Credit and the rural economy in North-western Europe, c. 1200-c.1850 [Illustrated] 9782503519845, 2503519849

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Food production and food processing in western Europe

CORN Publication Series 12

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© 2009 Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN 978-2-503-51984-5 D/2009/0095/141

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Credit and the rural economy in North-western Europe, c.1200–c.1850 Edited by Phillipp R. Schofield and Thijs Lambrecht

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CONTENTS

List of contributors 1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

Introduction. Credit and the rural economy in North-western Europe, c.1200–c.1800 Phillipp R. SCHOFIELD and Thijs LAMBRECHT

vi

1

Credit in rural Flanders, c.1250-c.1600: its variety and significance Erik THOEN and Tim SOENS

19

Village-indebtedness in Holland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Jaco ZUIJDERDUIJN

39

Credit, the land market and the connection between the rural and urban economy. The use of perpetual annuities in Aartselaar (Brabant) from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century Michael LIMBERGER

63

Rural credit and the market for annuities in eighteenth-century Flanders Thijs LAMBRECHT

75

Credit and agriculture in the Netherlands, eighteenth-nineteenth centuries Piet VAN CRUYNINGEN

99

Credit and the freehold land market in England, c.1200–c.1350: possibilities and problems for research Chris BRIGGS

109

Peasants and contract in the thirteenth century: village elites and the land market in eastern England Phillipp R. SCHOFIELD

129

Credit and land in eighteenth-century France Gérard BÉAUR

153

Urban capital and agrarian reforms: rural credit markets in nineteenth-century Westphalia Christine FERTIG

169

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS GERARD BÉAUR

Centre de Recherches Historiques, CNRS/EHESS, Paris

CHRIS BRIGGS

University of Southampton

CHRISTINE FERTIG

University of Münster

THIJS LAMBRECHT

Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) Ghent University

MICHAEL LIMBERGER

Department of Early Modern History Ghent University

PHILLIPP R. SCHOFIELD

Department of History and Welsh History, Aberystwyth University

TIM SOENS

University of Antwerp

ERIK THOEN

Department of Medieval History, Ghent University

PIET VAN CRUYNINGEN

Wageningen University

JACO ZUIJDERDUIJN

Utrecht University

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1 Introduction. Credit and the rural economy in North-western Europe, c.1200–c.1850 Phillipp SCHOFIELD, Aberystwyth University Thijs LAMBRECHT, Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO)

The papers gathered in this volume arise from a conference held at the University of Ghent in spring 2003, on ‘Credit and the rural economy in Europe, c.1100–c.1800’. As part of an ongoing examination of credit and its provision in European past societies, the present papers offer further insight into the ways in which credit was provided and managed, as well as the opportunities which credit may or may not have presented in effecting economic and social change in medieval and early modern society. In these respects, the papers in this volume add to a developing investigation of the history of credit and of indebtedness in northern Europe, which also coincides with a continued interest in the structures of credit evident in studies of southern European societies. The present volume also, for a broad North Sea region, develops a concentration upon the economic and social history of credit, more than it does a cultural history of credit, the latter a theme which has emerged with some force in writing about, for example, credit in early modern Europe, in, for instance, discussion of reputation and social standing (for instance, Fontaine, 1994: 1390–1; Muldrew, 1998). Instead, the themes here are deliberately focussed on the nature of credit, its form and structure, as well as upon the economic and social impact of credit and the changing availability of the same. Although an earlier historiography on the economic and social development of rural Europe between the middle ages and the nineteenth century contains important reference to the role and nature of credit, it was not until the early 1990s that credit and the rural economy were studied more systematically and from a variety of angles. The breakthrough of rural credit as a main theme in rural historiography can be observed through the large number of conferences and publications during the past twenty years. The special issue of the Annales on credit networks in early modern Europe in 1994 undoubtedly marked the start of a period of intense research on credit and rural society. In 1995 peasant indebtedness and rural credit was the main theme of the annual Flaran conference of rural historians (Berthe, 1998). A conference in 1996 highlighted the enormous variety of credit instruments and practices in early modern and modern Europe (Fontaine, PostelVinay, Rosenthal and Servais, 1997). This renewed interest in credit also revived and stimulated research on the complex relationship between money and credit. Both the debts and the money of French peasants were at the centre of attention in 2000 (Minard and Woronoff, 2003). In that same year credit practices and institutions with particular reference to medieval England were discussed at a conference in Oxford (Schofield and Mayhew, 2002). Finally, also in conferences dealing with broader themes such as the

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Credit and the rural economy in North-western Europe, c.1200–c.1850

land market or commercial exchange, credit was included in the research programme (Cavaciocchi, 2001 and 2005). The track record on research into rural credit after two decades of intense research is impressive. Perhaps even more than in the vast number of books and articles, this is best expressed in the main characteristics of this research. Reviewing the research on credit in the last 20 years reveals three main characteristics setting it somewhat aside from other research themes that have dominated rural history. Firstly, credit has been studied from a broad time period extending from the early Middle Ages to the end of the nineteenth century. Credit has attracted the attention of medievalists, early modernists and modern historians, a development which can be viewed as a reasonably rare achievement. A second notable feature of this research strand is the broad geographical span. In the last years knowledge about credit practices in the countryside has advanced fairly evenly across the whole of Europe. Lastly, the study of rural credit has benefitted from the input of researchers with various spheres of interests and methods. Whilst the older research on credit had a dominantly monetary and legal approach, the subject was now also treated by researchers adopting a more social, cultural and econometric approach to rural credit. Rural credit has been the research theme par excellence that has gone beyond the traditional chronological, geographical and disciplinary boundaries. Recent attempts to present a general overview of credit in Europe draw heavily on this research on rural credit (see for example Fontaine, 2008).

I.

The relation of credit to economic change in the countryside

Historians have come increasingly to associate credit with economic change at all levels of the rural economy. As Briggs notes in his contribution to this volume, it has now become all but impossible to consider quasi-commercial activity in the countryside (and here he is discussing the land market) without including discussion of the availability of credit (Briggs, this volume: 109-110). There is of course a long-standing historiographical association between credit and the economy in past society, with credit, depending upon its role, seen either as spur to economic activity, freeing up the use of money, or as an equivalent to money itself. Thus, historians of medieval and early modern trade and finance have longed recognised the role of credit within the economy (Postan, 1973a and b). A more recent historical study of credit has brought a greater emphasis to investigation of the credit economy in past society within rural economies and at social and economic levels below those of the leading figures of the countryside, especially secular and ecclesiastical lords. This is not to say that it is only in recent years that historians have been at all aware of credit within local rural society. The work of R.H. Tawney, for instance, in the first years of the twentieth century made quite clear his awareness of the significant role which credit could play in rural society, and at the level of the peasantry (Tawney, 1912; Wilson, 1925). Half a century later, Holderness, using probate inventories from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, also unveiled a rural economy in which credit was present at all levels (Holderness, 1976). Research in the last twenty or so years has not only tended to resurrect some of the earlier emphases, but most strikingly, has also attempted to employ them anew in further empirical research. Thus, perhaps most obviously, for early modern France, for instance, Postel-Vinay has explored the

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Introduction

close relationship between credit and agricultural investment, both in his own study of the impact of credit in a number of different regional contexts, and also in his work with Hoffman and Rosenthal upon credit and its impact upon the modern French economy (Postel-Vinay, 1998; Hoffman, Postel-Vinay and Rosenthal, 2000). Muldrew has also examined, in considerable detail, the nature and structure of credit in early modern England, providing both a close analysis of the availability of low-level credit arrangements and an assessment of their social and cultural importance (Muldrew, 1998). Striking in Muldrew’s assessment is the apparent ubiquity of credit in later sixteenth-century England, a point also made by Béaur for France in the eighteenth century and one to which he returns in his chapter for this volume (Muldrew, 1998; Béaur, this volume: 153-154; also, for instance, Spufford, 1994: 1362–3). A further point arising from Muldrew’s analysis is that the availability of credit is also identified as directly associated with dispute over credit arrangements. There is not, to follow Muldrew, a positive correlation between a failing economy and an increase in litigation over failed credit agreements. Instead, it is the frequency of credit arrangements and the disputes that they generate, especially in years of relative plenty, which is most evident. This may of course suggest that, despite the extremely widespread employment of credit, those most at risk from market failures and fluctuating prices were still to a degree isolated from credit markets and established mechanisms for recovery. That said, Muldrew’s assessment of a generally available credit for the early modern period stands in some contrast to that observed in certain contexts for the Middle Ages, at least especially in England. For that earlier period, it has been assumed, at least by some of those investigating rural credit, that the availability of credit fluctuated with some frequency and was, in no small part, either extended or withdrawn at moments consistent with economic change, the latter determined by a variety of exogenous and endogenous shifts (Schofield, 1997, 2008). Thus, as we shall consider further below, periods of harvest failure and general shortage may have witnessed a withdrawal of credit, evidence of a relatively precarious market and one that may have stood in some contrast to the kinds of markets where credit was generally available in the early modern period, at least as described by Muldrew.1 The extent to which credit contributed to the growth of the rural economy has been subject to various and quite divergent interpretations. The most influential model of pre-industrial economic development in rural Europe suggested that the debts found among the peasantries were symptomatic of their inability to escape the Malthusian trap. Peasant indebtedness – debts owed by peasants – were viewed as intricately linked with their economic vulnerability. The French model of a subsistence crisis – whereby rising food prices resulted in increased mortality and fewer marriages – also had a financial expression in rising levels of peasant borrowing. During these crisis moments peasant households had to borrow simply to survive. As these debts accumulated they were forced to mortgage their land and eventually lost it to their creditors. In other words, the money owed by rural households was seen as a symptom of structural poverty. Credit, in all its forms, paved the way for expropriation of the rural classes (for this view see

1

For a recent and slightly different assessment, including one which proposes some durability of credit supply in the fourteenth century allied to intensely local variety in terms of the availability of credit, see Briggs, 2009: 210–13.

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for example Goubert, 1965). Others have claimed that increased levels of debt among peasants should be viewed as indirect indicators of economic growth and specialization. Jan de Vries in particular links the changes in the number and frequency of debts listed in probate inventories to changes in levels of specialisation and market involvement. Contrary to the views of a classic French historiography, credit was thus viewed as a symptom of economic progress and growth (de Vries, 1975). The advance in research on rural credit has blurred the lines between these two models of interpretation. Recent research, including some of the contributions in this volume, show that the relationships between credit and economic development are far more complex than the two interpretative models sketched above and that no mono-causal model can fully explain the complex relationship between rural credit and economic development.

II. The nature of credit in the countryside It is clear that, in the medieval and early modern countryside, a high proportion of credit transfers, if not total credit, was not in the form of loans, mutuum, but as sale credit, commodatum. It is a standard of numerous studies of relatively low-level credit agreements, especially in Northern Europe and more particularly in England, that credit often or even typically existed in the form of late or deferred payment rather than as money extended for an agreed term. It is evident that sale-credits are a standard of credit agreements described in a number of the examples offered in essays in this collection, as they have been in other earlier studies of rural credit. Within the countryside, however, most individual credit transactions, though not the bulk of credit transferred, were typically of a different scale. In high and later medieval England, the vast majority of small-scale credit agreements, that is the number of total transactions and credit agreements, were almost certainly conducted orally and without evident security (Schofield, 2007; Briggs, 2009: 95–9). In the Flemish countryside of the early modern period, there is also plentiful evidence that a significant proportion of individual credit transactions were conducted orally, even in a context where rural creditors and debtors also engaged in credit agreements involving complex written securities (Lambrecht, this volume: 76-79). The same was also true, for instance, in the early modern Swiss cantons (Pfister, 1994: 1342). Elsewhere in Europe, especially in parts of Southern Europe, a system of credit operating through notaries tended to generate written agreements for the bulk of credit agreements, even those that were really quite small-scale, in what has been termed ‘the fundamental use of notarial credit’ (Drendel, 2004: 694). Further to this, it is also evident, of course, that a great deal of credit, extended in ways that we might not wholly describe as formal, has remained invisible to the historian. It is only in the failure of certain of these agreements, and failures which then generated recorded activity generally in the form of dispute resolution of some kind, that we are aware of elements of that ‘informal credit’. As Furio remarked in a recent essay on creditors and debtors in high and late medieval Valencia, the extent to which this informal credit existed is impossible to gauge; we are at least aware of the iceberg, though in this case what we see above the water-line does not necessarily permit an accurate extraction of the total hidden beyond our view (Furio, 2006: 23). This is a point also noted by Béaur for eighteenth-century France in his contribution to this volume (Béaur, this volume: 153).

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Introduction

Although the volume of this ‘informal’ credit is impossible to measure in great detail, it is nevertheless clear from litigation records, account books and probate inventories that this type of deferred payment in particular both facilitated and fuelled exchange in the countryside. Credit therefore was far from always secured by bonds, sealed written instruments, or other such easily assignable and transferrable written and provable documents. However, this is not to say that the greater proportion of credit, that is the total amount of credit extended rather than the number of individual credit transactions entered into, was unsecured. Loans, rather than credit in the form of deferred payment, were an important standard of credit relations in the pre-modern European countryside. Though less evident in medieval and early modern England, they occupied a central role in credit arrangements in other parts of western Europe (Briggs, 2009: 41–2; also Spufford, 1994: 1363, for a breakdown of types and proportions of written agreements for various kinds of debt recorded in wills from early modern England). The difference in the nature of credit instruments across Europe is indeed one of the most notable features that has emerged from recent research on this topic and can also be witnessed in the contributions in this volume. The literature to this date suggests for example that ‘formal’ written notarial deeds were far more prevalent in continental Europe than England with respect to credit arrangements (for some remarks on differences during the early modern period see Cooper, 1985: 181–182 and Postel-Vinay, 1997). And, of course, extensive mercantile credit and major loans to and from the nobility and the great and middling landlords, were, from the Middle Ages, certainly conducted in written form and secured (see, for instance, Mundill, 2002). In certain respects, partly because of the availability of information in relation to secured loans and more extensive credit agreements, historians have concentrated their attention upon larger-scale and more visible/accountable transactions of this kind (Postel-Vinay 1998: 83–4, 249). In eighteenth-century France as in later medieval Flanders, the preference for forms of security in relation to debt was, in no small part, a consequence of regional distinctions and local conventions and preferences (Béaur, this volume: 157-158; Thoen and Soens, this volume: 24-29; also Postel-Vinay, 1998: 88). In France bonds were clearly favoured in certain locales and perpetual annuities in others. In terms of peasant credit dealings with French notaries the main forms of security existed in the form of annuities, or rentes, distinguished between three main forms, constituted rents (rentes constituées), rents secured by land (rentes foncières) and life annuities (rentes viagéres); in addition, credit agreements might also be secured by bonds or obligations (Béaur, this volume: 154; on rentes and hypothecs, see also Servais, 1994; Hoffman, Postel-Vinay, and Rosenthal, 2000: 16–17). In later medieval Flanders, as Thoen and Soens illustrate in their contribution to the volume, different ‘social agro-systems’ were capable of generating quite discrete credit regimes. Generally, in the late medieval Flemish countryside similar discrete forms of credit arrangement can be identified, including credit linked to the sale of annuities (rentes constituées), rent-back arrangements arising from the sale of land, and rents arising from the investment of particular funds (Thoen and Soens, this volume: 21-24). The same is also true of nineteenth-century Germany, where again regional distinctions in

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terms of forms of security and availability of credit are also evident (Fertig, this volume: 186). As Hoffman, Postel-Vinay and Rosenthal also describe, the consequences of fiscal and administrative reform in Revolutionary France differed quite considerably between town and countryside, the more expensive hypothec/hypothéque taking hold in towns and cities far more than it did in the countryside where forms of credit administered through notarial offices remained far more common into the nineteenth century (Hoffman, PostelVinay, and Rosenthal, 2000). Of course, and as already noted, it is also evident that credit of a more sophisticated kind also operated, not least in the credit agreements created between tax-payers and the state. As, for instance, Jaco Zuijderduijn discusses in his chapter, the burgeoning needs of the state might cause villagers to organise the raising of capital through credit markets. In the case of Holland, studied by Zuijderduijn, villagers raised funds by selling renten, essentially loans of a kind largely consistent with annuities or rente (Zuijderduijn, this volume: 41-46). In fact, as more than one study in this volume makes clear, credit based upon annuities was, by the early modern period at least, a crucially important form of secured credit arrangement operating in the countryside on one side at least of the North Sea, with its widespread use evident in the Low Countries and in Northern France (see, Lambrecht, this volume: 78-79; also, Béaur, this volume: 154; also Fertig in relation to hypthec, this volume: 171). In this respect, and as we shall now briefly consider, the presence of as well as the forms of credit in rural society were determined not only by the local needs of parties to agreements but also by a variety of external factors, not least of which were commercial activity within and beyond the local rural community, the state and institutions at national and local level, and the influence of urban economies. In the following section we will discuss each in turn.

III. Credit agreements, their extension and their limits III.1. Commerce and rural credit It was once a standard of the historical literature on credit that its development was coincident with a growth of the commercial economy. Early writers on the medieval economy in England tended to assume a linear development in the economy, with which developments the history of credit and its institutions was deemed to follow. It was Postan’s work on credit in medieval trade, in articles written in the 1920s and 1930s, which undid a sense of even progression and illustrated instead the early sophistication of credit mechanisms, especially in relation to trade (Postan, 1973a and 1973b; Schofield, 2002: 5). In fact, to persist with the English example, it is reasonably clear that developments in credit mechanisms of a more sophisticated kind were generally dependent upon trade and the requirements of business and commerce. Some of the key developments in the security and registration of credit in high and late medieval England were generated by commercial activity and the expectations of merchants, but were also taken up in other areas of economic activity. Thus, for instance, the introduction of sophisticated registration of recognizances in the thirteenth century, an initiative intended to protect and support mercantile dealing, quite quickly moved beyond strictly commercial dealing and was employed, albeit intermittently, in local courts.

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Introduction

Aside from the wide-reaching structural changes which commerce might introduce, or at least encourage, it is also clear that fluctuations in the rate of economic activity might generate the kinds of conditions capable of stimulating a need for credit. The availability of relatively easy credit, as recent events in the global economy only too clearly illustrate, has a growth effect on the market and rates of exchange while reduced or restricted credit has the contrary effect (see, for instance, Mora, 2008, on the Japanese real estate market in the early 1990s and the impact of available credit on the same). It is far from simple to measure the changing availability of credit in the medieval and early modern European countryside but, from time to time, we gain a sense of such changes and developments. The withdrawal of credit, at moments of crisis and relative distress, often associated with harvest failure and a reduction in basic food availability and entitlements, is reasonably well evidenced in the local courts of medieval and early modern Europe. Its direct consequences within the economy are hard to measure, but it has been assumed that such withdrawal has consequences which proceed beyond the immediate reduction in available credit. Thus, in early nineteenth-century France, the availability of credit, and the forms in which it was available and generated had consequences for the range of economic activity undertaken, as Postel-Vinay’s comparisons between the regions of the Beauce and Artois illustrate (Postel-Vinay, 1998: 247–69). The recurrent financial crises that plagued France throughout the eighteenth century had effects that extended well beyond the urban and commercial centres. The collapse of John Law’s banking scheme in 1720 for example not only disrupted mercantile credit, but equally slowed down economic exchange in the French countryside as credit became more expensive (Jambu, 2000). In earlier periods, sales on credit, especially in futures markets for raw products presented considerable opportunities for economic growth in the countryside. In parts of Poland in the later Middle Ages and the early modern period, the movement of raw produce from the countryside both extended the need for credit and was supported by that growth in credit mechanisms, such developments also having consequences for a growth in other areas of the commercial and industrial or quasi-industrial sectors (Samsonwicz, 1985: 284–6). The early modern Flemish proto-industrial sector also testifies to the importance of credit for rural commercial expansion. Households engaged in textile production were part of a long chain of credit that penetrated all stages from the purchase of flax seed to the sale of the finished product on local markets. Each phase in the production and marketing process was characterized by a specific form of credit and term of repayment. A disruption in either one of these stages had a profound impact on the entire production process. High levels of peasant indebtedness in this region thus reflect intense demand for credit for production purposes and testify to intense commercial exchange (Lambrecht, 2007). III.2. Institutions and institutional change As more than one study makes clear in this volume, and as has been illustrated in numerous previous works, developing institutional structures were both capable of extending and limiting credit supplies (see, for example, Hoffman, Postel-Vinay and Rosenthal, 2000). The extension of credit occasioned by the development of institutional structures can be explored in a range of contexts, a number of which relate also to issues of commercial and economic expansion more generally. Thus, for instance, the development of secure systems for the enrolment of debt in later thirteenth century England helped encourage,

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and was no doubt intended to encourage, effective systems for the distribution of capital (McNall, 2002). The creation of new forms and rules of security profoundly impacted on credit markets. In the Low Countries the government proclaimed during the sixteenth century that all annuities should be redeemable (Aerts, 2000). This measure not only enabled the peasantries to repay their old debts, it also – more importantly – stimulated rural borrowers to participate more actively in the credit market. Further, in nineteenth-century France, legal reform effected, sometimes almost indirectly, significant changes in the way credit was managed and extended, as well as helping to establish quite discrete rural and urban systems of credit (Hoffman, Postel-Vinay and Rosenthal, 2000: 230–9, 290–1). The importance of government regulation and institutions on rural credit markets is further illustrated by the regional contrasts than can be observed in continental Europe. In some German territories for example rural households could only borrow money with the explicit approval of the local feudal lord. Through these so-called Kreditbeschränkungen (literally ‘credit restrictions’) village lords actively discouraged peasant borrowing as it could lead to indebtedness and reduce the rent they could extract from their tenants (Cohen, 1933 and Bessner, 1990). We might also consider here, sometimes at a slight remove, the creation by lords, boroughs, and state systems of other structures, including markets and organised trading facilities which allowed for business to be conducted with confidence and with some evident degree of security. In terms of the limits of credit effected by institutional and structural change, we might also think of state taxation which, as studies in this volume and elsewhere have shown, could increase the movement of capital and generate credit markets. As already noted, Zuijderduijn’s study of state taxation in early modern Holland explores the ways in which the growth of a system of governmental taxation forced tax-payers into credit relations. A striking feature of this relationship between taxation and capital markets is the evident limits to extension, with tax-payers sometimes constrained in their capacity to pay by the reluctance of creditors to extend credit to those deemed less than creditworthy (Zuijderduijn, this volume: 49-50). Furthermore, taxation systems might also have the consequence of limiting access to credit; it has been suggested in more than one study of the taxation of movables in medieval and early modern England, for instance, that available capital was sometimes invested by potential tax-payers in land in order to remove it from the taxable portion of estates. The net effect of this tactic was to limit the amount of capital available to be loaned (Hoyle, 1995; Schofield, 1997). Perhaps most obviously, the prescriptive expression of the church regarding usury and extension of credit at interest posed at the least moral problems for those involved in economic relations based upon credit; in these respects, Christian teaching against usury prompted its own range of institutional and quasi-institutional responses, including the development of devices aimed at by-passing such prohibition and the employment of non-Christian, Jewish, credit markets (McLaughlin, 1939). In discussing institutions, our attention is more obviously directed towards formal institutions, including the state, and our inclination is thereby also to conceive of credit in reasonably formalised terms. However, as is well known, a great deal of credit was extended at low levels of exchange and, in terms of the mechanisms which supported it, in ways that were really quite informal. This, of course, does not mean that such lowlevel exchange, some of it reasonably identified as consumption rather than investment

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Introduction

credit, was insignificant or indeed that it lacked some formality and local significance. In this respect, credit as an institution of mutual support and reciprocity may also have had, attached to it, issues of moral obligation and expectation which took it beyond a purely economic relationship (Furio, 2006: 23, for instance, and below, this introduction: 12-13). III.3. Urbanisation Since the Middle Ages towns have clearly had a significant potential impact upon rural credit, but not one that was necessarily ambiguous (Béaur, 1994: 1422–3). Regional and local market centres provided important points of access to capital for local debtors and were inevitable foci of exchange, a good deal of which was evidently based upon credit agreements. Capital flows in the form of loans and sales credit from town to country linked rural and urban populations in more regional economic systems. As Fertig’s study of rural credit and its origins in nineteenth-century Germany illustrates, a high proportion of credit in the countryside originated in neighbouring towns (Fertig, this volume: 179-182 and 187-189). This was true in a number of other contexts of course, with credit at different moments and in different places flowing from urban financiers, including banks, merchants and Jewish creditors into the neighbouring countryside (for instance, García Marsilla, 2000: 98–100; Nightingale, 2002; Hoffman, 1996). Thus, for instance, in later medieval Flanders, money-changers/lenders and ‘lombards’ extended credit to country-dwellers (Thoen and Soens, this volume: 21), and in a manner familiar from elsewhere. Limberger makes a similar point in this volume, describing the ways in which relations between town and countryside allowed a transmission of capital between the two, with townsmen from sixteenth-century Antwerp acting both as creditors and as land purchasers (Limberger, this volume: 69-71). The differing demographic and population regimes operating within regions, including urban hinterlands, will have had clear consequences for credit and its extension. In areas of relatively weak kin density, of proto-industrialisation, and of developing markets, conditions generally familiar from a number of areas of north-western Europe from the later Middle Ages, the need for credit and support beyond that which kin and neighbours might be able to provide is evident. While it would not be correct to suggest that throughout the period from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century rural dwellers sought additional credit in towns, and that this was their chief and direct source of loans and sale credit, it is certainly possible to identify certain factors associated with towns and their growth which help to explain an extension of credit. Significant amongst these factors must be the following: firstly and most obviously, the actual movement of credit from town to countryside in the form of loans and of business ventures; the employment of rural dwellers in and around towns, often on terms that involved some form of credit agreement (deferred wages for instance); the movement of credit from countryside to town in terms of, for instance, future purchases of basic foodstuffs, especially grain, and other raw produce, such as wool. For most rural dwellers, especially those of relatively limited resources, this movement of credit between town and countryside may have had indirect rather than direct consequences for their own access to supplies of credit. In later medieval England it seems probable that large scale credit exchanges between peasants and local townsmen were fairly rare and, in terms of the peasantry, involved only the

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relatively wealthy, effectively the kulaks. Such credit arrangements must however have effected changes in the availability of credit at the local level, bringing resources and finances into local communities, thereby allowing a second and third tier of credit arrangements to be established (Schofield, 2002; 2008). We can see similar social and economic distinctions played out in other parts of Europe. In some of the Swiss cantons, for instance, in the early modern period, opportunities for access to credit beyond the village tended to be concentrated in the hands of the relatively wealthy villagers (Pfister, 1994: 1347). In the studies gathered here, this exchange between rural and urban economies shifted in its extent and vitality according, often, to the significance of local urban centres and the formality and ease of credit networks. Thus, in early modern Antwerp, a heightened movement of country-dwellers into the city facilitated access to capital including credit extended through annuities; in nineteenth-century Westphalia, as is also evident in France for the same period, the emergence of formal banking, almost inevitably located in towns, presented opportunities for a more general access to credit for those dwelling in the countryside Limberger, this volume: 72 Fertig, this volume: 183-186; Postel-Vinay, 1998).

IV. The parties to credit arrangements: creditors and debtors In the instances explored in this volume, credit relations between debtor and creditor are seldom identified as uni-directional. In terms of social status and the direction of flow, credit does not evidently, in almost any circumstance, appear to have moved only from the relatively wealthy to the relatively poor. While it is clear that a good deal of credit did in fact move from those with more capital to those with less, examples of which will be considered below, the structures of rural credit can be defined in a number of different ways which also reflect a variety of credit relationships. Hoffman’s discussion of a ‘traditional society’ in which a system of mutual reciprocity nuanced and defined by collective and local knowledge encourages, for instance, a view of credit arrangements which permitted a degree of social complexity and little real uniformity of structure (Hoffman, 1996: 71–2). A review of the evidence tends to support a view that stresses the complex character of the different agents involved in borrowing and lending. The discrete levels of socio-economic exchange and the variety of credit relationships capable of being observed in historical sources have generated quite distinct views of the nature of credit relationships. Within the study of credit in medieval and early modern rural, and essentially peasant, society, for example, exchange of credit dominated by both horizontal and by vertical relations has been described. In the case of medieval England, significant determining factors have been both time and space, with, in so far as it is reasonable to suggest at this stage, differences in the nature and social structure of credit arrangements dependent upon when and where such arrangements were established. Thus, Clark’s investigation of credit relations in fifteenth-century Writtle, suggests a system of mutual reciprocity, credit exchanged between reasonably equal partners in a relatively prosperous and secure small-town environment (Clark, 1981); Briggs has made similar observations in his investigation of Cambridgeshire villages in the early fourteenth century (Briggs, 2009: 100–2, 146–8). By contrast, Schofield’s examination of credit arrangements in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries has tended to stress the vertical relations of credit extension, in which creditors, and, within relative

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terms, their debtors, tend to be associated with relative wealth, enjoying economic and social advantage over their debtor neighbours (Schofield, 1997; 2008: 59; this volume, : 146-149). In this volume, Thoen and Soens make much the same points for regions within later medieval Flanders, distinguishing between areas within Flanders where credit was employed out of necessity, in distinctly unequal relationships and those regions where a burgeoning commercialisation encouraged the development of investment credit (Thoen and Soens, this volume: 33-34). Anxieties about the nature of credit relations, and what they signified for the economic experience and stability of the rural economy, are evidently persistent ones, as Fertig’s discussion of the contribution of nineteenth-century commentators also illustrates (Fertig, this volume: 173-176). Credit remains a relatively elusive aspect of the history of the family in past societies. That said, there have been some important attempts to explore lines of credit and the familial component of the same, and these have tended to reveal the significance of familial relations in establishing credit arrangements (see, for discussion and references, Fontaine, 1998: 15–16). In certain obvious respects, credit is, in some form, always extended within families and households. While it may seem harshly functionalist to identify all such relationships of this kind in terms of credit and essentially economic relationships, it is at least reasonable to recognise that credit relations, including truly economic ones, were established between family members. In a largely indirect way, within the life-cycle familial relationships are, in part only, founded upon some kind of future expectation (for instance, Fontaine, 1994: 1378; Servais, 1994: 1397, 1400). On the part of offspring, credit might take the form of hopes in relation to inheritance and dowry, while, for parents, their care of offspring may have also anticipated their own needs in retirement. Soens and Thoen consider the life-cycle aspects of credit in their contribution to this volume and suggest a close relationship between indebtedness and the early stages of family and household formation; in their view, relatively wealthy and established peasant families were less likely to engage in a credit market, at least as debtors; instead it was changes in familial opportunity, driven by the life-cycle and including the freeing up of resource by inheritance, which helps explain the patterns evident in this Flemish material (Soens and Thoen, this volume: 31-32). This neolocal model of household formation and peasant economic development is closely focussed upon continuities in a general peasant existence, and is certainly familiar from studies of the peasant land market, especially those employing a broadly Chayanovian perspective (Postan 1973c: 114–5). While commercial enterprise and entrepreneurial activity are less evident in this ‘demand-side’ of credit relations, Soens and Thoen also note, from the supply-side, that relatively wealthy and aged peasants used credit relations, especially those founded upon annuities, as a means of securing their finances during their retirements (Soens and Thoen, this volume: 33). Pfister has also described, for the early modern Swiss cantons, an association between life-cycle and indebtedness, again tending to identify indebtedness with relative youth; however he adds a level of complexity in noting that the youngest households, i.e. by age of parents, were relatively less indebted than those families and households in which the parents were middle-aged (32–42), where the level of debt occasioned by the presence of young children, who consumed but as yet did little to produce and whose presence kept one parent, the mother, from other paid employment, was ‘crippling’ (Pfister, 1994:

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1354; Spufford, 1994: 1367). In van Cruyningen’s assessment of the probate inventories of farmers from West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen it is also evident that the relatively elderly were well-placed to extend credit, often involving significant sums and with a considerable degree of sophistication (van Cruyningen, this volume: 102-103). The supply and demand for credit was thus strongly influenced by the specific characteristics of each stage of the life-cycle. It is of course also evident that credit was and is sometimes, perhaps often, extended between family members in reasonably formal economic relationships (Spufford, 1994: 1369–70; also Holderness, 1984: 441–2; Fontaine, 1994: 1383). As Béaur notes, in his contribution to this volume, it is at least reasonable to assume that a good deal of such intra-familial credit was extended relatively informally and, save typically in instances of a failed relationship and of subsequent litigation, is likely to remain hidden. In some regions studied by Béaur, but by no means all, the proportion of familial credit agreements as recorded at their inception by notaries was very low (Béaur, this volume: 155). Furthermore, within households, rather than simply families or kin groups, economic relations between household members, including live-in servants, retainers and apprentices might also be conducted in terms of credit, with, for instance, payment of wages or future instruction effectively deferred. What is more, as more than one study has shown, capital generated within the family was capable of being transferred beyond the family, a point noted by Limberger in this volume in discussing the ways in which rural migrants to towns brought with them access to rural credit located in annuities (Limberger, this volume: 72). In fact, the movement from credit associated with family and its landed holdings to credit available in other and generally more easily accessible forms has been explored in other contexts, not least in the emergence of banking and Le Crédit Foncier (Postel-Vinay, 1998: 365).

