1

Spencer Dimmock
English small towns and the emergence of capitalist relations c. 14501550
Christopher Dyers article, Small-town conflict in the later middle Ages: events at
Shipston-on-Stour, has been put forward as an antidote to an excessively
harmonious view of urban society. This prevailing orthodoxy, he argues,
underestimates the clash of interests over issues of jurisdiction, rents, services,
taxes and property that gave rise to struggle. Of course social mechanisms
restrained open violence - pressure from communities and fraternities, the
authority of government and lordship, and the influence of religion, all helped
promote a spirit of social cohesion. But those who sought unity and peace
were often papering over the cracks of a divided structure.1
He then proceeds to identify long-standing conflicts over questions of tenure and
borough liberties between the inhabitants of the small town of Shipston and its
overlord, stemming from its thirteenth century foundation to around 1400. In addition,
he shows that serious factional struggles had developed within the town allied to local
gentry interests in a complicated political alignment, also around 1400.2
This present study seeks to extend this theme, social conflict in English small-town
society, but as it was manifested within the processes of agrarian capitalization in the
period c. 1450 to 1550.3 The well-known and still constructive Brenner Debate over
the determining role of social class in the emergence of capitalist relations has focused
upon agrarian transformation or the symbiosis between agrarian capitalization and the

C. Dyer, Small-town conflict in the later middle ages: events at Shipston-on-Stour, Urban History,

19 (1992), 183-4.
2

ibid., 205-7.

Agrarian capitalization essentially refers to the methods and processes of engrossment and enclosure

divorcing - directly or indirectly - small producers from possession of their means of subsistence
(small customary holdings), and the creation of large, specialized, competitively leased tenant farms
producing directly for profit via the market.

2
take off of the rural cloth industry.4 Despite being clearly integrated into feudal
structures, towns have received little attention in regard to their implicit involvement
in these changes.5 With the exception of London, towns are generally seen to have
undergone a serious process of economic and demographic decline from the middle of
the fifteenth century and extending to the last third of the sixteenth century, and so
this lack of attention is not surprising. But although the case of decline has been
generally made for the larger provincial towns, it is recognised that smaller market
towns that were closely integrated into their rural hinterlands were more resilient, the
majority surviving with adaptation and even enhancement into the sixteenth century.6
4

R. Brenner, The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism in T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin (eds.),

The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe
(Cambridge, 1985), 324-7. See also M. E. Mate, The East Sussex land market and agrarian class
structure in the late middle ages, Past and Present, 139 (1993), 46-55; P. Glennie, In search of
agrarian capitalism: manorial land markets and the acquisition of land in the Lea Valley, 1450-1560,
Continuity and Change, iii (May 1988), 11-40.
5

For an analysis of the nature of this integration, and of the various functions and characteristics of

different sized towns within the urban hierarchy in late medieval England, see the following works by
R. H. Hilton: English and French Towns in Feudal Society: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, 1992),
especially chapters 1 and 2; Lords, burgesses and hucksters, and Small town society in England
before the Black Death in the authors Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism: Essays in Medieval
Social History (London, 1990), 121-132, and 19-41; Medieval market towns and simple commodity
production, Past and Present, 109 (1985), 3-23. See also the following works by C. Dyer: The
consumer and the market in the later middle ages, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 42 (1989),
305-26; The hidden trade of the middle ages: evidence from the west midlands of England, Journal
of Historical Geography, 18 (1992), 141-57; Trade, towns and the Church: ecclesiastical consumers
and the urban economy of the west midlands, 1290-1540 in T. R. Slater and G. Rosser (eds.), The
Church in the Medieval Town (Aldershot, 1998), 55-75; and Small-town conflict.
6

For the discussion on the potential role of objective factors in this decline, see C. Phythian-Adams,

Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979); and
his, Urban decay in late medieval England, in P. Abrams and E. A. Wrigley (eds.), Towns in Societies:
Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1978), 159-85; R. B. Dobson,
Urban decline in late medieval England, in R. Holt and G. Rosser (eds.), The Medieval Town: A
Reader in English Urban History 1200-1540 ( London and New York, 1990), 265-86; D. M. Palliser,
Urban decay revisited, in J. A. F. Thomson and others (eds.), Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth
Century (Gloucester, 1988), 1-21. See also J. Barrys useful introductory survey, in J. Barry (ed.), The
Tudor and Stuart Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1530-1688 (New York, 1990), 1-34. For
important comments on the general fortunes of small towns between the fourteenth and sixteenth
centuries, see Hilton, Medieval market towns, 10-11; Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 19; C.
Dyer, The consumer and the market, 325-6.

3
Indeed, because of their greater density on the ground in medieval England compared
to the continent, and their structural importance in forming much of the basis of the
medieval economy, Rodney Hilton has suggested that small towns may have
contributed to the precocious development of capitalist relations in England.7 The
implications are that a tighter network of small market towns would have provided for
a greater commercial environment within which the agents of enclosure could
capitalize: hence the present task of analysing conflict in small towns in the context of
the enclosure movement from the mid-fifteenth century.
Most of the examination of urban conflict in this period has been confined to the
larger provincial towns and London. The lack of studies of small towns, and
particularly in this formative period of agrarian capitalization, has left substantial
lacunae in our knowledge of conflict at this level beyond basic, although crucial,
franchise-based confrontations between burgesses and overlords. We know that
limited social differentiation within small towns, and the prevalence of a common
experience of exploitation in the form of lordship before the fifteenth century,
probably ensured that internal class tensions were generally limited in potential.8
However, even where the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have been analysed
with respect to a small town, and the development in the period of a wealthy oligarchy
of traders and graziers in the context of enclosure has been identified, because of the
lack of evidence we are presented with a similar picture based upon results from
evidence surviving for earlier decades, again those straddling 1400.9 The remarkable
survival of a variety of sources for the small town parish and Cinque Port of Lydd
provides a good opportunity to fill in some of the gaps.10
To begin with, the jurisdictional, demographic and economic structures of the town
will be briefly outlined as they had developed by the mid-fifteenth century - the last
point before the parish began to give way to pressures for capitalization. Secondly,
evidence of social conflict in Lydd for the 1440s and 1460s will be analysed. And
7

Hilton, ibid., 4-7, 22-3: Given the important subsequent role of England in the development of

capitalism, this measure of pre-capitalist commercialization may be a useful historical background to

that development.
8

Hilton, English and French towns, 56.

