Mickletorn to interview the Prior of Shelton in connection with the dispute
over the ownership of Cornerwong, discussed in Chapter Five. 646 John Cost later
became an alderman, and Ralph Hill and Edward Hilton were both common
councillors. Twenty-seven years later, in 1512, the Mickletorn presentments weresigned by four affeerers;647 three of these, William Turner, Thomas Wasse andNicholas Fisher were common councillors, while the fourth, James Brasenby, hadbeen sheriff in 1504-5. It is possible to conclude that in the hundred or sointervening years the composition of the jury changed from respectable craft andtradesmen to drawing at least some of its members from a more elite group. This
644

NA CA 1299.
NA CA 1299, 1300, 1302, 1304/I, 3943; Foulds online CA 1306/II.
646
NA CA 4534, Stevenson, II, p.393.
647
NA CA 3012.
645

230

impression is confirmed by an analysis of the later Mickletorn jury lists whichhave survived.
The first full jury list of the sixteenth century dates from 1553.648 As Table XXX
shows, the jury’s twenty-four members include eleven who had been or were to
become chamberlains and/or sheriffs.
Table XXX: Mickletorn jurors found holding civic officeDateMickletorn
Civic Office24
11
1553: Easter
1577-78
Easter and Michaelmas

4624

1579-80
Easter and Michaelmas

45

26

1587-88
Easter and Michaelmas

4322

1593-94: Easter24

12

One of these, Thomas Harpham, is also noted as a common councillor in 1574,
and another, John Brownlow, became mayor for the first time in 1567. In 157778, twenty-four of the Mickletorn jurors would go on to hold civic office,including five who became common councillors and three of the jurors of 1579-80
became mayor. The jury of 1587-88 included five men who would be common
councillor and one mayor and the 1593 jury comprised another three common
councillors.
Rather than being a cross-section of the ‘commons’ as Stevenson implies, andwhich seems to have been the case at the end of the fourteenth century, theMickletorn jury and its companions, the Sessions juries of the sixteenth century,
were a select group of top-ranking burgesses. Furthermore, because the Sessions
juries and the Mickletorn jury together were responsible for raising issues of pubic
648

NA CA 3013.

231

order and town management, whether these concerned misdemeanours or thecondition of the streets and management of the market, it can be argued that the
courts they reported to were an arm of local administration and the jury members
active participants in town government. As these members were drawn from thesame social group as the Council, and some of them potentially members of theCouncil, they are yet another illustration of a greater narrowing of burgess
participation in the sixteenth century compared to the beginning of the fifteenth.
The Mayor’s court
There was one other court held in Nottingham, although the record of its work in
the town’s Hall books, which replaced the earlier Mayor’s rolls and books, issomewhat unclear. In 1818 the Hall books were catalogued by William
Illingworth, Deputy Keeper of the Records of the Tower, and he refers to these
legal records as the Mayor’s court, or occasionally the Borough court or thesheriffs’ court, which is probably the best possible description given the lack offurther detail.649 Many suits similar to those found in the Borough court books arenoted, including actions for debt and trespass. In 1501-2, for example, William
Turner, mercer, sued Thomas Parker, litster for 11d debt and the detention of‘musters’ (probably musters de villiers, a cloth) and a yard of ‘herdyn cloth’.650
Also recorded are deed and property conveyances which prior to 1449 had been
noted in the Borough court rolls. Two deeds were recorded in the Mayor’s bookof 1478-79 and from 1548 enfeoffments and other conveyances appear regularly,
fourteen being recorded in that year alone.651 After 1578-79 the Hall books also649

NA CA 3347, pp.5, 6, 8, 10 and other places.
NA CA 3351.
651
NA CA 3350, 3357.
650

232

record Statutes Merchant bonds, some for large amounts of money. In 1593-94
Francis Fletcher was bound to George, Earl of Shrewsbury for £2,500 and Edward
Savage to Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury for £6,000.652 These agreements
must have been registered in Nottingham’s Statutes Merchant court, but the pageon which they are recorded in, say 1586-87, is simply headed ‘Statutes’.653
Whether these records comprise the work of several courts or one ‘multi-purpose’court presided over by the mayor is impossible to say, but they do indicate yet
another aspect of the mayor’s large workload which increased in volume andimportance as the sixteenth century progressed.
Conclusion
Nottingham’s many courts were part of the town’s administrative structure;indeed the mayor’s authority to a great extent derived from his legal
responsibilities to preside over the Borough and Sessions courts. As institutions
both these courts demonstrate considerable stability. The Borough court dealt withcivil suits for debt and trespass following a well established process. Even thecreation of the Sessions court, which gave new responsibility and authority of thealdermen, was a development of the existing system of town management throughthe agency of the medieval Great Court.
An examination of the details of suits and presentments, though, reveals somechanges in practice. There is some evidence that the town became better organised
as Borough court records became briefer and more clerically efficient, whileconstables, whose workload increased as a result of legislation and population

652
653

NA CA 3373.
NA CA 3368.

233

growth, were organised by wards and more closely associated with the aldermen
to whom they reported. Mickletorn and Session jury presentments had always
reflected legislation, but the Protestant Reformation led to presentments ofharbouring vagrants and recusancy, and above this the language of thepresentments hints at changing social attitudes and the absorption of Protestantteaching into local culture.
Further evidence of the effect of economic and demographic change is provided in
the number and type of cases which passed through the Borough court. On the one
hand, the gradual lessening of suits together with the contracting hinterland,
indicate a narrowing of the trading interests of burgesses. On the other, theamounts of money contested in debt cases, and the size of enrolled Statutes
merchant, indicate a strengthening of the economy at the end of the sixteenth
century and the development of a domestic market.
Finally, this Chapter has added to the complexity of the social structure bysuggesting that below the level of bailiff or sheriff there was a group of burgesses– respectable trades and craftsmen – who held minor civic responsibilities such as
affeerer, but would not, and probably did not aspire to, hold civic office, although
they may appear on Sessions juries from time to time. Perhaps the mostsignificant issue discussed is the composition and role of the east and west side
Sessions juries and Mickletorn juries. Together, these three panels made asignificant contribution to the management of the town and its people. The juries
were part of the town’s administrative system and their members active
participants in local government upon whose co-operation and consent the rulinggroups had to depend. They, therefore, functioned as what Ian Archer might refer234

to as sub-structures of local government.654 This does not mean, though, that local
government was broad-based. Analysis of the membership of these juries has
shown that increasingly they were composed of men who, potentially andactually, would hold senior civic office. Even those who did not becomechamberlain or sheriff had other responsibilities for regulation and organisation.
Consequently, across the sixteenth century burgess participation in local
government became progressively more narrow. At the same time, through sharedjury membership and overlapping responsibilities, these branches of local
government became interconnected and even more restrictive of wider burgess
participation. The consequences of this are discussed in the next Chapter.

654

Archer, Stability, p.14.

235

Chapter Seven: Challenges to authority
It was established in the previous chapter that the relationship between the
Sessions and Mickletorn juries and the Council was close because they were
‘staffed’ by the same men, or by men from the same social groupings. Other
chapters, though, have given examples of criticisms of the Council and its
members, suggesting a degree of social and political tension. There is, of course, adebate about whether medieval towns were harmonious or fractious, the potential
for social and political conflict, the degree of empathy between elites andcommons, and their willingness to co-operate with each other.655
Stevenson’s assessment of the relationship between the Council and the town is ofdisharmony, where opposition to the Council was voiced in three ways:
presentments by the Sessions and Mickletorn juries, potential or actual
insurrection, and calls to reform the Council. He described Nottingham as having
two factions: an oligarchic and tyrannical Council opposed by a body of honest
burgesses.656 This concept is reinforced by David Marcombe who describes the
Mickletorn jury as capable of waging an ‘effective guerrilla war’ against the
mayor and aldermen, which saw the Council endeavour ‘to exclude the burgesses
from all control over their constitution, and the burgesses constantly opposing
these attempts’. 657 Stevenson states

655

P Fleming, ‘Telling Tales of Oligarchy in the Late Medieval Town’, in M Hicks (ed),Revolution and Consumption in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2001), p.178; P Clark and P
Slack (eds), Crisis and Order in English Towns 1500-1700: Essays in Urban History (London,1972), p.30; I W Archer, Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan England(Cambridge, 1991), p.14; S Rappaport, ‘Social Structure and Mobility in Sixteenth Century
London’, London Journal, 9, part 2 (1983), p.108.
656
Stevenson, IV, p.xii-xvii.
657
D Marcombe, ‘The Late Medieval Town, 1449-1560’, in J Beckett (ed) A Centenary History of
Nottingham, second edition (Chichester, 2006) p.92; Stevenson¸ IV, p.ix.

236

We can see how jealously the commonalty regarded the ceaselessencroachments of the Council and how resolutely they resisted theirgradual exclusion from the ruling of the town.658
This assessment is based on Stevenson’s interests as a constitutional historian. A
careful analysis of the records, though, leads to a different interpretation.
Mickletorn and Session jury presentments
The Mickletorn jury presentments for October 1407 name ninety-three men andwomen for a variety of infringements.659 Three of these men were or would
become mayor: William Brodholm (mayor 1429-30 and 1434-5) was presented
for putting dung on the highway, Robert Squire (mayor 1401-2) for dung near theRowell (a water course) and for setting palings on the ‘common soil’ and Henry
Wilford (mayor 1398-99 and 1412-3) for throwing cinders and dung outside thetown walls and blocking the entrance to the common caves. Six months later, six
town officers were presented for encroaching on common land, a problem
discussed in Chapter One. The small proportion of presentments against thesemen show that town officials were not committing any offence that ordinary
burgesses were not also guilty of, although they might be expected to set a better
example.
There are no further surviving Mickletorn presentments until April 1512, andthere is then by a further gap of forty years, after which there are six more
Mickletorn rolls to 1599.660 Each contains presentments against men who held
civic office, although the tenor of these changes over time.