V.

The circulation of the concept of credit and of information regarding credit

One of the more significant developments in the study of credit in recent years has been a focus on the mechanisms which supported credit in terms of social and economic networks and a shared understanding of where credit resided and how it could be secured. On a basic level in pre-industrial agrarian society, credit, extended between neighbours, was undoubtedly reciprocal and a reflection of social mores and expectations. In this respect, the shared knowledge of where credit resided and was likely to be made available was informed by certain shared cultural and religious assumptions, including those underpinning concepts of charity, neighbourliness and responsibility for the poor (for instance, Tierney, 1959). However, such neighbourly support could not be infinitely elastic and certainly failed when circumstances became difficult. Furthermore, there exist material differences between a consumption credit of a fairly informal kind, exchanged between neighbours on a day-to-day basis, and credit more closely associated with investment. In this last respect, credit arrangements established ‘at arm’s length’ between parties who were relative strangers may have employed quite distinct sets of practices and of shared assumptions than are likely to have existed between neighbours also engaged in the extension of credit in some or other form.

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As more than one paper in the present volume illustrates, access to credit in past society, as in the present, was/is dependent upon the accumulation of the necessary prior information, including who might be willing to extend credit and on what terms, as well as the credit-worthiness and reliability of the partners. Christine Fertig’s chapter illustrates the ways in which banks were able to publicise their activity and generate a clientele both for the deposit of capital and the extension of credit (Fertig, this volume: 183). It seems reasonable to suppose, and indeed has been reflected in earlier elements of this discussion, that the changing infrastructure of credit markets and the developments of mechanisms in terms of the availability, especially through banking, had significant implications for access to credit and its potential reach. In this respect, other factors will certainly have come into play, including the literacy of a potential clientele, either directly or through acquired literacy as members of ‘textual communities’. As Lambrecht’s discussion of early modern Flanders also makes clear, the presence of a literate and skilled cohort of intermediaries, in this instance clerks operating within and between towns and the countryside, both facilitated the establishment of secure, written agreements, and also helped to inform potential clients, both creditors and debtors, of opportunities existing within something akin to a credit market (Lambrecht, this volume: 89-94). In the later Middle Ages, in parts of Inland Flanders, local aldermen may have fulfilled a rather similar function (Thoen and Soens, this volume: 21-22). In these respects the kinds of credit extended and the size and complexity of credit agreements may well have reflected the nature and form of information circulated as well as the role of third parties in its transmission.

VI. Credit in the countryside: extent and impact The consideration of access to credit and information regarding credit also has implications for the availability and circulation of credit. Most medieval historians who have approached the question of credit’s extent and role in a rural context have chiefly tended to see credit as a cause of velocity, as stimulus to the market when available. Credit is less often seen as something which replaces money in its entirety; credit is of course measured in money’s worth and credit is recovered as money. Certainly, in parts of north-western Europe, and especially in relation to low-level exchange in a rural setting, credit was not evidently assignable, and as such failed an essential test which would otherwise encourage its identification as ‘money’ (see, for instance, Nightingale, 2004: 55, 68). Here an important distinction evidently exists between forms of securities and the reasonable potential for credit arrangements to be transferred from one creditor or debtor to another. In an interpeasant credit ‘market’ in the medieval English countryside, where a high proportion of credit was oral, existed in the form of sale credits, and was non-negotiable, the likelihood that any but the most unusual forms of credit were capable of being assigned was clearly remote. Elsewhere however, we might conceive of credit functioning in different ways. The transfer of annuities in the Brabant in the early modern period, for instance, illustrates the ways in which credit instruments might be assigned (Limberger, this volume: 69-71). Interestingly, and in contrast to some of the points suggested earlier, Béaur, in his contribution to this volume, considers that the ubiquity of credit in the early modern French countryside might cause us to question the extent to which money actually circulated in the countryside at all. At the same time, though, he identifies an increase in the availability

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and extent of credit across the eighteenth century, evident in the increased proportion of ‘passive debts’ in inventories post-mortem (Béaur, this volume: 160-162). To follow the well-known Fischer identity of MV = PT, where the velocity of circulation (V) of money (M) is deemed to be equivalent to the direct and positive relation of prices (P) and transactions (T), Béaur suggests that rather than serving as V (‘velocity’) as is often assumed to have been the case in rural societies in the pre-industrial past (see, for instance, Mayhew, 1995 and the brief discussion and references in Schofield, 1998: 81), credit operated chiefly as M (‘money’). Credit in this view serves as an addition to the physical quantity of cash in a society. Credit was the solution to the chronic shortage of cash noted in most of the pre-industrial European societies. It was only through the use of credit that a volume of transactions could be reached that extended far beyond the physical supply of cash. Béaur’s observations notwithstanding, an important index of extent or potential extent was the capacity of available credit to effect a change in the number and/or velocity of transactions. We find ourselves living at a moment when the limited or reduced availability of credit has clear and direct consequences for the health of the economy. Without fluid credit markets, the opportunities for investment and for speculation have been dramatically curtailed with all the well-rehearsed social and economic consequences which inevitably emerge from such a development, as for instance relayed in the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Update for November 6, 2008.2 As more than one discussion in the present volume makes clear, the ready availability of credit had, or at least illustrated, the potential for a positive effect on certain markets. As a Dutch State Commissioner noted in the second half of the nineteenth century, the lack of available credit in the countryside reflected a difficult economic situation, a situation which reflected the banks’ unwillingness to engage with potential credit risks (van Cruyningen, this volume: 100-101). As van Cruyningen describes, in his discussion of the same, it was land and the consequent security provided by the land purchased which encouraged banks to extend credit: without land, the availability of credit was poor. In similar respects, Soens and Thoen, in their study of the rural credit markets supported by land in coastal Flanders, suggest that tenurial changes and especially an increase in short-term leasing arrangements in the sixteenth century, reduced the potential security available to those peasant farmers who wished to borrow (Soens and Thoen, this volume: 31). But credit also, of course, provided the motor to drive the exchange of land and, by extension, other kinds of economic activity. The papers in this volume illustrate that it was not an excess of credit, but rather lack of borrowing and lending opportunities which were perceived as indicators of economic stagnation. In Béaur’s striking phrase in his contribution, ‘no credit, no land market’, we find encapsulated the basic principle which must surely have been the foundation to a good deal of exchange in medieval and early modern Europe (Béaur, this volume: 156-161; also Béaur, 1994: 1416–7). In later medieval England, as the chapters by Briggs and Schofield illustrate, the direct relationship between credit mechanisms and a peasant market in land is not easily established; instead credit’s role in relation to inter-vivos land transfer resides, or at least is assumed to reside in the relatively recent historiography,

2

International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook Update, Nov. 6, 2008, ‘Rapidly weakening prospects call for new policy stimulus’: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2008/ update/03/; accessed 12 February 2009.

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most obviously in the crisis sales of land often associated with the indebtedness of the seller (Briggs, this volume: 122-124; Schofield this volume, this volume: 142-148). As Briggs rightly notes, a direct association between credit activity and the transfer of land, either in terms of indebtedness or the extension of credit, is typically elusive, the final associations in the documentation tending to be inferential rather than unequivocal; it is only occasionally, perhaps even exceptionally, that something approaching a direct and identifiable relationship between the extension or withdrawal of credit and its impact upon other economic activity, such as engagement with the land market, especially in customary land, can actually be identified (Briggs, this volume: 123; Schofield, 1997). That the holding and transfer of land in high and late medieval England were not often easily identified as secured and effected by mortgages is one principal explanation for the lack of evidence allowing a direct association of credit arrangements and land transfer (Briggs, 2009: 168–9). In other contexts though this relationship was sometimes far more evident, and this is especially the case as we move into a modern era of banking, and of landed securities which were systematically recorded. Thus, for instance, as Hudson has described for West Yorkshire (England) in the mid-eighteenth century, an organised registration of mortgages upon land was directly intended to facilitate the extension of credit and thereby to ‘quicken trade’ (Hudson, 2004: 726–7).

VII. Conclusion Recent events illustrate only too forcefully the significance of credit in everyday lives, and even the lives not directly engaged in credit relations. The move toward sub-prime lending and its collapse, with the dire consequences for the confidence of banks and the availability of credit, as well as the housing market and, by extension, the wider economy, have been well rehearsed. They illustrate the close association between individual credit agreements and the wider economy, and show how the cumulative consequences of individual agreements, often guided by a general policy or by customary or established practice, can be of enormous significance. Credit agreements of the kind typically described in this volume did not and could not have the combined consequence of the present global credit collapse but they do illustrate the ways in which credit was often far more than an informal mechanism of mutual reciprocity (significant as that was as well), and that its availability or non-availability was of very real consequence for rural-dwellers across our period. The contributions to this book illustrate that viewing the European peasantries through the lens of credit reveals a rural society that displayed both an expected diversity, but also some surprising similarities. Despite the differences in the nature of credit and credit arrangements in different regions and periods, all the peasantries portrayed in this volume testify to the fact that credit was central to their survival, reproduction and commercial strategies. It is therefore the more surprising that only in recent years historians have turned their attention to the financial dealings of the rural population and acknowledged that much of the instruments and practices that have been traditionally associated with either urban economies or trade were also intensely used in peasant households. It is intended therefore that this collection of essays will add significantly to our knowledge of rural credit, its function, nature and significance, between the Middle Ages and nineteenth century, a theme that, as recent events in global financial markets all too plainly reveal, continues to be of real relevance and importance.

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Bibliography Aerts, E. (2000) ‘Monnaies, credits et finances dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux (1500–1550)’, in: L’escarcelle de Charles Quint. Monnaies et finances au XVIe siècle, Brussels, pp. 33–82. Béaur, Gérard (1994) ‘Foncier et crédit dans les sociétés préindustrielles, des liens solides ou des chaînes fragiles’, Annales HSS, 49, 6, pp. 1411–28. Béguin, K. (2006) ‘La circulation des rentes constituées dans la france du xviie siecle. Une approche de l’incertitude économique’, Annales HSS, 60, pp. 1229–1244. Beissner, H. (1990) ‘Die Verschuldung Schaumburger Bauernhöfe in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie, 38, pp. 24–41. Berthe, M. (ed) 1998, Endettement paysan et crédit rural dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne, Toulouse. Briggs, C.D. (2009) Credit and village society in fourteenth-century England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cavaciocchi S. (ed.) (2001) Fiere e mercati nella integrazione delle economie europee secc. XIII-XVIII, Paris, Le Monnier. Cavaciocchi S. (ed.) (2005) Il mercato della terra secc. XIII-XVIII, Paris, Le Monnier. Clark, E. (1981) ‘Debt litigation in a late medieval English vill’, in J.A. Raftis, ed., Pathways to medieval peasants, Toronto: Pontifical Institute, pp. 247-279. Cohen, A. (1933) ‘Kredit- und Verschuldungsbeschränkungen beim bäuerlichen Grundbesitz in Bayern im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, 139, pp. 705–715. Cooper, J.P. (1985) ‘In search of agrarian capitalism’, in: T.H. Aston and C.H.E. Philpin (eds.), The Brenner debate. Agrarian class structure and economic development in preindustrial Europe, Cambridge, pp.138–191. de Vries, J. (1975) ‘Peasant demand patterns and economic development: Frieland, 1550–1750’, in: W.N. Parker and E.L. Jones (eds.), European peasants and their markets. Essays in agrarian economic history, Princeton, pp. 81–124. Drendel, J. (2004) ‘Commodities, credit and land on the local market and on the urban market; the role of secondary agglomerations in the economy: comparison of Anglo-Saxon and French historiography’, in S. Cavaciocchi, ed., Il Mercato della Terra. Secc. xiii-xviii, Prato: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini”, pp. 685–702. Fontaine, L. (1994) ‘Espaces, usages et dynamique de la dette dans les hautes vallées dauphinoises (xviie-xviiie siècles), Annales HSS, XLIX, 6, pp. 1375–1391. Fontaine L., Postel-Vinay G., Rosenthal J.-L. and Servais P. (eds.) (1997) Des personnes aux institutions. Réseaux et culture du crédit du XVIe au XXe siècle en Europe, Louvainla-Neuve, Bruylant. Fontaine, L. (1998) ‘Introduction’, in in M. Berthe, (ed.), Endettement paysan et crédit rural dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne, Flaran xvii, Toulouse, pp. 7–21. Fontaine, L. (2008) L’économie morale. Pauvreté, credit et confiance dans l’Europe préindustrielle, Paris, Gallimard.

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Furio, A. (2007) ‘Crédit, endettement et justice: prêteurs et débiteurs devant le juge dans la royaume de Valence (xiiie-xve siècle)’, in Julie-Mayade Claustre (ed.), Endettement privé et justice au Moyen Age, Paris: Publications de al Sorbonne, pp. 19–53. García Marsilla, J.V. (2000) Vivir a crédito en la Valencia medieval. De los orígenes del sistema censal al endeudamiento del municipio, Valencia: Universitàt de Valencia. Goubert, P. (1965) ‘The French peasantry of the seventeenth century: a regional example’, in: T. Ashton (ed.), Crisis in Europe 1560–1660, London, Routledge, pp. 141–165. Hoffman, P. (1996) Growth in a traditional society. The French countryside, 1450–1815, Princeton. Hoffman, P. Postel-Vinay, G. and Rosenthal, J.T. (2000) Priceless Markets. The Political Economy of Credit in Paris, 1660–1870, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Holderness, B.A. (1976) ‘Credit in English rural society before the nineteenth century, with special reference to the period 1650–1720’, Agricultural History Review, 24, pp. 97–109. Holderness, B.A., (1984) ‘Widows in pre-industrial society: an essay upon their economic functions’, in R.M. Smith, Land, kinship and life-cycle, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 423–42. Hoyle, R. (1995) ‘War and Public Finance’, in D. MacCullouch, ed., The Reign of Henry VIII, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp 75–99. Hudson, P. (2004) ‘Land markets, credit and proto-industrialization in Britain and Europe’, in Il Mercato della Terra. Secc. xiii-xviii, Monash University, Prato, pp. 721–41. Jambu, J. (2000) ‘Le système de Law dans les campagnes: l’exemple du pays d’Auge’, Annales de Normandie, 50, pp. 297–320. Mayhew, N.J. (1995) ‘Population, money supply and the velocity of circulation in England, 1300–1700’, Economic History Review, 48, pp. 238–257. McLaughlin, T.P. (1939) ‘The teaching of the Canonists on usury (XII, XIII, and XIV centuries), Mediaeval Studies, 1. McNall, C. (2002) ‘The business of statutory debt registries, 1283–1307’, in P.R. Schofield and N.J. Mayhew, Credit and debt in medieval England, c.1180-c.1350, Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 68–88. Minard P. and Woronoff D. (2003) L’argent des campagnes. Echanges, monnaie, credit dans la France d’Ancien Régime, Paris. Mora, N. (2008) ‘The effect of bank credit on asset prices: evidence from the Japanese real estate boom during the 1980s’, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 40, pp. 57–87. Muldrew, C. (1998) The economy of obligation. The culture of credit and social relations in early modern England, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Mundill, R.R. (2002) ‘Christian and Jewish lending patterns and financial dealings during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, in P.R. Schofield and N.J. Mayhew, Credit and debt in medieval England, c.1180-c.1350, Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 42–67. Nightingale, P. (2002) ‘The English parochial clergy as investors and creditors in the first half of the fourteenth century’, in P.R. Schofield and N.J. Mayhew, Credit and debt in medieval England, c.1180-c.1350, Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 88–105. Nightingale, P. (2004) ‘Money and credit in the economy of late medieval England’, in D. Wood, ed., Medieval money matters, Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 51–71. 17

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Pfister, U. (1994) ‘Le petit crédit rural en Suisse aux xvie-xviiie siècles’, Annales HSS, XLIX, 6, pp. 1339–57. Postan, M.M. (1973a) ‘Credit in medieval trade’, in M.M. Postan, Medieval trade and finance, Cambridge, 1973, pp. 1–27 [first published in Economic history review 1 (1928)]. Postan, M.M. (1973b) ‘Private financial instruments in medieval England’, in M.M. Postan, Medieval trade and finance, Cambridge, 1973, pp. 28–64 [first published in Vierteljahrschrift fur Social- und Wirtschaftsgeschicte xxiii (1930)]. Postan, M.M. (1973c) ‘The charters of the villeins’, in idem, Essays on medieval agriculture and general problems of the medieval economy, Cambridge, 1973, pp. 107–49 [first published in Carte Nativorum. A Peterborough Abbey cartulary of the fourteenth century, eds, C.N.L. Brooke and M.M. Postan, Northants. Rec. Soc., xx, 1960]. Postel-Vinay, G. (1997) ‘Les relations de crédit dans les campagnes en France et Angleterre, 1600–1800’, in: J. Marseille (ed.), La terre et les paysans en France, 1600–1800, Paris, pp. 143–160. Postel-Vinay, G. (1998) La terre et l’argent. L’agriculture et le credit en France du xviiie au début du xxe siècle, Paris: Albin Michel. Samsonwicz, H. (1985) ‘Les débuts des banques privées en Pologne’, in A.V. Marx, ed., Credto, banche e investimenti. Secoli XIII-XX, Prato: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini”, pp. 283–91. Schofield, P.R. (1997) ‘Dearth, debt and the local land market in a late thirteenth-century Suffolk community’, Agricultural History Review, xlv, pp. 1–17. Schofield, P.R. (1998) ‘L’endettement et le crédit dans la campagne anglaise au moyen âge’, in M. Berthe, (ed.), Endettement paysan et crédit rural dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne, Flaran xvii, Toulouse, pp. 69–97. Schofield, P.R. (2002) ‘Introduction’, in P.R. Schofield and N.J. Mayhew, Credit and debt in medieval England, c.1180-c.1350, Oxford, pp. 1–18. Schofield, P.R. (2007) ‘Peasant debt in English manorial courts: form and nature’, in Julie-Mayade Claustre (ed.), Endettement privé et justice au Moyen Age, Publications de la Sorbonne, pp. 55–67. Schofield, P.R. (2008) ‘The social economy of the medieval village in the early fourteenth century’, Economic History Review, 61, S1, pp. 38–63. Servais, P. (1994) ‘De la rente au credit hypothécaire en période de transition industrielle. Stratégies familiales en region liégeoise au xviiie siècle’, Annales HSS, XLIX, 6, pp. 1393–1409. Spufford, P. (1994) ‘Les liens du credit au village dans l’Angleterre au xviiie siècle’, Annales HSS, XLIX, 6, pp. 1359–73. Tawney, R.H. (1912) The agrarian problem in the sixteenth century, London. Wilson, T., (1925) A discourse upon usury, ed. R. Tawney, London.

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2 Credit in rural Flanders, c.1250-c.1600: its variety and significance Erik THOEN, Ghent University Tim SOENS, University of Antwerp

Even before the well-known studies of Raymond de Roover of the Bruges money market (de Roover, 1948; 1968), credit in medieval Flanders had received a good deal of attention from historians. Most of the studies however only dealt with credit transactions and types of credit used in international trade. However, already before the late medieval period, large parts of the Flemish rural population were also familiar with credit. For many peasants throughout Flanders credit became a vital part of their life, but the types of credit transaction used, their intensity and their goals were highly variable from region to region and from one period to another. So whether a certain credit transaction indicated a productive investment in agriculture or, conversely, an increased peasant impoverishment and indebtedness, or perhaps both at the same time, can only be asserted analyzing the role of credit from within the structures of the regional economy. In this contribution we will use a comparative methodology in order to link divergences in the credit market to divergences in what we will call the ‘social agro-system’. The late medieval county of Flanders offers an excellent test-case to do so. In this relatively small region, corresponding to the western part of present-day Belgium plus the extreme northwestern part of France (‘La Flandre française’) and the southern part of the Netherlands (‘Zeeland-Flanders’), two regions witnessed an increasingly divergent economic evolution in the wake of the late medieval crisis or transition period. Whereas inland Flanders evolved towards a densely populated peasant society, dominated by small peasant landowners and growing proto-industrial activity, the polder area or coastal Flanders gradually turned into a highly commercialized rural economy, with larger market oriented lease-hold farmers. Through a comparative study of rural credit in both regions, we hope to increase our knowledge about the way in which credit markets were progressively adapted to divergent social-economic evolutions, and conversely, whether different credit opportunities in both regions affected the social-economic evolution.

I.

Coastal and inland Flanders: two different social agro-systems

In our definition, a social agro-system is a rural production system based on the regionspecific social relations involved in the economic reproduction of a given geographical area (for more details, see: Thoen, 2004: 47). Among the decisive elements distinguishing social-agro systems and determining possibilities for economic growth, two can be considered of major importance: the division of property rights and power between different groups in society as well as within these groups on the one hand, and the income

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strategies (including the organisation of labour and the access to markets) of these groups on the other hand. When applying these criteria on the late medieval county of Flanders, it becomes clear that the coastal area and inland Flanders were increasingly developing in a different, or even an opposite way (Thoen, 1999a and 1999b). Bordering the North Sea and the Western Scheldt estuary the Flemish coastal wetlands stretched from Calais in France to the port of Antwerp. Parallel to the progressive reclamation of the area from the High Middle Ages on, heavy clay soils were replacing salt marshes and peat bogs. In this fragile environment, many of the homelands of the counts of Flanders could be found. Almost uncontested by local feudal lords, they were able to maintain a firm grip on justice and administration, the so-called ‘seigneurie banale’. Acknowledging the authority of the count of Flanders, a free peasant population could flourish and until the end of the thirteenth century, small to middle sized owner-occupied holdings were predominant in the Flemish coastal plain. From the late thirteenth century on however, the structures of rural society in the coastal plain were fundamentally altered. Peasant landowners increasingly lost their land, freehold was progressively replaced by short-term leasehold and farm sizes were substantially increasing. Until the twentieth century, larger leasehold farms became the dominant feature of the coastal area. They were market oriented, specializing in large-scale arable farming, cattle breeding and/or diary farming. Proto-industrial and semi-agrarian activities, which had been common in the coastal plain before 1400 (especially peat digging and fishing, but also textile production) lost most of their significance (Soens and Thoen, 2009). As we will see, credit systems might have played a decisive role in this transformation. In the inland part of the county, where soils were made up of sand and loam, a more intense occupation already took place in the Early Middle Ages, and it was further intensified until about 1250. Here, between the tenth and the twelfth century, the power of the count of Flanders had been significantly contested by local lords, temporarily acquiring a large degree of independence. As a result ‘classical’ seigniorial levies were more frequent and higher in inland Flanders and personal freedom more restricted than was generally the case in coastal Flanders, but due to the mentioned power struggle with the count of Flanders and the rise of cities, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries feudal coercion was rapidly mitigated and customary tenure, increasingly depreciated by inflation, became predominant. Customary tenure was coming ever closer to full property rights for the peasant. In these conditions, this peasant landownership would prove more resistant to the rise of short-term leasehold in the late medieval period, and the owner-occupied family holding would remain the dominant feature of rural society in inland Flanders. Partible inheritance and family survival strategies resulted in a continuous splitting up of farmsteads and a permanent need to seek additional income. As a consequence rural woollen and linen industries were thriving in Inland Flanders. A limited number of larger farms, often leased out by bourgeois landowners, maintained a symbiotic relationship with the multitude of small peasant landholders, offering seasonal employment in exchange for a number of services like the use of horses for ploughing (Thoen, 1988 and 2001; Lambrecht, 2003). By the sixteenth century, coastal and inland Flanders had turned into two strikingly different although mutually dependant social agro-systems. An important indicator for

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this, is the share of leasehold in both agro-systems. By the middle of the sixteenth century, up to 90 per cent of land in coastal Flanders was held in short-term leasehold, against only 54 per cent in the eastern part of Inland Flanders (Vandewalle, 1986: 95; Van Den Abbeele, 1985: 104). Most peasant smallholders in Inland Flanders were able to maintain secure property rights on their holdings, only paying relatively moderate customary rents. By contrast, the on average much larger farmers of the coastal area had to rely on the competitive lease market to secure the survival of their farm.

II. Types of credit in late medieval Flanders Credit was important in both agro-systems, but both the institutional arrangements and the economic logic behind the credit transactions were significantly different. In what follows, we will concentrate on credit transactions intended for investment in agricultural activities, bringing in ‘new’ money in the farm. We will not deal in detail with other equally important forms of credit, such as informal loans between peasants or family-members (e.g. Lambrecht, 2003) or consumption credit used to cover day-to-day expenses. For this latter kind of credit, Flemish peasants could rely on money-changers and ‘lombards’ who were very active in the Flemish towns from the thirteenth century onwards (de Roover, 1948; Murray, 2005). Already in the first half of the fourteenth century, wealthy farmers like Simon de Rikelike, living in a village near Bruges frequently appealed to usurers in Bruges to obtain small amounts of cash (De Smet, 1933). However, the interest rates asked by professional usurers were so high that it is unlikely that most peasants and farmers used them, except in times of acute financial problems: in Bruges the interest rate for this kind of loan was fixed at two pennies every pound a week, the equivalent of 43 per cent a year (Marechal, 1955: 11–12; Godding, 1987: 475). The consumption credit these usurers granted was mostly guaranteed by movable objects taken in pledge. For this kind of credit transaction a new kind of charitable institution was founded in many towns of the Southern Low Countries in the course of the seventeenth century: the Mont-de-Piété – literally: Mount of Charity (Soetaert, 1986). Short-term loans granted by usurers or Monts-de-Piété were seldom used for active investment in farming. In what follows, we will mainly deal with loans that brought in new capital in the rural economy, in other words with deliberate investments by a lender, making more or less substantial capital transfers to a borrower in exchange for interest and capital reimbursements on a regular base (annuities). Since the thirteenth century this kind of credit transaction was often registered in Flanders by regional and local aldermen. In this part of Europe, public notaries were only of minor importance, at least in the late medieval period (Prevenier, Murray and Oosterbosch, 1997). However attempts to reconstruct the total volume of the credit market is difficult due to the lack of source-material before the end of the sixteenth century. Archival lacunae and the importance of oral transactions can be considered as the main reasons. There are however regional exceptions, enabling us to establish basic statistical comparisons between the two Flemish agro-systems, especially from the fifteenth century onwards. For Inland Flanders we could rely on the registers of the local aldermen of the small village of Haaltert not far from the city of Alost, which records deeds from 1472 onwards. For a second village in the same neighbourhood, Erembodegem, similar court registers date back to

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1457 (see Thoen, 1988: 903). For coastal Flanders there exists a similar source from the important ecclesiastical seignory belonging to the Dean of the Chapter of Saint-Donatianus in Bruges, who was at the same time hereditary chancellor to the count of Flanders. Besides other territories in Northern France and the city of Bruges itself, this seigneurie was made up of enclaves in more than 36 parishes in the coastal area surrounding Bruges, measuring around 3000 hectares all together in the seventeenth century (Maréchal 1960: VIII). The registration of all kinds of deeds by the aldermen of this seignory has been preserved from 1428 onwards. In order to reconstruct the late medieval credit market, local court registers of this kind can be supplemented with other sources such as probate inventories (which are preserved in good number for the region of Audenarde in Inland Flanders from 1377). For the thirteenth and fourteenth century, serial sources are less frequent and we have had to rely on collection of charters, recording individual credit transactions. As many thirteenthcentury credit transactions are written in the vernacular, we have also been able to make good use of the so-called Corpus Gysseling (1998), an electronic database containing most of the surviving sources written in Middle Dutch before 1300. This database provides a huge amount of information on credit transactions and is an excellent instrument for regional comparison, as it contains acts from all over Flanders. Based on a survey of these sources we have been able to establish a typology of credit instruments in use on the late medieval Flemish countryside. Three types of credit seem particular importantly: sales of annuities; ‘sale and rent back transactions’ of land and rents derived from the placement of orphans’ money. We will consider each in turn. II.1. Sales of annuities Sales of annuities – constituted rent or rentes constituées – were known in Flanders since the twelfth century, but they became especially important as a main form of credit in the second half of the thirteenth century. As is well known, there were different types of annuities, the most important being perpetual annuities and life annuities. The latter were restricted to the lifetime of the lender (‘purchaser’) whereas the former were passed over to the legal heirs of both lender and borrower. The interest rate was generally higher for life annuities than for perpetual annuities. As we will see below the first data on life annuities date back to the 1370s. In the last decades of the fourteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth century they seem to have been very popular. This would change in the sixteenth century, when the share of perpetual annuities was increasing again. In the course of the previous century, perpetual annuities had become largely redeemable, although it would last until 1529 before the central government issued a general permit to do so (Thoen, 1988: 905). As a result the biggest advantage of life annuities over perpetual annuities – their limitation in time – was countered and its popularity was going down in favour of perpetual annuities. At least since the fourteenth century, most sales of annuities were stipulated in cash. Therefore they were often indicated in the sources as sousrenten or ‘money rents’. Sales of annuities were often mortgaged on real estate, although regulations about mortgaging could be quite flexible, allowing a vivid credit market. In the village of Haaltert in Inland Flanders for instance, credit transactions stipulate that a mortgage on real estate was necessary if the lent sum was not repaid within a certain period, mostly three years. This kind of arrangement was also useful to avoid the seigniorial fines levied on mortgaging by the local lords: only a minority of the credit transactions was

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reimbursed within the mentioned term, but there are no traces in the registration of additional arrangements on mortgages added to already existing annuities. Probably the mortgage on real estate was simply discussed orally. In late medieval Flanders there was also no strict link between the value of the annuity and the value of the real estate mortgaged. The lent sum was mostly lower than the value of the mortgage. We can conclude that the link between the annuity and the real estate mortgaged was rather weak, and this clearly distinguishes the classic annuity from a second type of credit transactions that was very popular in (parts of) Flanders during the late medieval period: the so-called ‘sale and rent-back’ arrangement. II.2. ‘Sale-and-rent-back’ [SRB] arrangements This type of credit transaction has not yet received a great deal of attention in the historiography. Institutionally, two transactions were taking place simultaneously and were usually described in the same instrument. Due to a need for cash, the peasant or farmer sold land he owned or held in customary tenure for a certain amount of cash. Subsequently, the land was restored to him by the new owner in exchange for an annual and mostly hereditary rent. In general this rent was high, almost corresponding to the lease-value of the land (see below). As a consequence, sale and rent back transactions of this kind were only profitable for the borrower when agricultural prices were expected to rise. When prices were stagnating or even falling, the burden of rent became very high, and a debtor could become unable to meet his commitments. In the latter case, the creditor who already ‘owned’ the land as a result of the sale-and-rent-back transaction was also handed the usufruct. Sale-and-rent-back operations were very popular in the Flemish coastal area in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, although similar kind of transactions existed in other parts of the Low Countries as well. In the thirteenth century city of Brussels contracts closely resembling ‘cessionretrocession’ were used (Godding, 1960: 194–199) whereas in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux in the fifteenth century they were known as ‘abouts’ (Platelle, 1966: 335). In coastal Flanders this type of transaction had disappeared almost completely by the fifteenth century. With more and more land held in short-term leasehold, the peasantry had little land left that could be used for sale-and-rent-back transactions and for those who still owned land, sales of annuities became the most common way of obtaining credit. II.3. Orphan money rents Although the possessions of orphans were usually administrated by their guardians, in some areas it became common to entrust cash money or the proceeds from the sale of real estate or movables to the local public administration. Local aldermen acted as trustees of the orphans and guarantor of their possessions. The aldermen invested the orphans’ money, lending it out or using it for other purposes, quite often, in order to cover community debts (Harding, 2003). Orphan money was attractive as a source of credit, not the least because it escaped the church ban on interest-bearing lending (Spicksley, 2007: 201). Orphans generally had the possibility to recover the capital when they married or reached adulthood. In Flanders the use of orphan money as source of credit dated back to the thirteenth century in cities like Bruges and is found in some rural areas from the fifteenth century on. In the latter period, annual interest rates on orphan money were generally high, in many cases as high as ‘the penny 7.5’ i.e.13.33 per cent (Thoen, 1988: 907–908).

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During the sixteenth century the centralization and investment of orphan money by local courts, came increasingly to be replaced by individual sales of life annuities on behalf of the orphans. With the expansion of the credit market in the sixteenth century, there were other and cheaper opportunities to get a loan and this form of (expensive) credit became less popular, although in some Flemish regions like the castellany of Courtrai it survived until the seventeenth century.