D. Postles, An English small town in the later middle Ages: Loughborough, Urban History, 20

(1993), 9 n.8, 24-5.

10

S. Dimmock, Class and the social transformation of a late medieval small town: Lydd c. 1450-1550

(unpublished University of Kent at Canterbury Ph.D. thesis, 1998), 20-2.

4
finally, pointing to developments from these conflicts I will suggest why they may
have been fairly typical in English small towns at this time, and then examine their
implications for the emergence of capitalist relations in England.
The small town parish and Cinque Port of Lydd
On the extreme southwestern edge of Kent bordering East Sussex, the small town of
Lydd sits in the centre of its parish in the southeast of Romney Marsh. The parish has
a radius of about two miles, half surrounded by coastline, and this was true for the late
medieval period also. By the fifteenth century the parish had developed from three
borgs (settlement nuclei), these having been generated from a gift of land by the king
to the archbishop of Canterbury in the eighth century. Settled on a raised shingle bank
in the Marsh, the borg named Lydd had long since developed into the small urban
borough. In the mid-fifteenth century some seven manors and sub-manors claimed
jurisdiction within the parish, the urban area and other land forming a bailiwick of
the archbishop of Canterburys enormous Aldington manor.11
Superimposed upon these jurisdictions was Lydds franchise as a Cinque Port
(receiving its authority from the Crown) that covered the parish as a whole and
provided for a relatively high degree of self-government. The Cinque Ports
confederation must have elevated the freedoms and independence of a small town
such as Lydd above the general run of incorporated seigneurial boroughs, because in
addition to the general freedoms that the latter conveyed on their inhabitants, it
maintained and protected the political and economic interests of the Ports on a
collective basis.12 The Admiral and Lieutenant (royal ministers) of the Cinque Ports
saw arbitration of disputes which could not be resolved by the Ports themselves, but
the increasing focus of this association from the fourteenth century was the institution
of the Brotherhood or Brodhull which, theoretically at least, ensured the legal and
financial backing of the whole confederation for Ports experiencing encroachments on

11

E. Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, vol. iv (Canterbury, 1797-

1801: Wakefield, 1972), 420-39; F. R. H. Du Boulay, The Lordship of Canterbury: An Essay on

Medieval Society (London, 1966), 141-2; Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Fifth Report,
531; Lydd Borough Archive (hereafter, LBA), Ly/ZM 1.
12

For the freedoms of seigneurial boroughs see Hilton, English and French Towns, 38-41.

5
the franchise from powerful outsiders as well as from their own particular overlords. 13
Theoretically then, Lydd had more room to manoeuvre in terms of resistance than its
counterparts elsewhere.
The size of Lydds population in the sixteenth century fluctuated due to epidemics,
although in normal conditions it probably reached 1000 inhabitants.14 This figure
places Lydd in approximately the lower to mid-range of the medieval small-town
category. There is evidence, however, for us to assume that the figure for the midfifteenth century was significantly higher. To begin with, the number of freemen in
taxation lists fluctuated between sixty-four and seventy-one in the years 1432 and
1442, jumping to eighty-four and eighty-one respectively in the two surviving lists for
1446. The numbers in the surviving lists for the sixteenth century are a less healthy
fifty-one in 1555, forty in 1560, fifty-six in 1571, and thirty-seven in 1588. 15
Secondly, the communal financing of significant building projects on Lydd church
between 1441 and 1446 suggests prosperity early on. And thirdly, the absence of
vacancies and the density of holdings in the parish manors points to an area popular
with both the natives and migrants at a time of population downturn in the early
fifteenth century. A hundred years later the manor of Dengemarsh for which we have
the best evidence had become largely enclosed and mostly cleared of habitation. 16
Comparing a Dengemarsh rental dated from the 1370s with that of 1432, an identical
area of land divided between fifty-one family names in the 1370s had become further
divided among sixty-four in 1432. Also, while the number of people holding above
three acres between the two dates were strikingly similar, the number holding less
than three acres had increased by 1432 from thirty to thirty-seven suggesting
13

K. M. E. Murray, The Constitutional History of the Cinque Ports (Manchester, 1935). J. P. Croft, The

custumals of The Cinque Ports c. 1290 - c. 1500: studies in the cultural production of the urban record
(unpublished University of Kent at Canterbury Ph.D. thesis, 1997).
14

S. Elks, Lydd 1540-1644: a demographic study (unpublished University of Kent at Canterbury

M.Phil thesis, 1989).

15

PRO, E 179, 226-7, 231-7. This drop in numbers of tax paying freemen, however, should be treated

with caution. It may just indicate the polarisation of wealth and development of oligarchy in Lydd in
the sixteenth century.
16

For building projects see LBA, Ly/fac 1, 28v-30r, 132r. For New Langport manorial rental dated

1394, see CKS, U442/M72. For Belgar manor rental dated 1380 see PRO, Add. MSS. 37,018, 58r-60v.
For Dengemarsh rentals and related taxation (1370s to 1432) see PRO, E 315/57, 30v, 32v, 180r; E
315/56, 226r-241r; E 315/386; SC 11/347; SC 6, Hen 8/3675. See also the voluminous manorial court
rolls for the period 1430-1450: PRO, SC 2, 180/60-65.

6
fragmentation and population pressure at the bottom end of the holding scale.
Regarding actual habitation on the manor, there were some forty-two messuages in
1432, this figure falling to six in 1538.
Lydd exhibited a low level of urbanization and production specialization in the midfifteenth century which was also typical for small towns. However, agriculture seems
to have played a more conspicuous role in the economy of this town than is usually
recognised in studies of medieval urban society. Rather than isolating Lydd as a
special case, however, this distinction may well be the product of the scarcity of
available evidence in other studies, particularly in regard to extant wills. It may also
boil down to problems of periodicity with these studies examining evidence from a
period too early to take into account the land holding implications of migration to
towns in and from the late fourteenth century. Lydd rentals (as indicated), deeds and
wills reveal that small-scale land holding was normal for a broad range of townsmen
at this stage, and therefore surely an integral element in urban household economies. 17
These plots supported a relatively prosperous population of petty traders, craftsmen,
fishermen and mariners. But in drawing attention to the prevalence of small agrarian
production in Lydd and pointing to its likelihood for small towns in general, I am not
arguing that small-townsmen and women were self-subsistent in such produce,
thereby denying a functional separation in terms of exchange and services between
towns and their hinterlands. I am suggesting that many of them did have a significant
level of independence from the market on the basis of these small plots prior to
capitalization.18
The most prosperous artisans and traders were engaged in a variety of activities
such as brewing, baking and fishing as well as small agricultural production, and
17

