Ipswich shared the same advantages as other East Anglian towns on or
near the coast, in terms of convenient location for trade with the Baltic,
Scandinavia, the Rhineland and the Low Countries, and in terms of access
to the river system penetrating into the fertile agricultural lands of
inner East Anglia. During the Late Anglo-Saxon period East Anglia was
becoming one of the most heavily populated and prosperous parts of
England, despite the disruptions of the Danish
invasions. In fact, the influx of Danish settlers contributed to
the process, since they brought new blood into the towns and new hands
to turn forests into fields – the production of surplus food being
necessary to the growth of urban populations focusing more on commerce
and industry. Ipswich was a prime beneficiary of this.
From the seventh to ninth centuries Ipswich was the main production centre
for Ipswich ware, a sturdy type of pottery that is found throughout East
Anglia during that period and as far afield as Yorkshire and Kent. Other
industries – weaving, leatherwork, ironwork – have been revealed by
archaeology, but not on the same scale or apparent organization as the
pottery industry, which was concentrated in a particular part of the town.
The ruling Wuffing family likely was a factor in directing trade northwards,
to the land from which they had migrated.
In the post-Conquest period at least,
Cornhill was the 'town centre' and there
were several taverns nearby. Market stalls lined the surrounding streets,
with the meat and dairy markets to the south of Cornhill. The
quayside was another focus for
occupation and commerce; trading here was probably of a wholesale nature,
as opposed to the retail markets in the centre of the town. According
to a complaint made by the bailiffs in 1230, about a
rival market in Woodbridge, Tuesday was
the principal market day in Ipswich.
In contrast to Lynn where the location of
markets was dictated primarily by proximity to the quayside, the location
of Ipswich markets away from the quay, along the ridge running through
the centre of town, suggests that goods brought by land were at one
time as important to the town's economy as water-carried trade. There
were various specialized markets and, from a list of tolls levied on
different merchandise, we see that there were separate locations
associated with particular categories of product (although not rigidly):
corn market (extending eastwards
from Cornhill)
corn
cloth market
striped cloths ("rays"); dyed cloths of Beverley and Lincoln; cloths
of Coggeshale, Colchester, Maldon and Sudbury ("doubles"); long-weave
cloth ("singles"); linen; canvas; tailored clothes, including surcoats,
tabards, mantles, capes; hemp (which is sometimes referred to as having
its own market)
fish market (south of St. Lawrence's
church)
herring, porpoise, salmon, sturgeon, whale
wool market
wool-pells; cow and horse hides
cheese market
cheese; flax and hemp seed
timber market (south of Cornhill)
bowls, dishes, plates, cups, and other wooden wares; baskets, vessels,
spades; timber, boards, slats, yardsticks; hurdles, splints; cords;
cartwheels; broom.
bread market (south of Cornhill)
bread
meat market (it and the vintry
stretched along Tavern Street, east of the corn market)
quay (i.e. goods arriving or leaving
by river and therefore featuring foreign imports/exports; these goods
were not necessarily sold at the quay, but could be)
wine, vinegar, liquors; honey, oil, ointment; pitch, tar; ale; woad;
cinders (used in fulling); archil, copper sulphate (both dyes); teazel;
cloth; canvas; wool; millstones and other types of stone; marble ware
(e.g. coffins, crosses, fonts); mortars; plaster; alum; almonds; figs,
raisins; grain; Cordovan leather (used in shoemaking); Spanish iron,
Normandy iron, wrought iron, old iron, lead, tin, brass, copper, osmond;
squirrel furs; wool-pells; skins of lamb, badger, rabbit, fox, cat; cow
and horse hides; herring (smoked, salt, and fresh), salmon, whale; wax;
cheese, butter, lard; swords, bucklers, targets, coats of mail; wainscot
and other boards, barrel staves, shingles; wooden bowls, dishes and
plates; caps; wood; corn, onions, garlic, walnuts; salt; sturgeon;
The street still known as Buttermarket reflects another area of
specialization, while Tower Street (north of Tavern Street) was the
place for buying poultry, and streets to east and west of St. Lawrence's
church were the place to buy cloth or to have a bite to eat in Cook's
Row.
Tolls were charged by the volume of merchandise (e.g. cartload,
wheel-barrow, barrel), or for individual items in cases such as the
presumably luxury items of porpoise and salmon. In addition, those
selling their goods from stalls had to pay an annual fee called stallage.
Bakers who had stalls paid 3d a year for them (6d for non-residents);
instead of tolls on their bread, however, they paid a farthing a day to
sell in the market, while those selling from their homes negotiated
an annual (licence) fee with the town authorities.