III. Evolution of the credit market Between the thirteenth and the sixteenth century, the credit market in the Flemish countryside underwent important changes, both with regard to the preferred credit instruments, the number of transactions, the length of the loan or its possibility to be redeemed. Furthermore, the evolutions were significantly divergent in the two Flemish agro-systems. Table 2.1 gives a simplified overview of the most popular types of rural credit in both Coastal and Inland Flanders. Table 2.1

Period

Rural credit instruments in Inland and Coastal Flanders (thirteenth-sixteenth century) (HA: sales of hereditary annuities; LA: sales of life annuities; SRB: sale-and-rent-back transactions; OR = orphans money rents; ® redeemable; codes between brackets indicate less frequently used credit instruments) Inland Flanders

thirteenth century HA > (SRB) fourteenth century HA > (SRB) LA > HA (from 1370’s) fifteenth century LA > HA > OR LA® > HA® > OR (from 1480’s) sixteenth century HA® > LA® > (OR) (until c.1570)

Coastal Flanders SRB > HA SRB > HA HA® > LA® > (SRB) > (OR) HA® > LA®

Both agro-systems showed significant differences in the use of particular credit instruments and in the adoption and spread of new institutional arrangements like the possibility to redeem annuities. III.1. Coastal Flanders Typical for coastal Flanders is the success of SRB-transactions in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. This becomes clear when considering the number of individual deeds and contracts written in Middle Dutch between 1266 and 1281. For this limited time-span of fifteen years 350 non-literary texts written in Middle Dutch have been preserved. No less than 93 of them involve credit transactions, most of them regarding the coastal plain.

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Table 2.2

Credit transactions in instruments written in Middle Dutch (1266–1281)1

Sale-and-rent-back transactions Sales of annuities

Coastal Flanders

Inland Flanders

82 5

1 5

Although there is a clear bias in the documentary evidence, favouring the Coastal plain and its central part, the castellany of the Franc of Bruges, it nevertheless becomes clear that SRB transactions were the most successful credit instrument in the late thirteenth century coastal plain, whereas sales of annuities were more frequent in Inland Flanders. We can employ another source confirming the extraordinary importance of SRB in coastal Flanders. For the village of Lampernisse near Furnes in the western part of the coastal plain, an exceptional series of twenty-eight SRBs, recorded on chirographs and once stored in the City Archives of Ypres, have been identified as a result of an analysis made by G. Des Marez before the subsequent destruction of the archives in the course of the First World War:123 Table 2.3

Sale-and-rent-back transactions in Lampernisse 1275–12812

Number of transactions Total amount of rents (Flemish groten) Total amount of capital ‘lent’ (Flemish groten) interest rate (%) Average annual rent per transaction (Flemish groten) total size of land involved (hectare) average size of land involved (hectare) average annual rent per hectare (Flemish groten) Annual rent per hectare : variation coefficient (%)3

28 1140 11400 10 40.7 52 1.9 25.0 22.8

Source: Des Marez, 1926

1

Gysseling 1998 II. The numbers 40, 45, 46, 50, 51, 52, 54, 56, 58, 59; 60, 62, 63, 67, 68, 71, 72, 76, 77, 80, 81, 91, 99, 102, 104, 105, 105a, 105b, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 128, 133, 139, 141, 141a, 144, 150a, 153, 154, 155, 156, 160, 164, 168, 177, 202, 205, 207, 211, 222, 226, 229, 247, 248, 250, 253, 254, 260, 261, 262, 266, 267, 277, 284, 291, 293, 300, 302, 605, 310, 320, 321, 322, 326, 354, 368 and 377 are ‘sale-and-rent-back’ transactions in Coastal Flanders, whereas number 49 concerns Inland Flanders. Numbers 73, 89, 151, 296 and 351 are sales of annuities in the Coastal plain ; numbers 43, 282, 336, 364 and 368a in Inland Flanders. 2 Des Marez partly misinterpreted the meaning of these transactions. Fortunately, the counterpart of one of the chirographs has been preserved (State Archives Bruges (SAB), Oorkonden met Blauw Nummer, 1719), which enabled us to identify the documents analysed by Des Marez as SRB-transactions. The amounts of money have been converted from livres artésiens into Flemish groten. The Artesian pound equaled the Flemish pound parisis (Van Werveke 1934: 107) and the latter was appreciated at one tenth of a Flemish pound groten, at least until 1294: Van Werveke 1953–54: 11–13). One pound groten equals 240 pennies (denarii) groten, the latter simply called groten. 3 The variation coefficient is calculated by dividing the standard deviation by the average value. The higher the variation coefficient, the less the data are clustered.

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The considerable number of credit transactions – twenty-eight – for one single village in a limited time-span of six years is remarkable. The plots of land involved in the transactions were relatively small (1 to 2 hectares), and in a number of cases the instruments mention that the ‘sellers’ were actually living on these plots of land.4 The land was returned to the seller, but from that moment on his tenure was much less secure. An average annual rent of 25 groten per hectare was high: in the 1270s short term leases in the Flemish coastal plain usually fluctuated between 40 and 55 groten per hectare (Soens, 2009: table 3.5). The – hereditary – rent stipulated in the SRB-transactions thus amounted to 50 or even 60 per cent of the price for short-term lease and was considerably higher than the rent usually paid for customary tenure. In other words, peasant-landowners engaging in a SRB-transaction risked losing the very land they lived on. The high interest rate of 10 per cent further suggests an urgent need for cash that we will try to explain below. SRB-transactions remained popular in Coastal Flanders until the beginning of the fifteenth century. A random sample in the court registers of the seignory of the Dean of Saint-Donatian gives more insight in the mechanisms and the evolution of the credit market in the surroundings of Bruges:5 Table 2.4

Credit transactions registered before the court of the Dean of Saint-Donatian in Bruges, 1429–1570 (the number of redeemable loans indicated between brackets)5 1429–31 1474–76 1530–32

Hereditary annuities Life-annuities Sale-and-rent-back transactions Sale-and-rent-back transactions limited in time to the life of the buyer Total number of transactions Average annual rent per transaction (Flemish groten) Average amount of capital ‘lent’ (Flemish groten) Average annual rent per hectare (Flemish groten) Annual rent per hectare : variation coefficient (%)

1 (1)

3 (3)

10 (6) 8 (1)

2 (2) 1 (0)

19 288

1569–71

19 (19) 2 (1)

22 (22) 2 (0)

6 284.4

21 378

24 676.8

3180

4848

4932

10722

82.9

72.8

81

139.8

76.9%

58.2%

102.0%

130.7%

4

E.g. SAB, Oorkonden met Blauw Nummer, 1719: ‘deus messures de terre et demi la il mainnent’. 5 SAB, Proosdij Sint-Donaas, 1236–1251.

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Compared to the thirteenth century two changes had already occurred by the first half of the fifteenth century: on the one hand most of the ‘perpetual’ annuities and rents had become redeemable and, on the other, an element of the SRB-transactions was now limited to the lifetime of the money-lender. Both evolutions tended to enhance the security of tenure enjoyed by the original ‘seller’ of the land. Just like their thirteenth-century counterparts, the rent value in the fifteenth century SRB-transactions was high in comparison to the value of the land involved in the transaction. Average short-term leases in the fifteenth-century coastal plain dropped from c. 135 Flemish groten per hectare around 1430 to c. 94 around 1475 (Thoen and Soens, forthcoming). The annual rent in the SRB transactions thus amounted to 60–80 per cent of average short-term leases. However, fluctuations in this general pattern were becoming more significant and, in fact, intensified in the course of the sixteenth century. By the end of the sixteenth century the ratio between the amount of rent and the amount of land engaged in the transaction had become extremely variable, with high annuities mortgaged on small plots of land and vice versa: the link between the value of the land engaged in the credit transaction and the importance of the loan – very typical for the thirteenth century credit market in the coastal plain – obviously disappeared. By that period the traditional preference in the coastal plain for sale-and-rent-back operations had also faded away. Redeemable annuities (losrenten) had become the standard credit instrument, with interest rates falling down from an average of 8 per cent in 1429–31 to 6.3 per cent (le denier seize) in 1569–71. With redeemable annuities and much lower interest rates one could suppose that credit in the sixteenth-century coastal plain became more easily available. However, neither the number of transactions nor the capital involved seems to have increased. In contrast, if we also take into account sixteenth-century inflation – in the 1570s grain prices in Bruges were at least 2.5 times higher than in the 1430s – the increase in capital volume was negligible. At least part of the explanation can be found in the structural evolution of landownership in the coastal plain: we have already noted that the number of peasant landowners had significantly diminished between the end of the thirteenth and the end of the sixteenth century. With 90 per cent or more of the land held in short term leasehold, the share of the rural population able to mortgage land on the credit market was probably much lower in the sixteenth century than it had been three centuries before. III.2. Inland Flanders: a divergent evolution For Inland Flanders, serial data on the rural credit market in the thirteenth and fourteenth century are rare. It seems that credit transactions – mostly sales of annuities – were most popular in periods of rising (nominal) prices, e.g. between 1337 and 1370. This can be deduced from the evolution of credit transactions in twenty-four different parishes around the city of Grammond registered on behalf of the Carthusian convent of Sint-Maarten-Bos (Sint-Martens-Lierde). Between 1327 and 1340 twenty-three annuities were registered. Between 1343 and 1363 there were no less than fifty-three new sales, but thereafter the number of transactions dropped significantly: between 1363 and 1417 only seven further transactions were registered.6 Probably the decreasing solvency 6

State Archives Ronse (SAR), Priorij Sint-Maarten-Bos, nr. 70.

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of the institution, related to the late medieval crisis, played a role in this evolution, but we must also take into account a diminished demand for credit by the rural population from the 1370s on: annuities in fourteenth century Flanders were generally stipulated in cash, so it was advantageous for the borrower to contracts loans in a period of rising prices. When grain prices became stable or even slightly depressed from the 1370s on, this incentive disappeared (Thoen, 1988: 900–901). In the last decades of the fourteenth century, life annuities became increasingly popular in Inland Flanders: 58 per cent of the annuity-sales registered in the accounts of the bailiff of the castellany of Oudenaarde between 1372 and 1400 concerned life annuities (Thoen, 1988: 902). For more than a century this type of credit transaction dominated the rural credit market of Inland Flanders:7 Table 2.5

The credit market in the village of Haaltert (Inland Flanders), 1472–15707 Life annuities (capital lent)

1472–79 1480–89 1490–99 1500–02 1510–12 1520–22 1530–32 1540–42 1551–53 1561–70

Perpetual Orphan’ Total Number Average annuities money (capital capital transaccapital/ (capital lent) lent) lent tions/year transaction

Flemish % Flemish % Flemish groten groten groten

% Flemish groten

804 5196 672 3504 5424 6576 3864 5580 3216 1644

12 1 – 12 – – – – –

78 99 61 88 94 35 21 23 11 11

102 – 432 – 320 12156 14772 18432 24900 13956

10 – 39 – 6 65 79 77 89 89

131 36 – 480 – – – – – –

1037 5232 1104 3984 5744 18732 18636 24012 28116 15600

N 1.5 6.1 1.7 8.3 9.3 15.7 16.7 23 15 8

Flemish groten 684 864 648 480 624 1188 1116 1044 1872 1800

Examination of the court registers of the village of Haaltert makes it clear that perpetual annuities only regained their popularity at the very end of the fifteenth century. Not surprisingly, in this part of Flanders, they had only become redeemable from the 1480s onwards, and thus much later than in Coastal Flanders. The number of credit transactions as well as the invested capital also increased considerably: by the middle of the sixteenth century the volume of the Haaltert credit market was twenty times greater than it had been in the 1470s. Even taking into account the price revolution of

7

State Archives Beveren (SABE), Oud Gemeentearchief Haaltert, 259; 306–307; 327–329.

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the sixteenth century, the credit market in Inland Flanders was clearly booming in the sixteenth century, which was not the case in Coastal Flanders. Unfortunately for inland Flanders it was not possible to calculate the ratio between the value of the loan and the size of the land mortgaged, since most transactions did not mention the mortgage, probably in an effort to avoid seigniorial taxation, as discussed above. Nevertheless it can be seen that the importance of the transactions was different in both agro-systems. While in late fifteenth century Haaltert the average capital per contract was fluctuating around 700 Flemish groten per transaction, the amount was at least six times higher in Coastal Flanders (4848 Flemish groten on average in 1474–76: table 2.4) and this difference persisted throughout the sixteenth century. It is clear that by the sixteenth century credit arrangements had become more flexible in both Coastal and Inland Flanders: legal constraints had become less severe, the link with the rental value of the mortgaged land was fading away, and interest rates were falling. However, more flexible institutional arrangements could not avoid the persistence of important regional divergences: the contrasting capital investment per transaction clearly reveals a structurally different credit market. In the next section we will try to explain these differences by linking them to the evolution of the social agro-system in both regions.

IV. The demand for credit and the social agro-system Why did people seek access to the credit market? Explaining the evolution of the credit demand is not an easy task. Ideally one must assess the wealth or poverty of each individual debtor, since wealthy debtors usually contracted loans for investments, whereas debtors on the edge of bankruptcy might, we assume, be forced to the credit market from necessity (Brennan, 2006: 178). That said, complete insight into the financial situation of individual lenders and borrowers can seldom if ever be reached. In order to unravel the economic strategies of both lenders and borrowers, taking into account the basic characteristics of the regional social agro-system could improve our knowledge of the credit market considerably. In what follows evidence for the distribution of land and power, the income strategies of lords and peasants and, to a minor degree, environmental conditions, will all be used in order to shed light on divergent credit strategies in both Coastal and Inland Flanders. IV.1. Coastal Flanders In the late Middle Ages Coastal Flanders was making a swift transition to a more commercialised economy with larger market-oriented holdings. In the initial phase of this transition, in the late thirteenth and the early fourteenth century, this process was accompanied by an intense activity within the credit market, which slowed down in the subsequent period. In our opinion the success of sale-and-rent-back (SRB) transactions in villages like Lampernisse in the late thirteenth century has to be explained by structural problems faced by the peasant landowners in the area, urging them to contract heavy loans on their farms, creating debts they and their heirs were unable to meet in the following decades. In other words: necessity had driven the coastal peasants to the

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credit market in this period, which is explicitly confirmed by the narratio of some of the contracts, which mention that the loan was contracted prope evidentem urgentem necessitatem suam cum non poterant commodus subvenire.8 In order to understand the impoverishment of the coastal peasants in this period, we have to go back to the specific property and power relations that had been established in this region long before the thirteenth century. Since the Carolingian period the peasants of the coastal area had profited from favourable legal and economic circumstances. We have already mentioned that the rise of local seigniorial power in this region was blocked by the presence of the count of Flanders (Tys, 2005; Thoen, 2004). As was the case in many other coastal wetlands of the North Sea Area the count guaranteed the personal freedom of the inhabitants in order to stimulate reclamations. By the twelfth century communities of free peasants merged with the tenants of the counts’ demesne-lands, which, by that period, were largely subdivided in customary tenure (Verhulst, 1967). Secure tenure, personal freedom, a free landmarket and promising environmental conditions all fostered the splitting up of holdings and landed property in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: in 1281 82 per cent of the tenants of the Ghent abbey of Saint-Peter in the region of Oostburg held less than 3 hectares, whereas only 1 per cent held more than 15 hectares (Soens and Thoen, 2009: table 6). In any available sample for the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, at least three quarters of the landowners in the coastal plain owned less than 5 hectares of land (Soens, 2009: tables 2.1–2.4). By the late thirteenth century however the economic conditions of the coastal peasants were clearly getting worse. The free landmarket in the coastal plain, the absence of feudal levies and the agricultural potential of recently embanked polders attracted urban and institutional investors, especially from the large cities of Bruges and Ghent, who started to buy land in the coastal area and turned to short-term leases in order to exploit their land (Soens and Thoen, 2009). At the same time environmental conditions were getting worse: more and more inundations occurred due to drainage problems or failing flood protection. Both the increased cost of maintaining the vulnerable sea-defences and outlet-sluices and the risk of inundations disadvantaged peasantlandowners compared to lease-hold farmers, who in case of flooding were backed up by financially strong urban or institutional landowners. More and more maintenance duties were converted into cash contributions, once again to the disadvantage of the peasants. These ‘water taxes’ had to be paid within a very short period, usually a few weeks or even days, with harsh fines in case of non-payment, and sometimes leading to irreversible expropriation when taxes and fines were not paid in due time (Soens, 2005). The French-Flemish wars at the turn of the thirteenth century also brought devastation and taxes to the coastal plain. The coastal rural districts, in particular the Franc de Bruges and the castellany of Furnes would become major contributors in the slowly increasing central government taxation of the fourteenth century (Zoete, 1994: 184–185; Thoen and Soens, 2009). The collecting of the huge fines in the aftermath of the French-Flemish wars would eventually be one of the major reasons for the so-called Peasant Revolt of 1323–1328 which was concentrated in the coastal plain (TeBrake, 1993). 8

SAB, Kerkarchief Onze-Lieve Vrouw te Brugge, Oud Archief, 13, f°25v : contract of 1256.

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Increased taxes and an unequal competition with the increased number of leasehold farmers, probably brought many peasant landowners into financial problems. These financial problems can explain the boom of the credit market in the late thirteenth century plain, at least from the demand-side. On the supply-side, the same incentives that made urban dwellers and ecclesiastical institutions invest in land in Coastal Flanders, also fostered their engagement in the credit market. At the same time the success of the sale-and-rent-back (SRB) transactions in this period probably accelerated the expropriation of peasant land in the coastal plain. As the annual rent of the SRB transactions was high, the payment could become difficult, especially in years of low income or high taxes. When in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the prices for leasehold fell due to further impoverishment and accumulation of large holdings, the leases were often hardly higher than the rent charges. Although it requires further investigation, it is likely that many lands engaged in SRB transactions were either expropriated due to rent arrears or subject to renegotiation with the creditor and converted into short-term leases. In accordance with Brenner, we believe that expropriation of peasant land led to accumulation, larger holdings and commercialisation, as farmers had to compete with each other for leases (most recently Brenner, 2001: 291). In the coastal plain the impoverishment of the peasant landowners and the increased demand for credit thus stimulated the evolution of rural society towards commercialisation. Finally, the same evolution of property concentration hampered the further expansion of the rural credit market in the fifteenth and sixteenth century coastal plain, as fewer and fewer farmers possessed land they could use as mortgage for annuities. Only the richer farmers, owning at least some land, could still be active in the credit market. IV.2. Inland Flanders We agree with van Bavel that the land market in peasant economies was often more active than its equivalent in regions dominated by large landownership (van Bavel, 2003: 142; 2001). In Inland Flanders peasant landownership remained important throughout the late medieval and early modern period. Apart from a limited number of large holdings, often owned by urban landowners, leasehold farming could never break through in this area. The importance of landed property for the peasants made them engage in the land market, buying and selling landed property. Most peasants however were not interested in simply accumulating land: they adapted their amount of land to their needs and these needs were changing over time in accordance with the ‘life cycle’ and family size. Although a good deal of land was bought without contracting formal loans, it is clear that credit transactions were not absent in this peasant landmarket. In particular young peasants starting up their own farm can be thought to have lacked the financial means to buy land without contracting a loan. In this hypothesis both land purchases and loans were needed to keep the family income stable and in accordance with the available labour force in particular stages of the peasant life cycle (Pfister, 2007). Lacking information on the identity of buyers and sellers, it is not easy to link transactions on the land and credit markets to the life cycle of peasant families. For the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries an exceptional series of probate inventories for the region of Oudenaarde enables an in-depth analysis of peasant landownership. When classifying the

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peasants in wealth-categories according to the amount of land inherited by them, clear differences in their activity on the land market can be noticed: Figure 2.1 Relative share (%) of land purchased during marriage for 8 wealth categories in the region of Oudenaarde, 1400–15509 120 100 80

1400–09 1440–49 1470–79 1541–50

60 40 20 0 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

In all samples the percentage of land purchased during marriage compared to the total amount of land owned at the moment of death, was the highest in those families owning little inherited land. ‘Richer’ families with more inherited land typically were less active on the land market. In general, these wealthier families also had more children. Only the life-cycle of the peasants can help to explain this remarkable pattern: the first categories probably include young families who had not yet inherited land from their parents. They had to purchase land on the land market. During the course of the life cycle more land was inherited, and families no longer needed to buy additional land on the market, and thus the relative share of purchased land in the total possessions was diminishing. The larger holdings were clearly not interested in land accumulation. In this type of rural economy, peasants typically wanted to start a family as fast as economically possible and this could only be accomplished by buying land. The land market thus was a necessary component of a peasant economy with high population density and increasing shortage of land as was the case in Inland Flanders. Figure 2.1 reveals little of the importance of annuity sales in order to finance land acquisitions. It is nevertheless likely that the first categories, representing the younger families, were more active on the credit market as well, not only to buy land but also to buy movable goods – including cattle and tools – that were equally important to start up a peasant farm. In the normal life cycle of a peasant family the accumulation of debts was concentrated in the first years of setting up an independent household, as most families had to expect an ‘inheritance’ from their family in a later stage of their life cycle.9

9

City Archives Oudenaarde (CAO), Regesten van Staten van Goed, see also Thoen 1988: II 888–891. 1 = 0–0.25 ha; 2 = 0.25–0,5 ha; 3 = 0,5–1 ha; 4 = 1–2 ha; 5 = 2–4 ha; 6 = 4–6 ha; 7 = 6–10 ha; 8 = 10–15 ha; 9 = 15–20 ha; 10 = 20+ ha

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As population increased in the sixteenth century, the subdivision of holdings in Inland Flanders also grew stronger. In the castellany of Alost 72 per cent of all landholdings were smaller than 3 hectares c. 1570, with 41 per cent even smaller than 1 hectare and this fragmentation would continue until the middle of the nineteenth century (Van Isterdael, 1986; Thoen and Vanhaute, 1999). Parallel with the subdivision of holdings, the demand for credit also increased, as land became more expensive and the financial support from parents was reduced. As we have seen for the village of Haaltert, the capital volume of the credit market was considerably higher in the sixteenth century than it had been one century before (Table 2.5). In Haaltert much of the capital came from the nearby town of Alost, but nevertheless important capital transfers occurred within the peasant economy as well: for older peasants the purchase of annuities, and in particular life annuities, which became popular in the fifteenth century, offered an ideal instrument to ensure an annual income once retired from active farming. So, on the supply-side of the peasant credit market as well, life-cycle seems to have been an important variable. For Coastal Flanders we have stressed the risk of bankruptcy for those peasantlandowners who accumulated too many debts. Of course in Inland Flanders as well this risk was never completely absent, although the aforementioned life-cycle strategies could facilitate debt reimbursement in later stages of life. Nevertheless we have seen that the number of credit transactions was especially growing in periods of rising prices, which was favourable for debtors as the real interest rate decreased parallel with the inflation. Most solvency problems occurred in times of war or when the economy was stagnating after a period of growth. In the very long run the expanding credit market might have favoured peasant expropriation in Inland Flanders too, but before the middle of the nineteenth century, neither the expropriation process itself nor the role of debt in it, were comparable to what happened in the late medieval Coastal Plain.

V.

Conclusion

This article has concentrated on social agro-systems as a framework to study rural credit markets. A comparative study of credit markets in two contrasting social agro-systems within the county of Flanders has made it possible to explain some essential characteristics of the credit market in both regions. Between the thirteenth and the sixteenth century the structural differences between Inland Flanders and the coastal region were increasing. Whereas Inland Flanders evolved towards what could be described as a ‘commercial survival economy’ – i.e. a peasant economy using the market merely as a tool to secure the survival of the peasant family (Thoen, 2001), the coastal society was making the transition towards a market-oriented economy and was increasingly dominated by large leasehold farms. Although much work on rural credit markets in medieval Flanders remains to be done, this article makes clear that the volume and characteristics of the rural credit market could vary significantly, even between neighboring regions. Credit systems could even accentuate the differences between agro-systems, although their role was never exclusive and seldom decisive. In coastal Flanders peasant landowners were increasingly driven to the credit market from the second half of the thirteenth century as a result of worsening economic and

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environmental conditions. The success of ‘sale-and-rent-back’ (SRB) transactions, characterized by high interest rates and loss of property rights, reflects a society in urgent need of cash with peasant landholders having to risk the very ground they lived on in order to secure survival. Heavy rent charges combined with increased fiscal demands and ‘water taxes’ needed to protect the coastal area from flooding were disastrous for many peasant landowners, and this was probably even more the case when the market for agricultural products started to contract from the 1370s onwards. The fifteenth century brought institutional innovations to the Flemish coastal credit market: interest rates started to drop, annuities became redeemable and the link with the rental value of the mortgaged land, which had been very tight in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was relaxed. Nevertheless, the total capital volume on the credit market slackened, as many farmers no longer owned the land needed to engage effectively in credit transactions. Whereas the credit market probably contributed to the disintegration of the peasant economy in coastal Flanders, this was not the case in Inland Flanders. In the latter region the evolution of the credit market seems to be in line with the viability of the peasant economy. The credit market boomed in the sixteenth century, in parallel with the expansion of the peasant economy in this period. The economic strategy of the Flemish peasants was first of all aimed at securing the survival of the family and their use of both the land and the credit markets must be seen as part of these survival strategies. Typical in this respect was a fluctuation in the course of the life cycle, with a heightened resort to credit in the early stages of independent family life when the family farm was being established and equipped. In later years the activity within the land and credit market ceased, as more and more land (and capital) was inherited from parents. The credit market in Inland Flanders thus enabled the continuing subdivision of holdings and thereby helped to maintain the structures of a typically ‘Flemish’ peasant economy based on a majority of very small holdings.

Manuscript, printed and electronic sources City Archives Oudenaarde (CAO), Regesten van Staten van Goed State Archives Bruges (SAB), Oorkonden met Blauw Nummer, 1719 State Archives Bruges (SAB), Kerkarchief Onze-Lieve Vrouw te Brugge, Oud Archief, 13 State Archives Bruges (SAB), Proosdij Sint-Donaas, 1236–1251 State Archives Beveren (SABE), Oud Gemeentearchief Haaltert, 259; 306–307; 327–329. State Archives Ronse (SAR), Priorij Sint-Maarten-Bos, nr. 70. Gysseling, M. (1998), Corpus van Middelnederlandse Teksten (tot en met het jaar 1300). Deel II: ambtelijke bescheiden, ’s Gravenhage. Smet, J. de (ed.) (1933), Het memoriaal van Simon De Rikelike, vrijlaat te Sint-Pietersop-den-dijk 1323–1336, Brussel.

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Bibliography Abbeele, H. van den (1985) De penningkohieren als sociaal-ekonomische en demografische bron. Het Land van Waas 1571, Unpublished licentiaat thesis, Gent. Augustyn, B. (1992) Zeespiegelrijzing, transgressiefasen en stormvloeden in maritiem Vlaanderen tot het einde van de XVIde eeuw: een landschappelijke, ecologische en klimatologische studie in historisch perspektief, Brussel. Bavel, B.J.P. van (2001) ‘Land, Lease and Agriculture: the Transition of the rural Economy in the Dutch River Area (Fourteenth-Sixteenth centuries)’, Past and present, 172, pp. 3–43. Bavel, B.J.P. van (2003) ‘The land market in the North Sea Area in a Comparative Perspective 13th-18th centuries’, in: S. Cavaciocchi (ed.), Il mercato della terra. Secc. XIII-XVIII. Atti della Trentacinquesima Settimana di Studi 5–9 maggio 2003, Paris, pp. 119–145 (Instituto Internazionale di storia economica F. Datini. Prato. Serie II : atti delle Settimane di Studi e altri Convegni, 35). Brennan, Th. (2006) ‘Peasants and debt in eighteenth century Champagne’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 37, 2, pp. 175–200. Brenner, R. (2001) ‘The Low Countries in the transition to capitalism’, Hoppenbrouwers, P. en Zanden, J.L. van (eds.), Peasants into farmers? The transformation of rural economy and society in the Low Countries (middle ages-19th century) in light of the Brenner debate, Turnhout, pp. 275–338. (CORN-Publication Series 4). Cruyningen, P. van (2000) Behoudend maar buigzaam: boeren in West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen 1650–1850, Wageningen. (AAG Bijdragen, 40). Des Marez, G. (1926) Le problème de la colonisation franque et du régime agraire en Belgique, Brussels. Duby, G. (1962) L’ économie rurale et la vie des campagnes dans l’Occident médiéval, Paris, 2 vols. Feller, L. and Wickham, C. (eds.) (2005) Le marché de la terre au Moyen Age, Rome (Ecole française de Rome). Godding, Ph. (1960) Le droit foncier à Bruxelles au Moyen Age, Bruxelles. Godding, Ph. (1987) Le droit privé dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux du 12e au 18e siècle, Bruxelles. Harding, V.A. (2003) ‘The crown, the city and the orphans : the city of London and its finances, 1400–1700’, in: Boone, M., Davids, K. And Janssens, P. (eds.), Urban public debts: urban government and the market for annuities in Western Europe (14th-18th centuries), Turnhout, pp. 51–60 (Studies in European Urban History (1100–1800), 3). Isterdael, H. Van (1986) ‘Landbouwstructuren in het Land van Aalst (17de-18de eeuw)’, Het Land van Aalst, 40, pp. 269–308. Koch, A.C.F. (1951) De rechterlijke organisatie van het graafschap Vlaanderen tot in de dertiende eeuw, Gent. Kraker, A.M.J. de (1997) Landschap uit balans. De Vier Ambachten en het Land van Saeftinghe tussen 1488 en 1609, Utrecht.

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Lambrecht, Th. (2003) ‘Reciprocal exchange, credit and cash: agricultural labour markets and local economies in the southern Low Countries during the eighteenth century’, Continuity and Change, 18, pp. 237–261. Maréchal, J. (1955) Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van het bankwezen te Brugge, Brugge. Maréchal, J. (1960) Inventaris van het Archief der Proosdij van Sint-Donaas te Brugge, Brussel. Mertens, J. (1970) De laat-middeleeuwse landbouweconomie in enkele gemeenten van het Brugse Vrije, Gent-Leuven. Murray, J.M. (2005) Bruges, cradle of capitalism, 1280–1390, Cambridge. Platelle, H. (1966) ‘Les rentes viagères et le problème de l’endettement à Saint-Amand au XVe siècle’, Revue d’histoire du Droit, 34, p. 329–374. Pfister, U. (2007) ‘Rural land and credit markets, the permanent income hypothesis and protoindustry: evidence from early modern Zurich’, Continuity and Change, 22, pp. 489–518. Prevenier, W., Murray, J.M. and Oosterbosch, M. (1997) ‘Les notaires publics dans les anciens Pays-Bas du XIIIe au XVIe siècle’, in : Ostos, P. and Pardo, M.L. (eds.), Estudios sobre el Notariado Europeo (Siglos XIV - XV), Universidad de Sevilla, pp. 53–71. Roover, R. de (1948) Money, banking and Credit in Medieval Bruges: Italian merchant-bankers, lombards and money changers, Cambridge (Mediaeval Academy of America 51) Roover, R. de (1968) The Bruges Money market around 1400: with a statistical supplement, Brussel (Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België. Klasse der Letteren 63). Soens, T. (2005) ‘Explaining deficiencies of water management in the late medieval Flemish coastal plain, 13th-16th centuries’, Jaarboek voor Ecologische Geschiedenis, pp. 35–61. Soens, T. (2009) De spade in de dijk. De Vlaamse wateringen in het licht van de institutionele en sociaal-economische ontwikkeling van de kustvlakte (1280–1580), Gent (Historische Economie en Ecologie). Soens, T. and Thoen, E. (2009) ‘The origins of leaseholding in the former county of Flanders’, in: van Bavel, B.J.P. and Schofield, Ph. R. (eds.), The origins and early development of leaseholding in Europe, Turnhout (CORN Publication series, 10). Soetaert, P. (1986) De Bergen van barmhartigheid in de Spaanse, de Oostenrijkse en de Franse Nederlanden, 1618–1795), Brussel (Gemeentekrediet Historische Uitgaven Pro Civitate, in-8°, 67) Spicksley, J.M. (2007) ‘“Fly with a duck in thy mouth”: single women as sources of credit in seventeenth-century England’, Social History, 32, 2, pp. 187–207. TeBrake, W.H. (1993) A plague of insurrection. Popular politics and peasant revolt in Flanders, 1323–1328, Philadelphia. Thoen, E. (1988) Landbouwekonomie en bevolking in Vlaanderen gedurende de late Middeleeuwen en het begin van de Moderne Tijden. Testregio: de kasselrijen van Oudenaarde en Aalst (eind 13de-eerste helft 16de eeuw), Gent (Belgisch Centrum voor Landelijke Geschiedenis, 90).