On Dengemarsh alone in 1432 the landholders included twenty-four jurats (central government) and

twelve others who performed scot (tax) collection for Lydd. Of 468 Lydd wills examined between the
1450s and 1550s, some 39% of testators bequeathed land and a similar number bequeathed livestock,
despite a high proportion of inter-vivos (pre-deathbed) transmission of property: Dimmock,
Transformation, 37-8, 177-8. For evidence of land holding in other Kentish small towns see A. J. F.
Dulley, Four Kent towns at the end of the middle ages, Archaeologia Cantiana, 81 (1966), 95-108.
For the larger town of Canterbury see A. F. Butcher, English urban society and the revolt of 1381, in
R. H. Hilton and T. H. Aston (eds.), The English Rising of 1381 (Cambridge, 1984), 84-111.
18

Capitalization would facilitate the emergence of capitalist relations by compromising the

independence of small urban landholders and by generating instability through the restructuring of
relations around the market.

7
along with these, some of the master mariners and fishermen who were small boat
owners formed the backbone of the borough government at this stage. Fishing was
ubiquitous in the town, but this trade consisted mainly of those with relatively lesser
means and poor whose form of production was characterized by small partnerships
and shares.19 Fishing was also seasonal and these families would have been
particularly reliant upon another source of independent produce. Some middling
peasants at the level of husbandman were also present, and among them were a few
relatively large farmers benefiting from the availability of lordship demesne and other
competitive leases within and outside the parish from the late fourteenth century. 20
There was also significant investment in the Marsh by outside interests. For example
on Dengemarsh in 1432, three gentry accounted for approximately a quarter of the
total customary assize acreage.
I have suggested that tight commercial networks generated by the density of small
towns in England may have contributed to the processes of capitalization. Lydds
borough court books record disputes and contracts for eighteen years between 1507
and 1541. They reveal that the main structure of Lydds trading horizons was typical
of small towns, the majority of contacts being fairly local. 21 Besides those in Romney
Marsh, these contacts strategically circled both the Marsh and the Weald of Kent
(eight miles north-west of Lydd), and importantly included small towns and villages
such as Cranbrook, Halden and Tenterden that by the turn of the sixteenth century
accommodated significant areas of industry well into the Weald itself. Trading
horizons also stretched along the coast to the other Ports and to London, although the
nearby larger ports of New Romney and Rye would have severely limited the seagoing trade and function of Lydd in this respect by their presence. These patterns of
trade bore a close congruity to kinship and migratory networks and related patterns of
property ownership as evidenced in the voluminous deed and testamentary record
from the 1420s and 1450s respectively.22 Besides bequests to family, kin and others,
the testamentary record is made up of references to debtors and creditors, property
19

Dimmock, ibid., 39-40. See also A. J. F. Dulley, The early history of the Rye fishing industry,

Sussex Archaeological Collections, 107 (1969), 36-64.

20

See the rentals, the involvement of the Bates and Ayllewyns in the conflicts below, and G. Draper,

The farmers of Canterbury Cathedral Priory and All Souls College Oxford on Romney Marsh c. 14431545, in J. Eddison, M. Gardiner and A. Long (eds.), Romney Marsh: Environmental Change and
Human Occupation in a Coastal Lowland, (Oxford, 1998).
21

LBA, Ly/JB 1-5.

8
transfers, legal and financial affairs, gifts, tithes and money for purgatorial services to
other parish churches and their vicars and priests, and will officials such as executors,
supervisors, assigns and feoffees. Most of the interest in the deeds in regard to
geographical links comes in the form of women (in conjunction with their husbands)
alienating or selling part or all of their inherited property in the town and parish
because they had migrated either since or before they had become beneficiaries of
wills. Even though we are referring to very small plots at this stage, there are also
cases in the deeds of joint land holding between men of Lydd and those of the Weald.
A useful degree of communication between the small towns and villages of Marsh
and Weald in the form of commercial and kinship networks was therefore already in
place on the eve of our period. This is of some note, because by the mid-fifteenth
century the Weald was producing most of the countys broadcloths, and from here
production would steadily increase and then expand rapidly from the turn of the
sixteenth century. This increase in production of cloths in the Weald followed the
contours of the expansion of the textile industry in the Low Countries where most of
it was bound. It also followed the contours of large reclamation and inning projects on
Romney Marsh by Wealden gentry such as Guildford and Eldrington, and of the
conflicts generated in the enclosure movement on the Marsh by Canterbury and Battle
lordships and their farmers. The tracks of these networks then, already laid for what
would become a highly lucrative Wealden-Pasture regime by the early sixteenth
century at latest, were soon to be greased by the agents of enclosure.23
The conflicts of the 1440s and 1460s

22

Centre For Kentish Studies (CKS), Canterbury Consistory Court (PRC) 32/1-27; LBA, Ly/fac 1;

LBA, Ly/JB 1-5; LBA, Ly/T 1-9; British Library, Additional Charters, 8572, 8587, 8600, 8613, 59563,
59567, 59571, 59574.
23

For a detailed analysis of the relationship between the capitalization of Romney Marsh and the take

off of the cloth industry in the Weald see M. Zell, Industry in the Countryside: Wealden Society in the
Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994). See LBA, Ly/ZS, FR 2, 31r for Eldringtons Innings. For
Guildfords insatiable covetous inning, see S. Hipkin, The impact of marshland drainage on Rye
Harbour, 1550-1650, in J Eddison (ed.), Romney Marsh: The Debatable Ground (Oxford, 1995), 41,
pp. 138-147. See also H. Roberts, Tenterden: The First Thousand Years (York, 1995), 68-9; and Draper,
The farmers of Canterbury.