658

Stevenson, IV, p.viii.
NA CA 3011.
660
Stevenson published seven, but one has since been re-dated to 1631-35.
659

237

In 1512, former and future sheriffs, chamberlain and mayors were presented forthe common problems of adding to an unwanted muck heap and letting foul water
into the street, and similar accusations were made in 1553.661 In 1588 Edward
Goodwin, who was sheriff that year, was presented for enclosing part of thePingle and Humphrey Bonner, who would be mayor five years later, waspresented for setting palings too far into the street. Alderman John Gregory wasreported for subletting his share of the last crop from East Croft to a foreigner andfor ‘supporting’ a foreigner who enclosed land in the open field, for which he wasdischarged by the mayor (Disoneratur per Majorem et Justitiarios), as wasAlderman Peter Clerke was for building a lean-to and planting a hedge which
encroached onto Carter Gate.662 All these accusations, like those of 1412, indicate
a demand for land and resources resulting from the increase in population in thelast half of the sixteenth century, exacerbated by an apprehension of intrusion by
non-burgesses. They cannot, however, be taken as criticisms against civic officials
because of their office as similar presentments are made against less prominent
burgesses, some of which were also discharged.
The Sessions jury presentments show a similar pattern: between 1450 and 1500,
men who would at some time hold civic office were presented to the Sessions
court for regrating and forestalling the market, gambling, selling putrid meat anddisorderly behaviour.663 The economic instability of the first thirty years of thesixteenth century, as noted in Chapters Three and Six, lead to presentments

661

NA CA 3012, 3013.
NA CA 3017.
663
NA CA 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9a.
662

238

against tanning sheep and horse skin and baking bread with fetid wheat, some ofwhich name civic officials, amongst other burgesses.664
There was one curious, and perhaps telling, incident in 1504 when five prominent
men were presented by the east side jury to the Sessions court for dragging abarrel full of stones through the streets in the middle of the night, terrorising thetown.665 The first of these was John Wetherley who had been mayor 1503-4. He
was discharged from office in 1509-10 for ‘evil governance’, the same year that
another of the revellers, John Williamson, first became mayor.666 The other three,
John Rose, Thomas Mellers and William English all became mayors in the 1510s.
Williamson and Rose had been Chamberlains together in 1500 when they were
presented by the east side jury for not properly marking the town boundaries.667
Thomas Mellers’ extensive family network was discussed in Chapter Five, and hemust also have had a close relationship to John Wetherley because he acted as
executor of his will in 1511.668 This incident was probably the result of some
excessive celebration, but it does reinforce the interrelatedness of senior officials
and illustrate that they sometimes did not respect the townspeople they were
supposed to govern.
Complaints in the following Sessions’ presentments reflect the social andeconomic concerns of the later sixteenth century. In 1540, Robert Stanley who
would be sheriff six years later and mayor in the 1570s, was accused of lodging
beggars in his property in Fletcher Gate, one of six similar complaints made this664

NA CA 14b, 14c, 19a, 20a&c, 21a, 28.
NA CA 12.
666
Stevenson, III, p.462, footnote 2.
667
NA CA 9d.
668
NA CA 1384.
665

239

year.669 This was one of the earliest of this type of presentment, the first being
John Bamforth and Richard Dafte who were presented by the constables forharbouring beggars and vagabonds in 1534, only three years after the first piece oflegislation aimed at controlling beggars was enacted in 1531.670 Similarcomplaints about beggars and harbouring poor in-migrants were raised regularlyin the court; in 1593 for example, Peter Clerk, mayor in the 1580s and 1590s, wasaccused of converting his barns and letting them to disreputable people.671 Town
officials were among those who were presented for leaving town in during an
attack of plague in the 1590s, and, as already discussed, some were presented forrecusancy.672
Whatever the seriousness of the complaint, none of these accusations were aimed
at men in their capacity as town officials, but because, like other men and some
women, they contravened either the law or behaved in ways that were regarded as
unacceptable and against the well-being of the town and its people.
There were though some town leaders who abused their position. Clearly John
Wetherley had been one of these, and in 1512 the Mickletorn jury presented John
Howett, for ‘occupying’ the Common Sergeant so that ‘eyu[er]e q[ua]rt[er] of thetowne ys corupte’.673 In the same roll, he was also named for selling herring
while, as Clerk of the Market, excluding others who would have sold the fish
cheaper.674 William Barwell, the Mayor’s Clerk, was accused of maligning theburgesses and commons, and the mayor and aldermen were taken to task for669

NA CA 39c.
NA CA 35a; Statutes, Vol. 3, part 2, pp.328-32.
671
NA CA 52.
672
NA CA 51a, 52a&b.
673
NA CA 3012.
674
NA CA 3012.
670

240

allowing twenty-two marks which the former Mayor’s Sergeant had held for the
town to be retained by his executors.675 John Howett was fined 12d for his misuseof the Common Sergeant and 20d for selling herring. These figures are, however,comparatively light; Mistress Pykerd, for example, was also fined 20d forallowing her cattle and sheep into the meadow while John Ketterick had to pay
twice that amount, 3s 6d, for cutting brushwood, as did Robert Mellers for digging
clay from the highway.676
Financial irregularities are the subject of complaints against civic officers,
particularly in the last fifty years of the sixteenth century. In 1556 William
Atkinson was presented by both east and west side juries for disclosing Council
discussions about the lay subsidy, and the Chamberlain’s account of 1557-58
includes an entry for 4s 8d ‘for Master Cockeyn and Master Collenson’ who werearrested for their accounting when mayor and escheator.677 In 1575, Robert
Burton, who was mayor that year, was accused of ‘embezzling and taking thetown’s goods for his own use.678 Others relate to the personal conduct ofaldermen. In 1577, Henry Newton was accused by the Mickletorn jury of being
unworthy to hold the office of alderman and for ‘abusying him sellffe w[i]t[h] anowghte quene’.679
Perhaps the most serious of all the complaints, though, was made in 1527 when aletter or petition was addressed to the mayor and his brothers by the Mickletorn

675

NA CA 3012.
NA CA 3012.
677
NA CA 47c, 1610.
678
NA CA 50.
679
NA CA 3362.
676

241

Jurors listing seven complaints.680 The first specifically cited John Williamson,
John Rose and Thomas Mellers. These men, all associated with the barrel-rollingincident of 1504, were also identified in Chapter Five as being the only three inthis politically, economically and demographically unstable part of the century
with any longevity in office. Not only did they dominate the mayoralty, but they
were also highly litigious: Mellers appeared as a plaintiff in the Borough court at
least ninety-one times in twenty years, Williamson was plaintiff in the Boroughcourt on at least forty-five occasions for sums ranging from 16d to £20 and John
Rose was also a regular party in Borough court suits, albeit more frequently as adefendant. As the number of complaints brought to the Borough court was much
reduced in these economically difficult times, this visibility suggests theirbusiness relationships with the community may well have been strained.
Together they were accused of having contrived, with the support of some‘adherents’, the election of John Howes, inn holder, and Costlin Pykerd, baker, as
aldermen without consulting the burgess community. There were two problems
with their appointment. First, that as elections had not been held, the new
appointments went against the ‘Corporacion’ of the town. Second, that as
victuallers Howes and Pykerd were prevented by statute from holding the assizeof bread. The first element of this complaint was partially valid as the Charter ofIncorporation of 1449 allowed for the election of seven aldermen by the burgesses
but as already established, in reality all new officers were elected by a group of
former chamberlains, common councillors and the aldermen.681 As some members

680
681

NA CA 4763.
Charter of Henry VI, Stevenson, II, pp.200-1.

242

of the Mickletorn jury were probably former chamberlains, they may have been
by-passed on this occasion.
The second element of this grievance is incorrect as the statute to which theyreferred had been repealed in 1511-12 on the grounds that towns had fallen into somuch decline that there were not enough ‘men of substance’ and victuallers had totake office.682 The concern about the assize is, however, valid. The economic
problems of the 1510s and 1520s are highlighted as shortages cause the price ofgrain to rise. In 1509-10 St George’s Guild sold its surplus grain for 1s 8d perquarter, in 1513-14 this had risen to 5s per quarter and by 1520-21 barley was soldfor 9s a quarter.683 The price had fallen to 3s 3d a quarter by 1524-25, but this was
still double the price of fifteen years earlier. John Williamson, who was mayorthat year, was requested by the constables ‘to be gud master to hus, and se a
remedy for owre bruers’.684 In July 1525 he was asked to ensure that the Common
Sergeant brought corn into the market while the constables presented eight men
for buying and selling corn before the market bell had rung.685 In the same year as
the Mickletorn complaint, all the town bakers were presented for baking with‘foghtted’ [fetid] wheat ‘not sensible for mens bodies’.686 Not holding the assize
was clearly a serious dereliction of duty at this difficult time.
The second complaint concerned the integrity of the two new aldermen who were
described as both abusers of the town’s franchises and liberties and of lacking
discretion and reason ‘as it is welle knowyn ... as the co[m]men voice and fame

682

Statutes, Vol. 3, part 1, p.30.
NA PR 21599.
684
NA CA 26a.
685
NA CA 26b.
686
NA CA 28.
683

243

runyth thrughe the same towne and the shire’.687 There is little evidence for oragainst the validity of these claims in the surviving records. Costlin Pykard had
been presented on several occasions for forestalling the market and regrating andwas one of the bakers presented in 1527 for using fetid flour.688 John Howes, on
the other hand, had been sheriff in 1507-8, and was a common councillor from atleast 1520. There are no Session court charges against him, and he appeared
infrequently in the Borough court. Since 1522 he had been churchwarden at St
Peter’s Church and in 1512 was chamberlain of St George’s Guild.689
John Rose, who had been mayor the previous year, was the subject of the next twocomplaints: first that during his mayoralty he had not carried out the assize andsecond that had he not called the Mickletorn jury together – another example ofthe Mickletorn being by-passed. The absence of Hall books between 1525 and1533 means that there is no way of verifying these charges, which may not havebeen accurate. Three years earlier, in July 1524, a similar charge was madeagainst William Kirkby, mayor that year, for allowing bakers to make bread
contrary to the assize.690 The Hall book for 1524-25, however, records the assize
being held on at least fourteen occasions.691 Concern over Rose’s lack of attention
to the Assize, like the appointment of victuallers, must reflect community
concerns resulting from the social and economic problems of these years.
The penultimate complaint of 1527 again named Williamson, Rose and Mellers
together with John Revelle. They were accused of falsifying the subsidy because,

687

NA CA 4736.
for example NA CA 14, 18b, 22.
689
NA PR 21599.
690
NA CA 25c.
691
NA CA 3356.
688

244

having been assessed as having goods of £50 or £60 or more, they then ‘imbeselidand ‘nichil’ returnyd’.692 The certificate returned to the Exchequer bears this out
as it states there are no chargeable persons in the town.693 This complaint was
valid because the subsidy for 1526-27 was, as explained in Chapter Two, leviedon goods valued at over £50. In the earlier collections of this subsidy, Williamson
had paid £5, meaning he had goods worth £100, the largest amount contributed byany townsman. Mellers paid £3 which meant he had goods worth £60, and Rose,should also have paid £3 in 1523-24, but disappeared from the undated list of1524-25.
It is not possible to properly identify John Revelle, but he is likely to have been abaker who later became chamberlain (1536-7) and sheriff (1537-8). Nor is it
possible it say if he was related to Thomas Revelle who is the subject of the final
grievance. This Revelle is not the object of criticism, rather the presentment is ademand that he should continue to act as ‘lernyd Councelle of the p[re]sent boro’
and be paid his rightful fee,694 which is an implied suggestion that the Council had
dispensed with his services, against the wishes of the Mickletorn.
The Mickletorn petition, which in essence is a set of complaints against three men
who had survived and probably taken advantage of the insecurities of the 1510s
and 1520s, is symptomatic of the underlying demographic and economic
environment of the decade. It also indicates fractures in the community.
Stevenson argues that there was a gulf between the Council and the burgesses and692