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Thoen, E. (1997) ‘The birth of the “Flemish Husbandry”: agricultural technology in medieval Flanders’, in: Astill, G. and Langdon, J. (eds.), Medieval farming and technology: the impact of agricultural change in Northwest Europe, Leiden, pp. 69–88 (Technology and change in history, 1). Thoen, E. (1999a) ‘De twee gezichten van de Vlaamse landbouw en het probleem der ‘Wüstungen’. Middeleeuwen-Moderne Tijden’, in: Docendo discimus. Liber Amicorum Romain Van Eenoo, Ghent, pp. 75–84. Thoen, E. (1999b) ‘Zeeuwse landbouw en Vlaamse landbouw vanaf de Middeleeuwen: antipoden of complementariteit?’ in: Landbouw in Zeeland. Themanummer. Nehalennia, Bulletin van de werkgroep Historie en Archeologie van het Koninklijk Zeeuws Genootschap der Wetenschappen en de Zeeuwsche vereeniging voor dialectonderzoek, 126, pp. 8–19. Thoen, E., (2001) ‘A “commercial survival economy” in evolution. The Flemish countryside and the transformation to capitalism (Middle Ages-19th century)’, in: Hoppenbrouwers, P. and Van Zanden, J.L. (eds.), Peasants into farmers? The transformation of rural economy and society in the Low Countries (middle ages-19th century) in light of the Brenner debate, Turnhout, pp. 102–158 (CORN Publication Series 4). Thoen, E (2004) ‘‘Social Agrosystems’ as an economic concept to explain regional differences. An essay taking the former county of Flanders as an example (Middle Ages-19th Century)’, in: van Bavel, B.J.P and Hoppenbrouwers, P. (eds.), Landholding and land transfer in the North Sea area (late Middle Ages-19th century), Turnhout, pp. 47–66 (CORN Publication Series 5). Thoen, E. and Soens, T. (2001) ‘Van landschapsgeschiedenis naar ecologische geschiedenis. Waterbeheer in de Vlaamse kustvlakte in de Late Middeleeuwen en het Ancien Régime’, Jaarboek voor Ecologische Geschiedenis, pp. 1–24. Thoen, E. and Soens, T. (2008) ‘The social and economic impact of central government taxation on the Flemish Countryside (end 13th-18th century). Some remarks’, in: Cavaciocchi, S. (ed.), La Fiscalità nell’economia europea. Secc. XIII-XVIII - Fiscal Systems in the European Economy from the 13th to the 18th Centuries”. Prato, pp. 957–971 (Instituto Internazionale di Storia Economica ‘F. Datini’ Prato, Serie II-Atti delle ‘Settimane di Studi’ e altri Convegni, 39). Thoen, E. and Soens, T. (forthcoming) ‘The family or the farm: a Sophie’s choice? The late medieval crisis in the former county of Flanders’, in: Drendel J. (ed.), Postan - Duby : le destin d’un paradigme. Peut-on comprendre les crises économiques de la fin du Moyen Âge sans le modèle malthusien ?, Leiden. Thoen, E. and Vanhaute, E. (1999) ‘The Flemish Husbandry at the edge. The farming system on small holdings in the middle of the nineteenth century’, in: Bavel, B.J.P. van and Thoen, E. (eds.), Land productivity and agro-systems in the North Sea Area, Turnhout, pp. 281–296 (CORN Publication series, 2). Tys, D. (2005) ‘Landscape, settlement and dike building in coastal Flanders in relation to the political strategy of the counts of Flanders, 900–1200’, in: F. Mamoun (ed.), Kulturlandschaft Marsch – Natur, Geschichte, Gegenwart, Oldenburg, pp. 106–126 (Schriftenreihe des Landesmuseums für Natur und Mensch Oldenburg, Heft 32). Vandewalle, P. (1986) De Geschiedenis van de Landbouw in de kasselrij Veurne (1550– 1645), Brussel. (Gemeentekrediet van België, Pro Civitate, Historische Uitgaven, reeks in-8°, 86).

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Verhulst, A. (1967) Medieval finance: a comparison of financial institutions in Northwestern Europe, Bruges-Providence. Werveke, H. Van (1934) De Gentsche stadsfinanciën in de Middeleeuwen, Bruxelles. Werveke, H. van (1953–54) ‘Munt en politiek. De Frans-Vlaamse verhoudingen voor en na 1300’, Bijdragen voor de geschiedenis der Nederlanden, VIII, 1–2, pp. 1–19. Zoete, A. (1994) De beden in het graafschap Vlaanderen onder de hertogen Jan zonder Vrees en Filips de Goede (1405–1467) Brussel (Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Letteren, 56, nr. 149).

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3 Village-indebtedness in Holland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Jaco ZUIJDERDUIJN, Utrecht University I.

Introduction

In the debate about state-formation credit has been attributed a crucial role. The exercise of power required control of coercion. Coercive means could be bought, and the funds this required were mainly attracted by the levying of taxes. But as few states managed to pay for military expenditures out of their current revenues, credit became a crucial factor in the functioning of the state. According to Charles Tilly, ‘if a government and its agents can borrow, they can separate the rhythm of their expenditures from that of their income, and spend ahead of their income’ (Tilly, 2001: 85–86). Thus, credit was needed to help to reduce one of the shortcomings of taxation. When scholars study the link between taxation and credit, they predominantly focus on the state-level. The way the state managed to borrow and the state’s creditors have been major subjects of historical enquiry. For sixteenth-century Holland these themes have been analysed by James Tracy. He shows how the States of Holland, the county’s representative counsel, managed to introduce public debt on a county-wide level. Beginning in 1515, the States borrowed large sums by selling renten in the name of ‘the common body of the territory’, i.e. the whole county. Tracy calls this, and the way the States improved their creditworthiness by pledging the future tax-revenues of the county, a revolutionary development (Tracy, 1985: 57–70). As has been noted above, according to theories regarding state-formation credit helps the state to overcome temporary cash-shortages. But in medieval Holland credit facilitated taxation as well. Subjects turned to the capital market when they had problems meeting their tax-payments, and thus credit facilitated taxation on a local level as well. Credit gave communities some room to breathe, thus smoothing relationships between the state and its subjects. The way credit helped to bring about taxation at a local level is one of the main issues of this article. By studying the informacie, a 1514 government survey held in nearly all of Holland, the indebtedness of village communities is analysed.1 As this survey was aimed at the reform of the taxation-system, and gives information about the indebtedness of local communities as well, it allows for an in-depth inquiry into the link between credit and taxation. Therefore, the informacie can be used to gain an impression of the extent of state-formation in 1514. Furthermore, this source can be used to gain insight into the

1

For Holland village-indebtedness has been briefly addressed by Hoppenbrouwers (Hoppenbrouwers, 1992: 407–409) and Ibelings (Ibelings, 2001: 265). Elsewhere village-indebtedness has been treated by Kappelhof, (Kappelhof, 1986: 164- 169) Benassar (Benassar, 1960: 1123) and Blanquie (Blanquie, 1998).

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way local communities made use of the capital market, as they did not only borrow to be able to pay taxes, but to finance other expenses as well. Access to capital markets depended predominantly on creditworthiness. Using the informacie and some preserved rente-contracts, it is possible to show how local communities managed to secure transactions on the capital market. Furthermore, as the informacie is an abundant source regarding interest rates, it is not only possible to get an overall impression of interest rates, but of regional differences as well. This source even offers some data regarding the role of creditors in supplying villages with loans. The article focuses on the long-term debts village communities contracted. These so-called renten strongly resemble annuities: they were annual pensions sold for a principal sum. There were two types: the lijfrente was an annual sum buyers (renteniers) received for the remainder of their lives. Usually it was paid to one rentenier, but lijfrenten, made out on two or three lives existed as well. The other type, the losrente was paid until the seller repaid the principal sum; these renten were heritable and often transferable. In the Late Middle Ages a voluminous trade in renten emerged in capital markets in Holland, as well as elsewhere in North-West Europe (Zuijderduijn, 2007). Strictly taken, these renten were not proper loans, but merely annual pensions sold for a principal sum. This construction allowed creditors and debtors to contract loans with a concealed interest, and to comply with the Church’s ban on usury. For purposes of convenience, I will refer to renten as loans. Also, I will regard the rate of return (the annual rente divided by the principal sum) as interest rate. The article is structured as follows. After an introduction of the main source (section II), first the link between loans and taxation will be discussed (section III). Next the villages’ access to capital markets will be addressed (section IV). The article is rounded off with a conclusion (section V).

II. The informacie of 1514 In 1514 government agents travelled through the county of Holland to interview representatives of its cities and villages.2 They tried to gain insight into the economic situation in order to come up with a new distribution mechanism for taxation. In Holland the central government was not entitled to tax its subjects individually. Instead, the central government ordered each community to pay its share, based on a ‘distribution code’, and it was left to local governments to tax citizens or villagers (Fruin, 1886: IX-X). In 1514 the government agents talked to town- and village-representatives and questioned them about the number of inhabitants, the economic situation and the way they usually levied taxes. They also asked about the financial situation, about revenues and expenses. Regarding debts, village representatives were asked what type of loans they had contracted,

2

The only region not investigated was the country of Voorne and Putten. Furthermore some villages under the jurisdiction of powerful noblemen, and therefore exempt of taxation, do not appear in the source (Fruin, 1866: vi, xxviii).

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and when and why they had borrowed money. The representatives of the cities had to answer similar questions, which makes the informacie a unique source for the study of Holland’s capital market.3 Since Robert Fruin edited the informacie in 1866 many historians have used this abundant source. Some have questioned its credibility, pointing out that town and village representatives probably tried to make things look worse than they were in order to get a lower taxation, while others deemed the source to be reliable enough.4 It is true that some village-representatives clearly overelaborated, resulting in fine reading material about the horrors of war and natural disaster. Despite being under oath, some representatives even made false statements. However, fraud seems to have been restricted to statements about the landed property of the villagers.5 This is hardly surprising because landed property was one of the main elements, if not the main element, upon which the distribution code was based. The data regarding indebtedness probably had a much smaller effect on the new distribution code. The government agents must have had a hard time verifying the villagers’ statements. Whereas citizens had to hand over their accounts and the grants permitting them to sell renten, in the informacie such checks are rarely mentioned regarding villages. Moreover, one of the results of this survey was that creditors had to get their claims registered by the central government, probably because many villages had lost track of their creditors. Thus, village-administration was not always that thorough. Only in one case has it been possible to compare the data from the informacie with information contained in village accounts. The representatives of the large village of Noordwijk claimed they paid a rente of 311/2 Rhine Guilders (Rg.), and the village accounts support their statement.6 In this article a specific type of loan is discussed: the ‘public debt’ villages contracted as a community. Apart from public debt other types of loans appear in the informacie, but as the government-agents only asked villagers specifically about public debt, data about other loans does not allow for a general view. Furthermore, as the government-agents only informed about the renten villages were due, the figures in this article are based on the annual sums the villages paid, and not on the principal sums.

III. Loans and taxation It seems villages borrowed primarily to be able to raise the taxes they were due to pay. References to the bede (a general tax levied in all of Holland), ruitergeld (a special monthly tax to pay for war), and other costs of war are mentioned mostly as incentives to borrow (table 3.1). 3

See for the questionnaire Fruin, 1866: 4–5. In a similar survey on the economic situation in Holland, the enqueste of 1494, the government agents did not explicitly ask about renten (Fruin, 1876). 4 Both Van der Woude and Noordegraaf have used the data the enqueste and informacie provide (Van der Woude, 1972; Noordegraaf, 1985). Recently Van Zanden used the informacie to come up with a national account of Holland for 1510–1514 (Van Zanden, 2002). 5 See for instance Fruin, 1866: 149, 300. Hoppenbrouwers stressed the unreliability of the data on landed property in the informacie as well (Hoppenbrouwers, 2001: 44). 6 Noordwijk Archives, inv. nr. 291 (accounts of 1513 and 1516).

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Table 3.1

Public debt in Holland in 1514 (annual renten due, in Rhine guilders of 20 stuivers)

Destination Taxes and costs of war Drainage Ransom Building or maintenance of the church Lords Costs of legal proceedings Paying off other debts Mill Unknown Total

Amount (Rg.)

%

7816.5 1416.55 877.45 1229.8 1394.65 39.5 298 31 3775.7 16879.15

46.7 8.4 5.2 7.3 8.3 0.2 1.8 0.2 22.4 100.5

Source: Fruin, 1866

Altogether 46.7 per cent of the money the villages raised went to the central government. When the category ‘unknown’ is not taken into account, the importance of taxes and costs of war is even more obvious, at 60 per cent. Furthermore, as a substantial part of the costs of drainage was monitored by the regional hoogheemraadschappen, institutions that levied taxes as well, in reality the percentage of borrowed money flowing to central and regional authorities must have been even higher, probably amounting to 70 per cent. Given this correlation between taxation and indebtedness, it is not surprising to see government agents ask about village indebtedness in the informacie. Large parts of the Holland countryside had for long been relatively ‘over-taxed’. Due to the political domination of the main cities, a high amount of money had to be raised by the villages (Hoppenbrouwers, 2001: 59–60). When we add to this the fact that the county of Holland as a whole raised a relatively high amount of taxes, the pressure the central government put on the villages becomes visible.7 However, one region escaped high taxation. Southern Holland and the city of Dordrecht only had to raise one twelfth of the taxes (Fruin, 1886: xvi-xviii), a remarkably low proportion given the size and population of this area. As a result only few Southern Holland villages had borrowed to meet tax-payments, a mere 1.3 per cent for taxes to the central government (appendix table 3.10). Furthermore, the debts of Southern Holland villages were rather low, at 0.07 Rg. per capita (table 3.2).

7

The average pressure of the beden per capita in Holland between 1444 and 1467 was 6.1 groten, in Brabant 3.6 groten and in Flanders 3.4 groten (Blockmans and Prevenier, 1997: 175).

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Table 3.2

Public debt in five regions in 1514 (annual renten due, in Rhine guilders of 20 stuivers)

Region Northern Holland Central Holland Utrecht border region Southern Holland Guelders border region

Total amount (Rg.)

Amount per capita

13373.2 510.35 1507.05 705.55 773

0.33 0.03 0.21 0.07 0.12

Source: Fruin, 1866 This is a rough estimate of public debt per capita, as the data the informacie has about population is incomplete. The number of inhabitants must have been higher than the informacie states, as the people living in monasteries and hospitals were not taken into account. Nevertheless, for the purpose of the comparison between Holland regions the data in table 3.2 seems quite appropriate. The number of inhabitants is derived from Naber, 1970: 36–38. The situation in Northern Holland differed a great deal from the rest of Holland. Here the villages had to pay renten worth an astonishing 13373.2 Rg., 79.2 per cent of the total renten the Holland villages paid! The per capita indebtedness was 0.33 Rg., eleven times higher than that of Central Holland and nearly five times higher than that of Southern Holland. One of the causes of Northern Holland’s extraordinary indebtedness was the fine imposed by the central government after the 1492 ‘Cheese-and-Bread rebellion’. The countryside of Kennemerland and Westfriesland had to raise 11.000 Rg. (Koster, 1929: 89), causing some villages to sell renten. According to the chronicler Pontus Heuterus the Westfrisians had huge problems paying these fines, and even had to hand over gold and silver jewellery. However, in the enqueste and informacie complaints about these fines are hardly ever recorded (Blok, 1894: 273–276). The rebellion was a response to high taxes. When we look at the money borrowed by villages, in Northern Holland a relatively high 51.4 per cent of the renten were sold in order to meet tax-payments (appendix table 3.6). The link between taxation and the ‘Cheese-and-Bread rebellion’ has already been made (Hugenholtz, 1979). Considering the close relation between taxation and credit, it may be convenient to add access to capital markets as one of the causes underlying the rebellion. The importance of this element is obvious when we look at the incident that started the rebellion: the rebels wanted to capture the local tax collector, one Klaas Corff. Interestingly this unpopular tax-farmer did not only collect money, he supplied the villages with credit as well. Villages unable to pay the taxes could borrow money from Corff. At the beginning of the rebellion furious Westfrisians demolished Corff’s house, killed one of his servants, and thus started the uprising (Scheurkogel, 1979: 193; Blok, 1894: 262–273). Villages in Northern Holland borrowed far more money than elsewhere, and a relatively high proportion of the loans was used to meet tax-payments. This seems to indicate access

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to capital markets was quite good. However, when we look at the interest rates the North Holland villages paid, a different picture emerges. Volatility on the Northern Holland capital market was remarkably high: in 42.1 per cent of the cases villages paid less than 6.25 per cent interest, and in 42.1 per cent of the cases they paid more than 6.26 per cent (below, table 3.3). The absence of a most common interest rate, as is visible in all other Holland regions, indicates in Northern Holland possibilities to borrow fluctuated. Although this seems to indicate access to capital markets was not that good, the total amount of money the villages had borrowed by 1514 points towards the opposite. Thus, two contradicting phenomena are visible. What can account for this? What probably has happened in Northern Holland is the following. Prior to 1492 taxation in Northern Holland rose sharply,8 causing villages to sell renten. But as taxes remained high, villages had to continue borrowing, causing their creditworthiness to decline. As creditworthiness declined (due to defaults or an increasing lack of securities) the interest rates Northern Holland villages had to pay rose. Thus, by 1492 creditworthiness had declined, as the central government had stretched taxation as far is it would go. The desperate Northern Holland villagers could no longer meet tax-payments, and clashed with the local taxfarmer. This clearly indicates the function the capital market had on a local level, namely smoothing relationships between the central government and its subjects and offering the central government the possibility to stretch taxation. Altogether a strong correlation existed between taxation and village indebtedness. When villages could no longer meet the taxes they were due, they turned to the capital market. This seems to indicate state-formation at the beginning of the sixteenth century was already rather advanced. Paying taxes was so common that village-rulers were even willing to sell renten to meet their dues. The postponement of payments or even rebellion only occurred when access to capital markets declined. The central government could tap into capital markets on a local level by stretching taxation. As villages borrowed predominantly to be able to transfer money to the central government, it is safe to say the latter exploited the villages’ creditworthiness. In Holland this was nothing new, as a long tradition existed regarding public debt. The central government had already mobilised public bodies, particularly cities, to get access to capital markets for centuries. By the end of the fifteenth century many Holland cities were on the verge of bankruptcy, caused by a combination of rising taxes, war, economic decline and a huge burden of indebtedness. As cities defaulted on rente-payments, citizens ran the risk of being imprisoned for debt, or having their merchandise seized, causing trade to decline and the economy to get into a vicious circle (Kokken, 1991: 230–231). Of course, creditors willing to lend money to the impoverished and defaulting cities were hard to find. In this respect it does not seem unlikely that the central government had to rely on villages to raise (more) taxes, and for them to turn to the capital market whenever

8

It even seems the Northern Holland countryside was taxed much heavier than other regions. Perhaps this has been caused by a poor representation of Northern Holland villages in tax-negotiations. In Holland the interests of the countryside were namely looked after by the high nobility, whose members predominantly owned land in Southern and Central Holland (Tracy, 1985: 188).

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tax-revenues were low. Unlike the cities, the villages had not yet hit rock bottom, they were still able to stretch their tax-base by borrowing on the capital market. However, at the end of the fifteenth century, and at least by 1514, the villages’ creditworthiness seems to have taken a knock. Most villages were burdened with debts and some were quite behind in the payment of interest. Some villages complained about a lack of creditworthiness, which may very well have been caused by earlier defaults. Thus, by 1514 the Habsburg monarchy had led large parts of Holland into financial trouble. Cities faced legal procedures because of default, and this problem took on disastrous proportions as the inhabitants of Holland did not make a stand, but started charging each other, thus hindering trade (Kokken, 1991: 230–231). The central government had to step in. In order to get more insight in indebtedness, starting in 1515 villages had to get government approval to sell renten. Loans contracted without the government’s consent would be null and void, and the debtors would be punished. Furthermore, in an attempt to clear out ancient debts, creditors were summoned to make their claims known to the central government. In this way the central government helped local authorities to get a better impression of their indebtedness, or even to get rid of ancient debts.9 This was strictly necessary, as the conditions of loans were not always clear, and rente-contracts were frequently resold.10 Taxes were not the only expenses causing villages to borrow. Although villagers paid taxes for water-management to the hoogheemraadschappen, part of the struggle against flooding was fought at a local level. Combined these expenses accounted for 8.4 per cent of the funds attracted by villages (table 3.1). On a regional level, a 1509 flooding caused a large number of villages in Central Holland to sell renten. Such disasters frequently occurred in late medieval Holland: in the period 1500–1514 the county had to endure seven major floods (Fruin, 1884: 23; Fockema Andreae, 1953: 12). At a local level many village communities invested in drainage, which helped to improve the rural economy a great deal. First of all drainage made agriculture possible, but the network of ditches and canals had a major effect on the infrastructure as well, thus increasing access to urban markets (Hoppenbrouwers, 2001: 53). The villagers of Oostzaan borrowed money to construct new dikes (Fruin, 1884: 61; cf. 110, 160, 257–258, 270), and those of Stolwijk to build a sluice (Fruin, 1884: 577–578, cf. 302). Villagers were often responsible for the building and maintaining of water mills, such as those of Dussen, who borrowed money to build a water mill for which ‘they could not pay’.11 The villagers of Berkhout borrowed to dig a water reservoir (Fruin, 1884: 579). In some regions villages had to deal with looting and pillaging soldiers. The inhabitants could buy off the destruction of their village by paying a ransom, which was often

9

In seventeenth-century France similar attempts to cancel out ancient debts were made (Blanquie, 1998: 300). 10 Fruin, 1866: 620–621. The villagers of ‘t Ooge stated a losrente had already been resold three times ( . . . zoedat se in diversche handen gecommen es, ende es alsnu wel in de vierde handt . . .) (Fruin, 1866: 159). 11 . . . die zy geen macht en hadden te betalen . . . (Fruin, 1866: 538; cf. 485–486, 490, 566, 577).

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financed by selling renten (Fruin, 1866: 229, 225, 422 etc.). In 5.2 per cent of the cases principal sums were spent on ransom (table 3.1), although in reality the costs of ransom were higher. The informacie contains many statements about villagers having borrowed money as private persons to buy off looting soldiers. Unlike most other expenses villages faced, enemy soldiers posed an immediate threat, and villagers must have had a hard time raising money in the short time period given them by the rapacious soldiers. In this respect it is even remarkable that some villages claim to have sold renten to buy off enemy soldiers. Perhaps villages anticipated on such expenses and created funds to cope with pillage in advance? Among the less important motives are expenses made to build or repair parish-churches. These made up 7.3 per cent of the renten the villages were due.12 The costs of legal proceedings are mentioned as well. Villages appearing before the Hof van Holland (Holland’s court of appeal) or even the Grote Raad van Mechelen (the highest court of appeal in the Low Countries) often faced high expenses. A conflict between the villagers of Waarder and the citizens of Oudewater induced the former to borrow. They raised 400 Rg. in order to pay for the legal proceedings at the Grote Raad van Mechelen (Fruin, 1866: 253–254; cf. 203–204, 422, 478–479, 579). Another motive was the conversion of old renten into new ones as soon as the interest rate dropped, as did the villages of St. Pancras and Berkhout (Fruin, 1866: 133, 578). Other villages borrowed because they were forced to lend money to their lord, or pay him a feudal levy (Fruin, 1866: 156, 275, 559). In the end villages predominantly borrowed money to be able to pay taxes. This indicates a certain degree of cooperation with the central government, as villages might as well have bluntly refused to enter the capital market for the sole means of tax-payment. As most villages borrowed money to be able to pay taxes, it is possible to link the capital market with taxation. This connection is well known in the debate on state-formation, as the creation of a solid tax-base is regarded as an important prerogative for the creation of public debt. However, the case of the Holland villages indicates on a local level that credit facilitated taxation, and thus contributed to state-formation as well.

IV. Access to capital markets The willingness to borrow money to pay taxes does not only tell us something about the development of state-formation, but about access to capital markets as well. Apparently most villages did not encounter great difficulties when they tried to borrow, as is illustrated by the huge debts the Northern Holland villages probably had contracted by 1492. In this section the way villages managed to create public debt will be addressed. How did they convince creditors they were creditworthy, what interest rates did villages pay, and who were their creditors?

12

In some of these cases the initial transaction and the payment of interest was in hands of those in charge of churches. In the informacie the several types of rural communities (village, parish and polder) are not always clearly distinguished because these often overlapped.

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IV.1. General mortgages The informacie makes clear most villages acquired funds by selling renten. Only a small number of villages borrowed in another way (Fruin, 1866: 566, 568). Most Holland villages secured renten by appointing a general mortgage, meaning all villagers took responsibility for the payment of interest.13 At least, this is what can be read between the lines of the informacie; the government agents did not specifically ask about the securities villages offered their creditors. However, some close reading of both the informacie and preserved rente-contracts can help to make clear what government agents meant when they noted that loans were secured on ‘the body of the village’.14 Thus, a grant permitting the village of Noordwijk to sell renten makes perfectly clear how these were secured. In 1505 the villagers asked the central government permission to sell renten ‘on the village of Noordwijk’.15 These were to be secured both on the village and the bodies and goods of all inhabitants.16 But the village was not the only sort of rural community in medieval Holland. Villagers were parishioners as well. The parish, as well as the Heilige Geest (the organisation of the local almshouse) had its own financial administration, managed by respectively kerkmeesters and Heilige Geestmeesters. These administrators could sell renten in order to make ends meet. In 1491 the aldermen and kerkmeesters of Schagen secured renten on the parishioners and villagers. In case of default the owner of the contract was allowed to seize the bodies and goods of all inhabitants of Schagen.17 In 1488 the kerkmeesters of the parish of Noordwijkerhout borrowed to be able to repair the church. As a security they used the possessions of both the parish (the church) and the parishioners.18 In 1415 the Heilige Geestmeesters of Noordwijk, together with the lord, sheriff and kerkmeesters, borrowed money from the nearby-situated convent of Leeuwenhorst. The principal sum was used to build the choir of the parish-church (Bruggeman: 87).

13

For discussion of general mortgages, see De Blécourt and Fischer, 1950: 252–255; Lee, 1953: 188–193; Herman, 1914: 83–88. 14 The informacie has a number of descriptions for the sale of renten by village-communities. These could be sold op het dorp (on the village), op het lichaam van het dorp and op het corpus van het dorp (on the body of the village). 15 . . . up onse voirs. dorpe van noortich . . . (Noordwijk archives, inv. nr. 759). In 1520 Noordwijk sold renten in the same way (Noordwijk archives, inv. nr. 448). 16 . . . ende dairinne verbinden tvoirs. dorp ende de personen vanden gemenen buyeren ende inwonende vandien, ende hoirluyder lijven ende goeden . . . (Noordwijk archives, inv. nr. 759). 17 Alkmaar archives, oud-archief Schagen, inv. nr. 383. The same goes for a 1504 loan by the aldermen and kerkmeesters of Winkel (Alkmaar archives, verzamelinventaris, klooster het Oude Hof inv. nr. 23). 18 The loan was secured on . . . alle onse kercken ende gebueren goeden die wij nuetijt hebben of noch hier namels vercrigen sullen mogen . . . (. . . all the possessions of our church and neighbours both present and future . . . ) (National Archive, Archieven van de Abdij Leeuwenhorst inv. nr. 607). The possessions of the parish that could be used as a security included church-treasures. In 1494 the parish of Sybekerspel had to give two chalices to a creditor. Other church-possessions probably included landed property and tithes. (Fruin, 1876: 32).

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Furthermore, in Holland water management was of great importance. Usually the sheriff was in charge of the polders, local drainage-units. The finances were monitored by heemraden, or molenmeesters, who were also responsible for the maintenance of water mills, and the collection of a special tax to support drainage, called molengeld (Dekker, 1961: 51–54; Fockema Andreae, 1934: 112–114). The molenmeesters of the polder of Broekhuizen in 1490 secured a rente on the goods of the polder-community. Apart from that, the water mill, the reservoir and other goods managed by the molenmeesters were used as securities.19 Local rural communities thus secured renten on the community they represented. This resembles the way cities borrowed (Dokkum and Dijkhof: 1983: 50), but with far less inhabitants backing the security. Rural institutions could sell renten secured on private land as well. In 1512 four ambachtsbewaarders of Jacobswoude secured a loan on their own landed property. They contracted the debt together, so it is obvious the principal sum was contributed to the village’s treasure-chest.20 However, the informacie makes perfectly clear village-rulers favoured general mortgages secured on the village. Apart from the preserved rente-contracts, the statements gathered in the informacie indicate villages secured renten by means of general mortgages as well. First of all the fundamental difference between loans secured by a general mortgage and those secured by a specific mortgage is apparent. This is why the representatives of the village of Egmond could deny to have borrowed money (secured by a general mortgage), to state later on they had sold renten secured on their lands, i.e. by a specific mortgage (Fruin, 1866: 604). The representatives of many other villages made the same distinction.21 Furthermore, many village-representatives complained they could not sell renten because of a lack of creditworthiness. The representatives of Hilversum stated they had already sold renten ‘on the body of the village’, when all of a sudden they were confronted with a lack of solvency. They solved this problem by switching to the sale of renten pledged on houses and landed property.22 This example illustrates an abstract security (such as a village community) did not offer as much creditworthiness as a more concrete security like a house or a parcel of land. The villagers of Noordwijk encountered a similar problem when they tried to sell renten on the body of their village. They could not find any buyers, 19

Groene Hart Archieven, Oud-archief Gouda inv. nr. 720 e. The same principle can be seen in a contract of 1478, where the sheriff and heemraden of the country of Stein secured the payment of a rent on the bodies and goods of the inhabitants (Groene Hart Archieven, Oud-archief Gouda inv. nr. 931). An example of molenmeesters borrowing can be found in Geselschap, 1965: 248–249. Unfortunately the original contract is missing (Groene Hart Archieven, Oud-archief Gouda inv. nr. 753). 20 Regionaal Archief Leiden, Archief van het Heilige Geest- of armen, wees-, en kinderhuis te Leiden inv. nr. 4575. Another examples can be found in Helms van Eis, 1982: 101–103. 21 Fruin, 1866: 254, 391–393, 360, 418–419, 420–421, 426–427, 450. Others distinguished loans secured on the village from those secured on the private goods of the villagers (Fruin, 1866: 230–232). 22 Seggen oock, dat, zoe zy niet gelooft en waeren meer renten up heurluyder dorp te vercoopen, zoe hebben zy upte huysen ende landen particulier gehaelt an losrenten 100 currente guldens tsjaers . . . (. . . they secured 100 Rg. worth of redeemable annuities on their houses and lands because they lacked the creditworthiness to sell any more renten on their village . . .) (Fruin, 1866: 234).

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even when they offered to pay the high interest rate of 25 per cent23! Had they tried to sell renten secured on land there is little doubt the villagers would have found creditors willing to buy. IV.2. Solvency and transaction-costs It seems that Holland villages started securing renten with a general mortgage in the second half of the fifteenth century.24 What were its advantages? First of all it enabled village communities to borrow without a specified pledge. In Holland common grounds were rare round 1500,25 and other common goods (such as water mills) were rarely used as securities. Therefore, to offer a general mortgage was about the only way to borrow as a community (i.e. to share the risks). The main alternative was to persuade wealthy villagers to guarantee the payment. But few dignitaries showed solidarity with their less wealthy fellow-villagers and many moved away (predominantly to cities) as soon as taxes and other expenses rose. As a result citizens had started taking over the countryside (van Bavel, 2001: 16; De Vries, 1974: 44–46; Scheurkogel, 1979: 208), and many villagers had become lessors, who were not necessarily poor, but lacked solvency. Furthermore, selling on the body of the village was somewhat egalitarian. Every villager was responsible for the payment and could be sued in case of default. On the other hand, general mortgages did damage both the creditworthiness of the individual landowners and the liquidity of the villagers’ possessions (van Iterson, 1968: 350). From the perspective of the creditors loans secured by a general mortgage required a great deal of trust, because this particular type of credit was relatively ill secured. The renten were not specifically secured on land,26 which was the most common type of security in medieval Holland, but on the villagers, who could sell goods or landed property. As a result the security of the general mortgage could decrease in value (Lee, 1953: 196). Such things did happen: a major problem apparent in both the 1494 enqueste and the 1514 informacie is the migration of wealthy villagers to cities, where taxes were relatively low. This happened especially during the recession period of 1477–1494 when the tax burden was high. The negative effect this urbanisation had on the remaining villagers who stayed behind was twofold: they had to raise taxes with fewer and less wealthy people (Noordegraaf, 1985: 120), and at the same time the creditworthiness of the village was reduced because the community’s wealth declined.

23

. . . overmidts dat zij geen gheloof en hadden, zoewel zij boden te vercoopen renten den penningh om 6, 5 ende 4 (. . . because they lacked creditworthiness, even though they tried to sell renten at an interest rate of 16.7%, 20% and 25% . . .) (Fruin, 1876, 130). The average interest rate around 1500 was about 6.25%. 24 The earliest example of this type of security used by villages that I have found dates from 1478 (Groene Hart Archieven, Oud-archief Gouda inv. nr. 931). 25 Common fields in Holland had practically ceased to exist by 1514 (Hoppenbrouwers, 1992, 43; Enno van Gelder, 1953: 145; Fockema Andreae, 1934: 17). The only villages with common fields in the informacie are Hilversum and Laren (Fruin, 1866: 231, 234). 26 Historians of law stress the fact that general mortgages lack both specificity and publicity (De Blécourt and Fischer, 1950: 252).