9
For lordships, the enclosure movement from the mid-fifteenth century was a means
whereby they could generate large consolidated areas of land to be farmed at
competitive (leasehold) rents, and also increase the proportion of land under their
direct control. A powerful stimulus for this movement was the crisis of manorial
incomes that had persistently declined along with villeinage (serfdom) and the rent
paying tenantry since before the Black Death. Brenner suggests that the two major
strategies for lordships were firstly to attach unoccupied peasant holdings to their
manorial demesnes, and secondly to raise fines on the sale and inheritance of
customary plots, thereby legally evicting tenants who could not afford to pay. For
Brenner it was largely the failure of the customary tenantry in England to attain legal
freehold rights (or the equivalent) over the land they possessed which contributed to
the success of these lordship incursions.24 However, he is well aware that even where
such formal or prescriptive rights were established they may still have proved
inadequate in the face of the social power of lordship, or in other words the resources
and alliances lordship could muster in order to facilitate its will. 25 Tawney also
showed that where tenure was legally secure, this could induce evictions through
more persistent persuasion, intimidation and manipulation of the law and its lawyers. 26
Indeed, the experience of conflict by the commonalty and legally secure smallholding tenantry in Lydd in the middle third of the fifteenth century was very much
informed by such extra-legal and often violent pressure from a new nexus of forces
forged in a formidable mutual relationship between aristocratic lordships and large
yeoman farmers, gentry and merchants.
The evidence of these conflicts comes in the form of various memoranda in the
towns chamberlains accounts because they cost the town money in legal fees and
other expenses. The accounts were presented annually to the commonalty by the jurats
(central government) at this stage - a means of justifying expenditure. The prominence
of petty trading and small-scale production, mainly geared to subsistence in the midfifteenth century, was clearly reflected in the political structure of the town with the
commons or commonalty (the whole, unlimited body of freemen) at this stage
24

Brenner, Agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe in Aston and

Philpin (eds.), 47-9.

25

ibid., 278 n.116, 280.

26

R. H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1912; New York, 1967 edn.),

Part II, chapters 2 and 3.

10
forming the most significant institution of self-government in the town. Before 1467
(when Lydd by buying the farm of the borough secured virtually complete selfgovernment at this level by being able to elect its head officer the bailiff), the
archbishop of Canterbury maintained controls through his own appointment of the
bailiff and through his steward in the hundred court in the town. But apart from this,
the central government (besides the bailiff) of twelve swornmen or jurats, eight
representing Lydd and four Dengemarsh, largely formed a necessary but temporary
division of labour as well as of authority within the commonalty in order to best
organise the towns affairs. This obligation was spread among many inhabitants in the
fifteenth century with as many as six or half the jurats consistently standing down
each year and being replaced by other members of the commonalty and elected by the
commonalty as a whole.27
The more transparent example of conflict over enclosure within the context of this
new nexus of relations took place in the 1460s which we shall come to. The examples
of conflict in the 1440s in Lydd contain some of the less blatant characteristics of
enclosure but are worth including because they very much set a precedent for the later
conflict. They provide good evidence of ostensibly a growing arrogance and
impatience among improvers in dominant groups towards Lydds established
communal government and its constitution and liberties.28
The perpetration of these conflicts in the 1440s centred on James and Sir Andrew
Ayllewyn of Lydd, their own respective episodes being most likely contrived to the
same end. The former, judging by his involvement in town business and the wealth
and status of his family, was one of the most prominent members of the town
government, and the latter, possibly his brother, was a priest.29
On 14 March 1446 the Lieutenant of the Cinque Ports was at Lydd to end a dispute
between James Ayllewyn and the town. James lost the dispute being found guilty of
an illegal disregard of the towns customs while he reviled myssayd and straungely
rebuked diuerse sworne men Wt tedyous and odyous langage And also in drawing of
his daggar a yens the Kinges pees summe of hem smote. Instead of taking his
grievance against the bailiff William Mellale to the borough court, he illegally sued
27

LBA, Ly/LC 1, 1r; LBA, Ly/fac 1. The manor of Dengemarsh was incorporated into Lydds

constitution as a Cinque Port limb of the town, although Battle Abbey disputed this.
28

LBA, Ly/fac 1, 31r-31v, 137v-138r.

29

LBA, Ly/fac 1, 3r-59r; CKS, PRC, 32/2/172.

11
him directly to the Chancery courts at Dover Castle. Then without authority he
arrested one Joan Ivysshe and put her in jail, and afterwards arrested various
commodities by the coast that should have been held in custody by the bailiff and
jurats on behalf of the town. This arrogation of power and the flouting of the towns
popular customs and usages were taken a step further by Sir Andrew Ayllewyn.
There are two sides to Andrews case, both of which are recorded in the account of
1446-7 (within a year of James) although they hark back to 1441-2. At that earlier
date Ayllewyn was implicated in the replacement of William Hebbinge (Lydds
resident vicar since 1435), thereafter standing in himself for the absentee replacement
Prospa Colonna, cardinal-deacon of St George-at-the-golden-veil in Rome. The town
responded by seeking legal counsel at London and by petitioning the archbishop of
Canterbury for the purpose of either Hebbinges reinstallation or the replacement of
Ayllewyn whom the townsmen clearly did not want. Ayllewyn countered by allegedly
investing 2000 marks (1,370 pounds) to procure the summons of five Lydd men to
London, the impeachment of twenty-four to the archbishop who was sitting at
Maidstone, and the arrest and imprisonment of jurat William Bette. The dispute cost
the town an alleged 100 pounds (including Bettes release), a very large sum
considering the local tax only supplied the town treasury with fifteen to twenty
pounds a year. Indeed, most of the clauses detailing this conflict were the product of
attempts by the embattled jurats to justify the magnitude of this expenditure to the
body of commoners. They argued that the forsaid expenses by sir Andrew caused soo
to bee made was nevyr done Wt oute grete mayntenaunce beyng wt ynne vs And that
is opunly know[n]e. In fact these maintainers had told the commoners that the jurats
had wasted this money in a false querell, thereby possibly attempting to drive a
wedge between elements of the town government and weaken it by generating
factions. The town clearly lost the case because Ayllewyn remained vicar until his
death in 1458.30
Turning to the other side of this case, the towns reservations over having Ayllewyn
as their vicar are illustrated by a clause relating his refusal to pay his due scot to the
town on the cattle he owned in his diverse temporal farmes in the parish for the
previous five years. The jurats argued again that Which Scottes soo to the town due
We mighte not compelle to be payed for the grete mayntenaunce of dyuerse personys
being wt ynne vs And a gaynys due correccion of the towne. The great maintainers
30

Canon Scott Robinson, Churches on Romney Marsh, Archaeologia Cantiana, vol. xiii (1880), 445.