NA CA 4736.
TNA, E179 database of taxation,
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/details.asp?piece_id=9062&doc_id=4873&doc_ref=E17
9/91/101694
NA CA 4736.
693

245

that the petition proved that the Mickletorn had not ‘entirely forgotten its ancient
powers, for they still claim to give their approval in the name of the ‘Burgesses
and Commonalty of the town’.695 It is noticeable, however, that two other recently
appointed aldermen were omitted from the Mickletorn letter, yet their integrity
may have been equally doubtful as the five who were named.
Robert Hasilrig, mayor in 1525-26, was no less litigious than Rose or Mellers andconsiderably more so that Costlin Pykard and John Howes, appearing as plaintiff
in the Borough court on at least fourteen occasions between 1518 and 1528, and afurther thirty-seven times after that date. Likewise William Parmatour, who wasmayor in 1526-27 and to whom the letter is addressed, was frequently seen in boththe Borough court and the Sessions court. Between 1511 and 1537 he wasplaintiff at least twenty-three times, and in 1512 he was in debt to Thomas Mellers
for an unnamed sum.696 In 1517 he was accused by John and Costlin Pykard as
executors of Hugh Pykard, of detaining goods worth 105s 4d plus £17 in cash.697
In 1514 and 1515 he was presented by both the east and west side juries forbarking sheep and horse skin and in 1522 for forestalling the market.698
There is no surviving Mickletorn jury list for the 1520s, but the analysis of
Sessions juries lists in Chapter Six suggests that the correlation between thesejuries and civic office was at its weakest in the 1520s, probably because of the
difficulty, discussed in Chapter Five, of finding suitable candidates. As these theSessions and Mickletorn juries shared the same personnel it is likely that the same
correlation applied. This does not mean, though, that the complaints of 1527 were
695

Stevenson, III, p.xiii.
NA CA 1385.
697
NA CA 1385, 1389.
698
NA CA 20b, 20c, 21a, 23a.
696

246

made by common burgesses, only that the group which comprised civic officers
may have been less well represented. The complaints suggest that the jury was bypassed or ignored on important issues, so although it claimed to speak on behalfof the commons it could equally well have been concerned about its own status, ata time when its composition was less elite. It may even have represented a faction,
perhaps led or at least supported by Hasilrig and Parmatour, in opposition to
Williamson, Rose and Mellers. The particular set of circumstances surrounding
these complaints presents a more nuanced understanding of the politicalenvironment in Nottingham in the early sixteenth century. Williamson, Mellers
and Rose, as befitted their status, were the wealthiest men in Nottingham, but they
had come to power at a time of economic and political instability, and it is likelythat they took advantage of that position. Hasilrig and Parmatour, both recently
appointed as alderman, were a ‘new guard’ to whom the Mickletorn jury turned tosee some redress. This was not social conflict in the sense that it is generally
applied – between elites and commons – but between one administration andanother, fuelled by personal as well as community concerns.
All the complaints discussed so far, whatever they concerned and no matter how
they were voiced, were clearly targeted at individuals. They are also the productsof the social and economic conditions operating at the time, whether this wasdemand for common land, domination of the society by just three men or in
response to national legislation. The personal rather than institutional nature ofthese complaints is apparent, but there were incidents which did directly attack the
town’s institutions.

247

Insurrection
Three years after the 1408 Mickletorn jury made its presentments against
encroaching on common ground, there was an attempt by town burgesses toreplace the elected mayor and bailiffs. There are no Nottingham records
concerning this incident, but it is described in some detail in a commission to theSheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.699 It was clearly a serious affair whichlasted from 29 September 1411 to December 1413. In brief, the mayor and fortyeight former mayors and bailiffs gathered at St Mary’s Church to elect the new
mayor, Henry Wilford, and bailiffs, Thomas Bythestreet and John Clerk. St
Mary’s was surrounded by an armed mob of over one hundred led by eighteen
named burgesses, imprisoning the electors, who were threatened with death unlessthey elected John Alestre as mayor and John Braidsall as bailiff; a fate they
avoided by escaping through a ‘secret door’. Later that day Wilford made thecustomary proclamation about the assize but many of the burgesses denied his
authority and appointed John Stoke or Stook as their ‘sumnour’ who, over the
next few months, called them together in opposition to the mayor. In January1412, Thomas Mapperley and John Odynges were elected as MPs and the event
was again threatened by an armed mob demanding the election of Robert Sutton.
The mayor’s seal was called for so that the protestors might make the returnthemselves. The mayor tried to find shelter in John Odynges house, but was
turned away and in the end conceded to all the crowd’s demands.
In December 1413, an unnamed group met at the Friars Minor and declared thatthey would not obey any ordinance made by the mayor who by this time was699

TNA C145/292/24-26, translated in PRO, Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, Vol. 8,1399-1422 (1968), No. 469.

248

Robert Glade. In response, Glade arrested and imprisoned Stoke and twenty
others. A jury was empanelled and an inquest held before the Sheriff of the county
in September 1414, but one of the conspirators, Ralph Botiller, attempted toundermine the hearing by noting down the names of the jurors with the aim of
informing those arrested of their indictors. A second jury was empanelled and asecond inquest held.
One of the jury lists has survived; it comprises twenty-nine men, fifteen of whomwere ‘sworn’.700 These include John Heth who had been mayor in 1411-12,
Thomas Cay, mayor in 1405-6, and five bailiffs, all men who would have beenpart of the electoral college. There were also two men who would become bailiff
later in the decade and three decennaries: for Fletcher Gate, Barker Gate andGreat Smith Street. Decennaries for Stoney Street and St Mary Gate, streets whichsurround St Mary’s Church, were included in the list of men who were not sworn.
The jury, then, was comprised of men who were senior members of the town’shierarchy, responsible for peace keeping.
An examination of town records provides more information about the protagonists
and the consequences of the incident for them and for Nottingham. Henry
Wilford, the new elected mayor, had been mayor once before in 1398-99. He wasan ironmonger and as already discussed had been accused by the Mickletorn juryof encroaching on common ground.701 Thomas Bythestreet was a draper who had
been active in the Borough court as both affeerer and appraiser and had witnessed

700
701

TNA C145/292.
NA CA 1302, 3011.

249

some property transactions.702 Little is known of John Clerk except that he was abarker who witnessed property transactions in 1409-10.703
John Alestre, the alternative mayoral candidate, was a merchant and a member ofthe influential Alestre family. His father Nicholas, had been a bailiff and John had
already been mayor in 1409-10. John’s son, Thomas, became mayor on threeoccasions and also represented the town in Parliament. The opposition groupwanted to elect only one new bailiff, John Braidsall, or Braydsale, but whether hewas to replace Bythestreet or Clerk is not said. Braidsall was a lawyer who
appeared at most sittings of the Borough court from the 1390s to the 1410s. 704 He
had never been bailiff so he was probably chosen by the protestors for his
knowledge of the law rather than his experience of town government. In 1413 heheld a tenement in Bearward Lane, but does not appear to have practiced law after
1411.705 Both Alestre and Braidsall, as a merchant and a lawyer, probably had
greater social status than Wilford, Bythestreet and Clerk and therefore may havebeen regarded as the more worthy candidates.
It was not only the appointment of the mayor and bailiffs which was challenged
but also that of the burgesses returned to Parliament. As with the bailiffs, thecrowd called for only one man, Robert Sutton, to be elected. Sutton was active in
the Borough court and had been decennary of Fletcher Gate in 1395.
Of the eighteen named confederates, there is only one, Ralph Botiller, who does
not appear in the Nottingham records; it was Botiller who tried to undermine the702

NA CA 1298, 1299, 1301, 1305; Foulds online CA 1306/I.
NA CA 1305.
704
for example NA CA 1299; Foulds online CA 1306/I.
705
Foulds online CA 1308.
703

250

inquisition. Another of the group, Thomas Gay, is named in a property transaction
as armiger, otherwise there is again no mention of him in the Borough Records.706
It is possible that neither were residents of Nottingham. The remaining sixteen
were all burgesses, active in the Borough court both before and after this incident,
so presumably they suffered no greater punishment than a fine. They followed arange of occupations: John Stoke, the summoner, was a weaver, John Wyrsop a
fisher, Richard Whetecroft a baker, Nicholas Holbeche an ‘ostyler’,707 John Glena smith, John Eperston a tailor and John Albeyn a tanner. Many had acted asappraiser or affeerer in the Borough court but only one, Richard Coteller, also
known as Richard Franklin, had been bailiff in 1419.708 They were, therefore,
respectable townsfolk who, it must be assumed, felt that the town was poorly
governed and that their voice was not being heard.
Possibly connected to these incidents is a recognisance for £40 dated 1 May 1413
upon condition that eleven men ‘shall make or procure no insurrections or
unlawful assemblies within the town of Notyngham or elsewhere which may tend
to disturbance or terror of the people’.709 All eleven can be traced in Nottingham’srecords. The first, William Pomfret appeared in the burgess court five times as
defendant for trespass and debt and was presented by the Mickletorn jury for
obstructing Timber Hill causing the death of John Ward.710 He may be the same
man as William de Pontefract, in which case he was a spicer;711 he was probably
the ring leader as he is named twice. William de Stable was a fisher, Richard706

NA CA 1305.
This may mean groom or ‘hosteller’/inn keeper.
708
Foulds online CA 1315.
709
PRO, Calendar of the Close Rolls, Vol. 1, 1413-1419 (London, 1929), p.70.
710
NA CA 1299, 1302; Foulds online CA 1306/I.
711
NA CA 1302.
707

251

Estwaite or Estwhet a butcher, John Crophill and John Bower, both skinners acted
as affeerer and appraiser in the Borough court.712 Reynold Geffecoke or Gefcok,
Nicholas Fossebrooke, William de Rhodes were also affeerers and appraisers, andWilliam Cooke appeared as a plaintiff.713 John Reynalde was decennary of
Cookstool Row and Smithy Row and John Wyrale is probably the same as John
Wyrehall who was decennary of Bridlesmith Gate in 1395.714 Like the eighteen
named in the Commission, these eleven men were respectable craft or tradesmen
and burgesses. Their mainperners, William Stapulford, Thomas Strelley, Reynold
Shaw and William Aston, were probably from the county rather than the town.
Stapulford is noted as being from Nottinghamshire and Shaw from Eastwood.715
The others are not found in the Borough records.
It is difficult to assess how serious this series of incidents was. Despite theprotestations, Henry Wilford was mayor, John Bythestreet and John Clerk were
bailiffs and although Robert Glade appeared to concede to the protestors’
demands, it was Thomas Mapperly and John Odynges who attended Parliament
while Robert Sutton and his supporters were arrested, even if they eventually
returned to Nottingham. Within a year of the indictment John Alestre was electedmayor in 1414-15 (and again in 1420-21 and 1430-31) so the protestors eventually
got their way, though Braydsale possibly retired.
The series of events does not argue for an harmonious community but rather for
one in which the necessary consent and co-operation between the Council and thecommunity had broken down. The burgesses must have felt they had a right to712