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Another problem creditors faced was the transitory character of village-communities. Both in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern period villages could be abandoned27 or demolished by floods, fires or pillaging soldiers. When this happened creditors faced huge problems: once the security, namely the village, ceased to exist, the payment of renten was sure to be cancelled. To make matters worse, the people who had taken responsibility for the loan all of a sudden had a different legal status (they had either become citizens or inhabitants of another village) and could no longer be brought to justice.28 Thus, selling renten secured by a general mortgage clearly required the creditors to trust the villagers. In order to sell renten, villages had to assure creditors that they would live up to their obligations. Villages could improve their solvency by making different promises, which were recorded in the rente-contract. Of these the willige condemnatie (the waiving of legal rights) is particularly interesting. In order to improve their solvency villages promised not to appeal against any legal proceedings taken by creditors.29 They could also promise creditors they would be able to use sympelen woerden (simple words, meaning creditors could avoid lengthy legal procedures) and would not have to be put under oath in order to claim arrears. Some villages promised that any legal costs would be compensated by the village-community. They even wrote down a plea in the contract, requesting legal forces to do swift justice (een goet, cort, onvertogen recht). Other villages promised not to refer to exemptions or other rights to escape the payment of renten.30 All rente-contracts issued by village-communities contain such promises. These improved the villages’ solvency because they caused the costs of (future) legal proceedings to drop: village-communities were unlikely to institute legal proceedings or appeal considering the promises made in the contract. Of course the contract would always be handed over as evidence in court, so the legal position of the villagers was rather weak: they could not expect to gain anything in front of a judge. The debtors formulated a set 27

In Holland villages and hamlets sometimes were moved after the ecological situation had deteriorated due to bedding down of the peat bog (Besteman, 2001: 29–31, 38–39). In the peat-area villages were abandoned when the peat had been dug up (Ibelings, 2001: 258–259). Fockema Andreae mentions the abandoned villages of Zwieten and Ter Mije near Leiden (Fockema Andreae, 1954: 126–127). 28 The complete destruction of the mortgaged property was identified by the seventeenth-century lawyer Voet as one of the ways a mortgage could be extinguished (Lee, 1953: 202; De Blécourt & Fischer, 1950: 262). 29 . . . ende hem des niet te verweren noch doen verweren mit gene rechte geestelick noch waerlick noch mit gene exceptien van sheren geboden privilegien of bedwange van oerloghe van opvloede van water of van duer tide of van brande noch mit gene subtile vonden . . . (. . . not to defend themselves nor have themselves defended in front of ecclesiastical nor secular judges, not to make use of privileges, not to use war, floodings, economic recession or fire as an excuse, not to use any subtle legal tricks . . .) (Alkmaar archives, verzamelinventaris kloosters, klooster het Oude Hof, inv. nr. 23) About the willige condemnatie: De Blécourt and Fischer, 1950: 260–261. 30 Amsterdam archives, Archief van de gasthuizen, inv. nr. 2068. Other examples can be found in Regionaal Archief Leiden, Archief der stadsheerlijkheden en vroonwateren inv. nr. 574; The Hague archives, Tafel van de Heilige Geest en het Heilige Geesthofje te ’s Gravenhage inv. nr. 867; Noordwijk archives, oud-archief, inv. nr. 448; Groene Hart Archieven, Oud-archief Gouda, inv. nr. 931 and 720 e.

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of rules they had to follow, and accordingly their behaviour became more predictable. Furthermore, in order to be able to borrow in the future, villages could not afford to default as this could damage the villages’ solvency for years to come. Finally, it is also clear that the contracting parties somewhat distrusted the legal system. It was both expensive and unpredictable, and the waiving of legal rights solved this problem (North and Weingast, 1989: 805–808; Van Zanden and Van Riel, 2002: 364). Thus some sort of one-way legal procedure, with protection only for the creditor, was created. However, not all legal institutions were simply discarded. The villages upheld those legal institutions that offered the creditors possibilities to enforce payment. All contracts were based on the possibilities civil law offered to seize the properties of villagers. Other measures included the leisting, an expense allowance in case the debtors would not live up to their obligations. The leisting was laid down in the contract, and gave the creditor the right to travel to the village and stay in a tavern on expense of the villagers as long as the rente was not paid. It was also possible the leisting was a compulsory stay in a tavern for debtors, a matter of imprisonment for debt.31 The Noordwijk accounts show village leaders were taken hostage quite regularly.32 Another concern was the quantity of different currencies circulating in medieval Holland. Payment of renten in an outdated currency would require the creditor to make costs of exchange, and therefore payments were often connected to the mintordinances the government issued.33 To make sure the long-term loans would be paid out in a running currency the rulers of Zoeterwoude promised to pay the rente in currency deemed by the latest evaluation of the emperor to be trusted.34 In this way the payment in an ancient or debased currency, which would require the intermediary services of a moneylender, was prevented. Only in the country of Heusden were some renten paid out in kind, so it seems most creditors depended on a stable currency supported by mint-ordinances.35

31

. . . ende ist dat hij dan niet en betailt so sal gerijt voirscr. of den houder des briefs alle dage mogen leesten twalef groten vlaems gelts, ende die besette lantgenoit of lantgenoiten sullen dan dair gevangen bliven ter tijt toe, dat sij die voirs. renten mitter leestinc vol ende al betailt sullen hebben . . . (. . . and if he does not pay, the owner of the contract may leisten twelve Flemish groats, and the sued inhabitant or inhabitants will be kept as prisoners until they have paid both the interest and leisting . . .) (Groene Hart Archieven, Oud-archief Gouda inv. nr. 931). About the leisting: Van Hattum and Rooseboom, 1977: 195. 32 The accounts of 1505 and 1507 contain such expenses (Noordwijk archives, inv. nr. 291). 33 The Holland government frequently debased coins to make a profit out of its right to mint. Sometimes it increased the value of coins as well. Especially at the end of the fifteenth century monetary policy caused the value of coins to fluctuate heavily. 34 . . . al in goeden gevalueerden ghelden naer volghende de laetste evaluatie der key. ma. lestmael gepubliceert . . . (Regionaal Archief Leiden, Archief stadsheerlijkheden en vroonwateren inv. nr. 574). Other examples can be found in The Hague archives, Tafel van de Heilige Geest en het Heilige Geesthofje te ’s Gravenhage inv. nr. 2 cartularium f. 346v.-348v.; Noordwijk archives, oud-archief, inv. nr. 448. 35 Benassar has linked the availability of mint-ordinances with the existence of renten paid in kind (Benassar, 1960: 1118).

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The Holland villages could get official permission to sell renten.36 Until 1515 such a grant does not seem to have been mandatory, and was no more than a way to improve the villages creditworthiness. Thus, many villages borrowed without a grant. The representatives of Limmen stated in 1514 they had borrowed without government-consent, because they had to cope with an emergency.37 The Noordwijk case (below) illustrates how gaining governmentpermission could take quite some time and money. Perhaps this is why some villages in the remote Northern Holland area stated they had sold renten without permission.38 Other villages did acquire a government grant. In 1495 the village of Zwartewaal had to borrow. This proved to be impossible, because of a lack of creditworthiness, so the villagers turned to the government to seal the rente-contracts (Fruin, 1876: 293). The villagers of Noordwijk managed to improve their solvency as well, when they got a government-grant in 1505.39 They even stated implicitly that government-approval improved the chances to find creditors: the villagers wanted to sell renten but ‘they could not manage to do so without permission’40 It seems the comital seal was regarded as a confirmation of the villages’ creditworthiness.41 Obtaining a grant therefore was a somewhat expensive but effective way to improve solvency. Altogether it seems creditors in Holland at the beginning of the sixteenth century were quite confident they could expect the money they lent to villages to be fruitful. As a result, not only cities, as is often supposed, but even villages managed to create public debt. They did so at fairly low interest rates, which indicates Holland villages managed to cope with the fundamental problem of exchange, the phenomenon that ‘for individuals to enter mutually beneficial exchange relationships they have to recognise them as such and they have to be able to fulfil their contractual obligations’ (Greif, 2000: 251–253). IV.3. Regional differences The interest rate is a good indicator of access to capital markets by region. The informacie allows for a comparison of the interest rates paid by Holland villages. For the purpose of exploring any regional distinctiveness in this respect, rural Holland has been divided into five regions. Each region consists of a number of bailiwicks, territorial jurisdictions supervised by a bailiff. Each had a distinct institutional framework, put in writing in the regional

36 From the beginning of the fifteenth century cities had had to ask for permission to sell renten as well (Bos-Rops, 1993: 131; VerLoren van Themaat, 1983: 9). 37 Fruin, 1866: 33. The village of Graft had borrowed without consent because it had to pay quickly in order to prevent being pillaged (Fruin, 1866: 138). The rulers of Ursem stated they did not get a permission because they had to borrow quickly to stop a flooding (Fruin, 1866: 140). 38 The villages are Limmen, Ursem, ‘t Hofambacht, Uitgeest, Schoorl, Zandvoort, Assendelft, St. Pancras, Graft, Texel and Wieringen. The mayors of the Westfrisian city of Hoorn even stated they did not require a grant in order to sell renten (Fruin, 1866: 83; VerLoren van Themaat, 1983: 9, footnote 27). 39 In 1494 they had been identified as lacking any creditworthiness (Fruin, 1876: 130). 40 . . . daer zij niet en sullen mogen toecommen zonder van ons dair up te hebben oirloff octroye ende consente . . . (Noordwijk archives, inv. nr. 759). 41 Van Loenen, 6. Some grants given to cities contain explicit guarantees, such as an Amsterdam grant from 1405, where the count promised to look after the rente-payments in person (Van Mieris, 1756: 29).

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by-laws. Here, a division into a northern, central and southern region is used. Furthermore, two smaller regions in the east of the county are distinguished as well. The Northern Holland region (the bailiwicks of Kennemerland, Westfriesland and Waterland) had long been relatively autonomous. Large parts of this region had only been subjected to the counts of Holland as late as the end of the thirteenth century, and the process of state-formation often met with resistance. This region had its own customs and type of administration and remained unruly until the ‘Cheese and Bread-rebellion’ in 1492 (De Goede: 403–404; Hoppenbrouwers, 1999: 464–472). The other regions are Central Holland (the bailiwicks of Rijnland, Delfland and Schieland) and Southern Holland. The latter was a bailiwick that was economically dominated by the city of Dordrecht. Finally, the smaller bailiwicks in the east have been divided in two groups. Those bordering the hostile duchy of Guelders in the South-east of Holland (the bailiwicks of Schoonhoven, Arkel and Heusden) have been taken together. The same goes for those bordering Utrecht in the east (the bailiwicks of Amstelland, Gooiland and Woerden). These border areas suffered relatively greatly from war-activity, and this probably had an influence on creditworthiness. Of these five regions the interest rates of losrenten have been gathered (table 3.3). Altogether the interest rates are known from 217 loans contracted by village communities. Next the frequency of the interest rates has been determined. In Central Holland 60.5 per cent of the loans were contracted at an interest rate of 6.25 per cent. In Southern Holland most villages paid an interest rate of 7.1 per cent, with a frequency of 38.2 per cent. In the Guelders border region most villages paid an interest rate of 7.1 per cent as well, here the frequency was 43.2 per cent. On the other hand in the Northern Holland region villages paid widely differing interest rates. Here 42.1 per cent of the loans were contracted at a lower, and 42.1 per cent at a higher interest rate than 6.25 per cent! Thus the Northern Holland region shows profound differences with respect to the interest rates paid by village-communities. Another surprising feature is the fact the region bordering Guelders looks a lot like Southern Holland while the region bordering Utrecht to a certain degree resembles the situation in Central Holland. However, the Utrecht border region also shares a characteristic with the Northern Holland region: these are the only regions where some villages managed to borrow at a particularly low interest rate of 5.0–5.9 per cent. In Northern Holland 42.1 per cent of the loans were conducted at such low interest rates, in the Utrecht border region 31.3 per cent. In the other regions interest rates below 6.25 per cent were as good as absent. Table 3.3

Frequency of the interest rate of 6.25% in five regions, 1514 < 6.25%

6.25%

> 6.25%

Region

N

%

N

%

N

%

Northern Holland Central Holland Utrecht border region Southern Holland Guelders border region

32 1 10 1 –

42.1% 2.6% 31.3% 2.9% –

12 23 14 6 6

15.8% 60.5% 43.8% 17.6% 16.2%

32 14 8 27 31

42.1% 36.8% 25.0% 79.4% 83.8%

Source: Fruin, 1866 53

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Credit and the rural economy in North-western Europe, c.1200–c.1850

Thus, it seems access to capital markets differed markedly between regions. Although an explanation for the remarkable situation in Northern Holland has already been given above, there are still differences between Central and Southern Holland as well. Whereas most Central Holland villages paid 6.25 per cent interest, in Southern Holland 7.1 per cent was most common. Perhaps this difference must be attributed to the fact that Southern Holland villages predominantly borrowed to raise ransom, which may have caused interest rates to rise slightly. IV.4. Creditors In late-medieval Holland investors willing to lend money were not hard to find. Particularly in the cities thriving capital markets provided organizations and individuals with possibilities to attract funds, provided they had an ample creditworthiness. Although creditors are not often mentioned in the informacie, some data is available (table 3.4). Table 3.4

Geographical origins of creditors to Holland villages, 1514

Origins of capital

Villagers/nearby villages

Nearest city/cities

Other cities

7% (4)

20% (11)

73% (41)

Source: Fruin, 1866 Table 3.5

Creditors

Social background of creditors to Holland villages, 1514 Religious

Secular

20.5% (9)

79.5% (35)

Source: Fruin, 1866 Compared with table 3.4, the statements of the representatives of Ouddorp, Blaricum, Huizen, Engelen, Herpt en Hofwegen, only informing about the creditors’ residence, have not been taken into account. In 93 per cent of the cases townsmen provided villages with money. The relatively low share taken by the nearest cities is remarkable, because selling renten at a distance raised costs of transport and information. This seems to have been a problem for the village of Petten, in the far north of Holland. Its villagers declared they had not borrowed because of their remote location.42 As debtors committed themselves to deliver the rente at the creditor’s home, the costs of transport were certainly something to take into account. Furthermore the debtor risked losing the money during its 42

. . . zoe zy verde geseten zijn . . . (Fruin, 1866: 165).

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transportation.43 Despite these disadvantages the villagers of Spanbroek (in the north of Holland) borrowed in Haarlem, Amsterdam, Harderwijk and Kampen, cities at a considerable distance. Harderwijk and Kampen were even foreign cities (Fruin, 1866: 114). The villagers of Ouddorp even borrowed from a Louvain student (Fruin, 1866: 134). Perhaps village-rulers used the services of city-agents in order to manage payments at a large distance.44 Finally clergymen and religious institutions accounted for 20.5 per cent of the loans (table 3.5). In two of nine cases these loans were conducted within the village itself or in nearby villages, in three cases in a nearby city and in four cases in other cities.

V.

Conclusion

By 1514 large parts of Holland were heavily indebted, including many villages, especially in Northern Holland. But whereas the indebtedness of cities has received ample attention, village indebtedness has rarely been the subject of investigation. This is quite remarkable, as the introduction of public debt in villages seems to have been an important step in the process of state-formation. It allowed the state to rely on nearly all of its subjects to step in and sell renten that were predominantly contracted to be able to pay taxes Access to capital markets facilitated taxation: Holland villages borrowed heavily in order to be able to meet tax-payments. Credit also helped to create a buffer: as the Northern Holland example shows, it helped to prevent, or at least postpone the breaking out of tax-rebellions. Credit smoothed financial relations between the central government and its subjects by offering the latter some much-needed space to manage local finances. One might even say credit strengthened the whole institution of taxation by the upholding of precedents for payments to the central government. Finally, access to capital markets on a local level gave the central government the possibility to increase its income by stretching taxation. Thus, local access to capital markets was an important element underlying the mechanism of the state. Villages did not only borrow to meet central government taxation though: especially water management also required them to sell renten. Other major expenses, such as repairs to churches, ransoms, legal proceedings and payments to local lords required access to capital markets as well. Thus, creditworthiness helped villages to maintain relations with

43

Some examples: . . . te leveren binnen der stede van alcmaer tot horen woninge vry onbelast ende onbecommert . . . (. . . to be delivered in the city of Alkmaar at the creditors house without any trouble. . .) (Alkmaar archives, verzamelinventaris: kloosters, klooster het Oude Hof inv. nr. 23); . . .te betalen alle jaire vrij ende onvermaendt van allen commer ende costen ten huse ende in handen van heeren jacob . . . (. . . to be paid every year without trouble, without having to caution the debtors and without further expenses at the house of and in hands of sir Jacob . . .) (Regionaal Archief Leiden, Archief Stadsheerlijkheden en vroonwateren inv. nr. 574). More on costs of transport and information can be found in van Bavel, 1993: 530; Dokkum and Dijkhof, 1985: 80. 44 Both cities and the central government were assisted by intermediaries (Dokkum and Dijkhof, 1983: 55; Bos-Rops, 1993: 39).

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the central government, water management boards and local lords, and allowed them to protect villagers and carry out public works. Most villages had good access to capital markets. Townsmen were willing buyers of renten, and some villages even borrowed from foreigners, which seems to indicate they made use of the services of intermediaries. Thus, distance does not seem to have hindered the creation of credit relations, nor did the fact that village communities borrowed money as an abstract entity. Most villages offered their creditors a general mortgage as a security. This was not the best type of security, as the wealth within a community could fluctuate heavily. Nevertheless many creditors accepted a general mortgage, in part because Holland’s legal framework offered the villages ample possibilities to reinforce their commitment to the rente-payment. This legal framework was, to a significant degree, created and upheld by the central government’s officials, such as sheriffs and bailiffs. Thus, part of the taxes the villages paid were reinvested in a way that, amongst others, allowed them to create public debt.

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Appendix Table 3.6

Public debt in Northern Holland in 1514 (annual renten due, in Rhine guilders of 20 stuivers)

Destination Taxes and costs of war Drainage Ransom Building or maintenance of the church Lords Costs of legal proceedings Paying off other debts Mill Unknown Total

Amount (Rg.)

%

6870.8 1272 – 1087.25

51.4% 9.5% – 8.1%

1323 – 298 – 2522.15 13373.2

9.9% – 2.2 – 18.9 100.0

Source: Fruin, 1866

Table 3.7

Public debt in the Utrecht border region in 1514 (annual renten due, in Rhine guilders of 20 stuivers)

Destination Taxes and costs of war Drainage Ransom Building or maintenance of the church Lords Costs of legal proceedings Paying off other debts Mill Unknown Total

Amount (Rg.)

%

535.1 36.5 156 7.3

35.5 2.4 10.4 0.5

– 25 – – 757.15 1507.05

– 1.6 – – 50.2 100.6

Source: Fruin, 1866

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Credit and the rural economy in North-western Europe, c.1200–c.1850

Table 3.8

Public debt in Central Holland in 1514 (annual renten due, in Rhine guilders of 20 stuivers)

Destination Taxes and costs of war Drainage Ransom Building or maintenance of the church Lords Costs of legal proceedings Paying off other debts Mill Unknown Total

Amount (Rg.)

%

115.35 96.75 61 94.25

22.6 19.0 12.0 18.5

64.5 1 – 15 62.5 510.35

12.6 0.2 – 2.9 12.2 100.0

Source: Fruin, 1866

Table 3.9

Public debt in the Guelders border region in 1514 (annual renten due, in Rhine guilders of 20 stuivers)

Destination Taxes and costs of war Drainage Ransom Building or maintenance of the church Lords Costs of legal proceedings Paying off other debts Mill Unknown Total

Amount (Rg.)

%

286.15 – 146 39

37.0 – 18.9 5.0

– – – – 301.85 773

– – – – 39.1 100.0

Source: Fruin, 1866

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Village-indebtedness in Holland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

Table 3.10 Public debt in Southern Holland in 1514 (annual renten due, in Rhine guilders of 20 stuivers) Destination Taxes and costs of war Drainage Ransom Building or maintenance of the church Lords Costs of legal proceedings Paying off other debts Mill Unknown Total

Amount (Rg.)

%

9.1 11.3 514.45 2

1.3 1.6 72.9 0.3

7.15 13.5 – 16 132.05 705.55

1.0 1.9 2.3 18.7 100.0

Source: Fruin, 1866

Manuscript sources Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, Archief van de gasthuizen, inv. nr. 2068. Gemeentearchief Den Haag, Tafel van de Heilige Geest en het Heilige Geesthofje te ‘s Gravenhage, inv. nrs. 2, 867. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Archief der stadsheerlijkheden en vroonwateren, inv. nr. 574. Gemeentearchief Noordwijk, Oud archief van Noordwijk tot 1811, inv. nrs. 291, 448, 759. Nationaal Archief, Archieven van de abdij Leeuwenhorst, inv. nr. 607. Regionaal archief Alkmaar, Oud-archief Schagen, inv. nr. 383 Regionaal archief Alkmaar, Verzamelinventaris, Klooster het Oude Hof, inv. n. 23. Groene Hart Archieven, Oud archief Gouda, inv. nrs. 720e, [753], 931.

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Besteman, J.C. (2001) ‘Van Assendelft naar Amsterdam. Occupatie en ontginning van de Noordhollandse veengebieden in de middeleeuwen’, in J. Beenakker (ed.), Holland en het water in de middeleeuwen Hilversum, pp. 21–39. Blanquie, C. (1998) ‘La vérification colbertienne des dettes des communautés agenaises’, in M. Berthe (ed.) Endettement paysan & crédit rural dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne, Toulouse, pp. 299–316. Blécourt, A.S. de & Fischer, H.W.F.D. (1950) Kort begrip van het oud-vaderlandsch burgerlijk recht [sixth printing] Groningen-Jakarta. Blockmans, W. & Prevenier, W. (1997) De bourgondiërs. De Nederlanden op weg naar eenheid 1384–1530, Amsterdam/Leuven. Blok, P.J. (1894) ‘Het Kaas- en Broodvolk’ in Verslagen en mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde, third series, vol. 10, pp. 239–276. Bos-Rops, J.A.M.Y. (1993) Graven op zoek naar geld. De inkomsten van de graven van Holland en Zeeland 1389–1433, Hilversum. Bruggeman, J. (n.d.) Regesten van het archief der voormalige abdij Leeuwenhorst te Noordwijkerhout. Dekker, C. (1961) ‘De aanstelling van de molenmeesters in Delfland van de 15e tot de 18e eeuw’, Zuid-Hollandse Studiën, 9, pp. 49–88. Dokkum, H.W. & Dijkhof, E.C. (1983) ‘Oude Dordtse lijfrenten’, in L.M. VerLoren van Themaat (ed.), Oude Dordtse lijfrenten. Stedelijke financiering in de vijftiende eeuw Hilversum, pp. 37–88. Enno van Gelder, H. (1953) Nederlandse dorpen in de zestiende eeuw, Amsterdam. Fockema Andreae, S.J. (1953) Schets van Zuid-Hollandse watersnoden in vroeger tijd, Voorburg. Fockema Andreae, S.J. (1954) ‘Zwieten, een verdwenen dorp bij Leiden’ in A. de Buck, Varia Historica: aangeboden aan professor doctor A.W. Byvanck ter gelegenheid van zijn zeventigste verjaardag door de Historische Kring Leiden, Assen, pp. 121–128. Fockema Andreae, S.J. (1934), Het hoogheemraadschap van Rijnland: zijn recht en zijn bestuur van den vroegsten tijd tot 1857, Leiden. Fruin, R. (1866) Informacie up den staet faculteyt gelegentheyt van de steden ende dorpen van Hollant ende Vrieslant. . ., Leiden. Fruin, R. (1876) Enqueste ende informacie upt stuck van der reductie ende reformatie van den schiltaelen. . ., Leiden. Geselschap, J.E.J., (1965) Inventaris van het oud-archief van Gouda, Gouda. Goede, A. de (n.d.) Swannotsrecht. Westfriesche rechtsgeschiedenis deel I, Utrecht. Greif, A. (2000) ‘The fundamental problem of exchange: a research agenda in Historical Institutional Analysis’ in European Review of Economic History, 4, pp. 251–284. Hattum, M. van & Rooseboom, H. (1977) Glossarium van oude Nederlandse rechtstermen, Amsterdam. Helms van Eis, L. (1982) ‘Register ende protocol van eijgen- ende rentbrieve van Moerkercken, ingaende anno XVC XXXII ende eindigende metten jare 1552’, Ons voorgeslacht, vol. 37, nr. 316, pp. 97–123, 143–155, 349–370.

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Herman, A. (1914) Het karakter van ons hypotheekrecht, historisch beschouwd, Amsterdam. Hoppenbrouwers, P.C.M. (1992) Een middeleeuwse samenleving. Het Land van Heusden (ca. 1360- ca. 1515), Wageningen. Hoppenbrouwers, P. (1999) ‘Rebels with a cause: the peasant movements of Northern Holland in the later Middle Ages’, in W. Blockmans & A. Janse, Showing status. Representation of social positions in the late Middle Ages, Turnhout, pp. 445–482. Hugenholtz, F.W.N. (1967) ‘Het kaas- en broodvolk’ in Bijdragen en mededelingen van het historisch genootschap 81, pp. 4–33. Ibelings, B. (2001) ‘Aspects of an uneasy relationship. Gouda (Holland) and its countryside (15th-16th centuries)’, in P.C.M. Hoppenbrouwers & J.L. van Zanden (eds.), Peasants into farmers? The transformation of rural economy and society in the Low Countries (middle ages-19th century) in the light of the Brenner debate, Turnhout, pp. 256–274. Iterson, W. van (1968) ‘Eigendomsoverdracht van onroerende zaken en in het bijzonder de vrijwaring in het oud-nederlandse recht’, Verslagen en mededeelingen der koninklijke akademie van wetenschappen, afdeeling letterkunde, 13 : 2, pp. 320–376. Kappelhof, A.C.M. (1986), Belastingheffing in de Meijerij van Den Bosch gedurende de Generaliteitsperiode, 1648–1730, Tilburg Kokken, H. (1991) Steden en staten. Dagvaarten van steden en Staten van Holland onder Maria van Bourgondië en het eerste regentschap van Maximiliaan van Oostenrijk (1477–1494), The Hague. Koster, P. (1929) Hoorn in de middeleeuwen. De economische ontwikkelingsgang van een Westfriesche stad, Amsterdam. Lee, R.W. (1953) An introduction to roman-dutch law, [fifth edition] Oxford. Loenen, J.C. van (n.d.) ‘De rente-last van Haarlem in de vijftiende eeuw’ (manuscript Haarlem archives). Mieris, F. van (1756) Groot Charterboek. . .vol. IV, Leiden. Naber, J.C. (1970) Een terugblik. Statistische bewerking van de resultaten van de informatie van 1514, [reprint of the original article in Bijdragen van het statistisch instituut (1885) 1–48 and (1890) 8–14] Haarlem. Noordegraaf, L. (1985) Hollands welvaren? Levensstandaard in Holland 1450–1650, Bergen. North, D.C. & Weingast, B. (1989) ‘Constitutions and commitment: the evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England’, The Journal of Economic History, 49, pp. 803–832. Scheurkogel, J. (1979) ‘Het Kaas- en Broodspel’, Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 94, pp. 189–211. Tilly, C. (2001) Coercion, capital and European states, A.D. 990–1990, Cambridge/ Oxford. Tracy, J.D. (1985) A financial revolution in the Habsburg Netherlands. Renten and renteniers in the County of Holland 1515–1565, Berkely/Los Angeles/London.

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VerLoren van Themaat, L.M. (1983) ‘Geschiedenis van de lijfrente’, in L.M. VerLoren van Themaat (ed.), Oude Dordtse lijfrenten. Stedelijke financiering in de vijftiende eeuw, Hilversum. Vries, J. de (1974) The Dutch rural economy in the Golden Age 1500–1700, New Haven/ London. Woude, A.M. van der (1972) Het Noorderkwartier. Een regionaal historisch onderzoek in de demografische en economische geschiedenis van westelijk Nederland van de late middeleeuwen tot het begin van de negentiende eeuw, Wageningen. Zanden, J.L. van (2002) ‘Taking the measure of the early modern economy: Historical national accounts for Holland in 1510–1514’, European Review of Economic History 6, pp. 131–163. Zanden, J.L. van & Riel, A. van (2002) ‘Economische geschiedenis met een menselijk gezicht’ in Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 117, vol. 3, pp. 364–369. Zuijderduijn, C.J. (2007) Medieval capital markets. Markets for ‘renten’ between state formation and private investment in Holland (1300–1550), Utrecht

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4 Credit, the land market and the connection between the rural and urban economy. The use of perpetual annuities in Aartselaar (Brabant) from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century Michael LIMBERGER, Ghent University

I.

Credit and land market in the rural economy of Brabant in the Late Middle Ages and early modern period

In comparison with France and Britain the research on rural credit and credit markets in the Low Countries in the Middle Ages and the Early modern period is only just in its very beginning (recent studies by Lambrecht in this volume and Soens and Thoen, 2003). This is even more the case for the duchy of Brabant, which is still an almost unexplored field in this perspective. The only studies dealing specifically with questions of credit in the pre-industrial period are Godding’s study of the Brussels real estate law in the Middle Ages and H. Soly’s work on the Antwerp real estate market in the sixteenth century (Godding, 1960; Soly, 1977). In his work on the Antwerp building boom and land market, Soly stresses the importance of perpetual annuities within the urban real estate market. Antwerp citizens were highly interested in accumulating real estate and among others they frequently invested their money in annuities on rural goods (see also Limberger, 2001 and 2008). It is, in this respect, that Soly’s study is highly relevant for the study of the rural land and credit markets. Perpetual annuities (erfelijke renten) were a popular credit tool in the later Middle Ages and the early modern period. They consisted of selling a rente on a plot of land for an amount of money, against the payment of a relatively low annuity on a perpetual and hereditary basis. Hence, the capital was actually not repaid, but only the yearly interest. By the fourteenth century, perpetual rents had become re-purchasable, which gave the debtor the chance of cancelling his debt (Godding, 1987: 174) The significant increase in annuities in the hands of townsmen during the sixteenth century was to have an important impact on the rural credit market. On the one hand it provided the landowners with credit facilities and hence the possibility to invest in their holdings, to buy extra land, or to compensate for temporary economic problems. On the other hand, it burdened them with extra charges, which could make it difficult to pay back the original capital and could lead to indebtedness and the loss of property. If credit was not used to increase economic productivity the risk of accumulating arrears and therefore indebtedness was imminent. Mortgage in this context could be an accelerator of economic mechanisms leading to the loss of landed property and hence to social

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polarisation (Servais, 1982; Berthe, 1998). Large towns did however not only provide capital, and demand for annuities and real estate, they could also have an influence on the attitude towards credit in general and towards specific credit instruments. This would lead to a spread of credit transactions among the rural population at the same time as increasing investments by townsmen. Rural credit from this point of view was rather a part in an economic integration process of rural and urban economy than simply a means of peasant expropriation by urban citizens. In this paper it is my intention to look at the phenomenon of annuity sales from the point of view of the local land market and to analyse the use of perpetual annuities in a particular village situated south of Antwerp, more precisely between Antwerp and the towns of Mechelen and Lier. The focus of my paper will therefore be the study of a credit market and land market in transition. If in the last years of the fourteenth and in the beginning of the fifteenth century annuities were part of a rural credit and land market, they became more and more influenced by Antwerp capital in the following one and a half centuries. It is challenging to see when the commercial rise of the metropolis began to be felt in the rural credit market and whether it transformed the role of credit in the rural economy. Another basic question is, to what extent, and in which ways, urban involvement in the rural credit market hastened the process of peasant expropriation taking place during the extraordinary economic expansion of Antwerp in the sixteenth century. By studying only one credit instrument, that is, perpetual annuities, this question can only be answered to a limited extent. Annuities were a means to obtain relatively large credit, but they were limited to those who had sufficient real estate to mortgage. Hence only a particular sector of the rural credit market can be highlighted in this paper.

