1.

The town and feudalism',

preliminary definitions

A T O W N I S A T O W N W H E R E V E R I T IS?
What was a town? A preliminary definition, however general, may
be useful. The definition need not attempt to cover all towns from
antiquity to the twentieth century, but only those of medieval, feudal
society. One of the problems is that even medieval towns varied
greatly in size and function, from small market towns with even
fewer than 1,000 inhabitants to great cities, like Paris, with more
than 100,000. A useful definition may, then, be rather what was not
a town than what was. In effect, the town has to be distinguished
from its rural hinterland and not, as some historians have tended to
do, to be assimilated into the agrarian economy and society.1
The first point to be made is that the town, great or small, was the
location of permanent market activity, not only at a weekly
chartered market, which the lords of many villages also obtained in
the thirteenth century. Second, and this is crucial, the inhabitants of
the town did not, in contrast to those of the village, produce their
own means of subsistence, even though they might have small
vegetable plots, vineyards or even meadows. Their main activity was
devoted to manufacture and trade, from which the bulk of their
income was derived. The essential feature of towns, large or small,
was occupational heterogeneity in an economy which produced,
bought and sold commodities other than those necessary for
subsistence, that is, mainly agricultural products.
The existence of a permanent market and of occupational
heterogeneity might seem to be sufficient to define the medieval town
very broadly, but many historians would probably wish to add at
1
Already criticised in 'Towns in English Feudal Society’ reprinted in my Class
Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism.

6
 The town and feudalism : preliminary definitions 7
least an institutional dimension. This usually included the possession
by the town’s inhabitants of certain basic liberties, without which
their special function could not be properly fulfilled. They would at
least need freedom of status and tenure, freedom of movement and
freedom of access to the market. Even if it were argued that a
settlement with a market and an occupationally heterogeneous
population should be assumed to be a town, one would expect that
the grant of at least elementary liberties usually followed the
economic development implied by the first two conditions, and
would provide an extra indicator of urban status.
The role of the town in medieval feudal society has been perceived
in many different ways, over the years, both by historians and
sociologists. Some sociologists, in particular, have been tempted to
assimilate the medieval town, like medieval feudal society, into a
generalised pre-industrial or ‘traditional’ era in human history. In
their long term perspective of pre-industrial history, they have
perceived a duality between town and country, from the ancient
world onwards, and conceived ‘the city’ as an unchanged social
essence whose economy, society and ethos were always and
necessarily specific to a model of urbanism, whatever the overall
social formation.
This concept of ‘the city’ as an entity independent of the context
of the wider society is reflected in the views of Louis Wirth in his
famous article, ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life’. 2 Not all sociologists,
of course, ignored the historical context. One has only to remember
Max Weber’s book on The City, a work with many illuminating
perceptions of medieval urbanisation. 3 G. Sjoberg’s The Preindus
trial City emphasises the varying economic, social and political
contexts of pre-industrial cities. Unfortunately, he over-generalises
pre-industrial society. For him, the whole pre-industrial world is
divided into ‘folk’ and ‘feudal’ social formations, defined in a
manner unrecognisable by historians. His elaborate theorising,
however much he preaches to those (especially historians) presumed
to be ignorant, is of little use in dealing with real feudalism.4
On the whole, historians have been less all-embracing in their
perception of the pre-industrial town. Nevertheless, there have been
elements in their work which, to a greater or lesser extent, include
the concept of the unchanging town: country duality. Even Fernand
2
American Journal of Sociology, 44, 1938.
3 4
Trans. D. Martindale and G. Neuworth. New York, 1960.
 8 ENGLISH A N D FRENCH T O W N S