12
consistently identified may be found among the leading citizens of Lydd and nearby
New Romney in addition to local knights and gentry involved as feoffees and
intermediaries for archbishop Chichele from the 1420s in the development of a
significant consolidated area of marshland in the extreme west of Lydd parish. 31
Chichele was to endow All Souls College, Oxford with it upon the Colleges
foundation in 1443, and Ayllewyn and Richard Clitherowe, esquire and M.P. of New
Romney were to be the first lessees from that year. This was not long after Ayllewyn
had taken over the vicarage and began evading Lydds scot collectors. With his
rapidly expanding economic base and backing, it is likely that Ayllewyns designs on
a potential power base in Lydd was seen as a threat to the economic and political
stability of the town, hence the determined and costly resistance.
Draper cites Chicheles consolidation as just one example of such developments on
Romney Marsh initiated by his and other ecclesiastical Houses, and it is in the context
of these and the projects of Wealden Gentry geared towards capitalization and its
political trappings that in my view these conflicts with the Ayllewyns and the
following example should be seen.
The struggle of the 1460s32 saw the town in conflict with Battle Abbey which
possessed Dengemarsh manor. This manor stretched from the eastern side of the town
to the sea or Dungeness. In 1432 it contained some 307 acres of leased demesne,
much of which was not consolidated, and 658 acres of highly fragmented customary
holdings. The overwhelming majority of the latter ranged between two roods (half an
acre) and two acres and were divided among eighty-one occupying holders plus two
smallholdings of which Battle Abbey held one and the churchwardens of Lydd the
other. These holdings were not copyholds for lives but held by inheritance and
without servile dues, and so in terms of tenurial security claimed parity with freehold.
The rents had in fact remained static for at least eighty years (despite population
pressure) no doubt to the exasperation of the abbots, the latter having no legal means
with which to raise them.33
31

Draper, Farmers of Canterbury.

32

LBA, Ly/fac 1, 100r-100v, 129r-130r, 179v-181v.

33

These rents in fact remained the same until at least the 1530s: PRO, SC 2, 180/60/65; SC 6/Hen

8/3675. This shows that even where lords possessed a full rent roll, if the tenure was secure and the
rents were fixed (which is probably why the roll was full anyway, and getting fuller), the long term
implications for their income was disastrous.

13
The struggle involved a simultaneous two-pronged offensive against the town in
which Battle lordship aimed to re-establish its control over its alleged franchises while
at the same time increasing the size of its manorial demesne and therefore its power
over a greater landed area. The focus of the franchisal dispute and first prong of the
conflict took place between 1466-8, although it was not resolved until 1477 when the
abbey won its legal battle by citing as a precedent its victory in the same matter in
1315.34 The earlier dispute (lasting five years) centred on whether Lydd and
Dengemarsh by virtue of their alleged Cinque Port status could claim the potentially
lucrative right of wreck on the coast as well as other liberties, thereby overriding the
abbeys franchise. Certain men of Lydd lost this dispute only by default in the end by
consistently asserting their jurisdictional right to be tried at Shepway, the royal court
for the Cinque Ports, and therefore refusing to attend court at Westminster and then
Canterbury when summoned.35
But the franchise dispute of 1466-8 was not only played out in court but also on the
ground, with Andrew Bate, a Lydd jurat but also the farmer of the manor in question,
defending himself in Lydd borough court on 21 September 1467 against accusations
that he had illegally distrained West Country fishermen of their catch. Directly
underneath this entry in the accounts is a very different monkish hand (presumably
originating from Battle Abbey), summarising general aspects of the dispute. The
summary restated that Bate had compelled fishermen to hand over 300 fish against
their will, and in addition had taken over fishing cabins on the coast by Endenture of
the abbot in prejudice of the Comyn right. Then follows a striking clause relating to
the demesne expansion and the second prong of the offensive asserting that there be
Wastyd & put away from dengemerssh LXX [seventy] housold [households] And that
there Resorte in theys days to the stone [sea shore] not viii men of dengemerssh to
defend the kinges Enemeys. The final two clauses of the summary are also revealing
because they record a suggested compromise offered by the town to the abbey:

34

LBA, Ly/I 4, a seventeenth century transcript of the final judgement in 1477. Also from 1477 the

Dengemarsh jurats are no longer referred to as such in the election section at the head of each
chamberlains account.
35

J. R. Daniel-Tyssen and M. A. Lower, Translation of a Latin roll dated 31st Edward III, relating to

the liberties and immunities of Battle Abbey, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 24 (1886), 155-163.

14
Item that Wm Rolf by the meanys of Caxton offrys for the maner of
dengemersh [more] money than Andrewe payd there fore.
Also he offrys all manere ffraunchez and lybertees to be reservyd to the lord as
in Wreckys ffyschynges Wefes Strayes and the profytes off the Cabons
[fishing cabins], &c.
The first clause reveals that William Rolf, a Lydd jurat and Dengemarsh smallholder,
with the involvement of Thomas Caxton, the town clerk, attempted to remove Andrew
Bate from the equation by offering the abbey more for the lease of the manor than
Bate had previously paid. This implies that either the town would collectively own the
lease or Rolf would farm the manor with the interests of the town at heart. The second
clause indicates that this offer was bolstered with an agreement - officially at least - to
the effect that the town would be prepared to give up its claim on the franchises, even
at this early stage of the conflict. That it was prepared to make this unheard of
concession illustrates the kind of threat the demesne expansion and second prong of
the offensive posed in terms of the towns present and future economic and political
well-being. That the abbey did not accept this offer is a clear indication of its longterm priorities regarding policy. The franchises, which the abbey regarded as its own
anyway, and a slightly better return on its manorial lease were not enough to tempt it.
The abbey had to secure control over a greater landed area and to do so it needed
opportunistic farmers working in its interests. A few months later therefore on 16
January 1468 we find at the instigation of Andrew Bate of Lydd, Thomas Caxton
and John Serlis of Lydd being summoned to Westminster in a plea of trespass by John
Andrew, the bailiff of Battle Abbey, for having carried off an alleged 1000 fish from
Dungeness. This was clearly an indication that the town was now going to continue to
fight for the franchises, with Caxton coming back from London two weeks later on 2
February to inform the commonalty of proceedings regarding this suit before
returning with their answer.
With John Andrew we now see the burgesses of the town of Battle itself - some
thirty miles from Lydd - moving into the equation. Searle has shown that by the midfifteenth century these burgesses were, like those in most other larger towns from the
late fourteenth century, a self-perpetuating ruling clique of merchants and lawyers,
and benefiting by the 1430s (compare Ayllewyn) from large accumulations of land in

