Economic and social aspects of the history of Winchester, 1520-1670

This thesis is the first scholarly study of the city of Winchester in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Much of the information derived from local archives is new, and records in London and Southampton concerning Winchester are used for the first time. In particular, the wills of the city's inhabitants, ecclesiastical court books, and the records of Chancery, Star Chamber, and the Court of Requests have yielded much new social and economic information, The thesis is intended not only as a study of one ancient cathedral and county town, however, but as a contribution to the study of early modern English towns in general. Its approach is close to that used by Professor Hoskins and his successors, and many comparisons are drawn with other towns that have been studied for the early modern period. Few towns as small as Winchester have yet been studied, but one of the conclusions of this thesis is that the complexity of a town's social and administrative structure depended more on its status than its size; though some small market towns were relatively simple and had strong rural links, an equally small town like Winchester, which was the county town, had a cathedral, and had built up a long tradition of self-government, could be almost as complex as one of the provincial capitals.
In this and many other ways, Winchester's character was determined by its past history. Since the twelfth century the city's population had fallen from 7,000 to about 3,000, and its political and economic importance too was far less than in its medieval heyday. A major theme of the thesis is the readjustment of the city to its new reduced status, and the consequent social, topographical, and economic changes, At the same time Winchester's economic role was shifting from that of a manufacturing centre to a social, service, and distribution centre, as the Hampshire woollen cloth industry dwindled and finally disappeared, By 1670 the city had begun to attract local gentlemen, both as residents and visitors, and its economic outlook had improved.
The lay subsidy of 1524-5 is used as the basis of a description of Winchester in the early sixteenth century. The distribution of wealth in the community shows the lack of a substantial ‘middle class', though the economic functions of such a group were to some extent fulfilled by religious houses before the Reformation. Population totals for the city, and for its suburbs (the Soke), are carefully estimated from the subsidy, and the numbers, origins, and assimilation of aliens are discussed, Winchester's religious houses and other institutions played an important social and economic role in the city, and the process and consequences of their dissolution are examined; the city did suffer from their removal, but several institutions survived to soften the blow, Though popular religion had not been especially lively before the Reformation, Winchester resisted the advent of Protestantism, and recusancy was strong and socially acceptable among all classes there throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Recusants were even found among the bishop's officials, many of whom had served Bishop Gardiner.
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Keywords: social
economic
Winchester
seventeenth century
history
sixteenth century
economic aspects
17th century
16th century
social aspects