Braudel, in his Capitalism and Material Life, writes ‘A town is a

town wherever it is’,5 a statement sufficiently influential to be taken
as the title of an introductory section of the collected papers printed
in The Pursuit of Urban History.6
Henri Pirenne’s theory concerning the revival of urbanisation in
the early middle ages initiated a very influential interpretation of
urban development which could also imply the city’s identity,
specific to itself, separate from the social formation within which it
was contained. As is well known, he believed that true urbanisation
in the medieval period began with the revival of long distance trade,
which he supposed to have been ruptured in the Mediterranean as
a result of the activities of the Moslems in the Carolingian era. Once
this threat had disappeared, itinerant merchants dealing in (mainly)
luxury commodities could settle down at suitable, and often fortified,
places on international trade routes - and thus laid the basis for the
growth of the great commercial centres of medieval Europe. 7
Fruitful though much of Pirenne’s work on medieval towns has
been, his version of early medieval urbanisation has been severely
questioned, not only conceptually but empirically. 8 His critics have
insisted that the de-urbanisation of the Roman Empire and the
diminution of Mediterranean and European trade began long before
the Arab conquests. And although a significant revival of in
ternational trade did occur in the late tenth and early eleventh
centuries, it was not the itinerant merchants who became the ruling
bourgeoisie of the growing towns. As many historians, from
Lestocquoy to Hibbert, have shown, these urban patriciates were
mainly composed of local landowners and feudal officials, often
from families of the lesser nobility. 9
, Pirenne’s writing on urban history, unlike that of some of the
theorists mentioned above, does, however, pose the critical question
of the role of the bourgeoisie in feudal society. Did the bourgeoisie,
whatever its origins, become an anti-feudal social force in the central
period of the middle ages? In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in
particular, a number of towns obtained elements of self-government,
jurisdictional exemption from outside feudal courts, and facilities
s 6
Trans. M. Kochan, p. 373. D. Fraser and A. Sutcliffe, eds., p. 3.
’ See his Medieval Cities: their Origins and the Rebirth of Trade.
8
See, for example, the articles collected in A.F. Havighurst, ed., The Pirenne Thesis.
Analysis, Criticism and Revision.
9
J. Lestocquoy, Les dynasties bourgeoises d Arras; J. Hibbert, 'The Origins of the
Medieval Town Patriciate’.
 The town and feudalism : preliminary definitions 9
for the admission of outside servile immigrants. I will consider the
details of these privileged towns later, but the general issue is, of
course, of considerable importance. If towns were ‘non-feudal
islands in the feudal seas’,10 and if their economic, social and
political interests were in conflict with the interests of the feudal
ruling class, then one would expect them to be a driving force in the
transition from feudalism to capitalism, long distance generators of
the bourgeois revolution. Such an interpretation of the urban role
would also, of course, enforce the concept of a ‘dual’ society, in
which the towns constituted an alien element within the social order
of agrarian feudalism.
In fact, the concept of the separateness or antagonistic role of the
medieval town within feudal society has now been much eroded.
Standard texts on urban history are adjusting to a new standpoint,
as in Hohenberg and Lees’ Making of Urban Europe 1000-1950, in
which they recognise that ‘urban histories are inseparable from the
histories of the economic, social and political systems of which they
are part’.11 However, the single-minded pursuit of urban history
naturally involves a concentration of what seems to be specific to the
town. For the historian of feudal society as a whole, what is needed
is an examination not only of the role played by towns in feudal
society, but of the extent to which the economic, social, political and
ideological structures of feudalism are found in town as well as in the
country.

W H A T WAS FEUDALISM?
We must, of course, recognise that there are different ideas about
what is ‘feudalism’. The traditional interpretation defines it in terms
of the relationships between different strata of the landowning class.
The determining features are the lord-vassal relationships, con
cretely manifested in the granting from on high of landed fiefs to
clients, retainers and relatives, in return for homage, military service,
aid and counsel. 12 Although this could imply a fairly tightly
organised pyramidal structure, as was found in the Norman
10
M.M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society, p. 212.
11
Cambridge, Mass., 1985, pp. 2, 19.
12
F.M. Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism, 1066 to 1166, very well
describes the feudo- vassalic aspect for England. For France, see F.L. Ganshof,
Feudalism, trans. P. Grierson. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L.A. Manyon,
presents a more wide-ranging view.
10 ENGLISH A N D FRENCH TOWNS