15
the East Sussex countryside at least, and that these accumulations were increasing at
the time of the conflicts in Lydd. Importantly, as sub-stewards of the abbey, and in
line with their increasing economic base, these burgesses by the time of the Bate
conflict dominated the administration of the abbey itself. From the mid-fourteenth
century the abbeys manors had been farmed out wholesale including demesne, rent
roll and court perquisites. Also in a cost-cutting drive to combat the serious decline in
income, the aristocratic retainers were cut from the budget. But by the 1470s these
bourgeois sub-stewards were riding out and collecting the rents again, collections
made possible with the return of the retainers. 36 Because of this restructuring of its
administration and economic policy the abbey had therefore regained the confidence
it had shown in the decades straddling 1300 in its dealing with tenants. It had actively
re-addressed the balance of social power without having to wait for unknown future
economic and demographic trends to improve its position vis--vis its tenants.37
Now Caxtons and Serlis summons - instigated by Bate - defined them as yeomen
and these were typical of a number of the leading men in Lydds government at this
stage. But they can be clearly distinguished from the few substantial farmers and
butchers holding large leases like Bate and who were, crucially, lord-fest or in other
words close to the lords. They were smaller farmers and tradesmen without
occupational specialization, and of relatively more middling wealth and status. For
example, Serlis was presented as a common baker and his wife a common brewer in a
view of frankpledge in 1449. His will of 1476 certainly reveals some attire and
weaponry akin to yeoman status at this stage, and his provision of ten marks for the
church for purgatorial services is also relatively high.38 However, his nets, cabin and
other fishing equipment indicate a lower status.39 This conclusion is reinforced by the
36

Searle, Lordship and Community, 365-80, 418-37.

37

See ibid., part two. To give another indication of the coalescing of these dominant groups, John

Bokeland, one of the Battle sub-stewards held land jointly in Lydd parish at this time with Andrew and
Henry Bate: LBA, Ly/fac 1, 96v. In 1477 the latter were also chosen as head officers of the new
marshland administration by the aristocratic Royal Sewers Commissioners in the face of tax evasion by
tenants: W. Dugdale, History of Drainage and Imbanking (London, 1662), 47-59.
38

CKS, PRC, 32/2/353.

39

The distinction between those middling farmers and tradesmen who needed to diversify into fishing

and the specialist farmers and butchers who did not can also be extended into diverging inheritance
strategies which had crucial implications for political representation in the sixteenth century: see
Dimmock, Transformation, 126-7.

16
nature of his land holdings. In addition to an inheritance of lands from his father
worth only just over five pounds he sold some four acres in five fragments to pay his
debts and provided his wife with eight other small parcels, some with buildings on
them. Caxton, as well as being a salaried town clerk with some reputation extending
beyond Lydd,40 held various small tenements in or near the high street suggesting
commercial property that he passed on to three sons in 1495.41 Indeed he was styled
chapman in 1472, one of his sons Thomas being a brewer, and his most successful
son John a petty hardware trader. The latter, was also involved in the fishing industry,
again characteristic of a comparatively lesser status. He did invest in a lease in the
years 1468-70 in the west of the parish but this was only for sixteen acres. His ten
pounds to each of his daughters dowries was high however, although still not up to
the twenty marks (13 pounds 13s 6d) and twenty acres a piece that the four daughters
of Henry Bate, butcher, received much earlier in 1478. 42 Caxton and Serlis, among
others, can therefore be seen as the natural representatives of the broad commonalty
of Lydd, here in conflict with a significant aristocratic institution and its retainers, its
increasingly powerful and acquisitive urban officials, and its opportunistic urban
farmer.
Having drawn these lines of conflict and provided an outline for its context, we can
finally turn to the evidence for the demesne expansion. On 23 November we find
Andrew Bate in court pleading, ironically, not as defendant against irate tenants, but
as plaintiff against John Sedley, another Lydd jurat, in what amounts to a case of
defamation. Bate complained that Sedley had called him an extortioner, and that he
(Bate) had dryve awey halff dengemarsh. Sedleys defence, backed up by four
witnesses did little more than agree with the accusation, but he denied that he had
actually called Bate an extortioner. It would appear that Sedley wished to involve
these witnesses in his confrontation with Bate who along with him (Sedley) seemed to
be representing a general murmur in the town, the depositions ending with the refrain
as men said. And it would also seem likely that Sedley intended to be brought to
court where, on the same day, a number of further depositions by Dengemarsh
tenants, besides those of the witnesses, could be brought to bear on Bate.43

40

See Croft, Custumals, 55.

41

CKS, PRC, 32/4/44.

42

For the Caxtons see Dimmock, Transformation, 116-8. For Bates will see CKS, PRC, 32/2/392.

17
The six recorded depositions show the cause of complaint against Bate was stark
and consistent, as also was the climate of fear and intimidation within which they
were made. Serious damage was being done (and had been apparently for some time)
by Bates cattle and the abbots herd by overpressyng from the demesne onto both
the tenants cultivated corn lands and pasture for their livestock at the north end of
the marsh at least. In addition to this destruction that made it impossible for the
tenants to grow corn and feed livestock, Bate was issuing violent threats, and this was
enough for them to have either already alienated their lands, sold up completely, or be
close to selling up if there was no remedy. For example he informed Thomas Smyth
that he Wold pAy hym At sume onother place if he (Thomas) sued him, and he had
also offt dretinyd and fforsid Thomas Cliprank. 44 He could surely not have had this
effect without a recognition on the part of the tenants that these actions and threats
carried the full force of his powerful allies.
With Caxton, Serlis, Sedley and his witnesses, these plaintiffs were among the broad
commons of Lydd, mostly with experience in the Lydd juratcy. The one example
where this was not the case was that of Thomas Cliprank (who had now left
Dengemarsh), represented by his wife and another Lydd man, who sought help from
Stephen Hoigge, one of the more experienced commoners and jurats in Lydds
government, and also a relatively prominent landholder and fisherman on
Dengemarsh.45 We need to bear in mind that Cliprank may have been representative of
many of those seventy households removed from Dengemarsh, because we know
from the rentals and deeds that many tenements with houses there were tiny, and that
the poor as well as the more official groups in Lydd were therefore being represented
here in common cause.46
43

Two days later three Lydd butchers came to court to give depositions against both Henry and Andrew

Bate, the latter having allegedly used the art of a butcher to the hurt and undoing of the artificers
there. This is a further indication of the concerted resistance to Bate and enclosure.
44

Nicholas Howlyn, in an example of collective resistance to enclosure, made it clear that he sold his

lands off cheaply (better Chepe) rather than to Bate who offered to buy them while destroying his
production.
45

Cheseman alias Hoigges will: CKS, PRC 32/2/219.