II. Sources and methodology The particularly rich documentation concerning sales of real estate, annuities and similar transactions in the Brabantine countryside near Antwerp provides a good opportunity to study the market for annuities in detail. Registers of the Antwerp aldermen and local seigniorial courts, together with accounts of the ducal demesne provide complementary and independent sources for the research area. In particular the availability of typed abstracts of the Antwerp letters of aldermen concerning ca. 15,400 transactions concerning this area offer a valuable advantage for a systematic study of all kinds of real estate transactions (Verstrepen, 1990–96). The major advantage of this source is the availability of an uninterrupted body of sources running from the late fourteenth century until the end of the Ancien Régime. The available abstracts however only cover the period from the beginning of the registers in 1394 until 1565. The introduction of registers of aldermen in Antwerp took place relatively late in comparison with other towns of the Southern Netherlands, such as Ghent (1314), Brussels (1339) Mechelen (1345) or Louvain (1362) (Godding, 1987: 239, Cerutti 1969: 47–50) The nature of edition, in form of short abstracts, makes possible an analysis of a large number of transactions and their mutual interrelations. Hence, besides a mere quantitative approach a qualitative analysis can be undertaken. It has to be considered, however, that the abstracts were gathered from a genealogical perspective. Hence the author was particularly interested in personal details and famliy ties between the actors. Therefore, strategies of individual actors or specific groups become

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visible, and credit transactions can be seen in the light of other related transactions of the same person or group. They are however not so precise on economic and juridical details concerning the transactions. As a result, the transactions are summarised only in a very short form. The greatest inconvenience of the letters of aldermen is the lack of the mention of the sum lent. Only the value of the annuity is mentioned. For a calculation of interest rates we have to turn towards alternative sources. Another problem is the legal status of the Antwerp aldermen themselves. The registration of transactions concerning rural goods was considerable on account of the legal security offered by the letters of aldermen, but it was not obligatory for goods that fell outside the urban jurisdiction (Cerutti, 1969: 78–79). Hence there has to be some doubt concerning the overall representativeness of the documents. It is very likely that they form only the tip of the iceberg, and overestimate the commercial and urban aspect of the transactions, while small-scale transactions on a purely local level were only registered in the local seigniorial court, if they were registered at all. Another aspect of the local market for annuities that cannot be grasped via the study of the Antwep registers, and has to be neglected in this paper, is the share of credit transactions concluded at the courts of nearby towns such as Mechelen and Lier. The prominent place of annuities among the registered transactions suggests in fact that it was especially for registering annuities that people went to the Antwerp aldermen, because of their more than local character and the legal security they provided. The qualitative approach of analysing the sale of annuities in the framework of the local land market and as part of individual and family strategies requires a limited geographical focus. For the purposes of this paper, I have focussed upon one particular village, Aartselaar, situated ca. 10 km south of Antwerp. Aartselaar was a mediumsized village of 68 households or ca. 350 inhabitants, in 1437 and 104 households in 1526. Its relatively low percentage of poor households (10 per cent in 1437) indicates that the Aartselaar and other villages in its surroundings were relatively prosperous in comparison with other Brabantine villages (Cuvelier, 1912: 466–7, Limberger, 2008: 59–61). In spite of its relative closeness to Antwerp, it cannot be counted among the immediate ‘suburbs’ of the city with a highly developed commercial sector, but had a overwhelmingly agrarian structure (Limberger, 2008: 105–107) According to a declaration of the local aldermen form 1593, the village contained in 1570, 59 small and 23 big farms, with a total of 37 ploughs, 270 hectare of meadows and fields with rye, wheat, oats, buckwheat, peas and beans, 263 piece of cattle, 17 flocks of sheep and a windmill1 (Cosemans, 1963).

III. The market for annuities around 1400 We cannot go back to the origins of the use of perpetual annuities, which for the duchy of Brabant can, according to Godding, be situated in the thirteenth century and was in the beginning mainly an urban phenomenon (Godding, 1987). By the end of 1

Antwerp, City Archives, Vreemde Gemeenten, 5, fo. 1.

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the fourteenth century, their use was also quite common in the countryside as the frequency of transactions shows. In Aartselaar, between three and ten transactions took place every year (Figure 4.1). Annuities were not only created but also transferred to third parties. The values of the annuities varied but there was still a certain tendency: 76 per cent of the annuities were fixed in quantities of rye, ranging from one ‘muddeken’ (19.25 l.), and six ‘sisters’ (1848 l.) per year.2 This high percentage of payments in kind was typical for Brabant and was in sharp contrast with the county of Flanders (Soens and Thoen, 2003). The same discrepancy can be observed for land leases which were also to a much higher degree payable in kind in Brabant than in Flanders during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The rate between the size of the mortgage and the annuity was not fixed. It is remarkable, however, that a considerable number was at one sister of rye per bunder (1.33 ha.) – which corresponds more or less with 20 – 25 per cent of the gross yield.3 Five out of seventeen annuities were sold at this rate during the period 1394–1404, while another five had a ratio between one and a half sister per bunder and, in the case of another six, less than a half sister per bunder. These last annuities were for partial annuities attached to large parcels of land; hence the cost of annuity per bunder was relatively low.

Figure 4.1 Sales of annuities per year in Aartselaar 12 10 8 6 4 2

60

50

15

40

30

20

10

15

15

15

15

15

90

00 15

14

70

60

80 14

14

14

40

30

20

10

50 14

14

14

14

14

14

00

0

2

Throughout the article, the following measures and monetary units were used: 1 Antwerp bunder = 1.32 ha., 1 Antwerp sister rye = 2 halster = 4 viertel = 16 muddekens = ca. 77 litres, 1 lb. Brabant groten = 20 schillings = 240 pennies (deniers). See Mertens and Vandewalle 2003 and Vandewalle 1984. 3 Taking as a point of departure a gross yield between 1200 and 1500 litres/hectare.

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Table 4.1

Ratio mortgage size: annuities (1394–1404)

Sisters rye per bunder

Size of mortgage (min.–max)

1.33 1 0.5 – 0.99 0 – 0.49

1.5 2 (0.5–6) 2.2 (1–4) 9.6 (1.25–18.5)

Number 1 5 5 6

Per cent 5 29.4 29.4 35.3

Source: Antwerp City Archives, Letters of Aldermen, Verstrepen, 1990–96. The identification of the sellers and buyers of annuities can be based partly upon the investigation of the transaction itself. The sellers were generally inhabitants of Aartselaar, defined as such in the document by specifications such as ‘from’ or ‘living in’ or owners of real estate in the village. The identification of the buyers is more difficult, because their residences are only occasionally specified. The size of the mortgage is a second indicator of the social background of the seller of an annuity. These suggestions as to identity and status can be augmented by data from other transactions as well as other sources concerning the distribution of land in Aartselaar, such as rent registers or registers of fiefs.4 Around 1400, almost 40 per cent of the annuities in Aartselaar were sold by a small group of noblemen, local lords and urban patricians with landed property in the village. Hence the three most prominent families on the market for annuities in Aartselaar, the families Van der Elst, Van de Wouwer and De Herde bought and sold annuities from each others but also from people outside the village. They were followed by a small group of well-off families who also seem to have used annuities with a certain frequency and accounted for another 25 per cent of the sellers of annuities. Both groups used annuities quite regularly for what we might call the management of their patrimony: hence various annuities were interchanged within the family and within the same group. A very appealing example for the aspect of management of family patrimony is a declaration of the local lord Gillis Sanders who gave an annuity of 1000 schields to his nine natural children, the product of his relation with five different women. Other occasions on which annuities were used within the family were the distribution of the inheritance among heirs or for the compensation of some non-inheriting family members (Godding, 1987: 326–333). The Antwerp registers contain numerous of these transactions in which all the heirs and their corresponding share, or compensation, are listed. The motives of the great majority of landowners who only made one or two transactions are more difficult to guess. Only if the sale of an annuity is followed by the sale or purchase of real estate or a similar transaction can such a link be made. The registers contain mainly indications concerning sales of annuities in order to purchase or acquire immovable goods, to pay off other heirs for their share of an inheritance or to provide an income for a family member. 4

Registers of the land rents of the duke of Brabant at Aartselaar from 1440, 1516 and 1557 are concerved in the National archives at Brussels: Rekenkamer. Nrs. 45583, 45597 and 45622. Fief registers of the feudal court of the Land of Mechelen are published in Thys, 1972.

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IV. Changes during the fifteenth century In the first decades of the fifteenth century, the frequency of transactions increased and reached a peak around 1440. Also the social composition of the group of debtors changed: the preponderance of the feudal elite diminished. In contrast, more local families were involved in the credit market. Among them some of the wealthier families nevertheless stand out. Names like Van Loocke, Schoezitters and Bal appear more frequently among the sellers of annuities. They were closely related to the local gentry either as fiefholders, leaseholders or as aldermen in their local seigniorial court. Most especially the Bal family had worked its way up from fairly humble origins to the point where its members had become major landowners and players in the local credit market. Thus, a certain Jan Bal owned a farm of 7 bunders (9,24 ha) in 1427 and sold a smaller farm before 1433. Aart Bal bought a farm from a member of the local gentry, Jan Van de Wouwer, in 1428, and yet another member of the same family, Gillis Bal, leased a farm of 7 bunders from Claus Vande Wouwer in 1427. In 1440 Aart Bal sold a large annuity of 20 schillings Brabant groten upon a farm of 3 bunders (3,96 ha) and a plot of 15 bunders (19,8 ha) of land and another of 1 sister of rye on 2 bunders (2,64 ha) of land. From 1424 to 1437 members of the Bal family sold 16 annuities with a total value of 12.25 sisters of rye and 8 Brabant schillings. Among the buyers, the figure of Aart Corpt from Antwerp stands out. He bought several annuities around 1440, and at the same time he bought two farms from members of the local gentry and he leased out several plots of land to local farmers. In the ducal rent register of Aartselaar from ca.1440–1460 he figures on the first rank of the tenants.5

V.

The sixteenth century

In the second half of the fifteenth century, a period of economic and social crisis in Brabant (Van Uytven, 1975; Blockmans et al., 1980), the frequency of annuity sales at Aartselaar decreased again but reached another peak around 1500. In the sixteenth century, the records become more explicit on the residence of the contractors: hence the sellers of annuities still came from about 50 per cent from the village itself, whereas among the buyers this was the case for only 20 per cent. The others came from the closer surroundings and only some are explicitly identified as coming from Antwerp or Mechelen. Among the buyers, townsmen were slightly better represented (c. 10 per cent). Apart from Antwerp, some of them resided in the towns of Mechelen and Louvain, both of them towns of ca. 20 000 inhabitants, respectively 12 km and 50 km away (Van Uytven, 1992). However there is a considerable percentage of buyers and sellers of annuties whose residence is not specified in the documents. Some of them, mostly creditors, can be identified by their occupation: a goldsmith, a locksmith, a tin-founder, or a lawyer can be supposed to come from an urban background, while carpenters, weavers or even shopkeepers could also be rural occupations. Also religious institutions and local institutions of poor relief were among the buyers of annuities: in our sample of transactions related to Aartselaar, the Antwerp Our-Ladies chapter and the abbey of St. Salvator bought some annuities. Both of them had large landed property in the area (Limberger, 2008: 161–167; Van den Nieuwenhuizen, 1959; Van Passen, 5

Brussels, ARA, Rk. Nr. 45583.

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1988: 85–99). Also the poor tables of Aartselaar as well as those from the neighbouring villages Reet, Schelle and Wilrijk each bought several annuities.6 Another transition that can be observed by comparing 1400 and 1500, is that from annuities payable in rye towards payments in money. 63 per cent of the newly created annuities were payable in money during this period, whereas in the fifteenth century the greatest part was still in kind. The rising trend of grain prices during the sixteenth century made annuities expressed in grain increasingly unpopular (Bigwood, 1902). Money rents were generally higher than the rents in kind of the early fifteenth century, both, in nominal terms and in comparison with the size of the mortgage. Annuities very frequently were of 10 or 20 sch. Brabant groten, which was the price of 4.5 or 9 sisters of rye, while annuities expressed in kind were mostly less than 1 sister. Money annuities were also higher in relation to the mortgage (Table 4.2).

Table 4.2 Annuity > 20 sch. 10–20 sch. 10 sch. < 10 sch. > 1 sister 1 sister < 1 sister

Values of annuities, 1494–1500 and 1524–1529 1494–1500 Avg. size 1524–1529 n Per cent mortgage n Per cent 3 7 12 9 2 3 10

6.5 15.2 26.1 19.6 4.3 6.5 21.7

3 b. 3 b. 2.8 b. 8.25 b. 2.8 b. 4.3 b.

6 2 11 8

22.2 7.4 40.7 29.6

Avg. size mortgage 2.5 b. 2 b. 3.3 b. 1.38 b.

Source: Antwerp City Archives, Letters of Aldermen, Verstrepen, 1990–96.

VI. The role of urban capital Although townsmen and urban institutions had already been active in the rural market for annuities in the fifteenth century, it is especially in the sixteenth century that their presence becomes significant. Around 1520, the presence of Antwerp merchants and artisans are more frequently found among the creditors. This increasing presence of townsmen can also be observed at the level of real estate purchases (Limberger, 2008: 197): in 1529, for example the diamondcutter Godevaart Pauwels bought three annuities from different owners in Kontich, a village situated next to Aartselaar. He also bought considerable landed property, which made him one of the greatest landowners of the village, according to the 1556 rent register. The values of annuities as well as the relationship with the size of the mortgage remained on a similar level as that of around 1500. However, the annuities in kind almost disappeared entirely (Table 4.2).

6

Poor tables (armentafels, heilig-geesttafels) were local charitable institutions providing poor relief.

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Finally, between 1556 and 1565 merchants and other prominent townsmen dominated the market of annuities on goods situated at Aartselaar. 37 per cent of the purchases of annuities were made by townsmen, and 25 per cent each by inhabitants of the village and inhabitants of nearby villages. Among the sellers the proportion of townsmen was somewhat lower; 18.5 per cent of the transactions involved townsmen as sellers. However the volume of their sales of annuities made up for more than 50 per cent of the total. Table 4.3 analyses the flow of annuities between the different social groups that have been identified. Table 4.3

Transfers of annuities by social group, 1556-1565, (Brabant schillings/ bunders) buyers urbans

local elite

1395

140

urbans

1188

sellers

others nobility

360

local elite

10+13 vt.

rurals

2.5

58

15+10 vt.

rurals 815

locals

others 2350

22

60 20

1.5 5

locals 1780+23 vt. 85.5

41%

2.5

1402

15

27.40%

28

11.20%

485 10

18 69

54.30%

1188

15 125

8

82.5

37.5

30

8.5 0.25

30

30

2

20 32%

24%

3.90%

95+10vt.

4

5.75

2.20%

42.5

5

1057.5 45.75

169+13 vt. 28.5

7.5 30

2.20%

60 6 1%

1%

1.40%

Source: Antwerp City Archives, Letters of Aldermen, Verstrepen, 1996. Karel Van Hove, a merchant, sold an annuity of 200 guilders for a sum of 3200 guilders to Cornelis Rousseau on the domain called goed ter grippen. One year later he sold the holding to another merchant, called Jacob Wolfaert. Here we have the only explicit reference to the interest rate of the annuities, 6.25 per cent or penny 16.7 This is also the most frequent interest rate in Antwerp, as well as in the Southern Low Countries in general, as the duke of Alva declares in a letter to the Grand Council of Malines in 1571: quest rente plus ordinaire et coustumiere légitime en ces pays (cited in Bigwood, 1902). In the other transactions the amount of the credit is not mentioned or only in cryptic words such as ‘for an amount of money’ (1558). Noble landowners sold annuities to wealthy merchants such as Claude van de Wouwer who sold 72 Carolusguilders to the sugar-refiner and alderman Jan Vanden Broecke in 1556. The transactions often included the transfer of existing annuities, some of them 7

Penning 16 refers to one-sixteenth part of the total = 6.25%.

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dating from decades earlier, which have passed through the hands of many owners through inheritance or sale. In addition, more complex arrangements, including the creation of annuities upon existing annuities or part cancellations (that is, the re-payment of part of the total value), and transformations of hereditary leases into annuities, were also common. Furthermore, the properties of the wealthy local families, such as the Bals, Van Loockes and Schoezitters became involved in this market that was dominated by Antwerp citizens: Thus, in 1561, the widow Van Loock sold 10 s. to Antonio del Rio, seignieur of Cleydaal, and in 1560 Jan de Merchier, a merchant, sold an annuity which was sold much earlier, in 1488, by Joos de Schoezitter to an Antwerp peltier on his farm of 3 bunders (3.96 ha). In 1556 Willem Schoezitters sold an annuity of 10 viertel (192.5 l) of rye on a third part of a farm. Nevertheless, these families continued their former activities and sold and bought annuities, to an increasing extent from one of the other leading local families. Some of them became merchants themselves, such as Lucas Bal who provided the city with firewood according to the city accounts of 1549–50 (Génard, 1864: 77), or purchased real estate in other places, including Antwerp. The Antwerp registers do not allow us to make a global overview of the local property relations, but the records concerning annuities indicate that there was a tendency for concentration. A comparison of the tenants of the duke of Brabant in Aartselaar between 1440 and 1557 supports this observation. While in 1440, the tenures were held by 81 tenants, this number had diminished by 1557 to only 50. Moreover, the five largest tenants paid 50 per cent of the total land rent, while in 1440 the same share was held by the eight wealthiest tenants.8 Indications from other villages near Antwerp show that peasant property of land became very limited by the end of the 16th century (Limberger, 2008: 205–6). Therefore only a small local elite with landed property had access to the market for perpetual annuities. The farmers of lease-farms had to turn to alternative forms of credit. The arrangements between the lessor and the leaseholder provided different possibilities of credit, among which the delay of payment was probably the most widespread. At this stage of the research it is difficult to say if annuities were a major factor in this expropriation process, as is traditionally stated was the case. We will have to turn to individual cases of landowners and their sales of annuities in order to investigate this further. The comparison between transactions with annuities and other real estate transactions does however not show any fundamental differences. In fact, annuities were generally considered a form of real estate, albeit with particular characteristics, and hence no principal distinction was drawn between them and other forms of real estate.

VII. Conclusions The study of the local market for perpetual annuities reveals interesting insights into economic practice in the villages near Antwerp. Instead of a bipolar structure of

8

Brussels, ARA, Rk. Nr. 45583 and 45622.

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urban buyers and rural sellers of annuities, we can distinguish particular circuits of mutual exchange. The comparison of numerous transactions with perpetual annuities and other real estate transactions show the tight relations that existed between rural and urban credit networks as well as between the rural and urban economy and society in general (Musgrave, 1999: 38–39). First, the economic activity in the village was closely related to the urban market, which introduced more intensively commercialised contacts. Furthermore, there were ever-tighter family ties between villagers and townsmen, resulting from migration as well as from marriage. This was linked with socio-professional changes. Family members migrating to Antwerp moved into a new socio-professional environment closely related to their new occupation. Those annuities which they received via their rural family ties were thus frequently transferred to fellow craftsmen and merchants. The transfer from the countryside to the town hence took place at different social levels at the same time and therefore affected the gentry, the local elite and the peasantry alike. Secondly, annuities appear to have had a broader function than solely that of credit instruments stricte dictu. They were a tool for the management of the patrimony of individuals and families. They could serve to pay off heirs and other family members without however splitting up the patrimony itself, to provide a regular income for a family member, and so on. Sales of annuities from villagers to townsmen have to be seen therefore not only from an economic perspective but also from the perspective of the close social ties between townsmen and villagers. Hence, the one-sided picture of urban citizens gaining a hold on a passive rural land and credit market has to be more carefully nuanced: we can rather speak of a rural economy and society under strong urban influence. Small scale merchants, qualified craftsmen, local real estate speculators and petty landlords from the countryside were in close contact with the urban economy and thus contributed as much to the tight connection between urban and rural land- and credit markets as did strategic purchases of land and annuities by urban merchants.

Bibliography Berthe, M. ed. (1998) Endettement paysan et crédit rural dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne: actes des 17es Journées internationales d’histoire de l’Abbaye de Flaran, septembre 1995, Toulouse (Flaran; 17). Bigwood, G. (1902) ‘Un point d’histoire économique. La question des rentes payables en grains dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle, aux anciens Pays-Bas’, Annales de la Société d’archéologie de Bruxelles XVI, 3–4, pp. 5–18. Blockmans, W.P., Pieters, G., Prevenier, W., Van Schaik, A.W. (1980) ‘Tussen crisis en welvaart: sociale veranderingen 1300 -1500’, Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden IV, Haarlem, pp. 42–86. Boone, M., Davids, K., Janssens, P., eds. (2003) Urban Public Debts. Urban Government and the Market for Annuities in Western Europe (14th-18th centuries) (Studies in European Urban History 1100–1800 nr.3) Turnhout. Cerutti, F.F.X. (1969) ‘De schepenbank in de Brabantse stad en de overdracht en bezwaring van onroerende goederen’, De Brabantse stad. Tweede colloquium, 23–24 nov. 1968, ’s-Hertogenbosch, 47–87.

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Cuvelier, J. (1912) Les dénombrements de foyers en Brabant, 14e-16e siècle, Brussels (Verzameling van onuitgegeven Belgische kronieken en van onuitgegeven documenten betreffende de geschiedenis van België: reeks in-4°; 39). Génard, P. (1864) ‘De rekening der stad Antwerpen van het jaar 1549–1550’, Antwerpsch Archievenblad, 1, pp. 17–104. Godding, Ph. (1960) Le droit foncier à Bruxelles au moyen âge, Brussels. Godding, Ph. (1987) Le droit privé dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux du 12e au 18e siècle, Brussels. Limberger, M. (2001) ‘Merchant Capitalism and the Countryside: Antwerp and the West of the Duchy of Brabant - (XVth - XVIth centuries)’ P. Hoppenbrouwers, J.L. van Zanden, (eds.) Peasants into Farmers? The Transformation of Rural Economy and Society in the Low Countries (Middle Ages -19th century) in Light of the Brenner Debate, Turnhout, (CORN publication series nr. 4), pp. 158–178. Limberger, M. (2008) Sixteenth-century Antwerp and its rural surroundings: social and economic change in the hinterland of a commerical metropolis (ca. 1450- ca. 1570), Turnhout (Studies in European Urban History, 14). J. Mertens, P. Vandewalle (2003) Metrologisch Vademecum voor Vlaanderen, Bruges. Musgrave, P. (1999) The Early Modern European Economy, Basingstoke, London, New York (European History in Perspective). Servais, P. (1982) La rente constituée dans le ban de herve au XVIIIe siècle s.l. [Brussels] (Historische uitgaven: reeks in-8° = Collection histoire: série in-8°; 62). Soly, H. (1977) Urbanisme en kapitalisme te Antwerpen in de 16e eeuw. De stedebouwkundige en industriele ondernemingen van Gilbert van Schoonbeke, s.l. [Brussels] (Historische uitgaven: reeks in-8° = Collection histoire: série in-8°; 47). Thys, O.H. (1972) ‘Lenen van het leenhof van Mechelen te Aartselaar en Reet, 1473’, Vlaamse stam VIII, pp.441–447. Van den Nieuwenhuizen, J. (1959) ‘Een status bonorum van het O.L.Vrouwe-Kapittel van Antwerpen (1346–1362)’, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis 42, pp. 123–143. Vandewalle, P. (1984) Oude maten, gewichten en muntstelsels in Vlaanderen, Brabant en Limburg, s.l. (Centrum voor landelijke geschiedenis, Publikatie 82). Van Passen, R. (1988) Geschiedenis van Kontich, Kontich, 2nd ed.. Van Uytven, R. (1975) ‘Politiek en Economie. De crisis der late XVe eeuw in de Nederlanden’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis/Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 53, pp. 1097 – 1149. Van Uytven, R. (1992) ‘Brabantse en Antwerpse centrale plaatsen (14de-19de eeuw)’, Het stedelijk netwerk in België in historisch perspectief (1350–1850). een statistische en dynamische benadering/le reseau urbain en Belgique dans une perspective historique (1350–1850), une approche statistique et dynamique, (Handelingen 15de Internationaal Colloquium / Actes 15e Colloque International, Spa, 4–6 sept. 1990), Brussels, pp. 29–79. Verstrepen, C. (1990–1996) Stadsarchief Antwerpen Schepengriffie. Antwerpse schepenbrieven betreffende de dorpen van de Rupelstreek. Aartselaar, Boom, Boechout, Hemiksem, Kontich, Niel, Reet, Rumst, Schelle, 1384–1565, 7 vols, Brussel, 1990–1996.

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Rural credit and the market for annuities in eighteenth-century Flanders

5 Rural credit and the market for annuities in eighteenth-century Flanders Thijs LAMBRECHT, Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO)

I.

Introduction

Credit covers many aspects that include both money lending as well as the deferred payment of goods and services. Every type of transaction that involves some element of deferred payment can therefore be considered a credit transaction. There is however an important difference between a peasant borrowing money from an urban citizen using a formalized credit instrument like an annuity and the same person asking to postpone payment with the village shopkeeper. Although both credit transactions serve the same purpose, that is, bridging the gap between income and expenditure, the scale and social context of these loans are quite different. In this contribution the so-called ‘formal’ credit practices and instruments are at the centre of attention. The connotation formal refers to those transactions that include the transfer of money (and not goods or services) from one contracting party to another. Moreover, both the shape and content of the credit instruments that were used to conclude this transaction display some legal uniformity. In other words, when concluding these formal contracts a fixed procedure was followed and there is a large degree of conformity between the different contracts. Reviewing the historiography of rural (and urban) credit during the early modern period in the southern Low Countries immediately points to a striking phenomenon. Historians dealing with one or more aspects of the rural credit market have done this mostly using the perspective of the market for annuities. The popularity of annuities as a proxy for reconstructing trends in rural credit can be easily explained. Contrary to other credit instruments, the annuity was the only contract that was subjected to compulsory registration by local authorities. The ‘Eeuwig Edict’ from 1611 set out the formal rules and procedure for the registration of annuities (Martyn, 2000). This set of laws prescribed that every annuity needed to be registered before the court of aldermen of the parish where the land used as a security was situated. From the early seventeenth century, but in most cases already much earlier, historians have access to hundreds of series of annuities spanning nearly the complete territory of the Southern Low Countries. Research into these annuities was initially dominated by medieval and legal historians who were primarily interested in the origins and development of these credit contracts rather than their financial and economic importance. Only from the 1960’s onwards, largely inspired by the more quantitative approach of the Annales-school, historians started studying the market for annuities as an indictor of economic activity. Belgian scholars like Deprez, Soly, Thoen, Dambruyne and Servais have used the annuities to reconstruct economic trends in both urban and rural environments (Deprez, 1966; Soly, 1974; Thoen, 1988; Dambruyne, 1988; Servais, 1982). This article deals with the annuity market in rural communities during the eighteenth century. Firstly, I will present a general sketch of the various credit instruments in use

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in the Flemish countryside. This will allow us to determine to what extent the annuity market can serve as a measure for developments in the rural credit market. Secondly, a general overview of the annuity market in rural Flanders is presented. Specific attention will be devoted to the evolution of number and size of annuities, the interest rates charged and the problem of peasant indebtedness. Thirdly, using the private archives of a family of village clerks, this contribution will also explore the issue of financial intermediation in the countryside.

II. Credit instruments During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the annuity can be defined as a periodical and redeemable payment in money of a fixed sum (the interest) mortgaged on immovable property (Soly, 1974). In exchange for this annual interest the annuity-seller would receive a sum of money (the capital). Interest payments were not subtracted from the capital and the annuity-buyer enjoyed total freedom as to the timing of the repayment of the capital. The origins of these annuities date back to the Early Middle Ages and were primarily designed to circumvent the ecclesiastical ban on usury. The annuity was viewed as a sale rather than a loan. Because the annuity-buyer advanced capital he enjoyed some rights (e.g. the yearly interest) on the produce of the land. In the course of the sixteenth century the annuity contract experienced some important changes. This century, marked by an expansion of credit in the Low Countries fuelled by the international Antwerp capital market, was characterized by both continuity and innovation in credit practices and instruments (Aerts, 2000). This was particularly the case for the annuity contracts. Two important changes were introduced in annuity contracts which were primarily aimed at protecting the interests of the annuity-sellers. Firstly, in 1520 and 1529, annuities (both old and newly created ones) became redeemable de jure. Already in the fourteenth century annuity contracts included a clause enabling lenders to repay the capital. During the fifteenth century the number of contracts that included this possibility of repayment rose sharply (Thoen, 1988). This practice was however still not standardized. These changes in the nature of the annuity contract were not unimportant. This new set of laws implied that the peasantries could relieve themselves from loans that had been pressing on their land for many generations. Rural society was able to free itself from the interest payments that had been eating at its profit margins. The ordinances of 1520 and 1529 therefore created the much needed legal framework for the peasantry to release themselves from these intergenerational loans and may well have contributed to an import process of désendettement during this period. Victor Brants, one of the founding fathers of rural history in Belgium, has claimed that this was a measure that was absolutely necessary to ensure the viability of the rural economy. Because interest payments accumulated as new annuities were being sold the yearly dues from these loans would soon exceed the profit of the land they were secured against (Brants, 1881). These legal measures may well have been inspired by social developments taking place in the adjacent German territories. Recent research has shown that the peasant wars in some parts of Germany were closely linked to the problem of rural indebtedness. One of the demands of the peasantries participating in these uprisings included the right to redeem annuities (Gilomen, 1992). Secondly, in 1571 the Grand Council of Malines restricted the selling of annuities where capital and/or interest payments concerned non-monetary

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elements. Indeed, in many contracts dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the capital and interest payments consisted of payment in kind rather than cash. The annual interest payments consisted of fixed quantities of grains, dairy products or other goods. The sharp increase of prices during the sixteenth century increased the interest burden for peasantries who were obliged to supply their annuity-buyer with fixed amounts of agricultural produce. As prices were rising, so were the returns of the annuity-buyers on their investments. Although these contracts could not be considered usurious, the large profits made on these contracts were considered unethical at the least. In 1571 the government declared all new contracts that included some form of payment in kind illicit. This measure was also implemented retrospectively. Old annuity contracts in kind were automatically converted in new contracts with a fixed interest rate of 6.25 per cent. The value of the capital of the contracts was calculated based on average grain prices dating from the period when the contract was originally drawn up (Bigwood, 1902). From the late sixteenth century onwards the annuity was thus a flexible credit instrument with some important advantages for both lenders and borrowers (Dambruyne, 1988). For the annuity-seller it was an ideal way to attract capital to his holding and to benefit from the surplus-value of their properties when land prices were rising. The seller could decide independently when he would repay the capital of the loan. Depending on economic conditions this could be done fairly early (after a couple of years), but he could also decide to wait until his profits and saving potentials were increasing again. For the buyer the annuity was a means of obtaining a fixed and secured income. Compared to land, annuities proved to be a safer and less time-consuming investment. Unlike land, annuities required less monitoring, were not susceptible to destruction or degradation and no additional investments were required to guarantee profits. In theory annuities were subject to taxation, but in reality there was no way of retracing annuity ownership due to an inadequate administrative framework. There were some disadvantages, in particular for the annuity-buyers. What proved to be the most attractive feature of the annuity-seller, could potentially cause a problem for the buyer. Since the buyer had no control over the timing of the repayment of the capital, he could only invest savings that he could spare for an indefinite period of time. For short-term financial investments, annuities proved to be a less suitable option. There was always the possibility to sell the annuity to a third party, but this would entail some loss on the capital. Also, during periods of inflation and coin devaluation the capital invested was shrinking. Contrary to leasing out land for example, there was no opportunity to adjust the interest charged on annuities to changing economic conditions. Although annuities were important, there were also other credit instruments in use to transfer money between households. Bonds or so-called obligaties bear some similarities with annuities as an annual interest was also charged. Due to the specific nature of the bond and because it entailed more risk, interest rates charged were usually somewhat higher. However, in the contract the duration of the loan was not undetermined, but specified in detail. Most bonds seem to have run over shorter periods of time (less than 3–5 years). The borrower pledged all his possessions as a security for the loan although these securities were not recorded in detail in the contract. Bonds were also not subject to compulsory registration with the village clerk or notaries. It is therefore difficult to reconstruct how popular or unpopular this credit instrument actually was. There was an

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important element of risk attached to borrowing money using a bond. For this reason lenders needed to have accurate information about the financial and economic situation and competences of the borrower. This resulted in the bond primarily being used within rural communities where this kind of knowledge was commonly shared or where both parties already had a history of financial relationships (Lambrecht, 2007). Finally, simple IOUs were also used in rural societies. In these contracts, sometimes only orally concluded, no interest was charged. The charging of interest on simple IOUs was forbidden and considered usurious. It is possible however that the capital mentioned in the contract included some hidden interest. Also, there seems to have been no standardized structure for these contracts. Sometimes, the date of repayment was clearly stated, in other cases only the debt was recorded without any reference to the timing whatsoever (Strubbe, 1973). Reviewing the three most important credit contracts used in rural society indicates that the annuity was the most secure instrument since the capital was secured against immovable property. The annuity was therefore the most suited instrument for money lending between individuals belonging to different social, spatial and economic worlds. The risk taken by the lender was close to zero. In the case of the bonds and IOUs personal contacts, or at least a sound knowledge of their financial situation, would have preceded the contract. Because only annuities were subject to registration, the records of the parish aldermen do not allow us to reconstruct the incidence and use of these three types of credit contracts. To circumvent these inadequacies a set of probate inventories has been analyzed to reconstruct the use of these different types of credit arrangements. As is well known, a probate inventory records all debts owed and owned by the deceased. The annuities are listed among the immovable properties of the deceased, while bonds and IOUs were listed among the credits and/or debts. In the probate inventory both the value of the loan was specified and the legal instrument that lay at the base of this loan. For the region of Tielt (inland Flanders) probate inventories for the period 1755–1760 have been researched yielding a total of 163 annuities, bonds and IOUs (see Table 5.1). Table 5.1

The frequency and value of formal credit instruments in the region around Tielt, 1755–1760 Annuities

Bonds

£ Flemish

N

Value

N

< 10 10–25 25–50 50–100 > 100 Total Av. value

0 12 13 20 29 74

0 220–0–0 468–0–0 1326–0–0 4949–10–0 6963–10–0 94

3 21 14 7 1 46

Value 24–0–0 362–6–8 466–10–4 473–2–2 150–0–0 1475–19–2 32

IOU’s N

Value

33 8 2 0 0 43

131–18–5 123–1–6 75–15–8 0 0 33–15–7 0.8

Source: Lambrecht, 2007.