monarchy in post-conquest England, from the king down through

the barons to the knights, the model usually implied a decen
tralisation of power. It was the private jurisdictions of barons,
bishops, abbots and knights, with a concomitant fragmentation of
power, which was seen as one of the chief characteristics of
feudalism. The economic basis of landed estates worked by a
subordinated peasantry was recognised, the peasants being seen as
analogous at the bottom of the social heap, because of their
dependence on their lords, to the knights or barons higher up the
social scale. They were seen as the base of the pyramid of mutual
duties and obligations.
This interpretation - or description - of medieval feudalism con
tains much that is demonstrably true. It also fits in with a perception
of urbanism primarily defined in terms of a by-product of long
distance trade in luxury goods. Towns, in order to develop as
trading centres, needed basic liberties of tenure and status which
would allow their burgess populations to engage freely in buying
and selling on the market. In order to avoid the interference and
impositions of the feudal landlords, they needed, as we have said, to
be as free as possible from seigneurial jurisdiction, to be justiciable
in their own town court and, if possible, to be able to appeal to what
could be regarded as ‘public’ rather than ‘private’ authority. The
public authority was thought of, in terms of this particular
interpretation of feudalism, as the monarchy. The ideal town,
therefore, would be one ruled by its own burgesses, free from
interference by feudal potentates and protected by the monarch or
the nearest equivalent of public authority, such as the counts or
dukes of major territories. Such an interpretation would seem to fit
in well with the urban communal movements of the twelfth century.
It is also an interpretation which assumes that the monarchy as
public authority was non-feudal.
Our picture of towns in feudal society may be somewhat different
if we define feudalism as a social formation within which the
lord-vassal relationship, emphasised in the traditional interpret
ation, was certainly important, but without being determinant. 13 As
a social formation, the first aspect of feudalism is the level of
technology, which meant that the basic unit of production was small
scale, the peasant holding based on the family labour force normally
13
See my entry, ‘Feudal Society’ in T. Bottomore et al., eds., A Dictionary of
Marxist Thought.
 The town and feudalism : preliminary definitions 11
reinforced by at most one or two servants. Most productive activity
was agricultural. The ruling class, including the feudal monarchies,
was a landowning class. In varying degrees, at different times and in
different places, some landowners might attempt the direct cul
tivation of home farms or demesnes by using labour services from
peasant holdings or the hired labour of smallholders. But demesne
production generated a minor and always uncertain proportion of
the total income of the landowning class. That income was mainly
derived by a transfer of as much as could be obtained of the surplus
product of the peasant holding. This could take the straightforward
form of rent in kind or in money or, as previously mentioned, in
labour. It could also be taken as profits of private jurisdiction,
including banalités such as compulsory grinding of corn at the lord’s
mill, baking in the lord’s oven, pressing grapes in the lord’s wine
press, all at a cost to the tenant. The extraction of rent and other
dues was done by various forms of direct and indirect coercion.
The coercion was legitimised for a large number of peasants by the
institution of juridical serfdom. There was a considerable variation
in the proportion of servile to free peasants from region to region,
in both England and France. It must also be recognised that many
supposedly free peasants had to give rents and services to their
landlords which had the taint of servility. For many people in the
upper ranks of feudal society, the peasants, the rustid, were thought
of as servile, even though legally they were not. Whether serfdom
was a continuation of ancient slavery, by the provision of holdings
for slaves (servi casati), from which they provided their own means
of subsistence, or whether it resulted from the enserfment of once-
free peasants, it had a profound effect on the medieval mentality.
Perhaps the most important effect was on the enserfed peasants
themselves. For them, ‘freedom’ became a compelling social aim.
From the earliest period of enserfment to the sixteenth century, that
‘bondmen’ should be made free retained its ancient resonance. 14
Hence, although conflicts between kings and barons and between
various levels of the landowning class were an essential feature of
feudal politics, the principal social relations in this primarily
agrarian society were between landlord and tenant. These relation
ships led to conflict, both at the local and at higher levels, but only
occasionally well documented.

14
See my Bond Men Made Free.
12 ENGLISH A N D FRENCH T O W N S

The main features of the two definitions of feudalism just outlined

are largely based on evidence from the eleventh century onwards.
The chronology of feudalisation in Anglo-Saxon England and
Frankish Gaul before the eleventh century is a matter for dispute
among historians.15 The answer, to some extent, depends on whether
one considers feudo-vassalic relationships among the landowning
class to be essential in the definition of feudalism. In this case, it is
possible to argue convincingly that there might have been a rapid
development of such relationships around the year 1000, even
though not, as some have insisted, a ‘feudal revolution’. If the
broader definition of feudalism as a social formation embodying a
mode of production based on a class relationship between landlords
and peasants is accepted, an earlier arrival of feudalism may be
posited.
What was the social formation which preceded feudalism? The
mode of production determining ancient society is often assumed to
have been based on slavery. However, recent writings are inclined to
stress, even at the height of the Roman imperial system, but certainly
in the later empire, the greater numerical importance of peasant
producers than of slaves. The existence of slavery is not denied, but
its exploitation is not regarded as the main source of private or
public wealth. The state and its ruling class was based on the
appropriation of the surplus produced by the working population,
peasants in greater numbers than slaves, in the form of tribute or
tax, the peasants in the later empire being of varying legal status but
almost all subordinated to landowners. In this case, feudalism,
characterised by a relationship between peasant producers and
landowners with surplus transferred in the form of rent, could be
argued to have developed as the tax-gathering state collapsed,
perhaps as early as the sixth century.16
In sharp contradiction to this interpretation, some historians
argue that western Europe was a slave society (société esclavagiste)
until the end of the tenth century. There is little doubt that the
‘barbarian’ invasions of the Roman Empire, and wars between
barbarian tribes, did result in much enslavement. The various
Germanic law codes from the early sixth century onwards also make
clear that slavery was part of the social structure. Slaves were not
15
P. Bonnassie, ‘The Survival and Extinction of the Slave System in the Early
Medieval West (Fourth to Eleventh Centuries)’. G . Bois, La mutation de Can mille:
Lournand, village máconnais de l’antiquité au féodalisme.
16
C. J. Wickham, ‘The Other Transition: from the Ancient World to Feudalism’.
 The town and feudalism : preliminary definitions 13
only acquired in war. Slavery was also a punishment for grave
offences.17
The problem is, however, whether the presence of a number of
slaves is compatible with a feudal society. Was not England at the
time of Domesday Book a feudal society? According to this survey,
about ten per cent of the recorded population were slaves, although
they were soon to become servile tenants. What proportion of the
population had to be slaves in order to distinguish a slave from a
feudal society? Would slaves be exploited en masse on big demesnes,
or would they exist in ones and twos on the holdings of wealthy
peasants? At what stage would the settlement of slaves on holdings
from which they would provide their own and their families’
subsistence represent the end of a slave economy?
Another problem is that there is very little statistical evidence.
Literary sources indicate that big demesnes in the Auvergne could be
worked either by slaves or by peasant tenants owing labour services
- the latter being characteristic of big, ninth century estates
elsewhere (such as that of St Germain des Prés in the He de France)
in the Carolingian period. The estate of St Bertin in Picardy in the
ninth century provides evidence of a somewhat more complex
situation. Tenants owing labour services had slaves of their own,
who did their demesne labour services, as well as (presumably)
working on the tenant’s holding. There were also some demesne
slaves. But the numbers of peasant tenants, including a good
number of servi casati, considerably outnumbered the slaves -
eighty-five to fifteen per cent.18
It would seem sensible to recognise that the social formation, in
both Frankish Gaul and Anglo-Saxon England, was ‘feudal’ rather
than ‘slave’, well before 1000 and certainly in the Carolingian
period. Furthermore, it seems dubious to assume that the transition
from ancient to feudal society was quickly achieved by any sort of
revolutionary act, analogous to the revolutions characterising later
transitions.
Whether one defines feudalism in the narrow sense as a system of
lord-vassal relationships among members of the landowning class,
17
Bonnassie, 'The Survival’, cites much detail from the various ‘barbarian’ law
codes. The Anglo-Saxon law codes are typical. See F.L. Attenborough, The Laws
of the Earliest English Kings ; A.J . Robertson, The Laws of the Kings of England
from Edmund to Henry I.
18
G . Fournier, Le peuplement rural en Basse- Auvergne durant le haul moyen age, pp.
201-16; R. Fossier, La terre et les hommes en Picardie jusquà la fin du XHIe siècle,
pp. 208ff.
14 ENGLISH A N D FRENCH T O W N S