NA CA 1298, 1302, 1303, 1305; Foulds online CA 1309, 1308, 1316, 1322/I.
NA CA 1298, 1301, 1302; Foulds online CA 1306/I, 1309, 1319.
714
NA CA 3943, 3942.
715
NA CA 1322.
713

252

participate in local government and were prepared to protest their cause, withviolence if necessary. It is testimony to the factious nature of medieval towns thatthe dispute was resolved not by reconciliation but by the intervention of the
Crown to suppress the revolt.
One of the accusations made against the protestors was that the disturbances
damaged business and trade in the town as
the said mayor, bailiffs and burgesses dared not for fear of death
attend publicly to their business and trade within the town or without
save with a great power, to the extreme disturbance of the peace of thelate and present king and the manifest ruin of the town.716
There are no Borough court rolls between September 1411 and April 1413,
though this may simply be a question of survival because the roll for 1414-15 also
covers only the last six months of the year.717 There is a mayoralty roll for 141415 which lists fifteen pledges to keep the peace but as this is a rare survival it is
not possible to say if this is an abnormal number.718 The implication is that despite
the language of the indictment these disturbances were temporary inconveniences.
On the other hand, in May 1414 Henry V confirmed the Charter granted by his
father in 1399. The confirmation cost the town of £10, considerably more than thefive marks that Henry VI received for granting the Charter of Incorporation in
1449 or the two marks it took to have it confirmed by Edward IV.719 Henry V had
been on the throne for only two years in 1414 so a confirmatory charter is not
unexpected, but given the events of the previous eighteen months its purpose
could also have been to underpin the authority of the mayor and prevent a

716

PRO, Calendar, No. 469.
Foulds online CA 1307, 1308.
718
NA CA 3944. The next roll dates to 1459-60 and contains no such pledges.
719
Charter of Henry VI, Stevenson, II, p.208; Charter of Edward IV, Stevenson, II, p.246.
717

253

repetition of this disorder, which reinforces the argument that resolution wasreached not through agreement but by the imposition of royal authority.
One hundred years later the burgesses yet again threatened the mayor andaldermen, who again elicited support from the Crown. Evidence for this is slight
but authoritative as it comes from two letters, one from the Recorder, Thomas
Babington, and the second from Sir Thomas Lovel, the Lord Treasurer andConstable of Nottingham Castle.720 In the first of these letters, dated 21 May
1512, Babington warned the mayor and his brethren against the threat from thecommons which intended to ‘make Aldermen and oder offec[er]s at y[er]plesure’.721 He advised the mayor to call all the confederates to appear before him.
If that was not sufficient to bring them to order, the mayor should write to the
Lord Treasurer and ask him to deal with the matter or, if he was overseas (Henry
VIII was at war with France and Scotland between 1512 and 1514), to write to the
Privy Seal. Alternately, the mayor should write to the Lord Steward with whom
Babington had already discussed the matter. Finally, he warned the mayor to
avoid calling a common hall at the request of the burgesses saying
I dowte not bot diu[er]s of you remembre the saying of M[r] Tresorerof the inconveniences that hath ensued opon the callyng of thecomons to ged[er] in the Cite of London, and in od[er] Cites andBorowes.722
Clearly, Nottingham was not the only town where there was discontent; there had,for example, been electoral riots in York in 1504 which were repeated in 151617.723

720

NA CA 4733, 4734, Stevenson, III, pp.341-3.
NA CA 4734, Stevenson, III, p.341.
722
NA CA 4734, Stevenson, III, p.342.
723
D M Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), p.68.
721

254

The second letter from Sir Thomas Lovel, dated 17 June, was addressed to thedeputy mayor, probably John Rose, as Thomas Alestre, who had been electedmayor in September 1512, died on 10 June 1513.724 Rose was ordered to forward
the names of all those attempting to subvert mayoral authority. There is no direct
evidence of the effectiveness of this order, but the town may have been quieter
because of tighter control. In October 1511 and May 1512 the constables made a
total of five presentments, while the west side said they had nothing to report and theeast side presentment sheet is blank except for the heading.725 In October 1513, theeast side again made no presentments and the west side made only two, both for
scolding, suggesting that everyday frictions were much reduced.726

The reasons for this threatened insurrection are not mentioned in either the
Recorder’s or the Lord Treasurer’s letters, but the events occur only three years
after John Wetherley had been discharged as alderman. The threats mark the
beginning of the period of political instability already noted, which perhaps ended
with the 1527 Mickletorn petition. On the face of it, there is a continuity between
the events of 1512-13 and 1527 with John Williamson, John Rose and Thomas
Mellers being the linking factors. In 1512 they were in the early stages of theirtime as aldermen; by 1527 they were coming to the end of their careers. A closer
examination, though, shows that there are differences. Babington’s and Lovel’s
letters suggest the burgesses’ attempt to replace the mayor and aldermen with menof their choice was not an isolated incident but part of a more national discontent.
This, according to Babington would be ‘contrare to alle good and politke order

724

Stevenson, ‘Appendix’, III, p.462.
NA CA 17a&b.
726
NA CA 18a.
725

255

and rule’, and therefore warranted the intervention by the Lord Treasurer.727 The
events of 1527 were local and, despite the apparent severity of the grievances,
there is no suggestion that the town’s business was in danger of disruption.
Instead, it was probably the poor economy combined with an unstable andexploitative administration which was the spur to its production. The 1527
Mickletorn complaints against Mellers and his colleagues did not result ininsurrection, which suggests that either they were not as serious as the document
implies, or that recent experience had made insurrection an unviable option forcommon burgesses, leaving intervention by the jury as the preferred, and perhaps
only avenue open to them. If burgesses discontent had to be filtered through abody such as the Mickletorn, which was part of the town’s administrative
structure, it implies a considerable lessening in the capacity of common burgesses
to participate in local government; it also sets a precedent for future actions.
There is one final incidence of potential insurrection which Stevenson cites as an
example of the burgesses flexing their muscles which at the same time shows ‘theway in which the Aldermen attempted to overcome their opponents by holding
over them the fear of causing the loss of the corporate franchises’.728
In 1597-98 concern about the lease of the Tithe Hay resulted in some burgesses
holding a meeting in opposition to the Council. Evidence for this comes from aseries of depositions recorded in the Hall book for that year, taken at the meeting
which the Council interrupted.729 All but one of the seventeen men questioned
were constables. Their evidence is varied. Edward Garland testified that he and727

NA CA 4733, Stevenson, III, p.341.
Stevenson, IV, p.xvi.
729
NA CA 3376.
728

256

John Bell had taken it on their own authority to call the burgesses of their ward to
the meeting to ‘gyve there voyces about the townes leases’, while John Wood andRichard Goodhall claimed they had not told anyone about the meeting. William
James stated that William Cook and Percival Millington had assigned theconstables to warn their wards of the meeting and that some burgesses assembled
in the Spice Chamber had offered 10s or 20s ‘apiece toward[es] the mayntenanceof the sute’, and that six burgesses had paid 6d each.730 This suggests that someburgesses were expecting a legal contest.
The only man questioned who was not a constable was Percival Millington. He
seems to have been the ring-leader, a point emphasised by Stevenson who
published his testimony first, although he appears ninth in the original deposition.
Unlike the other witnesses the questions asked of him are noted in the margin. He
was asked four things: did he ask the constables to convene a meeting, did heorder any burgess to collect money towards a suit, had he ‘practysed or wishedthat this Corporation might be ou[er]throwen and become a bailywyck’ andfinally what was the intent of the meeting? He did not answer the first two anddenied the third. To the fourth he answered that its purpose was to ‘move’ or
propose that the Tithe Hay should be not be leased but ‘redown to the gen[er]all
benefyt of the wholl Burgesses amongst them’.731 He then addressed one of thealdermen, Richard Hurt, directly and said ‘Yow are but Burges as I, and therefore

730
731

NA CA 3376.
NA CA 3376.

257

I will answere the Maior and not yow’.732 Millington lived in Richard Hurt’s ward
so his denial of Hurt’s authority is interesting, and may have been personal.733
This incident reflects concerns expressed throughout the last fifty years of thesixteenth century about the management of town land and in particular its leases.
In 1553 the Mickletorn jury wrote ‘M[aster] Mayre, as we vnderstande you andyour brethern ar detarmynyd to let the Armytage Closse by leasse, the which wewoulde you shoulde not do’.734 In 1577 they found that Master Newton’s lease on
West Steynor was void and recommended that the ‘pore Bordgesses may have it
for a cowe pastur’.735 Another request made in 1577 was that no more ‘foreign’burgesses should be made, unless they paid £10 because there were already somany that the ‘pore Burdgesses co[m]mons is eatten up’ highlights the problem of
increasing burgess numbers and limited amount of common land. Later in thesame presentment they asked that any man having a ‘part’ of East or West Croft
but not using it himself should sublet it to burgesses, not foreigners.736 As the
body responsible for monitoring the management of town lands, the Mickletorn
regularly reported on the misuse of the common fields and meadows and many
examples have been given in earlier chapters. These later, more serious
complaints fall into the same category, but expose the growing pressures on the
town’s common areas resulting from the ever increasing population.