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The 163 loans recorded in these inventories display some distinct patterns. With some 45 per cent of all money loans recorded in this source, the annuity was undoubtedly the most popular form of money lending. The rest of the money loans are almost equally distributed between the bond (28 per cent) and the IOU (26 per cent). A breakdown of the size of loan also reveals some important differences. Table 5.1 indicates that the type of credit instrument used varied with the size of the loan. For small amounts the IOU and to a lesser extent the bond were primarily used. As the value of the loan grew larger bonds and annuities became more important. The type of credit instrument and the size of the loan were thus closely related. This can reveal something about the social context in which these loans were contracted. Small amounts of money were lent using the more informal and less secure credit instruments. This suggests that the bond and the IOU were instruments with that were primarily used by economic agents that had a sound personal knowledge of the financial situation of the borrower. These loans were much likely to be imbedded in social and economic networks within the village society (Hoffman, 2000). Although the probate inventories unfortunately do not record the place of origin of the lenders and borrowers, there is some evidence to suggest that both parties belonged to the same community. Annuities were not only the most common type of credit contract, they were also in terms of capital value towering above the other credit instruments. In this sample of loans annuities account for 79 per cent of the total value of the loans while bonds and IOUs respectively represent 17 per cent and 4 per cent. These data indicate that annuities can serve as an adequate measure for reconstructing trends in rural credit during this period.

III. The market for annuities For a long time the historical verdict on the role of annuities in economic life was negative. In his study of the eighteenth-century countryside of Liège, Ivan Delatte stated that the expansion of rural credit (as indicated by the rising numbers of annuities) was closely linked to economic distress. Small peasant landowners were forced to burden their properties with annuities to maintain their economic independence and prolong the survival of their holding. Delatte assumed that by the end of the eighteenth century the capital vested on these properties exceeded their nominal value (Delatte, 1945). The French historian Pierre Goubert considered the annuities primarily as a lending mechanism that resulted in the expropriation of the small landowners. Although there are large similarities between the annuity contracts of northern France and the Southern Low Countries, the procedure in case of non-payment of the interest differs considerably. In northern France the property rights of the land that was used as security were almost always automatically transferred to the annuity-buyers when the peasant defaulted on his payments. Due to this specific regulation urban and rural lenders could claim rights to the land of their borrowers (Goubert, 1984). In the southern Low Countries the borrowers who defaulted could also lose their property rights, but in this region the land was publically auctioned to the highest bidder. The sum that was raised selling the land was used to repay the capital and the interest payments owed, but in case there was a surplus, this money flowed back to the defaulted peasantries. In France annuity-buyers thus had a more direct and a cheaper point of access to the land if interest payments were not paid regularly. Gutmann is less pessimistic about the role of annuities. He acknowledges that the annuity was sometimes

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used to circumvent cash flow problems of the rural population caused by structural or cyclical circumstances. Annuities however were also used by peasants to invest in their holdings and if possible to expand their economic activities (Gutmann, 1978). For the Late Middle Ages and the sixteenth century Erik Thoen has reached similar conclusions. His research has indicated that only in a minority of cases were annuities sold as a final solution to peasants facing financial and economic difficulties. Thoen’s view of the role of annuities is far more optimistic since, according to him, annuities were used primarily to invest in additional land acquisitions or to finance the working capital of the farm holdings (Thoen, 1988). III.1. Capital volumes The vast series of aldermen records enable us to reconstruct the volume of annuities that were sold and bought annually in rural communities. Table 5.2 summarizes the available data for some eighteenth-century Flemish rural communities. Comparing these data is not without difficulties since not all authors have used similar time periods and the number of years analyzed is not equal. The data for the villages of Lovendegem/Gavere and Kruibeke are most representative in this respect as all years between 1710 and 1789 have been included in the analysis. The second decade of the eighteenth century has been selected as the period of reference and developments throughout the eighteenth century are measured against the volume of borrowing in that decade. The data in general seem to indicate that rural credit markets expanded throughout this period. In certain communities a true explosion in the demand for capital can be observed. In the course of the eighteenth century the demand for capital had risen more then tenfold in Lovendegem/Gavere. This general rise however is unequally distributed in both time and space. The middle of the eighteenth century, most notably the decade 1740–1749, was characterized by a decline in the demand for rural credit. This can be largely attributed to the effects of the Austrian War of Succession (1744–1748). Although the negative social and economic effects of this war for the Flemish countryside were limited compared to warfare during the late seventeenth century, the military activities did have an impact on rural borrowing. Insecurity and uncertainty, much more than wartime destruction or taxation, led to a declining credit market. The rural economy recovered quite rapidly thereafter suggesting that this war did not have any long-term effects on the capital market. Especially after 1760 the demand for capital expanded rapidly. This growth can be particularly observed in the villages of Lovendegem/Gavere and Evergem near Ghent. Although eighteenth-century developments suggest a rapid and substantial growth in the volume of peasant borrowing, the data must be interpreted with caution. Explaining why rural borrowing expanded during this century is not an easy task. Was this increase merely reflecting the inflation during this period, was it the result of population growth or did more households become involved in the credit market? There are at least two factors that can be identified as having attributed to the rising level of borrowing. Firstly, the annuity market was closely related to the land market. Although the relationship between credit and land markets is quite complex, the land market is generally considered to have exerted a major influence on the level of borrowing (Béaur, 1994). Paul Servais’ analysis of the annuity market in the land of Herve suggests that throughout the eighteenth century some 40 per cent of the annuities that were sold had a connection with the land

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1181 4218 4617 9433 6513 8424 20553 39513 43691

1700/9 1710/9 1720/9 1730/9 1740/9 1750/9 1760/9 1770/9 1780/9

27 100 109,5 223,6 154,4 199,7 487,3 936,8 1035,8

Index

1710/9 1720/9 1730/9 1740/9 1750/9 1760/9 1770/9 1780/9

Period

6283 7754 10234 4850 6298 3414 13425 11149

Capital

100 125,4 165,5 78,4 101,9 55,2 217,1 180,3

Index 1708 1718 1728 1738 1748 1758 1768 1778 1788

Period 239 230 1778 880 1925 958 1063 2106 5412

Capital

Moerbeke

103,9 100 512,2 382,6 837 416,5 462,2 915,7 2353

Index 1700 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780

Period 1762 858 2717 1902 2433 2723 3427 9127 16447

Capital

Evergem

205,4 100 316,7 221,7 283,6 317,4 399,4 1063,8 1916,9

Index

Source: Deprez, 1966 (Lovendegem-Gavere); Blomme, 1984 (Kruibeke); Baert, 1998 (Moerbeke); Dewulf, 2004 (Evergem).

Capital

Period

Kruibeke

Demand for annuities in Flemish villages, 1700-1789 (£ Flemish)

Lovendegem-Gavere

Table 5.2

Rural credit and the market for annuities in eighteenth-century Flanders

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market (Servais, 1982). It is therefore not unlikely that the volume of borrowing reflected both the intensity of land transfers and the price level. In the countryside around Ghent prices for land rose tenfold in the course of the eighteenth century. Although prices were quite low around 1700 as a result of the successive demographic and economic crises caused by French military presence in this region, the rise in price levels is nevertheless spectacular. In the village of Nevele one hectare of arable land costed on average 34 pound Flemish between 1700 and 1709. At the end of the eighteenth century this had risen to circa 375 pounds Flemish (Deprez, 1958). In another village in this region prices for arable land rose with factor 5 to 7 between 1715 and 1775 (Thomas, 2005). The similarities in the development of land prices and the volume of borrowing suggest that they were closely connected. The rise in private borrowing in the countryside can therefore also be partly explained by the changes in the price for immovable property. This is also suggested by the average amounts that were borrowed. The average sum borrowed by peasantries rose with the same speed throughout the eighteenth century, especially accelerating after 1760. While between 1700 and 1719 some 88 per cent of the annuities that were sold by rural dwellers consisted of sums smaller than 100 pounds Flemish, this had dropped to circa 41 per cent at the end of the century (Deprez, 1966). In the village of Evergem the average capital of an annuity rose from 55 to 245 pounds Flemish between 1700 and 1780 (Dewulf, 2004). The volume and frequency of borrowing seems to have been connected, albeit partially, to the land market. A second factor explaining the boom in peasant borrowing during this century arises not from economic development, but rather from registration procedures. The series of annuity contracts registered before the court of village alderman actually tend to overestimate the actual volume of peasant borrowing. Especially during periods of falling interest rates, such as the eighteenth century, the risk of distortion is considerable. Historians studying the credit market have until now largely overlooked the distortions this could produce on actual levels of peasant borrowing. In periods of falling interest rates households were eager to refinance their debts. So, a household that had borrowed money at an interest rate of 4 per cent would be inclined to refinance this debt when interest rates had fallen to 3 per cent. And a lot of households actually resorted to this technique. In some contracts the annuity sellers declared that the money raised would be used to redeem the capital of an annuity that they had sold earlier or that had been vested on their property for a longer period. For example, when a household borrowed 100 pounds in 1740 at an interest rate of 4 per cent, there was a large chance they would refinance this debt when interest rates had dropped to 3,5 per cent in 1760. The borrowing household thus appears twice in the village court books as borrowers of a total sum of 200 pounds, while in reality they had only borrowed 100 pounds. A close reading of village court rolls yields numerous examples of this technique. Between 1734 and 1743 the household of Emmanuel de Voldere appears three times as a borrower. The court rolls suggest that his household borrowed 146 pounds on three different occasions, while in reality they had only borrowed a total of 78 pounds. In 1743 they borrowed 78 pounds to redeem two earlier debts of 48 and 20 pounds because they were able to obtain the money at a lower interest rate (Lambrecht, 2007). The volume of rural borrowing that can be reconstructed from village court rolls thus grossly overestimates real capital demand. Particularly in periods when interest rates were falling and peasant households had incentives and opportunities to refinance their debts, this would have resulted in markedly higher credit transaction levels. The rise in peasant borrowing during the eighteenth century reflected some economic trends during this period (e.g. the

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land market), but was to some extent also artificial. Although the frequent refinancing of debts during the eighteenth century distorts our view of actual levels of borrowing, this points indirectly to an interesting feature of the rural credit market. It indicates that the peasantries had a general awareness of developments in the credit market and thus had access to financial information concerning both interest rates and credit supply. It was only when this information was available that peasant could actually make the step towards refinancing their debts. This would seem to suggest that, at least in this period and in this region, peasants enjoyed an easy access to capital markets. The data presented in table 5.2 also indicate that there were some geographical differences in the development of peasant borrowing. Borrowing levels for the polder village of Kruibeke indicate that demand for credit was much lower compared to some other villages. The explanation for these divergent trends can be retraced to the different economic and social structure of these villages. In Kruibeke the majority of the land was leased and not held in property by the local peasantries. As a result, the annuity market in this village was likely to be underdeveloped compared to regions where a majority of the land was owned by the local peasantries. Since annuities could only be sold when the borrower owned immovable property, peasants who had their land in leasehold would have been automatically excluded from this credit circuit. In other words, it is not unlikely that in the village of Kruibeke bonds for example were more important credit instruments than annuities. Since the local population lacked land ownership, they could not use land as a security in annuity contracts. Unfortunately bonds were not subject to registration so it is not possible actually to test this hypothesis. A second area of explanation concerns demographic development. In the polder regions population rose only slowly during the eighteenth century and land prices did not rise as fast and sharp as in inland Flanders (Vandenbroeke, 1984). Thirdly, geographical factors may also have influenced this divergent trend. The villages near Ghent experienced the most rapid growth in borrowing during this century. The proximity of a large city, with an expanding urban middle class, certainly would have reduced transaction costs for the peasantries in the surrounding villages. Easy access to the capital of these urban middling groups, either through the agency of intermediaries or direct social contacts, may explain why these villages near Ghent experienced a more rapid growth in borrowing levels (both for new loans or financing old debts). Overall however, a rise in the demand for annuities can be observed in this region and period. While this rise might not be so sharp as presumed earlier due to the frequent refinancing of old debts, the trend in the capital volume of the annuity market suggests that the eighteenth century was clearly marked by credit expansion rather than contraction. III.2. Interest rates Like capital volumes, trends in interest rates can equally inform us about developments in the rural credit market. The existing evidence has been summarized in Table 5.3. The interest rates declined throughout the eighteenth century making borrowing money less expensive. The decline in interest rates was slow and gradual until the third quarter of the eighteenth century. In some regions the rates during the early eighteenth century were close to the legal maximum of 6.25 per cent. Before the invasion of the French in the 1790’s interest rates on annuities of less than 3 per cent were by no means an exception.

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3,1 3,5 3,5 3,4 3,3 2,9 3,1 3,1 3,0 3,4

1690’s 1700’s 1710’s 1720’s 1730’s 1740’s 1750’s 1760’s 1770’s 1780’s

1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790

Period

5,24 5,39 5,10 4,97 4,85 4,50 4,29 4,50 4,65

% (A)

4,44 4,75 4,75 4,63 4,29 4,13 3,85 3,96 4,17

% (B) 1700 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790

Period 6,09 5,75 4,99 4,71 4,44 4,33 4,14 4,10 4,23 4,48

% (A)

Evergem

5,00 4,20 3,93 4,27 3,74 3,49 3,43 3,29 3,47 3,91

% (B)

1710/9 1720/9 1730/9 1740/9 1750/9 1760/9 1770/9

Period

Eke

5,79 5,47 4,84 4,81 4,05 4,19 4,11

%

1708 1718 1728 1738 1748 1758 1768 1778 1788

Period

6,25 4,75 5,50 5,50 4,50 4,50 4,50 3,75 4,50

%

Moerbeke

1700/9 1710/9 1720/9 1730/9 1740/9 1750/9 1760/9 1770/9 1780/9

Period

Zele

4,41 3,42 3,85 3,63 3,48 3,20 3,00 2,31 2,32

%

Source: Riley, 1994 (Antwerp); Dewulf, 2004 (Ypres and Evergem), Thomas, 2005 (Eke); Baert, 1998 (Moerbeke); De Wever, 1978 (Zele).

%

Period

Ypres

Interest rates on annuities during the eighteenth century

Antwerp

Table 5.3

Credit and the rural economy in North-western Europe, c.1200–c.1850

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Antwerp excluded, the decline in interest rates can be generally observed throughout this period. The stability of the interest rates in Antwerp can largely be explained by the low level that was already reached around 1700 (Riley, 1994). Some regional variations can be observed in the level of interest rates. In the Southern Low Countries interest rates were traditionally the lowest in Antwerp. Although the eighteenth-century Antwerp capital market was merely a shadow of what it had been during the sixteenth century, it still represented the financial heart of the Southern Netherlands with an important concentration of bankers and merchants. Compared to Ghent or Brussels for example, Antwerp disposed of a much denser network of international bankers and financial intermediaries. The concentration of especially wealthy tradesmen and bankers led to a large supply of capital resulting in low interest rates (Degryse, 2005). In the countryside interest rates were more elevated at the onset of the eighteenth century. In the village of Evergem for example, interest rates were twice as high compared to those of Antwerp in 1700. The general decline of interest rates indicates that the supply of capital was growing more rapidly than demand. For the village of Evergem and the region around Ypres two series of interest rates have been produced. The A-series represents the official interest rate mentioned in the annuity contracts. The B-series takes into account the discount that the borrower could receive if the annual interest rate was paid within an agreed period of time. Annuity buyers frequently offered a lower interest rate if the seller agreed to pay the interest within some months (usually two or three) following the annual repayment date. Annuity sellers could delay payment of interest up to three years before any legal action could be undertaken by the lender. By offering a discount on interest rates annuity buyers gave the borrowers a financial incentive to pay their debts regularly. These discounts could be quite substantial in some cases reducing the official interest rate by up to 1 per cent. This practice clearly expanded throughout the eighteenth century. In the village of Evergem more then three quarters of the annuity contracts contained a discount clause at the end of the eighteenth century (Dewulf, 2004). The general evolution in the height of the interest rates indicates that throughout the eighteenth century the cost of borrowing declined for the peasantries. This implies that the gross return for lenders equally diminished. Although the return on investments in annuities declined, it still remained an interesting opportunity for investment for households who had some savings they could spare. Compared to land for example, the annuities yielded a higher return. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the ratio between price and lease levels of land suggest an annual gross return of 5 to 7 per cent. Around 1775 however this ratio had dropped to a mere 2 per cent (Thomas, 2005). Land thus became increasingly unattractive for non-peasant households wanting to invest their savings. Urban dwellers for example were reluctant to invest their savings in rural property during this period. For them land and farms had become unattractive because the return was low, monitoring costs were high and frequent additional investments had to be made (Lambrecht, 2007). This is confirmed by the social and geographical background of the buyers of rural properties during this period. During the second half of the eighteenth century, the local peasantries were the most active agents on the land markets, both in terms of transactions and in volume. Large as well as small farmers used the land market to expand their holdings

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during this period (Vermoesen, 2008). Urban dwellers appear mostly during this period as sellers rather than buyers of rural property. Annuities were viewed as a much more interesting investment. Not only the private capital market flourished because the return of land was low; the government bond market equally thrived. In 1768 the magistrates of the rural district of Courtray stated that bonds issued by them had great success with urban middling groups because there were few alternative investment opportunities. While these groups had traditionally invested in rural property, after 1750 they had massively invested in government bonds because profit margins on real estate had declined sharply (Lambrecht, 2007). Whilst urban dwellers were almost invisible in the land market, they were omnipresent in the annuity market from the 1750’s onwards. In the investment portfolio’s of the urban middling groups and elite annuities became much more important. This is illustrated by the sharp and hostile reactions of these social groups to the plan of the central government to reduce the interest rates on government bonds during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. They feared that a ‘national’ fixed interest rate of 3 per cent on government bonds would not only reduce the return on their investment, but would equally lower interest rates on the private market (Lenders, 1977). III.3. Indebtedness Both the volume of the level of peasant borrowing and the evolution of interest rates suggest that the eighteenth century was characterized by an expansion of rural credit. Although these are both crude measures, there is some evidence to state that during the eighteenth century more rural households were involved in the credit market. This raises some important issues. Did peasant households become more indebted during this period or does this point to higher levels of investment ? The key to interpreting these trends lies with the use of the capital. Unfortunately, the annuity contracts rarely specify the reason and motives behind the decision to borrow money. Examples can be produced illustrating both the optimistic and pessimist view concerning peasant borrowing. While some households used the capital raised through annuities to invest in the productivity of their holdings, other households were forced to borrow money to repay old outstanding debts or to tie them over periods when household expenditure exceeded income (Lambrecht, 2007). As the contracts themselves do not inform us about the financial and economic circumstances lying behind the action to borrow, three alternative measures have been constructed. These measures combined should provide sufficient information to interpret the trends in the annuity market in a more accurate way. A first measure consists of looking at the burden of the annuities on the individual holdings. This interest burden per holding can be reconstructed for the village of Meulebeke circa 1730. The village clerk drew up an unusually detailed list of all annuities bought by the local poor relief administration and also specified the exact surface of the rural properties these annuities were vested upon. This list enables us to reconstruct the burden of annual interest payments for different categories of farms. Meulebeke was situated in inland Flanders and characterized by an overwhelming majority of small farms. Most of the annuities were vested on properties smaller than 2 ha. The interest burden per ha declined as the farm size grew larger (see figure 5.1). In other words, for small farms it was more expensive to borrow money compared to larger farms. More important than the differences between farm sizes is the overall burden of annual interest payments. For

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peasants holdings smaller than 1 ha the annual burden averaged some 91 stuiver or the equivalent of 6 to 7 daily wages of a male labourer. The annual direct tax burden on these smallholdings can be estimated between 112 and 132 stuiver during this period. Herman van Isterdael has calculated that that less than 7 per cent of the annual gross yield on these farms went to interest payments (Van Isterdael, 1988b) This suggests that the threshold for peasants to buy land was quite low. Compared to leasing land, buying land was thus much cheaper in the short and long term. These data also indicate that the burden of annuities was limited for the peasant households. Framed within this perspective it seems illogical to associate peasant borrowing directly with structural indebtedness. The height of the annual interest payments suggest that annual interest payments on annuities did not constitute a severe financial burden on these households. Figure 5.1 Interest burden per ha in the village of Meulebeke, circa 1730 (stuiver per ha) 140 120

stuiver

100 80 60 40 20 0 0

1

2

3

4 ha

5

6

7

8

Source: Lambrecht, 2007. Secondly, probate inventories also testify to the sound nature of the eighteenth-century rural credit market. Since probate inventories contain a list of all the debts owed by the deceased they can be used to reconstruct the credit market participation of rural households. The data for three villages in Flanders suggest that levels of indebtedness, measured by the number of households with annuities vested on their properties, remained more or less stable throughout the eighteenth century. Although some regional variations can be observed, no parish displays a sharp rise in the number of households with annuity debts. In Okegem the number of households with annuity debts rose from 32 per cent to 44 per cent between 1716–35 and 1776–95 (Van Isterdael, 1988a). In the village of Waarschoot the number of households remained almost at a constant level (48 to 51 per cent) between

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1700 and 1789. Only during the period 1740–1759 did the number of debtors drop to 34 per cent (De Vos, 1990). Finally, the village of Ardooie experienced a decline in the number of indebted households from 37 per cent in 1703–13 to a little over 17 per cent in 1788–90 (Verfaillie, 2005). These figures suggest that the eighteenth century was not marked by increasing levels of peasant indebtedness. While the volume of annuities bought and sold was clearly rising, this did not negatively affect the household economy. The fairly constant number of households with annuities listed among their debts suggests that they were able to meet their financial obligations. Finally, the time difference between the action of selling and redeeming an annuity can be used as a crude measure to reconstruct the income and saving potential of the household involved in the credit market. If households were able to repay their loans rapidly this could suggest that these annuities were primarily used for investment purposes. The data for the countryside around Ghent certainly point towards this interpretation. In Lovendegem and Gavere the number of annuities redeemed within five years rose from 18.5 per cent in 1700–1719 tot 44.6 per cent in 1761–1779. Some form of stagnation can be observed during the last quarter of the eighteenth century when repayment of these loans remains at 43.7 per cent (Deprez, 1966). Throughout the eighteenth century the average time it took a household to redeem an annuity was decreasing. In the village of Eke a household would need an average of twenty-two years to repay their loans fully at the beginning of the century; by c. 1765 this had more than halved to approximately nine years. From the third quarter of the eighteenth century the speed of repayment slows down again (Thomas, 2005). In Evergem a similar pattern can be observed. The average length of repayment drops spectacularly from 23.5 years in 1700 to less than six years in 1780 (Dewulf, 2004). At least in this region this testifies to the sound character of the rural credit market. However, it is possible to observe some regional differences in this pattern. In Kruibeke for example, a village in the polder region in the northern part of Flanders, only 12.6 per cent of the annuities sold during the period 1760–1779 were redeemed within five years while in the countryside around Ghent this was more than 44 per cent. These significant differences suggest that developments in capital accumulation could be quite different, even within restricted geographical areas. The countryside around Ghent could have benefited from lower transport costs and more easy access to urban markets resulting in higher revenues enabling them to repay their loans more rapidly. The absence of proto-industry in Kruibeke could also serve as a possible explanation. In the countryside around Ghent spinning and weaving thrived and expanded throughout the eighteenth century. These proto-industrial activities yielded additional earnings that not only enabled households to accumulate a higher income, but also a more constant stream of revenue. In Kruibeke on the other hand, households were primarily dependent on income from agriculture. The absence of protoindustry in this region might have influenced the speed of the repayment of annuities. These three measures taken together certainly do not point towards a pessimistic interpretation of eighteenth-century developments in the credit market. The interest burden for households was quite low when calculated in real terms. Probate inventories indicate that levels of indebtedness did not rise throughout this period and that a vast majority of the households was able to meet their financial obligations. The eighteenth-century annuity market was thus quite sound. From the last quarter of the eighteenth century however, there are some signs that growth was slowing down.

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IV. Intermediation1 Annuities have received considerable attention in the medieval and early modern historiography of the Southern Low Countries, both in the urban and rural context. The annuity contracts have mainly been used to reconstruct the volume and trend of private borrowing, the evolution of interest rates and the financing of immovable property. Influenced by the Annales-school of the 1960s to the 1980s Belgian historians have primarily looked at the quantitative data contained in these annuity contracts (capital, interest rates, and so on) Since these contracts were subject to compulsory registration and were more or less standardized, they became an attractive measure to reconstruct economic and financial development. The social background of the lenders and borrowers has been touched upon by some authors, but still requires more research in depth. The research indicates that the demand side was dominated by small (< 5 ha) to medium (5–10 ha) landowning peasant households. On the supply side the picture that emerges is quite diversified. Members of the nobility, public office holders, urban middling groups (mostly artisans and tradesmen), wealthy farmers and ecclesiastical and charitable institutions all offered their money on the market (Deprez, 1966). The social and economic diversity on the supply side was furthermore complicated by the spatial differences between lenders and borrowers. Although the annuity market during the eighteenth century indicates that the countryside was becoming increasingly self-sufficient, a vast part of the capital raised still had its origins with the inhabitants of the large and small towns. The inevitable question that arises from this description concerns the problem of matching. The annuity contract informs us of several aspects of the early modern credit market, but contains no information on the process(es) leading to this contract. How, for example, did a peasant with a holding of 2 ha obtain a loan form an urban artisan living some 60 km away? In recent years, this topic has been at the centre of attention in the field of economic and financial history. Both the private and public capital markets have been increasingly analyzed in terms of intermediation and information (Hoffman, Postel-Vinay and Rosenthal, 2000). Until now this research has almost exclusively focused on either the urban credit market or the government bond market. The questions about intermediation and information have still not been thoroughly addressed with respect to the rural credit market. This section deals with these questions and will try to identify some of the actors involved in the process of intermediation in a rural context. Recent French historiography would suggest that notaries would be the most logical agents involved in the process of intermediation in the credit market. Studies for both Paris and Rouen have revealed that the networks of notaries facilitated the process of matching potential borrowers with potential lenders thereby contributing to the efficiency of early modern capital markets (Hoffman, Postel-Vinay and Rosenthal, 1999; Hardwick, 1998). Since notaries were also active in rural communities it would seem logical that they could also have fulfilled this role in the countryside. Although this can certainly not be excluded for France, the role of notaries in the rural society of the Southern Netherlands was quite limited. Although notaries could in theory operate on the countryside, in reality only 1

The references to the archival sources used in this section can be found in Lambrecht, 2007.

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very few actually did (Bruneel, 1998). This was largely due to regulations concerning the registration of the transfer of land and rights to land. By an edict of 1611 the college of village aldermen and the village clerk in particular had been granted a sort of monopoly by the state with respect to registering all legal transactions concerning rights to land such as sales, mortgaging donations etc. (Martyn, 2000). Because only contracts registered before the village court had any legal value, notaries were actually sidelined. Notaries could draw up annuity deeds, but these would only gain any legal power if they were copied in the village court books of the community where the mortgaged property was located. In a way, this made notaries redundant since they were at no stage really needed. However, notaries did draw up annuity contracts (Lambrecht, 2007). It is possible especially an urban clientele of borrowers used the notary because they, unlike the village clerks, had received a formal legal training and this would ensure that the contract met all the legal requirements. It is more likely however that allowing a notary to draw up a deed can be viewed as a form of indirect payment for services provided with respect to financial intermediation. Since a vast proportion of the urban lenders had no social contacts or relations with the rural borrowers, intermediation was crucial and this could be interpreted as a way of financially rewarding the notaries for their efforts. The relationship of the village clerk to the credit market, and the market for annuities in particular, was manifold. Firstly, the clerks were responsible for drawing up the deeds relating to transfer of land and any mortgages vested on these properties. Remarkably, although the clerks did not have any legal training or had to meet any specific requirements (they were simply appointed by the village lord), they were given the important task of registering all transactions relating to the transfer of property rights in their communities. In return for this service a fee was awarded to them by the contracting parties. Essentially village clerks were remunerated through a piece-rate system and gained income accordingly to the number of deeds they drew up, registered and copied. Although some of them received a small annual fee from the village council, their main source of income was variable and depended on their activities. The length of the contract determined the fee these clerks could charge. In 1703 the fee was set at 4 stuiver per page (recto-verso) and each page had to include a minimum of 20 lines containing a minimum of 5 words per line. These rules were quite detailed and had been ordered by regional authorities because clerks frequently drew up contracts that were spread over too many pages thus driving up the administrative costs of these contracts. One annuity contract would have yielded in total some 60 stuiver for a clerk because usually 3 copies were drawn up for the different parties. Next to a registering fee, the clerk also received a fixed sum for his attendance when the contract was signed. It is possible to reconstruct these administrative costs relating to annuity contracts. For a contract involving capital of 400 pounds the total cost amounted to 17 pounds and 8 schellingen or some 4.35 per cent. Some two-thirds of these costs were destined for the clerk. From another account indicating the details of the costs related to an annuity contract we can infer that more than 90 per cent of the costs were claimed by the clerk. Especially when a clerk was servicing multiple communities, this could be a time-consuming process. Most clerks by this period had one or more apprentice-clerks working for them who were mainly involved in making copies from existing deeds. The reputation of the clerks was also determined by their accuracy in drawing up these contracts. From the correspondence of an early eighteenth-century village clerk named de Bels it becomes quite clear that

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borrowers and lenders meticulously read the draft of the contracts and sometimes minor changes were proposed by one of the parties (Lambrecht, 2007). But clerks were not merely passive actors in this process of drawing up contracts and restricting themselves to purely administrative functions. During the eighteenth century they were also involved in active mediation between borrowers and lenders. Similarly to the Parisian notaries they contributed to overcoming the problem of asymmetrical information in credit markets (Hoffman, Postel-Vinay and Rosenthal, 1999). This becomes quite clear from the correspondence of a family of village clerks in the eighteenth century. In 1755 for example the clerk de Bels received a letter from a widow stating that she had 1000 guilders that she would like to invest in annuities. She specifically asked de Bels if he knew anyone that would be willing to borrow this money. Furthermore, she asked if he would contact his informants on this matter should de Bels not be able to produce a lender in due time. Another letter from a baron states that he has 400 pounds he wanted to invest in annuities and asks if he could give him some information on potential lenders. These letters clearly indicate that potential lenders assumed that village clerks had considerable knowledge and information about the credit market. As will be demonstrated later, they had a very sound knowledge of both the regional and local land and credit markets in their villages and a unique access to information relating to the financial and economic background of the households in their parishes. The prime incentive of village clerks to be active as intermediaries on the credit market was personal financial gain. Looking more closely at the way these clerks were remunerated for the services they provided, both by the village community and its individuals, explains why they were so preoccupied with successfully brokering loans. When a notary drew up a deed, the clerk only received a fee for copying the contract in the registers of the village aldermen. However, when the clerk brokered the loan, he could increase his earnings substantially. Although no formal brokerage fee was included in the cost of these contracts, clerks could charge the contracting parties with a fee for various expenses relating to the drawing up of the contract. These expenses could include costs for travel, attendance at the village court or researching the archives of the parish to locate any deeds relating to the property that was mortgaged. By acting as an active agent rather than a passive scribe in the annuity market, the clerk could thus substantially increase the income associated with this office. However, village clerks did not have a monopoly on intermediation in the rural credit market. There appear to have been other circuits operating that helped to connect lenders and borrowers. First, as has been demonstrated, the countryside became increasingly self-supporting throughout the eighteenth century as far as credit was concerned. The share of rural dwellers as lenders on the credit market expanded considerably. We may assume that a vast part of these contracts resulted from either social, professional or kin networks. These networks were usually first addressed when peasants wanted to borrow (Fontaine, 2001). This seems to have been particularly the case when bonds and IOUs are considered. The data from the middle of the eighteenth century suggest that these contracts were usually drawn up between households and individuals living within the same village. As the amounts grew larger, there was a need to look for potential lenders outside the village community. The account book of an eighteenth-century village grocer sheds some light on at least one of the (probably many) ways this could be achieved. Between the pages of the account book some written leaflets have been preserved that

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have a remarkably standardized outlook. These leaflets contain a description of the immovable property that was offered to act as a security for an annuity. In 1775 for example a farmer named Andries Vanden Broucke requested a loan between 150 and 175 Flemish pounds to be mortgaged on his farm in the village of Dentergem. The loan would be used to construct a new house on his farmstead. Similar leaflets also survive for other villages. Publicly ‘advertising’ the need for credit seems to have been fairly common in this period and region. It is also no surprise that these leaflets can be found in the archives of a village shop as this was one of the places that were frequently visited by all members of the rural society. This practice can also be observed with urban notaries, especially when they needed to raise vast loans. In 1783 a leaflet was circulated by a notary from Brussels offering the general public the opportunity to participate in a huge loan of 100,000 guilders to be mortgaged on the estate of a nobleman. Although urban notaries may have used printed announcements, the aims and techniques are quite similar. Written or printed announcements served as a means of tapping into information and financial networks that were otherwise beyond the reach of the individual who wanted to raise the loan (Lambrecht, 2007). It has also been noted that some urban centres during this period had specialist groups active in the business of money changing and brokering private and state loans. In Antwerp for example various occupational groups, ranging from accountants over official brokers to notaries were active agents in the financial markets, but there is no conclusive evidence that they were also operating in rural areas on a massive scale (Degryse, 2001). Lastly, clerks were also active on the annuity market and credit market as borrowers. When the village clerk Thomas Vaerman of Meulebeke and Pittem died in 1723 an extensive probate inventory was drawn up listing all his moveable and immovable assets, debts and credits. His estate included 5 houses, 18 farms and dozens of parcels of land amounting to little less than 200 ha. The appraiser also noted that 31 individuals and institutions had outstanding debts to the deceased. Although the exact value of all these debts cannot be calculated precisely, it amounted to approximately 2000 Flemish pounds. This investment portfolio includes some interesting features. Firstly, a vast majority of the debtors had rural origins (26 out of 31). When we look at the geographical distribution of the borrowers we see that all of them lived in villages where Vaerman also served as the village clerk (Meulebeke, Pittem and Koolskamp). A parallel can be also be drawn with the location of his immovable properties. More than 150 of the total of 200 ha land owned by this clerk was situated in the same three villages. In a vast majority of the cases these properties either consisted of small farms (generally under 5 ha) or small parcels of land rented out to peasant households. In a geographical sense, the land and credit portfolio of this clerk were almost perfectly overlapping. Vaerman counted also two institutions among his debtors and 3 non-rural househoulds. The largest debt owed to his estate was 1000 Flemish pounds and was contracted by the duke of Croÿ, one of the leading noble families of that time. These data indicate that these village clerks were not only very active in the capital and land market, but that their information networks extended from the rural poor over regional government institutions to noble courtiers. This raises the question as to how these clerks managed to build up these impressive fortunes and networks. In my view, two factors explain why clerks were so active in the credit market as borrowers: access to information and substantial cash reserves.