or as a mode of production, another question must be answered.

Was the feudal system, as P. Sweezy designated it,19 based on a
natural economy, producing use values? Could it only be trans
formed by the introduction of trade and commodity production
from outside? No one would wish to deny that much that was
produced, whether on the peasant’s holding or on the lord’s
demesne, never went through the market. Nevertheless, simple
commodity production additional to production for subsistence was
a characteristic feature of feudal societies. Trade in basic com
modities was to be found in markets and small towns as early as the
eighth century as far apart as Anglo-Saxon England and the Basse-
Auvergne in France, not to speak of most Mediterranean countries. 20
It was not only that peasants needed to market agricultural
surpluses in order to acquire such commodities as salt and
manufactured goods. But, in addition, the landed classes required
ever-increasing quantities of cash for military and luxury ex
penditure. Their pressure on the rural and urban populations for
rent and tax in cash increased, and the proportion of the
commodities which the peasants produced for exchange rather than
for consumption also increased.
The basic producers in feudal societies were subjected to a
multiplicity of demands of which rent in whatever form was the most
prominent. But the increasing demands of another generation of
tax-gathering states considerably increased the burden, especially
from the late thirteenth century onwards. This raises again the
problem of how the monarchical state should be regarded. Should
one regard the ‘public authority’ of the monarchies as non-feudal?
C. Petit-Dutaillis wrote an important comparative study of England
and France from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, in which he
designated the monarchies as ‘feudal monarchies’. 21 This is a correct
description, whatever one’s definition of feudalism. However much
the kings of England and of France may have attempted to extend
their political and jurisdictional control over the territories of their
vassals, they did so as competitors within a feudal society. They
regarded themselves as a public authority, but in no way sought to
undermine the essence of the feudal order. This is so obvious as to

19
See his contribution to The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, intro. R.H.
Hilton.
20
Suggested by H.P.R. Finberg in his edition of The Agrarian History of England and
Wales, I, Part 2, p. 392; and by Fournier, Le peuplement, pp. 127-200.
21
The Feudal Monarchy in France and England, trans. E.D. Hunt.
 The town and feudalism : preliminary definitions 15

