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Economy

Archaeological evidence suggests that the coming of the Danes stimulated significant growth in the city and its economy. The Danes preferred to settle around centres where their armies had their headquarters. By early twelfth century settlement had spread across the other side of the Ouse, and ships from Germany and Ireland were visiting it, although growing problems with river navigation, the growth in size of ships, and the development of a harbour at Hull gradually made York less attractive to sea-going vessels.

From Roman times York was one of the north's main population centres. By the thirteenth century it was drawing immigrants from far afield in Yorkshire and from the Midlands, as well as a few from Scotland, France, Lombary, and Flanders. The city was an important consumer market itself, as well as the major redistribution point for goods destined for the northern regions. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was being visited by merchants from Italy, Germany, Flanders, and France, and there is also evidence of trade with Ireland and Scotland. The bulk of trade was probably directed at the Low Countries, however, with grain, hides, and wool prominent among exports. A community of fishmongers is early in evidence, while wine merchants are also seen in the twelfth century.

Most local marketplaces are assumed to have been in the section of the city referred to by Domesday as "marketshire". Two were specifically mentioned at that time: the butchers' market, and a general provisioning market in the Pavement (which was also the location for public proclamations and punishments – the pillory was located there). The Pavement's market was probably held on a Sunday, which appears to have been the main market day of the city until about 1322, when Sunday was prohibited for sale of most goods; the market day thereafter varied according to which market was being held. In the previous century we start hearing of the Thursday Market, which eventually became the principal market of the city. There were other specialized markets further afield, such as one for fish caught at sea, held on Foss Bridge, and the cattle market held on Toft Green (at least, by the fifteenth century). The city had annual fairs at Pentecost (late May/early June) and on 29 June, which were held outside the walls on the site of the horse market.

Perhaps even more than most towns, York showed great concern to keep its lifelines – roads and river – open to commerce. The maintenance of the bridge over the Ouse was the rationale for the citizens obtaining a grant of new revenues from the king in 1392 (lands in mortmain), while keeping the Ouse clear of obstacles – notably fish-garths – led to an expensive lawsuit against St. Mary's Abbey in the fifteenth century. Similarly, attempts by the lords of the honour of Knaresborough to impose tolls on river traffic at Boroughbridge met with resistance from York. York might be considered a port; for a brief period (1337, 1339) it was even one of the official collection points of the national wool custom. Its quayside stretched along both sides of the Ouse between the bridge and the Franciscan friary. However, it was too far upriver for most sea-going vessels. It was necessary to ship goods to some point downriver, such as Selby, and transfer them to larger ships that would continue on to the Humber. By the end of the thirteenth century, corn was being ferried from York to Hull, for transfer to ships bound for the Low Countries; from the 1340s, Hull was generally considered the port facilities for York's international trade.

The king's grant in 1163 to the weavers of York of the right to form a gild and to share with the weavers of other royal boroughs in Yorkshire a monopoly on the manufacture of dyed and striped cloth suggests the textile industry was important in the city at that period. York seems to have been one of the leading cloth-making towns in England in the late twelfth century. Yet, at the beginning of the next century, the weavers were having difficulty paying the £10 annual farm they paid to the king for their rights; assuming this was a genuine expression of financial hardship, it is perhaps attributable partly to competition from imported Flemish cloth. By mid-century the weavers gild was badly in arrears of its farm, and in the early fourteenth century was trying to persuade the king to release them from the farm altogether.

The wool trade gradually gained importance for the city during the thirteenth century, although much of it was in the hands of foreign merchants. At the same time, the various leather industries appear to have employed a greater number of local craftspeople; the skinners, glovers, saddlers and hosiers had all attempted – this time without royal authorization – to form gilds by 1180. During the thirteenth century, York's society appears to have been relatively egalitarian, in terms of wealth – there were very few residents who were noticeably more wealthy than their fellows as a result of extensive land-holding or participation in international commerce.

In the fourteenth century, York's economy was affected by the Scottish wars, which both jeopardized the peaceful conditions under which commerce best flourished, yet also brought profit to those citizens able to take advantage of opportunities for provisioning the York-based national government and the royal armies, while also providing employment for craftsmen who could help furnish the army with weapons or clothing, or help with the rebuilding of city defences. Provisions were being taken from York to Berwick, while in 1316/17 and 1322 York merchants were active in the Midlands and East Anglia buying supplies for the relocated royal court. However, much of the international commerce at York was in the hands of foreigners. Furthermore, the downside of the stimulation to trade was that – with the relocation of government bringing a wealthier clientele to York, prices rose, due in part to shortage of goods (as many were diverted to the army) and in part due to local tradesmen trying to take advantage of the situation. The king, probably in consultation with city authorities, issued a set of ordinances in 1301 to regulate York's trade: ensure that good quality foodstuffs were sold at fair prices, and combat illegal activities aimed at forcing prices up.

