S.H. Rigby

Urban decline in the later middle ages: the reliability of the non-statistical evidence

E. H. Carr once admitted his envy of medieval historians who have a manageable body of evidence to deal with but found consolation in the belief that their competence was, in a sense, based on ignorance. Students of the English town in the later middle ages may soon be in the ‘enviable’ position of having no reliable sources at all with which to judge progress of urban life. The use of the statistical evidence of lay subsidy returns of 1334 and 1524 and the lists of admissions of freemen to late medieval towns as indicators of the prosperity of Englands towns in the later middle ages has been questioned and the meaning of these sources is open to doubt. Yet much of the evidence for urban decline comes from impressionistic sources, sources which were often compiled by townsmen with a vested interest in pleading poverty in order to obtain financial relief. The value of this evidence has also been challenged.