be almost banal. Their domains were managed in the same way as

those of feudal landowners. Their family inter-connections were
with the higher ranks of the feudal nobility. However much they
may have used elements from the petty nobility in state adminis
tration, they depended essentially in war and peace on the high
nobility. In so far as the monarchies appeared to be in conflict with
baronial interests, on close examination it often appears that there
was rather an internal conflict of noble factions, with the monarchy
involved with one of them. Thus, when we discover the monarchical
presence in the towns, we must not assume in any way that it
represented an antagonism to feudalism as a socio-political system.
Another element in the medieval social order of particular
relevance to the towns was the church. Historians of the middle ages,
as well as medieval thinkers, have regarded the church as an order
of society somewhat distanced from feudal interests, rather as has
been thought of the monarchy. It is a grave error to separate the
church from feudalism. Apart from the fact that churchmen
constructed the ‘three estate’ social theories which justified the
feudal order - Timaginaire du féodalisme’, as Georges Duby
describes it 22 - the hierarchy of the church, as well as its economic
base, reflected that of the lay element in the feudal order. Whatever
their social origin - and it was normally aristocratic - the arch
bishops, bishops, cathedral chapters, monks and nuns constituted
part of the landowning aristocracy. Their estates were organised in
much the same way as those of the lay nobility, if often more
efficiently. Their income was derived from peasant rents and
services, from jurisdiction, from the profits of fairs and markets and
from urban property rents. And, in both countries, the parish tithes
of agricultural produce, which were supposed to go to the parish
priest, were in various ways appropriated by the big ecclesiastical
landowners. The church was by no means immune from the class
conflicts of feudal society which, for the most part, emerged from
peasant resistance to seigneurial demands. In fact, both in England
and in France, some of the earliest peasant rebellions were directed
against church landowners.
The long-lasting peasant protests, referred to as coniurationes and
conspirationes, against the attempts by their lords to increase
customary rents and services, are found in many Carolingian edicts
and capitularies as far back as the late eighth century. The edict of

22
Les trois ordres ou F imag inaire du féodalisme.
16 ENGLISH A N D FRENCH T O W N S

Pitres in 884 insisted on the performance of labour services by

‘coloni tam fiscales quam ecclesiastici a sure indication that these
supposedly free peasants - colonii - had been refusing to perform
them. A particular example is found earlier at Antoigné, a possession
of the abbey of Corméry in the Loire valley. The brief evidence for
this is in a written act of Pepin I of Aquitaine in 828. In 996, there
was a general rising of Norman peasants against the deprivation of
their common rights in woods and fisheries, indicating the
persistence of peasant discontent. Much more detailed accounts of
struggles by the peasants become available as a result of better
documentation in the twelfth century. One example is that of Rosny-
sur-Bois, near Paris, which lasted from 1180 until 1246, once more
against a church lord, the wealthy abbey of Ste Geneviève. This has
been described by Marc Bloch, the matter at issue being a claim by
the peasants for freedom. 23 Similar protests by English peasants are
rarely documented before the thirteenth century, but by then they
frequently involved conflict with ecclesiastical and particularly
monastic lords. Such lords, like their lay counterparts, usually
asserted what they considered to be their rights against their unfree
tenants. Sometimes a more ideological expression of opinion
emerges from the mouths of the monastic landowner. Around about
1280, the wealthy abbot of Burton-on-Trent, during a dispute with
his villeins (serfs), said that they owned nothing but their bellies.
After a dispute in the early 1270s between the abbey of Leicester and
its tenants at Stoughton, concerning the deprivation of their
freedom around 1200 by an earlier abbot, the peasants were
dismissed by the king’s justices to whom they had appealed. One of
the monks wrote a derisory poem describing the conflict, ending by
saying, ‘What should a serf do but serve and his son after him? He
will be purely a serf and will not have freedom. Judgement at law
proves this as well as the royal court. ’ 24

URBAN C L A S S E S - A P R E L I M I N A R Y VIEW
Much of the conflict in feudal society, and that which is best known,
resulted from competition for land and power within the upper
23
For Antoigné, see Bond Men Made Free, p. 66; for Rosny-sur-Bois, see the English
translation of Bloch’s article in S.L. Thrupp, ed., Change in Medieval Society.
24
R.H. Hilton, ‘Lord and Peasant in Staffordshire in the Middle Ages’, in Hilton,
The English Peasantry in the later Middle Ages, p. 23; Hilton, ‘A Thirteenth
Century Poem on Disputed Villein Services’, in Hilton, Class Conflict and the
Crisis of Feudalism, p. 110.
 The town and feudalism : preliminary definitions 17
ranks of society. But if we accept that the main division, and
therefore area of conflict, was between two classes, namely the ruling
landowning aristocracy, lay and ecclesiastical, and the peasantry, a
re-evaluation of the idea that the towns were the leading element in
anti-feudal movements will need to be made. If towns were not, by
their very nature, anti-feudal entities, were the divisions within
feudal society reflected in them? How different from those of the
countryside were urban classes and class relationships?
One fundamental difference, of course, was that the urban
artisans did not, like the peasants, produce their own means of
subsistence, although many urban artisans did in fact have small
plots and gardens within or just out of town. 25 Nevertheless the
artisan workshop, like the peasant holding, was an enterprise based
on a family labour force with only two or three additional persons
- an apprentice, one or two journeymen - just as many peasant
households had one or two servants. Below the artisans, whether
masters, apprentices or journeymen, there were many unskilled
workers, as well as beggars, prostitutes and other marginals. A
constant flow of rural immigrants sustained the numbers of the
artisans and retail traders, as well as of the unskilled workers and
marginals. It was an influx almost impossible to measure. It was
partly due to the higher mortality of the urban population, as well
as to the attractions of urban life. But even though rural immigration
cannot be reliably quantified, there are indications from the number
of people with surnames indicating a rural origin that in some of the
expanding urban centres in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries, at least a third of the tax-paying inhabitants were recent
immigrants, and probably an even higher proportion further down
the social scale. 26 We can only guess what was their influence on
town life.
If we move above the mass of artisans, small shopkeepers and
other petty traders, do we then find a class which is clearly separate
from, and antagonistic to, the main structures of feudal society?
Studies of medieval towns have clearly designated the nature of their
ruling class. Wealthy leading masters of craft gilds occasionally
obtained a minor voice in town government. In some areas, the
lesser nobility and officials with legal training might have a greater
share (increasingly in the case of the latter), and there was always
25
A. Higounet-Nadal, ‘Les jardins urbains dans la France médiévale’.
26
A survey of some of the evidence is in P. McClure, ‘ Patterns of Migration in the
Later Middle Ages: the Evidence of English Place-name Surnames’.
18 ENGLISH A N D FRENCH T O W N S