46

The allegation that seventy households had been removed from Dengemarsh is largely reinforced in

the pre-dissolution accounts of 1538: PRO, SC 6, Hen 8/3675. The eighty-three holders in 1432 had by
1538 been reduced to thirty-two, the scattered and highly fragmented holdings within seventy-one
tenementa reduced to thirty-five holdings, the number of messuages (these may include more than one
household) reduced from forty-two to six. The majority of tenants in 1538 were now gentry, the new

18
This concerted resistance clearly failed. The area where the main conflict took place
was almost certainly Northlade where a lease was developed by 1470 out of
formally scattered demesne plots, and further enlarged and enclosed by the early
sixteenth century.47 This enclosure formed one of two leases by the dissolution of the
abbey in 1539, the demesne area having expanded more than a hundred acres by that
time.48 Thomas Robyns, another Lydd jurat, took the baton from Bate as the demesne
farmer in the 1470s (partially in 1470 and completely in 1480) and then proceeded no doubt with similar backing - to engross the customary assize holdings themselves.
He acquired well over 130 acres in eighteen transactions (from eighteen individuals),
most of these acquisitions probably occurring in 1489 alone.49 The old communal
landscape was now already well on the way to being transformed. In his will of 1526
(written in 1520) he passed two consolidated farms to two of his sons. These
amounted to two messuages and 180 acres that were divided by the road leading from
the town to Dungeness. Another consolidated farm of eighty acres was already in the
possession of a third son.50
The transformation of arable production to pasture for sheep accompanied this
enclosure movement, and like everywhere else by the 1520s there were grain
shortages in Lydd and much evidence of serious hardship and impoverishment. This
impoverishment was not the result of the rise in population, which had only just began
to rise from about this time in England in any case, but of market dependency for food
and employment - a market favouring speculative engrossers.51
Mavis Mate has charged Brenner with overstating the relative strength of English
lordship over the peasantry with its implications for the sustained emergence of
capitalist relations in England and its short-circuiting in France in this period. Her
farmer elite and their families, the tenure freehold.
47

PRO, SC 6, 1107/9-10.

48

PRO, SC 6, Hen 8/3675; SC 6, 889/17.

49

PRO, SC 6, 1107/9-10; SC 2, 180/61, 3r-3v. Relations on Dengemarsh during the next thirty years

were characterized by a striking increase in personal assaults and violent theft. Between 1430 and 1450
only one out of forty-two cases of trespass were violent. From 1487 all sixty-eight recorded cases,
mostly before 1520, were violent, many related to theft. Twenty of these involved the Robyns, mostly
Thomas, plus nine directly against abbey property: a disproportionate amount of violence and theft was
therefore engendered by the engrosser and his patron: PRO, SC 2, 180/60-5.
50

CKS, PRC, 32/14/140; PRO, SC 2, 180/64, 11r.

51

Dimmock, Transformation, 83-90.

19
thesis points to the uniqueness of the English yeoman, largely the result of a fluid
land market in England, made possible by the English legal system. 52 Even if the latter
could be demonstrated, she does not grasp the point that as exemplified in the
evidence for Lydd - it is the alliances these big farmers forged with lordships and
other dominant groups that enhanced their significance, and at the same time
enhanced the social power of lordship over the peasantry.53 What we witness in these
conflicts in Lydd is the failure of a very well organised and enfranchised community
to resist this new balance of class forces. If the commonalty of a town such as Lydd
failed, what chance did towns like Shipston and the villages have with less favourable
politico-legal institutions?
Conclusion
The typicality of these conflicts for small towns in England
The relationship between these agrarian developments and urban society - small
towns in particular - can be derived from comparisons between Lydds experience and
elsewhere. In his authoritative study of the bishop of Worcesters estates in the West
Midlands Dyer has examined in detail the phenomenon of deserted villages and ruralurban migration from the late fourteenth century. In an area where customary tenures
carried a high degree of servility, not surprisingly the deserted villages were
previously overwhelmingly made up of customary tenants, those holding freehold
tenures generally staying put.54 In line with this migration from rural servility, Dyer
found that the manors around towns such as Bristol and Worcester were characterized
by peculiarly fragmented plots in the pre-enclosure period. And yet he also found that
enclosure was typical and generally occurred earlier in these market areas, particularly
52

Mate, The East Sussex land market, 65.

53

In the Lea Valley (just north of London), Paul Glennie finds that, as in Lydd, by the 1530s a

relatively small group of...families had come to dominate tenant land holding and in the next thirty
years their prominence increased still further. Yet - in similar fashion to Mates diagnosis - the fact that
it was these very families who acted as officials and rent collectors for their London landlords forms no
part of his subsequent discussion on social differentiation amongst the tenantry, however interesting:
Glennie, In search of agrarian capitalism, 26-7, 30-3.
54

C. Dyer, Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society: The Estates of the Bishopric of Worcester, 680-

1540 (Cambridge, 1980), 262.