At York as in other English towns, the growing wool trade brought fortunes for a few. In the 1330s and '40s a group of England's leading wool-merchants were among the citizenry and the city remained an important source of wool exports throughout the century. The textile industry also revived and came to be helped, as the century wore on, by the growing numbers of Hanseatic merchants taking English cloth to northern markets. Consequently, the city attracted relatively high numbers of immigrants in this period, about one-sixth of them in occupations related to the cloth industry. The weavers' gild revived to the point where it was able to purchase royal confirmations of its ancient privileges in 1346 and 1377, and by the end of the century there were 51 master weavers operating in the city. The influx of immigrants in turn strengthened the revenue base of local government. But York's merchants were not reliant solely on the wool and cloth trades, even though it tended to be merchants active in the cloth trades who were most prominent among the political elite. They were also, for example, taking grain to London, wine to Carlisle, and importing iron from Spain, oil, figs, raisins and wine from Portugal, herring, timber, furs, iron and ashes from the Baltic and Iceland. In the last part of the century, when much of the country was experiencing an economic decline, York was probably at the peak of its medieval prosperity.

However, the seeds of reversal had already been sewn. The activity of Hanseatic merchants in York was not wholly welcome; although it stimulated the local economy, it also made it difficult for York's own merchants to capture or maintain a share in international trade. Whereas earlier kings had provided encouragement and incentives for foreign merchants to be active in England, from the late fourteenth century there was a trend towards protectionism, both at the national level (e.g. the imposition of special taxes on merchants of the Hanse) and at the local level. At York efforts were made to restrict the types of goods foreigners could deal in, or impose restrictions on those with whom foreigners could do business.

Retaliatory measures were ordered by the German authorities. After rivalry turned violent in 1385, leading the authorities in each country to seize the commercial goods of merchants of the rival country, the king appointed two ambassadors – one a York citizen, the other a Londoner – to present complaints and demands for compensation before the German authorities; the complainants were merchants from a number of cities involved in the northern trade, but York's merchants were the most numerous among this group (although Lynn's merchants were claiming a larger sum of money). The dispute was patched up with a treaty, but resentment, hostility, and ill-treatment of foreign merchants (with reprisals by the other side) grew. While diversification continued to be a feature of York's international commerce, the northern trade was becoming increasingly important to its merchants. Consequently, intensification of political troubles between England and the Hanse during the fifteenth century had adverse effects on York's economy, by creating obstacles to the North Sea and Baltic trade.

A second factor in economic decline in the fifteenth century was competition from cloth producers in rural areas of the West Riding. York's weavers used this as leverage to persuade the king to allow them, in 1400, to levy charges on country weavers as a contribution towards the annual farm the gild paid for its privileges. Rural competition took its toll particularly on the broadcloth industry (as well as on the leather trades); the city's producers of worsteds and small cloths managed to hold their own. Fulling was another part of the industry in which rural competition was strong. The city authorities tried protectionist measures, ordering that no citizen have cloth woven or fulled outside York, nor buy wool in or near York unless he planned to have it made into cloth in the city. By the close of the Middle Ages, York's weavers' gild was in sufficient difficulty that it was able to convince the king to reduce its farm by half.

Evidence is conflicting on quite how much impact the declining economy had. On the one hand, depopulation is evidenced by vacant or ruinous houses and dropping property values; on the other, the financing of church rebuilding in the fifteenth century argues for continued private prosperity. Doubtless the fortunes of some declined, while others continued to get by – perhaps in part shifting their financial strategy to invest in extra-urban land (ultimately leading some families out of the city to join the rural gentry). It was more likely the city government that were worst hit, as its traditional sources of revenue – such as rents and tolls – fell, while its expenditures continued to grow in the demanding political environment of the fifteenth century, as well as the growth of public ceremony, including the mounting of the pageants of the famous York Mystery Play. By the end of the Middle Ages, York had declined to the point that it was no longer one of the country's top ten towns.

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Created: December 28, 1999. Last update: February 23, 2000

© Stephen Alsford, 1999-2003