Manchester University Press Money in the Medieval English Economy 973–1489: 15 (Manchester Medieval Studies)

The importance of money as one of the key variables in the workings of the medieval economy is often overlooked. This new study first provides the reader with a background to the problems of modelling the medieval economy and the value of the Fisher equation of exchange to monetary historians, to the pratical processes of strking coins from silver and gold acquired through foreign trade and to the importance of royal control over mints and exchanges. These theories are then used to analyse how money worked within the economy of the early, central and late middle ages with fluctuations in the size of the circulating medium and the availability of credit acting as either a brake on or a stimulus to economic expansion. A full money economy did not emerge until c. 1300 but its existence and flexibility helped the economy survive the severe shocks of the late middle ages. Review An insightful and wide-ranging book on money and its place in the medieval English economy ... Other secondary literature is available on money and the economy in medieval England, but Professor Bolton's book offers students, researchers and general readers with a breadth of vision and analysis' -- Andrew Wareham, Reviews in History, 6th June 2013 Money in the Medieval English Economy: 973-1489 is one of the most important books published in English medieval economic history during the past two decades. Indeed, I do not know of any other comparable and equally comprehensive study of English medieval monetary history.' -- John Munro, University of Toronto, EH.Net (June 2013) The longest and most important sustained discussion of the economic importance of England's medieval currency now available. It should be read by all those interested in the the workings of premodern monetary economics or the medieval economy more widely .. a valuable, perceptive, and very welcome addition to the literature on medieval economic history. -- Rory Naismith, University of Cambridge, Journal of Economic History His approach is bold and straightforward classical scholarship and a pleasure to read. The narrative provides a step-by-step approach in which each conclusion reached points the reader towards the direction of his next moveEL in the final analysis, a tour de force that raises the debate to a higher level. - Svein H. Gullbekk, 'Speculum' 91/2 (April 2016) From the Inside Flap Current explanations of long-run changes in the medieval English economy have largely used models in which changes in the money supply play very little part. Here a fresh approach is taken and the money supply is seen as one of the main variables in the workings of the economy. In Part One, theories and problems in using monetary theory and numismatic evidence to model the medieval economy are fully discussed, as are the coins in circulation and the practical challenges faced in putting into circulation millions of coins struck by hand. The aim is to provide the reader with an informed background to the discussions in the chronological sections that follow in Part Two. Here, three broad periods are considered: 9731158; 11581351; and 13511489. Each occupies a particular space in the history of money and the money economy. In the first there was a limited money supply, a shortage of coin and a monetised economy. The second saw a more than tenfold increase in the money supply, accompanied by growing literacy and numeracy; new accounting methods; and laws that gave greater protection to creditors, leading to growth in the credit market. Together these factors produced the full money economy necessary to support the expansion of the thirteenth century. The final section challenges the idea that monetary deflation, combined with population decline, caused a general crisis in the post-plague society. The money economy was challenged but it survived by finding new ways of extending the money supply using flexible and transferable credit instruments which were eventu