732

NA CA 3376.
NA CA 4623.
734
NA CA 3013.
735
NA CA 3014.
736
NA CA 3014.
733

258

One of the rolls in the Sessions court record of 1574-75 is a faded sheet headed‘Presentment of Assize’.737 It comprises five complaints, one against William Mys
for forestalling the market, one complaining about the inhabitants of ale houses
and back lanes and two against the wappentake of Bassetlaw for not maintaining
its portion of Leen Bridge.738 The longest entry is a request for a ruling on theleasing of property to foreigners.
My lord where has the poure burgesses of this towne had off old
custom and right off this towne had commons in our feldes off nobdy[ ? ] now there is a closse called Howe crofts letton a way frome thebordgesses for ever and the poure bordgesess shall losse ourecommons contrary to all right and costom There is other in this townethat haythe takyne in oredy [already] any and sum that wyll take morein and remyde [remedy] be nott foude ther we dessyre you honnars to
be oure good lord to in form oure mare and jusysses that ourecommons may be has they have been afre tyme739
There are two possible interpretations of this presentment. The first is that it was
drawn up by the Mickletorn jury, which normally dealt with such matters, in orderto force the Council into taking action. If this was the case, the Mickletorn was
acting on behalf of the burgesses, in opposition to the Council.
A second interpretation is that this document was drawn up by a group ofburgesses dissatisfied with the action, or inaction, of the Mickletorn jury, whichlooked to the visiting Justices of Assize for support. Under the 1449 Charter, theAssize or circuit judges had no judicial authority in Nottingham, but they visited
twice a year because the county gaol was within the town’s precincts. During theirvisits they were entertained by the mayor at the town’s expense.740 These
presentments were an appeal to their legal expertise and authority, in support of737

NA CA 49.
Leen Bridge was maintained by the town of Nottingham and six adjacent wappentakes. See NA
CA 4477, Stevenson, II, pp.222-241.
739
NA CA 49.
740
for example NA CA 1610, 1612.
738

259

the wider community. As a unique survival it is difficult to say if this was acommon occurrence. Similar petitions, for example those from poor weavers andmillers, were made directly to the Council through the Sessions court, so this may
be an extension of that practice. Millington and his associates also acted
independently of the Mickletorn jury over the Tithe Hay and it is possible they
had a similar appeal in mind in 1597-98. As will be discussed later, questions
concerning the expansion of the common council were also referred to the Assize
judges. There is no suggestion in future records that the Council’s approach toleasing land was greatly changed so, as in 1411 and 1512, the Crown’s
representatives supported the Council against the commoners. The existence of
this document, though, does suggest that there were times when the common
burgesses acted independently of the Mickletorn and Sessions juries, rather than
through them.
Constitutional change
The last twenty-five years or so of the sixteenth century saw changes to theconstitution which are perhaps even more significant than the 1449 Charter,
although less well acknowledged. Integral to these changes were the Mickletorn
and Sessions juries. The stages in this protracted development are described indetail by both Stevenson and Grey, and Stevenson in particular see them assignificant evidence of burgess’ opposition to an oligarchic Council.741 For thisreason it is worthwhile analysing each step in more detail.
The latter part of the sixteenth century, as described in earlier chapters, saw amore stable mayoralty combined with better economic conditions and 1577-78
741

Stevenson, IV, pp.xiii-xvii; D Grey, Nottingham Through 500 Years: a History of Town
Government (Nottingham, 1960), pp.55-62.

260

was perhaps something of a reforming and re-organising year in Nottingham. The
butchers’ craft presented new rules under which they were to trade, all apprentices
were registered and two men were prosecuted for trading as ironmongers without
serving an apprenticeship. The Mickletorn jury called for improvements to themarket place and it is the first year that a record of ward boundaries is found in
the Hall book.742 Its recommendation that ‘foreign’ burgesses should pay a £10
entry fine seems, however, to have been ignored.743
It was also the year that the first known move towards a reconstituted Council was
made. An agreement was reached between the aldermen, common council and ‘45
in all, beinge then all of the degree of Chamberlaynes’744 that the common council
should be expanded from six to twelve; something Stevenson describes as a‘decided victory’ for the burgesses.745
How the new councillors were to be elected seems to have been the cause of some
dispute. The Mickletorn jury of the same year asserted that according to the Red
Book it should be by a group of forty-eight and ordered that anyone who thought
forty-four to be the right number should ‘set [sit] downe, and so to end’.746
Stevenson interprets this as an agreement that forty-eight should be added to theCouncil, but the wording clearly relates to the ‘chossing of the Co[m]mon Counsell
according to the grement’.747 This pronouncement therefore records a disagreement

between jury members themselves, not between the aldermen and burgesses as
Stevenson contended, and as three of the newly elected councillors were members
742

NA CA 3014, 3362.
NA CA 3014.
744
NA CA 4771, Stevenson, IV, p.409.
745
Stevenson, IV, p.xiii.
746
NA CA 3014.
747
Stevenson, IV, p.xiv; NA CA 3014.
743

261

of this jury it was in their interests to have this procedural issue settled. It may besignificant that the term ‘le Clothing’, referring to the group that elected themayor which comprised mainly chamberlains, is first used in the Hall book of
1578-79, following the agreement to expand the common council.748
As Stevenson points out, the enlargement of the common council was an‘acknowledgement of the status of the Clothing as a subordinate member of theCouncil’.749 Another presentment made at this sitting stated that the common
council should attend the ‘vardyth of the myddyllturne; and that it may be so everhere after’, which must also be a recognition of the status of the Mickletorn in
relation to the Council.750 The combined effect of these two presentments was toclarify the composition of the Clothing and more closely define and formalise therelationship between it and common council, and between the common council
and the Mickletorn jury.
Another of Stevenson’s contentions is that the enlargement of the common
council did not provide any ‘popular representation’ because new members of the
Clothing were nominees of the Council.751 This implies an assumption that theagreement to extend the Council and associate it with the Clothing was intended
to increase popular representation. This may not have been the case, as subsequent
events show.
The next step to a re-constituted Council came in October 1579 when the
Mickletorn jury recommended to the aldermen that all the common councillors be

748

NA CA 3363.
Stevenson, IV, p.xiv.
750
NA CA 3014.
751
Stevenson, IV, p.xiv.
749

262

removed from office and that ‘xlviij may be joyned to youe to confer in aney
matters for the towne’.752 The reason for this reform was given to be that ‘othar
place[s] wher ther corporations are bettar govarned then this is’ had governing
bodies of this size.753 This can be seen as a criticism of the Council for failing in
its duties, but the word ‘governed’ can also mean regulated or controlled.754 The
proposed model for the new Council was similar to that which operated in towns
like Leicester, Northampton and York, and these were ‘closed’ administrations,where burgess participation in local government was limited.755
There is evidence that the Mickletorn attempted to control Nottingham’s burgess
community to prevent it acting independently. At the same meeting that the
dissolution of the common council was proposed, the Mickletorn jury requested
that Red Book be read at every Sessions court ‘in the hering of the Burgeses ...
that the Burgeses may the bettar dyscharge ther owthe and there dewtey for the
comen welthe of this towne’.756 It may be significant that the Red Book was to beread at the Sessions court, where petitions were also made directly to the mayor,suggesting it was used by the burgesses as a ‘common hall’ as well as a court
room. This Mickletorn presentment was an unmistakable reminder to theburgesses that they had their own responsibilities to the community and theCouncil. The fact that it came only four years after the Assize justices wereapproached to rule on the leasing of common land and other matters of town
management, supports the earlier suggestion that this had been generated by a752

NA CA 3015.
NA CA 3015.
754
Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. VI, second edition (Oxford, 1989).
755
M Bateman, ‘Introduction’, in Records of the Borough of Leicester 1509-1603, Vol. 3(Leicester, 1905), p.xxiv; C A Markham, ‘Introduction’, in The Records of the Borough ofNorthampton, Vol. 1 (Northampton, 1898), p.xxxi; Palliser, Tudor York, p.61.
756
NA CA 3015.
753

263

group of common burgesses taking affairs into their own hands. The proposed
Council reform and the reminder to community of their duty may have been areaction to such independent actions. A similar reminder was made twenty years
later in October 1599, the year after the Tithe Hay protests, when the burgesses
were told by the Mickletorn jury that the common council was chosen to confer
with the aldermen ‘for the good of the Commons and in steade of thecommeneres’.757 At the same meeting, though, the jury asserted that councillors
often neglected their duty and the mayor was asked to issue an order that any
councillor absenting himself without good reason should be expelled from theCouncil.758 It cannot be co-incidence that both examples of unilateral action by
the burgesses resulted in reprimands for them and the common council equally.
This is a good example of the ‘balancing act’ that, according to Stephen Rigby,
local governments had to practice.759
The 1579 proposal was not acted on. Why is not clear. There could have been alack of support for such a radical change, but there may have been a legal
stumbling block as well. The 1449 Charter of Incorporation, as noted in Chapter
Five, made provision only for those elements of the Council that were innovationsin administration, that is the aldermen and the sheriffs. The common council wasomitted and for that reason it was probably relatively easy to enlarge it to twelve,as happened in 1577, especially as there was a precedent in 1446 the committee oftwelve. The joining of forty-eight burgesses to the seven aldermen might have

757

NA CA 3020.
NA CA 3020.
759
S H Rigby, English Society in the Later Middle Ages: Class, Status and Gender (Houndsmill,1995), pp.171-72.
758

264

been less legally achievable, possibly requiring an amendment if not complete
revision of the 1449 Charter, which the administration had no desire to undertake.
In 1601-2, shortly after the Mickletorn jury again reminded the commons of therole of the common council, there was another call for a reform. This came fromthe Sessions juries not the Mickletorn, as before. It was suggested earlier that the
Sessions court was also used as a common hall by the burgesses, so these petitions
may indicate a coming together of influential burgesses with members of thesepowerful juries to reach an agreement over long-standing problems. Another
difference is that rather than replace the common council the request was for the
Clothing to merge with the common council.
This does not mean there was complete agreement, but, as before, the arguments
came from within the juries themselves. The east side and constables juries asked‘that thear may be added to the Councell of the town xxxvj Borgissis to makethem xlviij’, that is twelve common councillors and thirty-six others.760 The westside jury wanted a more complicated arrangement, asking for ‘xlviijtie of the
Clothinge and other Burgesses of one companye, and xxiiijtie of a nother company
with oure Maior’, in other words, a two-tier system of forty-eight burgesses in one
house and twenty-four, including the mayor, in a superior one.761 These calls werecombined with an appeal that ‘there not be anie officers chosen, nor forryners
made Burgesses, but with consent of all those’, echoing the concerns about
foreigners found elsewhere in both Mickletorn and Session presentments.762

760

NA CA 57.
NA CA 57.
762
NA CA 57.
761

265

The primary purpose of government was to maintain the peace and prevent
discord, and the function of both the Mickletorn and Sessions juries was to ensure
the good management of the town, hence the need to control independent action
by the common burgesses. There seems, however, to have been an understanding
and sympathy for the concerns of the burgess community, and even a genuine
desire for better government structures. The Council’s increased responsibilities
for regulation and control had given it greater authority, yet little attempt wasmade to stifle opposition as had happened in 1411 and 1512. Instead, theproposals made in 1601-2 allowed some limited commons representation ingovernment, but at the same time reinforced the authority of the Council to makedecisions on behalf of the community and emphasised the duty of the commons to
not oppose the Council.
The improved economy of the period may also have had some influence. Many of
the sheriffs and chamberlains had occupations which were not commonly foundamongst the civic elite, but as they and some of the common burgesses became
more prosperous they became more suitable for office; wealth of course being aqualifier for civic responsibility. Avner Grief, for example, attributes the changing
political organisation of Genoa to the increased wealth of its citizens who
demanded a greater say in town government.763 They may also have been better
educated – the later Sessions rolls testify to an improved literacy compared to thebeginning of the century. Another reason why this reconstitution may have been
more acceptable in 1600 is that after 1580 the relationship of the Clothing and theSessions and Mickletorn juries as substructures of government had been moreclearly defined. The merging of the Clothing with the common council twenty
763

A Grief, Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy (Cambridge, 2006), p.287.

