Credit, Crisis and the Money Supply, c. 1280–1330

In an unpublished paper, written some 40 years ago, Nicholas Mayhew offered a wide-ranging survey of the money supply and the importance of the role of money within medieval England. (I am very grateful to Nicholas Mayhew for permission to cite his unpublished work. There is some shorter discussion of the same material in Mayhew, 2000, pp. 34–5; the same paper is also discussed by Briggs in this volume.) In addressing more removed issues, including gold and silver supply from the Middle East, Mayhew reminded his audience of the degree of potential integration of even the smallest rural communities with international exchange in the high and late Middle Ages. Importantly, from my point of view at the time and subsequently, the paper also included some summary findings from an examination of manorial courts for the Dorsetshire manor of Gussage All Saints. Mayhew’s discussion of debt litigation at Gussage All Saints offered a number of valuable observations, most of which had not previously been considered by historians of the medieval village. While it was known, and had already been subjected to comment and, in one case, detailed study, that medieval villagers used credit extensively, Mayhew offered some perceptive comment on the variety of ways in which debt might be recorded in the manor court. His own purpose was to attempt to show the significance of money rather than money’s worth or goods in kind in credit agreements.