The various market tolls were an important source of revenue for Ipswich
throughout the Late Middle Ages. Other principal
sources of income by mid-fifteenth
century were rentals and leases of property owned by the
community – houses, lands, mills,
and market stalls – entrance fees paid by new burgesses, and fines
imposed by the courts; the licenses for
exemption of outsiders from certain tolls were not very lucrative
by this period. However, these sources were outbalanced by the
outgoings, chief among which was
the fee farm, although the costs of
maintaining community properties and general costs of government
(officers' salaries and business expenses) were also not inconsiderable.
Despite an income of £88, in 1446/47 the borough ran up a deficit
of £20. There were problems at this period with collecting all
the revenues expected and chamberlains were often considered to be in
arrears from their account (probably through no fault of their own);
there are several references to debts owed by the borough for the fees
of officers or its representatives to parliament. In 1451, in order to
cover the expenses of obtaining a new charter (presumably that of 1446,
unless there was then a new iniative which proved unsuccessful),
a general levy had to be made on the community: 3s.4d from each portman,
20d from each burgess, 12d from each foreigner.
By contrast, in 1286 (during the period of
wardenship) the sheriff accounted for over £93 in revenues for a
year and a half and could boast of a surplus of almost £17 over the
expenses of administering the borough, in part because of a savings on
salaries of town officers (only a sergeant of the court and a couple of
toll-collectors being needed by the sheriff).
During the reign of Edward III, we may suspect that borough revenues
were managing to cover expenditures (if barely) since the
farming out of several sources of
revenue produced income by itself sufficient to meet most or all of the
fee farm. Although the town mills are seen being leased out in 1285
and 1308 (and this is likely to have been standard practice), the systematic
leasing of a range of revenue sources seems to have begun as an experiment
in 1334, when the meat market was farmed to two new burgesses for
£9.6s.8d a year, for a seven-year period. In 1339 the experiment
was much expanded to include the corn market (£20), fish market
(£8.13s.4d, with a slight discount if war with France jeopardized
the seas), the petty goods market (£4.3s.4d), and the borough's half
of the Woodbridge market (£1.4s.); the quay, the
community-owned mills (the New Mill and
Horswade Mill, with
Odenholm meadow subsequently attached to the
latter), hawgable, and "forwardeselver"
(possibly estreats) were also available for farm, although there does not
seem to have been any immediate takers. The mills later brought in
£5 to £8 annually. Tronage and
the carriage of bulk merchandise from the quay to merchants' warehouses and
cellars were later added to the farm of the quay, to make it more attractive,
but the initial amount of £20 likely proved unprofitable and in some
years it was difficult to find a farmer, until the cost of the lease was
halved. The tolls on broom were also added – a small item bringing only
5s. into the borough coffers. By 1347 the total revenue to the borough
was amounting to over £58. A century later, in 1451, one man was
prepared to pay £48 as one year's farm for a parcel of revenue
sources: the Great Custom, customs collected at the quay and the
Wool-house, the crane, the "petybeam" at the quay (probably for tronage),
administration of weights and measures, the Flesh-house together with
tolls on meat and wool-pells, tolls collected at St. George's fair (April)
and St. James' fair (July), and foreign
fines. In 1469 the tolls from St. James fair were to be applied to the
care of lepers.
The Black Death only briefly disrupted this situation, but loss of key
records prevents us from knowing how far into the second half of the
century this practice was continued. A general decline in court business
(and therefore borough income from it) in the third quarter of the
century hints at a more general economic decline in the town, but
efforts were made towards the end of the century to systematize revenue
collection better, through chamberlains
and sergeants. By 1415 the revenue from court business was at about
the same level as in the 1446/47 accounts: £6.3s.2d from court
estreats and £10.3s.4d from leet
estreats.
In mid-fifteenth century, the borough authorities were making fresh
efforts to regulate trade and commerce in the town. Mercers were
forbidden, in 1434, to store wool in any private house unless the
community warehouse was full. In 1446 there are references to stalls
for the sale of fulled cloth in the moothall, as well as a draper's
stall and a tavern under the moothall. In 1448 it was ordained that
the fuller's market take place only in a room above the moothall, and
the draper's market only under the moothall – any cloth sold elsewhere
would be confiscated; a similar stipulation was made for wool and mercery
markets, to be held only in the Wool-house, which was situated above
the butchery. A regulation of 1454
required all outsiders bringing merchandise into town to have it weighed
by the Common Crane (at the quay), and not elsewhere without prior
arrangement with the chamberlains, entailing payment of a cranage fee
(3d). 1473 saw the prohibition of residents of the town having their
grain ground at any mill other than the town mill (Horswade?), while
at the same time the miller was instructed not to charge excessive fees,
and the following year put in place (among a set of ordinances) the
requirement that all merchandise be measured and weighed before being
shipped out, while two months later a committee was appointed to reassess
local tolls and customs on different types of merchandise. All these
initiatives were aimed not merely at regulating commerce but at ensuring
the borough had its cut of the profits therefrom.