some inter-penetration of landowning and mercantile interests. But

for the most part, the urban ruling class was mercantile. Given the
importance of small-scale craft production, they were concerned
with its internal social, even ‘political’ organisation, as one can see
in the control of the craft gilds. But they were hardly at all concerned
with its internal economic organisation, even when the ‘putting out
system’ developed. They were only concerned with buying and
selling. The richest of them bought and sold commodities of
international trade. Others dealt in money as changers and lenders.
The two groups often overlapped. Lower down the social scale,
though still above the artisanate, were merchants involved in local
and regional trade. If any of these people could be described as
capitalists, they were merchant capitalists. But can the interests of
merchant capital be described as being in any way antagonistic to
the feudal order?
Given the intermeshing interests of the feudal landed aristocracy
and the feudal monarchies with those of merchant capitalists, it
would seem that there could not be any such antagonism, in spite of
the lofty social disdain which some aristocrats had for the money
makers. The landed aristocracy was, of course, very interested in
money, down to the last halfpenny extracted in rent from their
peasants. Every aspect of their style of life, from the furs, the fine
woollen cloths and silks with which they clothed themselves, to the
wines, spices and other luxury foodstuffs on which they feasted, and
to their manor houses and castles, could only be acquired by
spending money. As a class, the aristocracy constituted an essential
market for the goods provided by the merchant capitalists. And
given the overspending by the aristocracy, not merely on luxury but
on war, they, and the state powers which in the last resort
represented their interests, also constituted a permanent demand for
the services of the moneylenders.
In general terms, then, it would seem that, far from being an
antagonistic element within feudal society, towns would be one of its
essential constitutive components. Feudal societies, however, were
no more simple than capitalist societies, so we must examine the
many specific variations not only in feudal-urban relationships, but
also in the internal ordering of the towns themselves. In particular,
we must consider the actual socio-political presence of the feudal
ruling class in the urban scene, whether at the level of the market
towns or of the larger centres.
 The town and feudalism : preliminary definitions 19

ENGLISH AND FRENCH FEUDALISM

Before we examine the towns it may be well to consider, if only
briefly, the main differences between English and French feudal
societies. 27 The similarities considerably outweigh the differences,
even if one looks as far away from England as Provence. In both
countries the overwhelming majority of the population was rural,
and most were peasant cultivators. The core of the peasantry in both
countries consisted of producers with enough land to provide for the
subsistence of the family, with sufficient surplus for transference in
the form of rent (labour, kind, money) to the landowner - and in
taxation to the state. At different periods and in different places, as
a result of varying economic and demographic conditions, there
would be a greater or smaller proportion of smallholders below the
core peasantry, who would have to engage in labour for lords or
richer peasants, or other by-occupations, in order to make up for the
inadequacy of their holdings. Higher up the social scale there would
be rich peasants, whose holdings would be more than adequate for
subsistence and who would produce for the market, not merely to
acquire products which could not be produced on the holding, but
to engage in the accumulation of land, livestock and so on. In both
countries there were, as one would expect, variations as between
primarily arable areas and those where pastoral production
predominated. The chief difference in crops grown was that, as far
north as the Laonnais in France, but hardly at all in England,
vineyards and wine production were developed. And in Mediter
ranean France, olive trees had been providing oil since ancient times.
The similarities between English and French social structures can
be traced back to the ninth century at least, even though the
documentation of peasant conditions is rather scanty in these early
years. Nevertheless, both the surviving estate surveys, of which the
Polyptique of Irminon of the Parisian abbey of St Germain des Prés
is perhaps the most famous, and the occasional Carolingian
capitulary, indicate a peasantry on the big estates many of whom
were unfree, or at best dependent, and subject to heavy obligations,
especially labour services. There were still peasants with less heavy
obligations on these big estates, and, of course, in less heavily
27
This is a very big subject. For a brief consideration, see Hilton and Jacques Le
Goff, * Féodalité and Seigneurie in France and England ’ in D. Johnson, F.
Bédarida and F. Crouzet, eds., Britain and France: Ten Centuries.
 20 ENGLISH A N D FRENCH T O W N S