266

years later was, thus, a more natural progression. There might have been personal
motivations as well because, as members of the Clothing, many of the men who
sat on the Sessions and Mickletorn juries would benefit from the ‘promotion’ tocommon councillor and the status that it would bring. The mounting burdens of
the Council due to population growth, an increasing workload and the need tosatisfy the more frequent demands from central government discussed in Chapters
Five and Six may also have made an expansion acceptable as there would be more
people to share the load.
Whatever the reasons, the principle that the common council should be reformed
was accepted. This, perhaps, is unsurprising as two of the aldermen in 1601-2,
Humphrey Bonner and Anker Jackson, had been members of the 1579-80
Mickletorn jury which had originally called for change. Other members of that1579-80 group were common councillors Thomas Huthwaite and Nicholas
Sherwin, and several members of the Clothing, as well as Percival Millington. As
part of the group that first raised the question of constitutional reform they musthave been more receptive to the Sessions jury requests. It does imply, however,that control of the burgesses was as at least as important as understanding theirconcerns.
Despite the apparent concord, the detail continued to be disputed, and as in 1577,
the main point of contention was the election of new Council members. In 1603-4,
for example, the west side jury, which had also called for the more complicatedstructure the previous year, requested that all new town officials be elected by theburgesses.764 In February 1604, the aldermen, common councillors and the764

NA CA 59, Stevenson, IV, p.265.

267

Clothing agreed with seventy burgesses that a subcommittee should meet to reachan agreement about the composition of the new Council. Their recommendation
was for a Council of fifty-six, to include all the Clothing, but the final decision
was deferred to the Recorder, who as the town’s legal adviser could rule on any
legal complications. Five days later a second subcommittee was set up comprising
all the aldermen and seven burgesses, with ‘Maister Recorder Umpyer’.765 Thissecond group comprised all the aldermen and seven burgesses, most of whom hadsome civic responsibility. Nicholas Kynnersley was the Sheriffs’ Clerk andGeorge Balderston was a constable and had been a member of the 1577
Mickletorn jury which had requested the dissolution of the common council.
Another constable was William Mathews, who had been questioned about theTithe Hay incident, as had George Walker, and John Stanley had been one of thepetty collectors of the 1595 lay subsidy. Only Richard Hare, who was an
apothecary and Percival Millington, the ring-leader of the Tithe Hay protest, do
not appear to have held any official position.
Together they proposed that there should be two committees or houses of twentyeight; the upper house comprising the mayor, Recorder, aldermen, common
councillors and members of the Clothing; the lower house the remaining membersof the Clothing and ‘commoners’. The more important decision was probably theagreement that vacancies in the upper house were to be filled with men from thelower house and new members of the lower house be elected by four burgesses
from every ward. This two-house system recognised the seniority of the aldermen
implicit in the 1449 Charter which would have been eradicated by a flatterstructure, while allowing for a limited degree of burgess participation. The
765

NA CA 3379.

268

structure was accepted and the first page of the Hall book of 1604-5 records thecomposition of the Council to be the mayor, recorder and six aldermen, followedby two coroners, twelve common councillors, and eight members of the Clothing.
Nineteen other members of the Clothing, together with nine others, are listed
under a heading of ‘2nd company’.766 Of these nine, six including Percival
Millington, had been members of the sub-committee that had devised this new
structure. The remaining three were Ludovic Oxley, who had been a member ofthe 1587 Mickletorn jury, George Riley who had sat on the east side Sessions jury
in 1599, and James Seele about who little is known, but may have been related toJohn Seele who sat on the Mickletorn jury of 1592.767
Yet again, though, the dispute about the election of new officers continued; there
is a note in the Hall book for August 1605 that a meeting was to take place with
the Burgesses ‘in hope to settle a peace and quyett in the towne’.768 The note does
not explicitly state that the grievances concerned the composition of the Council,
but Stevenson makes this not unreasonable assumption.769 On 13 January 1606,
there was another meeting between six aldermen and six burgesses to ‘consider ofthe grevances, and to indeavour to bringe the controuersies to an end’ and a week
later it was noted that an agreement had been reached for twenty of the Clothing
and eight of the commons to be added to the Council.770 Although it is notapparent from the note, this agreement can only refer to the lower house and its
rather odd composition of the nineteen and nine. By this date, the dispute had
766

NA CA 3779. Conservator’s tape used to secure the bottom of the page has obscured some of
the names and only twenty-five are legible, consequently, Stevenson’s comments have been relied
on for accuracy.
767
NA CA 51b, 52b, 55.
768
NA CA 3380, Stevenson, IV, p.274.
769
Stevenson, IV, p.xvii.
770
NA CA 3381, Stevenson, IV, p.279.

269

been referred to the Assize court and the Privy Council for settlement, and the
purpose of the agreement was ‘so that the Lordes of the Councell [the Privy
Council] and the Judges [Justices of Assize] bee pleased therewith’.771 How thisreferral was made is not obvious, but as noted above, there had been appeals in
the past to the Assize judges for legal advice on leases; it is probable that they
were consulted over this matter in the same way. The mayor though, had directaccess to the Privy Council through the Earl of Shrewsbury, a member of the
Privy Council since 1601, who had been appointed High Steward of Nottingham
in January 1606.772
In March 1606 the Privy Council issued an order that a Council of twenty-fourshould be elected by the mayor and all the burgesses, or the majority of them,comprising eighteen members of the Clothing and six commoners who together
with the mayor, Recorder and aldermen had the power to make orders for thegovernment of the town.773 As Stevenson point out, it is ‘difficult to reconcile its
provisions with the evidence of the Hall Books’ as there were fifty-fivecouncillors including the Recorder, the Mayor’s Clerk and the Sheriffs’ Clerk at
the first sitting of the new Council held on 23 April 1606.774 As the order was
made only two months after the execution of Guy Fawkes, the Privy Council
probably had more important things to consider than the squabbles of a provincial
town, which may account for the mis-match. Its wording does, however, support
the argument that by this stage any dispute concerned only the composition of the771

NA CA 3381, Stevenson, IV, pp.278-79.
P E J Hammer, ‘Manners, Roger, fifth earl of Rutland (1576–1612)’, Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, online edition, 2008, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17962]; NACA 3381, Stevenson, IV, p.278.
773
Stevenson, IV, p.xvii.
774
Stevenson, IV, p.xviii, footnote 4.
772

270

lower house, which included common burgesses, and the appointment of new
members to the Council. The order also overcame – or by-passed – problems
associated with amending the 1449 Charter as it did not deal with the compositionof the upper house.
In the short term, the Council may have allowed greater burgess participation
through the election of six or eight ‘commoners’. The tradition of an electoralcollege was such that, whatever the Privy Council’s order, in the longer term
vacancies on the Council were filled by former chamberlains. Effectively theCouncil was at least as closed as before and more importantly its composition was
legally defined and more hierarchical.
To a degree Stevenson was correct in identifying a split between the burgesses
and the Council. He was, however, less accurate in suggesting that the Mickletorn
and Sessions juries both represented the burgesses in opposition to the Council.
Composed, as they were, by future members of the ruling groups, it was in theirinterests to regulate disaffected burgesses such as Percival Millington.
Furthermore, although the Mickletorn was critical of the common council andsupported its replacement, it also regularly criticised the burgesses foroverstepping their authority. By including men like Millington in a revised andmore closed Council structure, his actions and those of his colleagues wereabsorbed and neutralised. There does, though, appear to have been an
acknowledgement of the plight of ‘poor burgesses’, perhaps because as Ian Archer
argues, first-generation members of the elite had many contacts with members of
the lower social orders.775 If that was the case in London, then it would be even775

Archer, Stability, p.51.

271

more so in a small town like Nottingham. The range of occupations followed bychamberlains and sheriffs, and even mayors, identified in Chapter Three suggests
they may have had more in common with the burgess community of 1600 than the
Staple merchants had with the same community of 1400. What is unambiguous isthat both sides sought a legal solution and demonstrated a willingness tonegotiate, co-operate and adapt to circumstances, an attitude very different fromthat of the burgesses of the early fifteenth century. The result was a Council which
was probably better fitted to deal with the responsibilities of seventeenth-century
local government than the medieval structure that was the legacy of the 1449
Charter.
Conclusion
This chapter has addressed the potential for social unrest, specifically events
which challenged the authority of the Council, asked by the fourth researchquestion. Criticism of council members came in a variety of forms. The first ofthese saw complaints made against council members, through the Mickletorn or
Sessions juries, for infringements of communal rules and acceptable behaviour.
These are similar, if not identical, to complaints made about any other burgesses;
they may be expressions of dissatisfaction with individual men but cannot be seen
as a rift in the community.
There are, though, several examples of fissures between the Council and theburgesses. The insurrections of 1411-13 and 1512 resulted in interventions by the
Crown in support of the local authority. The cause of the former is unknown, but
the latter was part of a pattern of urban unrest, fuelled by local economic and272

political instabilities. It was these conditions, which allowed three men to
dominate the town in the 1520s, that led to protests and possibly factionalism.
The final examples, at the end of the sixteenth century, do suggest a fracture
between the common burgesses and the Council, caused to a great extent by the
influx of new burgesses and the stress this placed on common land. Theinteresting and important difference between these events and those at the
beginning of the century was that a solution was reached not through direct action
but through negotiation and compromise.
This leads to the question of the role of the Mickletorn and Sessions juries inchallenging the Council. As well as pointing out individual misdemeanours, they
were critical of the common council as an institution which did not fulfil its
function. But the Mickletorn in particular was also quick to remind the burgessesof their responsibility and duty to the community. The majority of their members
had some civic responsibility and increasingly they were identified with local
authority and the eventual merger of the Clothing with the common council
recognised that connection. By composition and function, these juries were notrepresentative of the common burgesses although they may have sympathy withthem. The association between civic office and social status has been discussed atvarious times in this thesis; the consequence of the reforms of the later sixteenth
century was to produce a delineated hierarchy and narrower burgess participation
in local government, and more rigidly defined social structure.
As part of the analysis in this chapter, Stevenson’s interpretation of the role of theGreat Court and the relationship between the Sessions court and Mickletorn juries
has been reassessed. Rather than being in competition with each other, these273

groups were complementary, with their own range of interests. Overlaps in
responsibility may have resulted from their shared membership and because they
were part of the same court structure. The absorption of the Great Court by the
Sessions court shows the flexibility of that structure at this time.
Stevenson’s interpretation of the social relationships within the burgess
community has also been challenged and reinterpreted. There were frictions, buteach had individual causes dependent on the economic and social conditions of
their time. Furthermore, these frictions were not always between burgess andCouncil. The Mickletorn and Sessions juries were comprised of many men who
were the peers of Council members and their criticisms cannot be described aspart of a continual rift in the community. Rather than being tyrannical, the actionsof the Council at the end of the sixteenth century show considerable efforts weremade to reconcile the concerns of the burgesses with its duty to prevent unrest andmaintain a harmonious community. Instead, it is the beginning of the fifteenth
century that the greatest disharmony is apparent. This does not mean that the
government of 1606 was democratic, only that the responsibilities andrelationships within the community were defined and understood, reducing thepotential for political unrest.