The Merchant Gild doubtless had some
role in the regulation, or at least the fostering, of local trade and
commerce; probably more so in the early thirteenth century than in
later periods. We do not know precisely what, since it is rarely
mentioned in the surviving borough
records, and its own records have not survived. It was essentially
the commercial face of the borough, which must have become redundant in
some regards as the borough increasingly took control (as reflected in
the custumal) of commercial matters. In 1325
it resurfaced in its aspect of a socio-religious association – the
Corpus Christi Gild – whose alderman had to account before bailiffs
and portmen for the property and debts of the fraternity, and which
retained a connection with St. Mary Tower.
Occasionally there is mention of the gildhall which, since identified in
the fifteenth century with court sessions, must have been another alias of
the moothall/tolhouse. In 1446 we still hear of the election of alderman
and associates (now reduced to 2) by "bailiffs, portmen and the entire
community", and the alderman's monopoly on
commerce in stones is reiterated. By
this period one of the functions of the gild was to present an annual
pageant on Corpus Christi day, financed by the borough; groups of
craft gilds were each assigned a specific tableau to represent, while
the different orders of friars, as well as the Priors of the two
local priories and the bailiffs and
portmen all had particular role to play. In fact, judging from the
financial account of the Gild for 1478/79, the celebrations on Corpus
Christi day – including a large feast – may have been the sole
significant function of the Merchant Gild; all
burgesses, both intrinsic and foreign,
were expected to contribute 4d a quarter towards it and all could attend
the feast with their wives – and bring a guest for an extra 4d. The
income from the monopoly on sale of certain stones was now assigned to
hiring a chaplain to pray for gild brethren. In 1482 it was reaffirmed
that foreign burgesses must pay a quarterly fee to the Gild or lose their
burgess rights.
The early importance of Ipswich as a market for regional agricultural
produce is indicated by the number of manors that purchased
exemptions from tolls on grain and other
produce. Even in the late fourteenth century, grain featured
prominently among exports of local merchants. Wool and cloth exports
and wine imports became more important in trade as the fourteenth
century progressed, although even in the earliest surviving court roll
(from 1255/56) we find recognizances of debts for the purchase of cloths,
which appear both to be Suffolk product and imports from Ypres. Customs
accounts show that a wide-ranging trade was carried on with Flanders
and the Low Countries. Ipswich was probably also a convenient port
from which to ship wool to the staple towns of Calais and Middelburg.
It was used quite a bit as a port by Colchester merchants; the national
customs system had Colchester, Harwich and Maldon as subsidiary ports
to Ipswich.
Suffolk had a smaller role in the wool trade than Norfolk; of the four
East Anglian towns designated in the fourteenth century as Staple towns
(i.e. the sole authorized centres for the sale of wool), three were in
Norfolk – Norwich, Lynn and Yarmouth – and the fourth was Ipswich.
East Anglian wool was not of the highest quality, and its economic
importance was gradually supplanted by the cloth-making industry. There
are indications of cloth-making at Ipswich in the twelfth century; by
the thirteenth century, the town was known locally for its cloth, linen,
and hemp. But this was on a minor scale; commerce was of more importance
to the town's prosperity than was industry. Wool continued to play a
prominent role in exports from Ipswich throughout the Late Middle Ages,
although it never rivalled Boston or Lynn in the wool trade (nor Yarmouth
in the fish trade). Cloth began to appear among exports from the
thirteenth century and became an increasingly important commodity in
the fifteenth, but its trade was dominated not by local merchants but
rather by the Merchant Adventurers (founded in London, with branches
in Ipswich and other towns) and, by the end of the Middle Ages, the
merchants of the German Hanse. A cloth-finishing industry tried to
establish itself in fifteenth-century Ipswich, but discord between
wool-producers, merchants and clothiers made the industry susceptible
to the influence of London and Hanse merchants.
Petitions from "the poor burgesses" of Ipswich to the king in 1399
and again in 1402 complain of a decline in prosperity as a result of
the burdensome fee farm and royal tallages, losses in shipping, and
emigration of some of the wealthier burgesses. While such complaints
are not entirely to be taken at face value, being devices to seek lower
taxation or additional privileges (such as being made a staple town),
evidence presented above suggests that the borough may not have been
keeping its head above water, financially. Nonetheless, it does not
appear to have been in dire straits; its diversified economy allowed
it to weather the medieval fluctuations in the fortunes of commerce
fairly well.
History of
medieval Ipswich
