Welsh Journals

RURAL ECONOMY AND SOCIETY IN THE DUCHY OF CORNWALL, 1300- 1500. By John Hatcher. Cambridge University Press, 1970. Pp. xiv, 322. £ 5. The core of this book is a study of the seventeen demesne manors of the duchy of Cornwall-their prosperity and the social and legal character of their tenantry-from Earl Edmund's time (1272-1300), via the creation of the royal duchy (1337), to the Yorkists. The documentation is comparable with that for Chester and the principality of Wales, but the estate accounts for 1287-1336, and the 'assessions' rolls which record most of the tenants and their holdings, are more rewarding than the skeletal accounts of Wales and Chester. The duchy was administered from Lostwithiel, and its demesne manors supported a tenantry, part free, part villein, which was engaged in mixed farming on small individual holdings. That much is familiar: more surprising is the predominance in Cornwall of 'conventionary' tenants who, whether they were free or unfree, occupied property from the early 1330s on seven-year leases which were not necessarily renewable. This kind of tenure was a deliberate creation, for the relatively free market in land at free market rents which the system encouraged was profitable to the lord in an age of rising popula- tion and an active land market. It did, indeed, ensure a 70 per cent increase in profitability. The easing of pressure on land and the end of the population boom might have a correspondingly adverse effect, while short leases themselves could be inconvenient and lead to instability and neglect. Yet, the system did not collapse even after the Black Death, though in the fifteenth century the lord contemplated longer leases and smaller entry fines. Dr. Hatcher's discussion of these themes is orderly and well supported by tables and graphs. Changes in population and in demand for land emerge as fundamental determinants of economic change, though in Cornwall the pattern is unusual. Before the Black Death there is no sign of the contraction detected elsewhere; rather did a population boom prompt the creation of the 'conventionary' system. The Plague had its impact, but by no means a cataclysmic one: population fell and so did rents and fines, but land was re-occupied by survivors, migrants and tin-workers. Indeed, one of the most instructive aspects of the book is its discussion of the relationship between different forms of economic activity. A prosperous tin industry meant a brisk demand for food and land, and by the early fifteenth century one Cornishman in ten was engaged in mining. Nor must one forget how textile manufacture and fishing buttressed the Cornish economy in the late-fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. All in all, under Edward IV the manors were worth only 15 per cent less than before the Black Death. Moreover, Dr. Hatcher is fully aware of the importance of regional variation: this enables him to present his Cornish conclusions firmly, but also to avoid whoops of triumph when a venerable theory based on evidence from elsewhere needs modifying.