274

Chapter Eight: Conclusion to Part II
The three chapters in Part II have concentrated on the development of theinstitutions of local government in Nottingham in order to identify the nature andextent of oligarchic government in Nottingham. It has also shown how changes inthe structure of government were influenced by the economic and demographic
changes identified in Part I, and added further to the details of these changes.
There can be no doubt that Nottingham’s local government was always oligarchic.
Authority in 1400 rested in the hands of the mayor and two bailiffs. Althoughthese were elected annually, it was the custom for the electoral group to be small
and composed of an elite group, some of whom were related to each other and all
were from the more prosperous sections of the community. Overtime, the natureof the oligarchy became more defined and hierarchic, first in 1446 with theelection of a council and more formally as a consequence of the 1449 Charter
which by default created a two-tier system that further excluded burgess
participation. The changes at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of theseventeenth century at first appear to present a paradox, as they allowed some
limited contribution to government by common burgesses, at a time when it isgenerally argued that oligarchies became more defined. Further investigation
showed, though, that in the intervening years, the Mickletorn and Sessions court
juries had become more integrated with the group who elected the mayor andaldermen, now known as the Clothing. The merger of the Clothing with thecommon council simply recognised its role in local government. Any wider
burgess participation was short-lived, and the paradox is thus reconciled. The
early seventeenth-century Council was still an oligarchy defined by wealth and275family networks but the hierarchy was more rigorously distinct and precise. Witha legally prescribed fifty-six members it was only fractionally larger than the more
informal grouping of mayor and forty-eight who were in control at the beginningof the fifteenth century – the difference being represented perhaps by the other six
aldermen and the Recorder. The narrowness of this oligarchy is further
emphasised when the great increase in population is taken into account, thus
making the elite group of 1600 proportionally smaller than its counterpart of1400.
All the major constitutional changes were, partially at least, prompted by external
influences. The 1449 grant of Incorporation offered financial protection to town
officials who were affected by the declining wool and textile trades. Underlying
the 1600-1606 reconstitution was a discontent with the management of common
land and the lot of poor burgesses. This highlights a difference in the economic
environment of the two events. The evasion of office by middle ranking burgesses
in the mid-fifteenth century suggests it was this group which was most seriously
affected by the loss of markets. In contrast, the middle ranking burgesses of thelate sixteenth century were prosperous and willing to take office, while it was thepoorest of the burgesses who suffered because of competition from in-migrants. In
both cases the wealthiest appear to have been unscathed, and even flourished.
The changing economic and demographic conditions affected the mayoralty inother ways as well, in particular the early part of the sixteenth century saw
political instability. A consequence of this was that, temporarily, the higher civic
offices became accessible to men who would, in all probability, have been
excluded in other circumstances. It also allowed the opportunity for three men,

276

John Williamson, John Rose and Thomas Mellers, to dominate the mayoralty andabuse their position, leading to discord and factionalism.
The criticisms made against Williamson, Rose and Mellers, are probably the mostserious found in the Borough Records, but they were, of course, not the only
members of the Council to abuse their privileges. Several examples have been
given of mayors taking actions which were perceived to be detrimental to thewell-being of the community. This was not unique to Nottingham, as Friedrichs
points out, and neither was it limited to post-Reformation Nottingham.776 The
Mickletorn petition criticising Rose, Williamson and Mellers itself pre-dates theReformation by several years, and there are examples of presentments against
men like Henry Wilford and Robert Squire at the beginning of the fifteenth
century.
These were not the only examples of discontent within the burgess community.
Some, such as the discord in the fifteenth century, led to insurrection which had tobe quashed by the Crown. There were similar problems in the early-sixteenth
century, related to national unrest, which were again controlled through central
government intervention. In contrast, in the later sixteenth-century, when
Stevenson suggests there was a great rift between the burgesses and the Council,
the Council chose not to use its authority to over-rule burgesses’ concerns but
displayed a degree of flexibility and adaptability similar to that perceived by
Rappaport in his studies of London.777 There may be many reasons for this,including the improved prosperity of the group which called for change, but in

776

C R Friedrichs, The Early Modern City 1450-1570 (Burnt Mill, 1995), p.309.
S Rappaport, ‘Social Structure and Mobility in Sixteenth Century London’ London Journal, 9,part 2 (1983), p.107.
777

277

itself, that indicates a concern for the poorer members of society not apparent in
the previous century. Furthermore, the causes of the burgesses’ fears were not thepolitical motives attributed to them by Stevenson, but the social, economic anddemographic problems discussed in previous chapters. As a result, his descriptionof Nottingham’s oligarchy has been reassessed and reinterpreted. The various
examples of criticism of town officials are not part of a continuum but individual
events, stimulated by particular events and circumstances.
Much of the evidence for the connections between the Council and the substructures of government which underpinned its work of preserving the peace andmaintaining social harmony, comes from the discussion of the court system in
Chapter Six. This discussion also added to the description of the changing
economic circumstances of Nottingham. The gradual reduction in suits brought tothe Borough court is an indication of the steady economic decline through the last
half of the fifteenth century to the mid-sixteenth. In particular the severity of theeconomic problems in the 1520s are highlighted by the lack of legal businessconducted. The continual decline in the number of cases reflects changing legal
practice, but the value of the suits judged at the end of the sixteenth century
testifies to a more buoyant economy. Further corroboration of this decline is given
through the lessening of distances travelled by the men and women who traded in
Nottingham, however, there is also evidence of the later strength in the domestic
market.
The discussion of courts has added to the understanding of the social structure of
Nottingham based on office holding, suggesting that there was a hierarchy ofminor court officials from affeerer to constable, with very few men able to278

progress beyond these levels. Even at these low ranks, suitability was probably
assessed by wealth, which though difficult to quantify at these levels, is echoed in
occupations. Occupational analysis shows clear distinctions between the men who
were able to rise to higher office and those who were not. Nevertheless, theselower social groupings also had their leaders such as Percival Millington and theconstables who led the Tithe Hay protests, and who later gained status as common
councillors, even if this progression was short-lived.
Despite some discernible milestones, the pace of administrative change was, ingeneral, gradual, and many of the modifications which seem new are on further
examination, often just affirmations of existing practice. The grant ofIncorporation in 1449 acknowledged that Nottingham was already an incorporated
town and the creation of seven aldermen to rule it, while conferring status on theindividuals, simply formalised existing customary practice. The establishment of
the Sessions court was an innovation for Nottingham, but as it assimilated manyof the responsibilities and characteristics of the Great Court and common hall it
was also an adaptation of existing institutions. Even the reconstitution of theCouncil after 1600 was to some extent a formalisation of the status of the Clothingwhich since the 1580s at least had been closely linked to the common council. In
the meantime, the role of the Borough court remained almost unchanged, although
it became better organised. The most discernable changes are found not in theinstitutions, but in the responsibilities of local government which were aconsequence of the Reformation.
The post-Reformation period brought greater authority to the Council as its
responsibilities for the management of the town’s assets and for social regulation279

increased. Indeed, most of the consequences for Nottingham of the Reformation
can only be appreciated through the administrative documents. These record notjust the most commonly discussed facets of social regulation such as the controlof vagrants and the provision of poor relief – although there are many examples ofthese – but also some of the less common aspects. The transfer to the Council ofthe responsibility for the maintenance of the Trent bridges brought with it thefinancial responsibility for a greater area of land and the regulation of beggars alsomeant the regulation of troupes of players. Initially, these travelling players werepart of the means by which the Protestant message was transmitted. The
assimilation of this message into the consciousness of Nottingham people isdemonstrated by the Sessions court presentments against immorality, while thesame presentments reveal the degree of resistance to the movement. Thisaugmented authority can only have served to emphasise the social distinctivenessof local officials, particularly the mayor and aldermen.
This examination of Nottingham’s administration has shown, then, that thefunction of most of its institutions remained unchanged, but the breadth of
responsibility increased particularly in response to the Reformation and increasing
amount of centralised legislation which was a consequence of its imposition. This
gave the town’s leaders greater authority which, combined with the wealth andsocial status identified in Part I, must have added to their social distinctiveness.
Nevertheless, in face of opposition from burgess groups, the post-Reformation
council was far more prepared to negotiate and co-operate than its predecessors
whose members, in theory at least, were socially more closely related to the wider
community than the urban gentry who comprised the elite in 1600.

280

Conclusion: Continuity or Change?
This thesis opened by stating that the world in 1600 was different from the worldof 1400, yet the overarching themes have been continuity as well as change.
Inevitably there is more evidence for change than for continuity because almostby definition continuity goes unrecorded. It is also true that over long periods oftime very little remains unchanged. Consequently, all aspects of Nottingham
discussed have shown modifications, but some are minor and the pace gradual andevolutionary. Men and women living through these modifications, as Friedrichs
asserts, were probably aware of little change; it is only the longer time-scale ofthis study which makes them visible.778 On the other hand, some changes
happened perceptively quickly, and this seems particularly true in the latter half ofthe sixteenth century. Furthermore, observations made from just one viewpoint
cannot tell the full story. The three foci of this study – the town, the people andthe administration – were chosen because they allow the same stimuli to bestudied from three perspectives, thus confirming or modifying arguments, adding
detail, and creating a more complete account of events.
The first of these subjects, the town, shows both gradual and rapid change, andsome considerable continuity. The street plan of Nottingham in 1600 was
fundamentally the same as in 1400. From 1400, however, until the middle of thesixteenth century the streets became steadily emptier as the population declined.
Houses were uninhabited and rents unpaid, and the fabric of the town dilapidated.
There is no direct evidence of the immediate effect of the sixteenth-century reedification but it is possible to infer that property repairs and new building
778

C R Friedrichs, The Early Modern City 1450-1570 (Burnt Mill, 1995), p.333.

