Economy: agriculture and trade

• The economy


  Agriculture and trade
• Population: 2.2 million
• Most lived in the countryside and depended on farming
• 10% were urban dwellers and lived in small towns continentally relative
• London's population exceeded 50,000
• No more than 20 towns had as many as 3000 people
• Main industries in urban areas

  • Wool and cloth
  • Mining tin, lead and coal
  • Metal working
  • Leatherwork
  • Shipbuilding
  • Papermaking
• Henry VII was interested in building up his personal wealth but he had no specific 'economic policy' as a modern leader would
• The Acts of Parliament that dealt with economic matters were mainly the result of the private lobbying of merchants, who had a vested interest
• Agrarian economy


  Income from land had declined in the aftermath of the Black Death of the 1300s and early 1400s though it has been suggested that there was something of a recovery in the 1480s and 1490s as the population began to increase again
• Evidence of a greater move towards sheep farming in the 1480s and 1490s
• Reasons for move to sheep farming

  • Depressed profitability of arable (crop) farming
  • Improved profitability of sheep farming brought about by the increasing demand for wool, as the population grew and trade overseas developed
• Farming


  • Mixed farming was the most common form of farming found in the lowland zone
  • Pastoral farming predominated in woodland areas
  • Specialisms such as horse breeding in the Fenlands
  • The traditional manorial system of open-field husbandry could be found in such areas and was concentrated mainly in the grain-growing areas of the southeast and the east Midlands
  • Tenants farmed strips of land found in open fields and who enjoyed common rights, particularly for keeping animals
• The system of open-field husbandry came under increasing pressure by enclosure in some parts of the country as the 16th century began
• The efficiency gains in terms of improved production and profitability from enclosure came at a price for peasants who lost their access to land and common rights, and were often left destitute by the process
• This became more widespread in the first half of the 16th century
• The cloth trade was responsible for about 90% of the value of English exports
• There was an increase of over 60% in the volume of cloth exports during Henry VII's reign
• The bulk of exports had comprised of raw wool, which was shipped mainly from east-coast ports e.g. Boston, Lynn and Yarmouth and exported through Calais by the Merchants of the Staple
• It was finished cloth which dominated the trade, leading to the development of weaving which was usually done as a domestic process, and fulling and dyeing, which were commercial enterprises
• The cloth industry offered opportunities for rural employment to supplement agrarian incomes
• Some cloth towns, such as Lavenham, Suffolk and Lewes were extremely prosperous
• Historic cities such as Winchester and Lincoln had suffered significant decay as the cloth industry tended to move from older corporate boroughs to newer manufacturing centres in smaller market towns and villages in East Anglia, the West Riding of Yorkshire and parts of the West Country
• An increasing proportion of the finished cloth was exported from London through the Merchant Adventurers
• This reinforced London's commercial dominance within the country and established a commercial axis with Antwerp which, during this period, according to the economic historian Donald Coleman, was the commercial metropolis of Europe and its main money market
• From Antwerp, English cloth was transported all over Europe
• Merchant Adventurers


  • Dominated London's cloth trade with Antwerp
  • Their positive relationship with the Crown was immensely important
  • They could act as the voice of the industry when its commercial needs were subordinated to national policy
  • The king increasingly used their expertise in the negotiating of trade treaties such as the Intercursus Magnus and the Intercursus Malus
  • The most powerful English business organisation of the age
• The Merchant Adventurers could not achieve complete domination of trade because they proved unable to overcome the trading privileges enjoyed by the Hanseatic League which had been reasserted by treaty in 1474 and again in 1504
• Hanseatic League


  • A group of free cities originating in the 13th century
  • Came together to form a commercial union with the intention of controlling trade in the Baltic Sea
  • The league dominated commercial activity in northern Europe from the 13th-15th century
• Henry may have agreed to reassert the Hanseatic League's trading privileges because he needed to ensure that the Hanseatic League would offer no support to the Yorkist claimant to the throne, the Earl of Suffolk
• This sacrifice of English commercial interests was 'out of all proportion to the feeble threat' posed by the de la Poles (Jack Lander)
• Other industries


  • Mining tin in Cornwall
  • Mining lead in upland areas e.g. the high Pennines and the Mendips
  • Mining coal in Durham and Northumberland
  • Mining and smelting iron ore in the Weald of Sussex and Kent, where there was a blast furnace as early as 1496
• Much of the coal from the northeast was shipped from Newcastle to meet the growing demand for domestic and industrial fuel in London, but there was also a small export trade to Germany and the Netherlands
• The development of basic pumping technology, first recorded in Finchale in County Durham in 1486, enabled greater coal production
• Henry VII's approach to trade

  • Had little consistency
  • Clearly interested in maximising customs revenue
  • Prepared to sacrifice revenue and trade in the interests of securing the dynasty
  • Happy for Parliament to legislate in favour of sectional interests
• Henry imposed an embargo on trade with the Netherlands in 1493 as a result of the fear and insecurity brought about by Margaret of Burgundy's support for Perkin Warbeck
• Instead of trading directly with the Netherlands, merchants were required to direct their trade through Calais
• The embargo ended with the Intercursus Magnus, though the terms of the treaty were still being debated 2 years later
• Intercursus Magnus


  • Set down that English merchants could export to any part of the Duke of Burgundy's lands apart from Flanders
  • Merchants would be granted swift and fair justice and that effective arrangements would be put in place for the resolution of disputes
  • Confirmed by Philip of Burgundy in 1499 and proved a solid basis for trading relationships from that point on
• Intercursus Malus


  • In practice exorted from Philip as a result of his weakness in 1506
  • Never became fully operative and by the following year trading relationships had been restored on the basis of Magnus