20
in the small-town market areas of Henbury and Whitstones. In fact the demesne of
Henbury provided for the most complete example of peasant enclosure. 55 He also
points out that it was in these market areas that engrossers generated the greatest
amount of wealth post-1470, and not surprisingly therefore they were also areas of the
greatest resistance to landlord encroachments with conflict particularly marked at
Henbury.56 So comparable to Lydd there was a high demand for land and population
pressure in these market areas at a time of serious population downturn: these were
areas with tenurial freedom, greater occupational and trading opportunities, and early
on at least, relatively popular government. It was the project of lordship therefore to
penetrate this independent prosperity in the face of its own crisis of incomes. Hence,
the fifteenth century increasingly sees collaborations between lords, merchants, gentry
and large yeoman farmers in order to wrest the initiative from popular government
and independent peasant and craft production and exchange in both small and large
towns.
Small market towns and the emergence of capitalist relations in England
It is logical that the enclosure of such populated urban market areas by some form of
expropriation, far more than enclosure of depopulated rural areas (due to the
accident of demographic crises and peasant migration) would facilitate the
development of capitalist relations through a potentially greater increase in the
amount of dependent labour created and placed at the disposal of increasingly wealthy
and speculative landlords, farmers and clothiers. 57 Indeed, the serious decline of the
larger towns should be examined more closely with respect to urban enclosure,
particularly if evidence for more intimate urban-rural connections incorporating a
broader cross-section of townsmen and women holding land in the surrounding
manors and region in the pre-enclosure period can be identified as, for example,
Butcher has found for Canterbury in the late fourteenth century. This is of course
implied by the fragmented nature of plots around such towns as Bristol and Worcester.
55

ibid., 107-8, 336.

56

ibid., 279-81, 352-4.

57

The enclosure of depopulated land would however become just as serious with the reduced amount of

land available when the population recovered from the early sixteenth century: see Dyer, Lords and
Peasants, 243; and his Were there any capitalists in fifteenth-century England?, in J. Kermode (ed.),
Enterprise And Individuals in Fifteenth-Century England (Stroud, 1991), 20-1.

21
Such extra-mural small plots in addition to the bitterly fought over common land in
towns may have been more significant than is realised for the stability of urban
household economies prior to enclosure and capitalization, not only in terms of
produce but in providing an crucial element of independence from market and trade
fluctuations as well as from exploitative landlords and merchants.58
Crucially, small towns would also have acted as a power base in this period for this
emerging agrarian bourgeoisie, thereby immeasurably facilitating its interests. While
the wealthy merchant governors of the large towns were deserting their posts for
countryside estates in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries significant
wealth, as Dyer and Postles have pointed out, was being made in the small-town
market areas. The growing economic prominence of big farmers in Lydd was already
by the 1520s reflected and in turn ensured by the towns political structure as it had
been transformed by this stage. The jurats of whom these farmers composed half were
now all permanently installed. By 1550 the government was almost entirely a large
yeoman and gentry oligarchy whether these families had developed like the Bates and
Robyns in Lydd itself or had migrated from elsewhere in the Marsh and Weald, taking
up such opportunities that were now available to such people.59
Dyer has found that Among the success stories of the period of late medieval urban
decline were market towns with populations of 1000 or so which could cater for a
large hinterland of rural customers, and those which developed specialities like
Waldens Saffron, or Walsalls horse-bits, allowing them to trade beyond their
traditionally restricted commercial territory.60 However, regarding the cloth industry
which took the lead in the emergence of capitalist relations in this period, Hilton
points out that, by and large the shift towards cheaper textiles was manifested in the
58

Coventrys surrounding countryside was the hardest hit in the whole of Warwickshire in terms of

enclosure and conversion from arable to sheep farming, thus polarising relations and depleting the
grain supply to the city. Indeed, Warwickshire was one of the worst hit in this respect in the whole of
the midlands. Hence an attempt in 1525 by the extremely unpopular magistracy - many of whom were
lessees of large enclosed sheep farms held from ecclesiastical lords themselves - to plough up the
increasingly impoverished citizens common lands in order to grow grain was met, after a century of
resistance to ecclesiastical and gentry encroachment, with a serious insurrection only eventually being
put down by a national military force: Phythian Adams, Desolation of a City, 50, 57, 134, 252-7.
59

See for example, the evidence for Ralph Wilcockes, a wealthy gentleman who moved to Lydd and

straight into its government directly after his involvement in a dispute in 1549 concerning marsh
taxation: CKS, S/W, AZ 2, 1r-16r; PRO, PCC, Cant.38 More, quire 37; Ly/fac 2 and 3.
60

Dyer, The consumer and the market, 325-6.

22
relocation of the industry in small towns and villages, taking advantage of, and at the
same time strengthening, the growth of small-scale commodity production in the
countryside.61 The significantly greater degree or spread of urbanisation at this lower
level of the urban hierarchy in England as compared with the continent would of
course provide for a more accessible commercial environment in this respect, and in
the case of Lydd and small cloth towns such as Cranbrook and Tenterden in the
Weald, there was not even a need to move beyond traditional trading territory, except
perhaps in regard to increasing opportunities with burgeoning London. When
production and relations of production in these towns began to be transformed by
capitalization from the second half of the fifteenth century, simple commodity
production and petty trading relations between the Weald and Romney Marsh were
already in place alongside the networks provided by property ownership, kinship and
migration. The expropriation of the small customary holders in Lydd parish and the
development of new inning elsewhere on Romney Marsh not only ensured a surplus
labour supply for Wealden industry, but opportunities to invest in agrarian
specialization in order to supply the Weald with wool. Hence Brenner: Industry fed
on agriculture and stimulated in turn further agricultural improvement. 62 Hence by
the sixteenth century the big sheep farmers and small gentry from the small town of
Lydd and elsewhere were supplying big clothiers in the small towns and villages of
the Weald, and capitalist relations had begun to crystallize. 63 However, before we start
applauding the achievement of such small towns in this period, we should recognise
that in the shadow of the growing wealth of this emerging bourgeois class, the
increased dependency for much of Lydds population that the - largely forced restructuring of relations around the market entailed, provided for a striking degree of
instability and social polarisation to which the new crises of the sixteenth century are
testimony.64

61

R. H. Hilton, A crisis of feudalism, 136.

62

Brenner, Agrarian roots, 327.

63

Zell, Industry, especially chapters seven and eight; Dimmock, Transformation, especially chapter

four.
64

Dimmock, ibid., 83-90, 237-245; Zell, ibid., 145. For example, the subsidy of 1524-5 marks the small

cloth town and hundred of Cranbrook as one of the wealthiest districts in the Weald, and yet the
polarisation of wealth was particularly acute there with over sixty per cent of the taxable population in
the two poorest wealth bands.

23

Spencer Dimmock, September 7 2000

24