seigneurialised areas, but the general tendency, as we have seen, was

for the peasantry of one-time free status to be merged into a position
of dependency on landowning lords with the serfs, who were the
descendants of slaves who had been allotted family holdings (servi
casati).26 There are no complete estate documents from Anglo-
Saxon England, but it is clear that the old image of a predominantly
free peasantry before the Norman conquest cannot be maintained.
In the ninth and tenth centuries there were big estates belonging to
lay and ecclesiastical lords, not to mention those of the Wessex and
other Anglo-Saxon kings. A charter of about 900 indicates that
peasants on the estate of the church of Winchester at Hurstbourne
on land granted to it by King Alfred, paid heavy rents in money and
in kind as well as labour services on the lord’s demesne. A fuller
document, reflecting conditions in the late tenth century (the
Rectitudines Singularum Personarum), probably on estates of the
bishop of Worcester, indicates heavy obligations, including labour
services owed by those who were, in effect, servile tenants, and also
the familiar stratification of peasant society between the well-to-do,
28
the middling and the smallholding peasantry. 29 Slavery probably
lasted longer in England than in France, but the slaves in Domesday
Book which, as we have mentioned, constituted nearly one tenth of
the recorded population, were soon to become unfree tenants,
probably of smallholdings. Slaves were not as profitable to their
owners as were servile tenants.
There were obviously a lot of regional differences within each
country, for instance in the proportions of free to servile tenants.
The pressure on peasants, especially for labour services, tended to
slacken in the eleventh century in France and in the twelfth century
in England, as a result of the decline of the direct cultivation of the
demesnes. In the He de France and to the north and east, in the late
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, peasant communities asserted
themselves and fought for - or bought - freedom of status and
elements of autonomy from their lords. By this time, however, there
began to develop important differences in the legal status of the
French and English peasantries. The survivals of juridical serfdom
were slight and scattered in France, although the development of the
seigneurie banale implied the jurisdictional subjection to the lords of
28
Marc Bloch’s articles on serfdom, collected in his Mélanges històriques, II, remain
essential reading in spite of later criticism. See also Duby’s very important The
Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval ¡Vest, trans. C. Postan.
29
Finberg, The Agrarian History, pp. 453 and 512ÍT.
 The town and feudalism : preliminary definitions 21
many families which were in theory of free status. 30 In England there
had been an economic and social development which contrasted
with that of France. Although the direct cultivation of the demesnes
had declined in England in the twelfth century, as compared with
what we can see in Domesday Book, there was a reversal of this
situation on a scale which did not exist in France. Large estates, both
lay and ecclesiastical, saw the revival of the direct cultivation of the
demesne with a consequent need for labour services from the
peasantry. This was at the heart of an intensification, rather than, as
in France, a dwindling of serfdom. A powerful aristocracy was
backed by a strong monarchy which, while willing to guarantee the
rights of well-to-do freeholders, helped the landowners to deprive
the customary tenants or villeins of their freedom of status. In many
parts of England by the end of the thirteenth century, well over half
of the peasant population was juridically servile, subject to
seigneurial jurisdiction and with only rare access to the royal courts.
Those classic features of servile status - heriot, merchet and tallage
- were commonly found in the English villages.31
England, a much smaller country than the whole kingdom of
France, was controlled by a more powerful feudal monarchy,
though it should not be supposed that this strong state was the result
of the Norman conquest. It was taken over by the Normans, having
been created, especially during the wars against the Scandinavian
invaders, by the kings of Wessex, notably Alfred, in the ninth
century. It was preceded by the strong Mercian kingdom of the
eighth century, especially during the reign of Charlemagne’s
contemporary, Offa. But was it a feudal monarchy? To a certain
extent, this depends on one’s definition of feudalism, a matter which
we have already raised. The mobilisation of a military force by the
imposition on landowners of the duty of providing a quota of
knights for the king’s service, linked with the sub-enfeoffment of
land in return for military service, through a hierarchy of great,
lesser and smaller lords, as was completed between 1066 and the
mid-twelfth century, did not exist in that form before the conquest.
Nor did it exist in such a neatly hierarchical arrangement in France.
Nevertheless, before 1066, the English social structure should be
described as feudal. As we have seen, it was based on a dependent
peasantry, whose rents and services maintained a highly diversified