281

resulted in in-filling, with little expansion except to the north of the Saturday
market into Back Side. The stimulus for this investment was the increasing
population which must have filled the streets and crowded the market.
Residential patterns within Nottingham also remained much the same. Butchers
occupied the streets around the Weekday market, tanners lived in Broad Marshand Narrow Marsh, although there were more of them in 1600; a consequence ofboth a larger population and the greater importance of the industry. Mercers,
corvisers, fishmongers, bakers and suppliers of other household items lived
around the Saturday market. Men dwelt near to the sources of their income sothere is no evidence of wealthier or poorer areas, but as some occupations
generated more wealth than others a few streets, such as Long Row, probably
seemed more prosperous.
Like the streets, the market saw few real changes. Market rents fell and, likehouses, stalls were left untenanted, but the organisation of the market was
unchanged. The Weekday market continued to supply both meat to townspeople
and hide to the tanners. The Saturday market dealt in a wider range of household
goods and attracted traders from outside town, although they travelled lessdistance than their predecessors. Greater prosperity in the later sixteenth century
saw an increase in the number of shops and the introduction of luxury goods. By
the end of the sixteenth century, the market was crowded and thriving; thissparked other commercial development such as the new mills which had
consequences for tenant millers who were unable to compete. At the same time,
there is evidence of greater regulation of the market, probably in response to its
growth and the potential for unfair trading by a greater number of people. The

282

improved economy of the 1570s led to calls for additional buildings toaccommodate incoming traders, yet at the same time there was a fear of thestrangers and ‘noughte rookes’ they would attract.779 These almost conflicting
attitudes exemplify many of the concerns of this later period when the town andits burgesses sought to exploit the improving economy but feared theconsequences of such development.
One of the most obvious, but hardest to quantify, changes is the use of the streetsas the setting for public events, whether these were the ritual processions of Whit
Monday and Corpus Christi or the more secular event of the Mayor’s fishing. The
Reformation changed the nature of many of these occasions but the venues
remained the same. The atmosphere of communal and public areas must havebeen affected by the closure of the friaries and chantries, and by the many licensed
and unlicensed poor men and women, including maimed soldiers and homelesspaupers, moving from town to town. The appearance of these strangers created an
impression of insecurity which demanded greater control and regulation.
Unlike the streets and markets, there is evidence for much greater change in the
demand for common land, particularly to support poor burgesses. Yet again
population growth at the end of the sixteenth century was a key factor in the
management of these communal assets, as burgesses demanded that leases were
not renewed and plots not sub-let to ‘foreigners’; a concern which illustrates thetown’s continuing relationship with and dependence on agriculture.
Population change was an important factor in altering the urban environment in
Nottingham, whether this was decline or growth. The gradual decrease in
779

NA CA 3014, 3015.

283

population over the fifteenth century, followed by accelerated shrinkage at the
beginning of the sixteenth threatened to undermine the town both economicallyand politically. Rapid population growth, fuelled by in-migration, in the latter halfof the sixteenth century probably doubled the number of inhabitants. Some of theconsequences, or fear of the consequences, of this migration have already been
mentioned, but migrants were not just transitory paupers or dishonest vagrants.
The presence of ‘foreign’ burgesses led to protests and calls to restrict their
numbers, while a small proportion of migrants were also men of wealth andstatus. Still relatively insignificant in 1600, they foreshadow a greater presence inthe later seventeenth century. Together with other wealthy men they attracted
manufacturers of luxury goods into Nottingham.
The history of people, though, is not simply the history of numbers. Perhaps theeasiest way of describing the people of Nottingham is through the framework of
the social structure of the town. Status was accorded to civic office and civic
office was dependent on income. All but the later taxes, which focus on only thewealthiest, describe a pyramid with few people at the apex and a broad base ofmen and women whose worth just qualified them for taxation. Those men at the
top of the ladder were invariably mayor and some aspired to gentry status. In the
mid-fifteenth century this necessitated the acquisition of land or honour, hence theSamon family gained a knighthood and moved to Annesley Woodhouse while
Thomas Thurland became Lord of the Manor of Gamston and married into a
noble family. By 1600, gentry status was bestowed on the basis of civic
responsibility (and therefore wealth), testifying to the increased status of civic
office at the end of the sixteenth century. In the middle of the pyramid are the284

sheriffs and chamberlains, then minor civic officials. Below them, of course, arethe significant number of individuals with so few assets they did not warrant
taxing.
There is a correlation between civic office, wealth and occupation from which it ispossible to observe a parallel or complementary hierarchy. Men who held minor
office practiced the least prestigious crafts while senior officials were important
tradesmen and manufacturers. Some crafts are never seen associated with thehigher offices, suggesting some were considered unsuitable or insufficiently
respectable. These, of course, are broad generalisations. There are, though, someindications that a narrow hierarchy of occupations operated at the beginning of the
fifteenth century and again at the end of the sixteenth, when the spectrum ofoccupations followed by civic officials is comparatively small. The intervening
period saw the appointment of men from a much greater range of occupations,probably as a result of the prevailing economic conditions which caused evasionof office by middle-ranking burgesses and a shortage of suitable candidates. This
was an adaptation in response to specific circumstances, which was rectified assoon as economic conditions permitted.
As the urban textile industry failed over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
Nottingham developed a more mixed economy, with a greater preponderance of
manufacturing industries, initially bell founding, but by 1600 tanning and the
manufacture of leather products were dominant in both numbers and in the civic
and social status of the industry leaders. The wealth, social status and civic
responsibilities of these men separated them from the rest of the community, but it
is possible that as employers they had more in common with their employees and285

less wealthy burgess colleagues than the rich Staple merchants of the previous
century.
This stratification, of course, does not tell the whole story. It omits all those who
did not pay tax, or paid tax but did not, or chose not to, hold civic office. It does
include some better off women, usually widows, but there were many other
women actively employed in Nottingham. Nor does this structure allow for the
fifteenth century alien community or the poor migrants of the sixteenth. One
constant throughout both centuries, though, is the importance, in numbers, of the
manufacturers and suppliers of food and drink, almost matched by the social
status of many of the people employed in this trade. Another constant is thepresence in Nottingham of men who can be called entrepreneurs, although thedirection and scale of their enterprise changed.
These discussions of the town and people of Nottingham show that both follow apattern of small changes in some areas and significant modifications in others.
The administrative structures of Nottingham follow a very similar model. The
Borough court provides not only the longest series of records but also displays thegreatest continuity, indeed its jurisdiction remained unchanged after 1399. Anychanges are small: its record keeping became more systematic, attorneys more
prominent, and the cost of litigation may account for the reduction in small debt
cases in the last twenty years or so of the sixteenth century. The significantly
larger sums contested, though, reflect the more prosperous economic
environment.
The creation of the Sessions court, authorised to hear the most serious felonies, isan important development in the court system. In many ways, however, it was an
286

adaptation or continuation of existing institutions and the majority of its businessconcerned the day-to-day management of the town and people. Integral to its
structure were the Mickletorn and Sessions juries, and membership of these juries
allowed limited burgess participation in local government. These men, though,were drawn from a relatively small group of the more senior burgesses who
increasingly were also civic officers, thus narrowing the relationship between thejuries and the governing administration even further. Furthermore, as the
population grew, proportionally the juries were drawn from an increasingly small
sub-set of the expanding community.
The structure of the Council underwent a number of mutations during the fifteenthand sixteenth centuries. In 1400, it comprised a small oligarchic elite, formalisedby the 1449 Charter which in many ways simply acknowledgement the existingorganisation. The sixteenth century extension of the common council and theearly seventeenth century re-composition of the Council are some of the biggest
changes observed in Nottingham, but even here there are underlying continuities,
as they were, essentially, a recognition of the role already played by former
chamberlains and sheriffs in town management. A contributing factor to both
restructures was the economic environment. The 1449 Charter provided financial
protection for civic officials faced with recession, while the economic boom of thelater 1600s forced constitutional change. The greater prosperity of the burgess
group may have also made them more acceptable in the eyes of the aldermen (andthe town) as partners in local government.
As a result of the examination of the Council, courts and juries it has beenpossible to challenge some long-held conceptions about the relationships between

287

civic institutions and the common burgesses. The first, is that the Sessions court,
rather than encroaching on the Mickletorn jury absorbed the responsibilities of theGreat Court. Second, it has been shown that the Mickletorn and Sessions juries
were not in opposition to the Council, although they might criticise it, but were
integral to town administration. Finally, that although there was, sometimes
serious, dissention it was not part of a continuous and growing rift between theburgesses and the elite. Each incident had its own stimulus and, if anything, there
was greater consensus in 1600 than there had been in 1400, although this may be
because of a more rigid hierarchy which limited the ability of burgesses to act
autonomously.
No change came about from a single cause, and not all can be identified. The lossof records between 1450 and 1480 and again between 1550 and 1575 means there
is little possibility of fully assessing the implications of these troubled years. But
it has been possible to identify three prominent factors that contributed to change:
an erratic economy, demographic swings and the imposition of Protestantism.
The first two have a ‘chicken-and-egg’ relationship. Did economic recession in
the fifteenth century reduce in-migration resulting in low population figures, or
did a decreasing population lessen demand, causing recession? The obverse of thisis, of course, did the economic improvements of the mid-sixteenth century createa demand for labour, attracting migrants into Nottingham to raise the population,or did in-migration stimulate the economy? Whatever the position, theconsequences for Nottingham have been well rehearsed. Recession affectedmarket and house rents, reduced the workload of the Borough court, andultimately changed the occupational profile of the town. Recovery increased the288demand for common land, crowded the streets, stretched the social structure
widening the social divide, and possibly contributing to social friction. Two
features are consistent in both situations: men with the greatest wealth survived
whatever the circumstances and both environments provided opportunity for
entrepreneurial activity, the difference being purely in the scope.
There is little direct evidence of the effect of Protestantism in Nottingham’s
administrative records. The most obvious features are the presentments forrecusancy in the Sessions court, suggesting resistance to the new faith. Even the
Mickletorn jury’s request that the Council regularly attend the Friday preaching isquestionable. There is evidence that Protestant teaching was being absorbed into
attitudes to immorality, but that may have been as much a result of visiting
players giving Protestant plays as theological conviction. Indirect effects of theReformation, though, are evident and important, as the Council acquired new
responsibilities which brought with them greater authority and greater status,
contributing to the widening social and economic divide.
In summary, then, in 1600 Nottingham was physically slightly bigger andcertainly more densely populated than 200 years earlier. The economy wasbooming but the civic leaders were industrialists not merchants. The
administrative institutions fulfilled the same role they had in 1400, but were morebureaucratic. The Council was bigger, but more formally stratified, and access to
civic office more limited. The social structure of the town, which to a great extent
mirrored the Council hierarchy, must also have been more formal, and the gap
between rich and poor was almost certainly wider. The speed of most of thesechanges, however, was evolutionary at least until the middle of the sixteenth289

century. After 1550, through a combination of economic, demographic andpolitical factors, the pace of change increased and many of the changes must havebeen noticeable to the townsmen and women. Medieval Nottingham had become‘modern’ Nottingham.

290

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The National Archive notes on lay subsidies
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/notes.asp?slctgrantid=247&action=3
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/notes.asp?slctgrantid=241&action=3
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/notes.asp?slctgrantid=263&action=3
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/notes.asp?slctgrantid=277&action=3
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/details.asp?piece_id=9062&doc_id=4873&doc_ref=E179/91/101

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