30
Duby, The Rural Economy, Book 3, chapter 2.
31
Hilton, The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England.
22 ENGLISH A N D FRENCH T O W N S

landlord class - as was the case in France. There were earls, heads of
wealthy aristocratic families, and other lay landlords of lesser
wealth, down to the thegns who were lords of villages (or even less)
- antecedents of many of those who in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries would be known as knights. In addition, there were
wealthy landowning bishops and abbots who controlled great
estates, freed from undue lay influence since the reforms of the tenth
century. As in post-Carolingian France, it was the lay and
ecclesiastical aristocracy which provided the ruling cadres at the
level of the shire (county in France), and - especially the ecclesiastics
- had private jurisdiction over their estates. One should also
probably not exaggerate the difference between Anglo-Saxon
military mobilisation and that regarded as properly ‘feudal’. The
word ‘feudum’ (fief) may not have been used, but the vassals of the
king and lords did in fact do military service for lands received, as
E. John pointed out many years ago.32
England after 1066 had its earls, barons, bishops and abbots with
vast estates, but these estates tended to be scattered. Coherent
duchies and counties, as in France, did not exist, except (marginally)
on the frontiers of Scotland and Wales. The wide scattering of the
aristocratic estates is shown in Domesday Book. One of the
wealthiest of the Norman expropriators of the English landowners
was the count of Meulan, whose considerable estates (793 manors)
were distributed over Cornwall, Buckinghamshire, Devon, Dorset,
Northamptonshire, Somerset, Sussex and Yorkshire. Earl Roger of
Montgomery, nearly as wealthy (544 manors), held his lands mainly
in Shropshire, but also in eleven other counties, down as far as
Sussex. The earl of Chester (Ranulf III), at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, was also earl of Lincoln and lord of the Honours
of Leicester and Lancaster. His contemporary, the famous William
Marshal, had a fief as far north as Cartmel (Lancashire) and family
holdings in two midland and four southern counties, not to speak of
his scattered acquisitions resulting from his marriage to the daughter
of the earl of Pembroke. In the late thirteenth century, the Clare
earls of Gloucester, one of the richest landed families, not only had
the lands of their family honours of Gloucester, Clare (Suffolk) and
Tonbridge (Kent), but also various other acquisitions. Their manors
were scattered throughout some twenty counties, from the midlands
32
E. John, Land Tenure in Early England; see also his contribution to Campbell, ed..
The Anglo-Saxons.
 The town and feudalism : preliminary definitions 23
to the south-east. This scattered distribution of feudal estates
continued throughout the middle ages.
In the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Capetian
monarchy, although claiming suzerainty over France west of the
Rhone (and of Alsace and Lorraine), still only had control over its
domain in the He de France, with a wider indirect influence over a
number of bishoprics and abbeys beyond. The great dukes and
counts had, in effect, what were independent principalities, of which
the duchies of Aquitaine, Brittany, Normandy and Burgundy, and
the counties of Toulouse, Flanders and Champagne were the most
important. After the marriage, in 1152, of Eleanor of Aquitaine to
Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou, later to become king of England
(1154), the whole of western France, except for Brittany, from
Normandy to Gascony, came under the control of the English
monarchy.
Within the royal, ducal and comital domains, as well as those of
the great ecclesiastics, there was, as in England, a hierarchy of feudal
landowners, barons, castellans, knights and lords of villages, though
in France, the castellany was a more important intermediate element
in the feudal hierarchy than in England. 33 All acquired powers of
jurisdiction, not only over their tenants but over all inhabitants of
their lordship (seigneurie banale). Haute justice, that is, jurisdiction
over cases for which there was death penalty for the guilty, was not
enjoyed by petty lords, but nevertheless was found much lower down
the social scale than in England, for, in spite of the considerable
jurisdictional powers that lords of manors in England had over their
unfree tenants, the king monopolised haute justice.
The centrally-controlled law courts in England were matched by
relatively sophisticated royal financial and administrative appara
tuses, with effective locally-based officials. By the thirteenth century,
the Capetian monarchy was developing similar institutions, though
primarily on the royal domain rather than throughout the kingdom.
Because the English lay and ecclesiastical nobility was not able to
develop regional powers to the extent found in France, it pursued its
political interests at the centre. However much elements among the
baronage might oppose royal policies, they had to do so at the
national level. Their aim was to control the king, his court and his
administration, not to set up rival states of their own. However

33
Duby, The Chivalrous Society, trans. C. Postan.
24 ENGLISH A N D FRENCH T O W N S

‘constitutional’ the monarchy became - a n d this must not be

exaggerated - it remained a strong, and for its era, a centralised
feudalism. The centralisation of the French monarchy was greatly
delayed. When it came, it had much to do with the military response
which it had to make to the rival claims of the feudal kings of
England, lords of Aquitaine, although the French kings had already
begun a policy of using uncertain successions to various duchies and
counties to create appanages for their kindred. These changing
features of the two feudal monarchies were not without their effects
on the character of their towns.