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In the historiography these clerks have mostly been represented as rather passive individuals who were primarily administrators for the business dealings of others. The correspondence of this occupational group however indicates that they were far more active agents in both the land and the credit market than has been previously assumed. Central to their power position within these markets lies access to information. Since clerks were responsible for registering land and annuity sales, probate inventories and debt litigation, they had access to a treasury of knowledge regarding the financial position of individuals and households. Village clerks knew who had recently come into the possession of an inheritance, who had access to ready cash resulting from a sale or who was defaulting on their creditors. Access to this information implied that a clerk had a sound knowledge of both market conditions and information on the financial background of households. Since dozens of transactions would pass through their hands annually, they would be very well informed about supply and demand and about price levels in general. Potential buyers of rural property even addressed these clerks to gather information over the quality of the land and the price against which they were planning to make their purchase. Moreover, some urban or distant landowners entrusted the management and collection of rents to these clerks in exchange for a percentage of the income this property represented. Stating that these clerks had first hand, and sometimes even exclusive access to information, is certainly not an exaggeration. It is therefore no surprise that land and credit were at the centre of the estates of these clerks and this explains why they could amass such wealth while they held this office. Their position made them ideal candidates for intermediation on the land and credit market, but also gave them the opportunity to use this information for their personal benefit. The geographical distribution of both their landed and financial assets illustrates this clearly. This privileged access to information also implied that they could rule out competition fairly easy. As they held first row seats in these markets they could negotiate the best deals. It is therefore no surprise that the landed and financial assets of these clerks were primarily located in the parishes where they held their office. But information alone does not explain the unique position of these clerks. They also had access to vast cash reserves that enabled them to respond rapidly to any opportunities to buy land or annuities. As has been noted, some non-resident landowners entrusted the management of their properties and collection of rents, tithes, and annuities to these clerks. From the archives of this family of clerks a peculiar picture emerges. They were very strict in collecting income from the properties that had been entrusted to them. In most cases debtors had to pay their dues every year and only rarely an exception was made to this rule. But as strict as they were in collecting the income, they appear to have been quite slow in physically transferring the cash balance to the beneficiaries of this income. Numerous letters survive from owners requesting full or partial payment of the income they had entrusted to the clerk. In one case a landowner complained that he had not been sent money for nearly ten years. These letters reveal the strategy that was used by these clerks. The family de Bels was responsible for the collection of landed income for some thirty families and individuals. They supervised both vast estates owned by the nobility, but equally managed the assets of small distant landowners. Institutions also entrusted the collection of their income to these clerks. The family de Bels for example was responsible for the collection of rents and annuities owing to the local poor relief administration and

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the parish church. The law also associated the clerks with another source of access to cash. In medieval and early modern Flanders the inheritance of minor and orphan children was administered by the village aldermen. The village aldermen appointed legal guardians to the orphans and exercised control over the financial management of these inheritances. The cash that was inherited by the orphans was entrusted to the village clerk until the age of majority was reached. Although most of these cash inheritances were quite small, pooled together they could represent an interesting opportunity for investment. It seems that clerks used the money entrusted to them by orphans primarily to invest in annuities for their personal financial gain. In 1710 clerks were explicitly forbidden to lend out the cash from inheritances deposited with them for their own personal benefit without the explicit consent of the guardians of the orphans. During the 1760’s a large-scale government investigation was conducted into these practices; this revealed that clerks were still using these cash inheritances to invest in either bonds or annuities (Roggen, 1954). In short, both by law and by acting as estate managers clerks had access to important cash reserves. They used a simple financial technique to use these cash reserves for their own personal benefit. A time-lag was created by the clerks between the actual collection of the income and the physical transfer of the money. This time-gap, which could extend from a few months to several years, offered them the opportunity to use this cash for their own benefit. In a society where there was an endemic shortage of coins this strengthened their position in the land and credit market. Ready access to cash enabled them to react to profitable investment opportunities fairly rapidly. Information and cash thus explain why clerks were able to build up these vast estates during the early modern period. The case of village clerks in eighteenth-century Flanders suggests that local office-holders might have played a more important role in rural society than has always been assumed. These clerks also illustrate that mediation in the credit market was closely related to other markets as well. The correspondence of this family of clerks indicates that they were equally active as intermediaries in the land and rental market.

V.

Conclusion

In August 1794 an inhabitant of Bruges noted in his diary that the credit market had totally collapsed. No single person or institution could be persuaded to lend money using annuities despite the high interest rates offered by the borrowers (Van Wallleghem, 1989). The French annexation of the Southern Netherlands and the subsequent introduction of the French paper money called assignats would ultimately result in a total breakdown of the old regime’s financial system. Even in 1805, when the financial markets had somewhat stabilized and recovered, the prefect of East Flanders noted that peasants would only rarely borrow money (Faipoult, 1805). The situation during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when credit was scarce and trust in the credit instruments was at a low, contrasts sharply with the preceding decades. Throughout the eighteenth century Flemish peasants were increasingly borrowing from both urban and rural lenders. In some regions a true explosion in the level of peasant borrowing can be observed. There is no doubt that the annuity market thrived during this period. Peasants used annuities to borrow money for both long and short term investments, to redeem older debts, to purchase land and to tie them over difficult periods when revenues were insufficient (Thoen, 2001). A review

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of the research on annuities in Flanders indicates that a growing number of annuities sold by rural dwellers did not necessarily result in higher levels of peasant indebtedness. The data drawn from probate inventories suggest that the level of indebtedness remained more or less stable throughout this period. The rising level of demand for annuities, declining interest rates and shortened terms of repayment all suggest that the rural economy was quite sound in this respect. The rural population used the possibilities of the credit market offered to them to the maximum. The success of the credit market depended largely on the efficient exchange of information. This paper has indicated that village clerks, although they certainly did not have a monopoly in mediation, played an essential part in this process. Because they had access to relevant information on both potential lenders and borrowers, they could efficiently match both parties. During this process they also used this information to increase their personal wealth and gradually built impressive family estates. External factors, however, caused this system to collapse at the end of the eighteenth century. From the mid-1790s onwards the annuity market declined sharply. What burdened the peasants during this period was not debt, but rather the lack of cheap credit that had been so easily available ten years earlier.

Bibliography Aerts, E. (2000) ‘Monnaies, crédits et finances dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux (1500– 1550)’ in L’escarcelle de Charles Quint. Monnaies et finances au XVIe siècle, Brussels. Baert, J. (1998) ‘Leefbaarheid en proletarisering van de agrarische sector in het Land van Waas: Moerbeke-Waas, 1571–1846’, Annalen van de Koninklijke Oudheidkundige Kring van het Land van Waas, 101, pp. 85–203. Béaur, G. (1994) ‘Foncier et crédit dans les sociétés préindustrielles: des liens solides ou des chaînes fragiles ?’ in Annales. Histoire, sciences sociales, 49, pp. 47–56. Bigwood, G. (1902) ‘Un point d’histoire économique. La question des rentes payables en grains dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle aux anciens Pays-Bas’, Annales de la Société d’Archéologie de Bruxelles, 16, pp. 5–18. Blomme, J. (1984) ‘Bevolking, landbouw en rurale industrie in het Land van Waas’, Annalen van de Koninklijke Oudheidkundige Kring van het Land van Waas, 87, pp. 119–243. Brants, V. (1881) Histoire des classes rurales aux Pays-bas jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Brussels. Bruneel, C. (1998) ‘L’exercice des fonctions’, in C. Bruneel, P. Godding and F. Stevens (eds.), Le notariat en Belgique du moyen âge à nos jours, Brussels, pp.118–140. Dambruyne, J. (1988) ‘De 17de-eeuwse schepenregisters en de rente- en immobiliëntransacties te Gent: enkele beschouwingen’, Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 42, pp. 153–183. Degryse, K. (2001) ‘Boekhouders, notarissen, stadsboden en factors. Het succesverhaal van sommige financiële experten te Antwerpen tijdens de 18de eeuw’ in Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis, 84, pp. 43–62. Degryse, K. (2005) De Antwerpse fortuinen: kapitaalsaccumulatie, -investering en – rendement te Antwerpen in de 18de eeuw, Antwerp.

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Delatte, I. (1945) Les classes rurales dans la principauté de Liège au XVIIIe siècle, Liège. Deprez, P. (1958) ‘De verkoopprijs van akkergrond in de heerlijkheid Nevele’ in Bijdragen tot de Prijzengeschiedenis, 3, pp. 121–132. Deprez, P. (1966) ‘Hypothekaire grondrenten in Vlaanderen gedurende de 18e eeuw’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 79, pp. 142–148. De Vos, A. (1990) Geschiedenis van Waarschoot, Waarschoot. Dewulf, D. (2004) De private kapitaalmarkt in de 18de eeuw. Een vergelijking tussen de regio’s Gent en Ieper, Ghent (unpublished MA thesis). Faipoult, M. (1805) Mémoire statistique du département de l’Escaut, Paris. Fontaine, L. (2001) ‘Antonio and Shylock: credit and trust in France, ca. 1680-c. 1780’, in Economic History Review, 54, pp. 69–57. Gilomen, H.-J. (1992) ‘Das Motiv der bäuerlichen Verschuldung in den Bauernunruhen an der Wende zur Neuzeit’, in S. Burghartz (ed.), Spannungen und Widersprüche. Gedenkschrift für Frantisek Graus, Sigmaringen. Goubert, P. (1984) ‘Les rentes constituées et le crédit: nature et rôle économique des constitutions de rentes dans la France du nord au XVIIe siècle’ in Actas del II coloquio de metodologia aplicada. La documentacion notarial y la historia, Santiago de Compostella, volume 2, pp. 245–251. Gutmann, M.P. (1978) ‘Why they stayed: the problem of wartime population loss’ Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 91, pp. 420–435. Hardwick, J. (1998) The practice of patriarchy. Gender and the politics of household authority in early modern France, Pennsylvania. Hoffman, P.T. (2000) Growth in a traditional society. The French countryside, 1450–1815, Princeton. Hoffman, P.T., Postel-Vinay, G. and Rosenthal, J.-L. (1999) ‘Information and economic history: how the credit market in Old Regime Paris forces us to rethink the transition to capitalism,’ American Historical Review, 109, pp. 69–94. Hoffman, P.T., Postel-Vinay, G. and Rosenthal, J.-L. (2000) Priceless markets. The political economy of credit in Paris, 1660–1870, Chicago. Lambrecht, T. (2007) Krediet en de rurale economie in Vlaanderen tijdens de 18de eeuw, Ghent (unpublished PhD). Lenders, P. (1977) ‘Controversen over de intrestvoet tijdens in de achttiende eeuw bij de conversie van de renten in Vlaanderen (1755–1777)’, Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 55, pp. 1035–1068. Martyn, G. (2000) Het Eeuwig Edict van 12 juli 1611. Zijn genese en zijn rol in de verschriftelijking van het privaatrecht, Brussels. Riley, J.C. (1994) ‘Interest rates in Antwerp, 1664–1787’, in E. Van Cauwenberghe (ed.), Entrepreneurship and the transformation of the economy (10th-20th centuries). Essays in honour of Herman Van der Wee, Louvain, pp. 497–505. Roggen, I. (1954) ‘Enquête du Conseil de Brabant relative à la tutelle (1761–1762)’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Commissie voor de Uitgave van Oude Wetten en Verordeningen van België, 18, pp. 309–344.

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Servais, P. (1982) La rente constituée dans le ban de Herve au XVIIIe siécle, Brussels. Soly, H. (1974) ‘De schepenregisters als bron voor de conjunctuurgeschiedenis van Zuiden Noordnederlandse steden in het Ancien Régime’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 56, pp. 521–544. Strubbe, E.I. (1973) ‘Ieperse schuldbrieven (littera obligatoria) uit het begin der 15e eeuw’, in De luister van ons oude recht. Verzamelde rechtshistorische studies, BrugesGhent, pp. 527–533. Thoen, E. (1988) Landbouweconomie en bevolking in Vlaanderen gedurende de late middeleeuwen en het begin van de moderne tijden. Testregio: de kasselrijen van Oudenaarde en Aalst (eind 13de-eerste helft 16de eeuw), Ghent. Thoen, E. (2001) ‘A commercial survival economy in evolution. The Flemish countryside and the transition to capitalism (middle ages-19th century)’, in P. Hoppenbrouwers and J.L. Van Zanden (eds.), Peasants into farmers ? The transformation of rural economy and society in the Low Countries in light of the Brenner debate, Turnhout, pp. 102–157 (CORN Publications Series 4). Thomas, W. (2005) De rurale immobiliënmarkt in Vlaanderen (18e eeuw). Casus: heerlijkheid Eke, Ghent (unpublished MA thesis). Vandenbroeke, C. (1984) ‘Le cas flamand: évolution sociale et comportements démographiques aux XVIIe-XIXe siècles’, Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 39, pp. 915–938. Van Isterdael, H. (1988a) Belasting en belastingsdruk: het Land van Aalst (17de-18de eeuw), Brussels (unpublished PhD). Van Isterdael, H. (1988b) ‘De invloed van de fiscaliteit op het inkomen van de plattelandsbevolking van het Land van Aalst in de 17de en 18de eeuw’, in L. Janssens (ed.), Handelingen van het eerste congres van de Federatie van Nederlandstalige Verenigingen voor Oudheidkunde en Geschiedenis van België, Malines, volume 1, pp. 291–308. Van Walleghem, J. (1989) Merckenweerdigste voorvallen 1793 en 1794, Bruges. Verfaillie, J. (2005) Krediet en de Vlaamse rurale economie: Ardooie, medio 17de-eind 18de eeuw, Ghent (unpublished MA thesis). Vermoesen, R. (2008) Markttoegang en commerciële netwerken van rurale huishoudens: de regio Aalst, 1650–1800, Antwerp (unpublished PhD).

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6 Credit and agriculture in the Netherlands, eighteenth-nineteenth centuries Piet van CRUYNINGEN, Wageningen University I.

Introduction

In 1997 Cor Trompetter drew attention to the fact that Dutch rural historians have largely ignored the role of credit in Dutch agriculture in the past. In the standard work on the history of Dutch agriculture (Bieleman, 1992) credit is not mentioned at all and Trompetter managed to find only two publications on rural history in which any attention was given to credit (Baars, 1973; Paping, 1995). Since then apart from Trompetter’s article only one book on agricultural history has paid some attention to the role of credit in Dutch agriculture (Van Cruyningen, 2000). Of these four, only Baars and Trompetter have thoroughly analyzed the role of credit in agriculture; Paping and van Cruyningen only dedicated short sections to this issue. For Dutch rural history then, credit within agriculture remains mostly terra incognita, at least as far as the period before the late nineteenth century is concerned. It seems that until now most Dutch rural historians have held the opinion that credit was not important for agriculture, at least until the late nineteenth century. In that period, farmers needed credit to invest in improvements like more and better livestock, drainage, improved farm buildings and machinery to overcome the problems caused by the agricultural depression of that period. Before the end of the nineteenth century this kind of investment was negligible – at least historians seem to think so – so there was less need for credit. Or perhaps historians writing in this context have never really thought closely about credit; it is, after all, fairly evident that the farming enterprise could not function without credit. Let us consider an example. An account book of a young farmer in West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen in the South-west of the Netherlands shows that in 1791 he needed 11 000 guilders to rent a farm of 96 hectares and pay taxes, wages etc. until the next harvest. Of this sum he had to borrow 9 600 guilders. In 1796, when his income was low because of the war and the consequences of French occupation, he had to borrow 1 100 guilders (van Cruyningen, 2000: 298–299). So he needed credit to start as an independent farmer and to bridge difficult periods when income was low and costs were high. Later on he may have needed credit to buy land. Now this young man leased a large, commercial arable farm so he needed more credit than the average farmer, but the need for credit must have existed in all layers of the peasantry. For a middle sized farm on the sandy soils in eastern Gelderland around 1800 a starting capital of 2 500 guilders was required.1

1

Gelderland Archives, Arnhem, Huisarchief Verwolde, nr. 595.

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In this contribution I will give an overview of the scanty literature on the subject, the conclusions that can be drawn from it and I will propose some research themes that might help to enlarge our insight in the role of credit in Dutch agriculture from the early modern period until the end of the nineteenth century. The main questions are: how did the credit market function and how did farmers use the obtained capital. First we will take a look at the situation around 1900, because what happened in those years was not only responsible for the way agricultural credit would be organized since then, but also for the view many Dutch historians have of credit and agriculture in the nineteenth century and before.

II. Cooperative banks and historiography Apart from the four publications mentioned in the introduction, most work on credit in the Netherlands consists of books about the history of cooperative banks, the first of which were founded at the end of the nineteenth century (Westerman, 1948; Sluyterman et al., 1998). These books, usually commissioned by banks celebrating a jubilee, contain very little information about the situation before the founding of these banks. Usually, they present a rather bleak image of the opportunities for farmers to obtain credit. Even if they did manage to do so, interest rates were often too high and there were a lot of abuses, especially by tradesmen who extended credit. Village shopkeepers were accused of selling their goods on credit to farmers at inflated prices, later accepting payment in products like butter and eggs at low prices, thus cashing a very high interest from farmers who were dependent on them (Westerman, 1948: 18). The cooperative (Raiffeisen) banks saved especially the small peasants from slavery to usurers of this kind. The source usually quoted for this view on the situation at the end of the nineteenth century is the four volume report of the so-called State Commission for research into the situation of agriculture of 1886 (Sickesz, et al., 1890). This Commission had been created in order to advise government about the problems of Dutch agriculture during the late nineteenth century depression and the means to solve them. One of the issues the State Commission addressed was credit. Its conclusion was indeed that the credit market in the countryside was functioning unsatisfactorily. Interest rates were about one per cent higher than in towns, even when a farmer could present sufficient security. Mortgages for buying land could be obtained at a price, but it was more difficult to get short-term credit. Traditionally this was obtained from family members or neighbours, but due to the adverse economic situation it became more and more difficult to get this kind of credit (Sickesz et al., 1890: IV, 31–37). A contemporary author ascribes this to the increasing habit of wealthy farmers to invest in securities (Vlaanderen, 1900: 5). According to the State Commission the type of credit farmers were in need of could not be obtained from banks either, because they only extended credit to businesses for three months, while farmers would only be able to repay the credit after the next harvest so they were in need of credit for a period of about one year. So, apart from credit to buy

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land, for which farmers could present the purchased land as security, it was very difficult to obtain credit. In many cases farmers had to rely on credit from shopkeepers and other traders with the already mentioned detrimental effects. The credit market in the Dutch countryside in the late nineteenth century indeed does not seem to have functioned efficiently. However, this does not mean the situation had always been this bad. In the second half of the nineteenth century Dutch agriculture was going through a transition, especially in the sandy areas in the east and south of the country. The farmers in these areas were changing their operations from arable into commercial dairying farms, a process that was accelerated by the agricultural depression of the 1880s and 1890s. To accomplish this farmers needed to invest in fertilizer, animal feed, better stock and equipment, causing increasing demand for credit (Van Zanden and Van Riel, 2000: 373). So it may well have been that until the nineteenth century a well-functioning credit market was not able to meet new and hitherto unknown demands for credit, a situation which appears to have been comparable to that which occurred in France in the same period (Postel-Vinay, 1998). So let us take a look at the functioning of the credit market in the Dutch countryside in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

III. The credit market in the countryside What we know about the credit market in this period is mostly based upon the four studies already mentioned in the introduction. These are regional studies about the Beijerlanden area (Baars, 1973), Groningen (Paping, 1995), Twente (Trompetter, 1997) and West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen (Van Cruyningen, 2000). The first three of these regions are situated in the coastal areas of the south-west and north-east of the country. All three are regions with relatively large-scale commercial arable farming on marine clay soils. Only Twente is situated on sandy soils with small-scale mixed farming. There are no studies at all concerning the important dairy farming regions in Holland and Friesland and very little is known about credit in the river clay area, so the geographical typicality of these regional studies is rather unfortunate. All four of these publications contain data on the interest rate on mortgages in the area studied. During the eighteenth century interest rates varied between three and five per cent. This was not that much, considering the interest on state bonds in this century was three per cent (De Vries and Van der Woude, 1995: 154). From the last quarter of the eighteenth century interest rates rose to reach a level of five to six per cent around 1820 (Baars, 1973: 118). More interesting perhaps are the regional differences in interest rates, which are shown for Groningen and Twente in Figure 6.1. In Twente interest rates were always lower than in Groningen, and usually considerably lower. The data for West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen and the Beijerlanden area could not be plotted in this figure, but they also show differences. Rates were always highest in Beijerlanden and lowest in Twente, with Groningen and West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen in between. About 1820 for instance, the average interest rate for Twente was 4.2 per cent, for Groningen and West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen 4.7 per cent and for Beijerlanden 4.9 per cent.

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Figure 6.1 Interest rates on mortgages in Twente, 1761–1832, and Groningen, 1770–1860 6 5 4 Twente

3

Groningen

2 1

1859

1852

1845

1838

1831

1824

1817

1810

1803

1796

1789

1782

1775

1768

1761

0

Sources: Paping, 1995; Trompetter, 1997.

These data show there was no national market; each agricultural region had its own credit market. This is hardly surprising, I think, because of the problem of getting information about the solvency of the borrower and his qualities as a farmer. Only within a limited geographical region lenders could be well enough informed about this. The scope of rural credit markets seems to have remained limited to single agricultural regions with one or two adjoining cities. We know who the borrowers were on these markets, but who were the lenders and were there also intermediaries? The State Commission pointed out that the most important lenders to farmers in the late nineteenth century were other farmers, especially in the wealthy coastal areas. Research drawing upon probate inventories of farmers from West-ZeeuwsVlaanderen shows that other farmers indeed were an important source of credit from the late eighteenth century. Between 1780 and 1860 more than eighty per cent of all credit was obtained from colleagues (Van Cruyningen, 2000: 302). Often the lenders were older, childless people who had retired from farming and in fact were running small banking operations. These elderly lenders sometimes lent some 50,000 guilders in usually small sums of some 1,000 guilders; large sums were only lent to next of kin. The loans were not only mortgages, but also personal loans (van Cruyningen, 2000: 303). Sometimes working farmers also ran banking operations. An interesting case is that of the Peters family from Lobith in the river clay area of Gelderland. These very wealthy farmers and brick manufacturers in the second half of the nineteenth century lent money for rates of three to five per cent and were also shareholders of a regional

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bank, the Geldersche Credietvereeniging (Gelderland Credit Society, founded 1866) (Janssen and Peters, 1991: 240–243). The evidence about this family corroborates Vlaanderen’s view that from the late nineteenth century wealthy farmers preferred investing in securities over lending money to colleagues. When Theodorus Peters died in 1922 a considerable amount of capital had been invested in Russian and AustroHungarian bonds that had become worthless because of the revolutions in these countries (Janssen and Peters, 1991: 429). But farmers were not the only ones to lend money to farmers. In West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen up to 1760 most credit was obtained from members of the bourgeoisie in the area and farmers in Beijerlanden usually borrowed from urban patricians in Rotterdam and Dordrecht (Baars, 1973: 120). Urban sources of credit were especially important in Twente. Trompetter has shown that between c. 1760 and 1830 peasants in this area were able to borrow millions of guilders from textile merchants and industrialists from the Twente towns (Trompetter, 1997: 24–25). It seems industrialists in the region did not have enough opportunities to invest in their own firms and decided to lend large sums of money to farmers in need of credit. This shows the importance of the relationship between town and countryside, also for the credit market. A special form of credit by non-farmers consisted in consenting to arrears in the payment of rent. In Gelderland this was formalized in provincial law. Tenants had the right to be two years in arrear with the payment of rents, only after those two years the landowner could demand payment or even evict the tenant (Brusse, 1999: 165–166). In West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen also farmers often were several years behind in paying rent. For a landowner it was often preferable to keep a defaulting tenant rather than evict him, because, especially in periods of depression, it was difficult to find new tenants. In some cases the landowner demanded some form of security; the tenant then had to transfer property rights in his cattle, his implements and/or other personal possessions to the landlord but he could continue using them (Van Cruyningen, 2000: 58–59). If the farmer went bankrupt, the landlord could compensate for part of his loss by selling these goods. Farmers who lent to other farmers usually did so without recourse to intermediaries, but non-farmers, who knew the peasant population less well, often needed some help. This was provided by rural notaries, whose role at the end of the nineteenth century was described by the State Commission (Sickesz et al., 1890: IV, 34). The Commission was rather positive about this ‘notarial credit’. Notaries were well aware of the creditworthiness of farmers in their resort and were usually able to extend credit to those in need of it at a moderate interest rate, thus preventing usury. Sometimes the notary simply negotiated between borrower and lender, but more often people deposited money with the notary, who paid them interest for it. The notary then lent out the deposited capital himself, thereby running his own banking operation. Many contemporary observers considered this to be a problem: the notary was a lawyer, not a banker, and the mixing of these functions occasioned risk. Notaries had to find borrowers for the capital that had been deposited with them because they had to pay interest, a process that sometimes encouraged them to take risks which were too large and which caused them serious financial problems (Vlaanderen, 1900: 14–16).

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IV. For what did farmers require credit? Several functions of credit have already been mentioned. A young farmer needed capital to start up his operation. In most cases he could obtain this from his parents or other relatives. Further, money was needed in difficult circumstances because of failed harvests or low prices of agricultural products. As we saw, in these cases, tenant farmers could often rely on landlords who were willing to accept arrears in the paying of rent. Landowning farmers will have had to rely upon relatives or upon ‘notarial credit’. Very important adverse circumstances were the epidemics of cattle plague in 1713–1720, 1744–1765 and 1768–1786. During these epidemics many farmers lost all of their cattle, some even more than once. However, usually farmers were able to rapidly acquire new livestock (Bieleman, 1992: 164). Some farmers may have had financial reserves, but it seems more than likely that many of them were in need of credit to purchase cattle. Nothing is known about the amount of capital that was required and how it was obtained. The most common reason why farmers needed credit in the period until the late nineteenth century was to buy land. How important this could be, Trompetter has described for Twente. Peasant indebtedness in this region rose from 1.6 million guilders in 1800 to 4.8 million in 1832 (Trompetter, 1997: 25). Most of this money was obtained from urban capitalists who, as we have already seen, were prepared to lend money to peasants. The money was used to purchase land on a grand scale. Peasant landownership in the area rose from at most 20 per cent in 1750 to 62 per cent in 1832. By obtaining credit from merchants and industrialists, peasants had become the most important landowners in the area, replacing the nobility and ecclesiastical institutions. Several historians have doubts about the wisdom of farmers obtaining credit to purchase land. One of the most pronounced of these critics is Wintle (1986). According to Wintle, farmers in the province of Zeeland tended to buy land when grain prices and farmers’ profits were high, but at the same time land prices were also high because of the increasing demand for land from these same farmers. Together they drove up prices and bought land at inflated prices. Then, when some years later depression set in, they were not able to repay their loans and had to sell the land again or in the worst case went bankrupt. When prices later recovered, the whole unfortunate cycle started again. This resulted in the savings of farmers leaching away from the province because they mostly sold their land to investors from outside the province, and so had a negative effect on the regional economy. Wintle’s view is mainly based on late nineteenth-century data and while his observations for that period may well stand, recent research shows that reality in the eighteenth century was less obvious. The buying and selling of land by farmers did not correspond so closely with the price cycle of grain. In several regions and villages farmers actually bought land when grain prices and land prices were low and thus were able to accumulate large areas of land (Priester, 1998: 146–147; van Cruyningen, 2000: 106). So obtaining credit for the purchase of land may not always have had such detrimental effects. Was credit also extended to farmers to finance improvements to their farming operations? Until the late nineteenth century no examples of this are known. There may not have been

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much need for this form of credit. As far as innovations were introduced in Dutch agriculture before the second half of the nineteenth century, they generally were not very capital intensive. An eighteenth century innovation such as mechanical winnowing was not very expensive and was within the reach of most farmers. Where an innovation was considered too expensive for the single investor, it could be purchased together in association with one or two neighbours (van Cruyningen, 2000: 165). An innovation such as the horse-drawn churning mill was considerably more expensive, but since this implement could only be used efficiently on large farms with a sufficient number of cows, the farmers that needed them were usually wealthy enough to purchase one without recourse to credit. A demand for credit to finance improvements only seems to have arisen in the course of the nineteenth century. From early in this century, members of the aristocracy and high bourgeoisie were urging peasants to improve on farming standards by investing in stock, implements and heath reclamation. When most farmers failed to do so, their social superiors tended to blame this on their conservative mentality. The wiser men among them, however, realised that farmers often lacked capital. In 1828, a reformer from Gelderland, baron A.Ph.R.C. van der Borch van Verwolde (1766–1836), remarked that most farmers earned just enough to survive and simply did not have the means to invest in experiments or improvements.2 It was in these days that the first proposals were made to found credit banks for farmers. In 1840 a plan was made for a state mortgage bank, but this plan and several others came to nothing (Bouman, 1946: 135–137). From the 1860’s private, urban based mortgage banks would supply credit to farmers in need of capital to purchase land or a farmstead (Bouman, 1946: 190; Van Zanden and Van Riel, 2000: 372). The problem of short-term credit remained unsolved. It was only from 1896 that successful Raiffeisen banks were founded and credit for improvement was available from these banks. As already stated, the transition to commercial dairy farming and accompanying investments in livestock, implements, farm buildings, artificial fertilizer, and so on, must have led to an increase in the demand for credit in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It may well have been that until the second half of the nineteenth century regional credit markets in the countryside were functioning sufficiently, but that they were not equipped to face the new demands that were made in the second half of the century. But our knowledge is too limited to say this for sure.

V.

Conclusion

This contribution has told us more about what we do not know than what we do know about rural credit in the Netherlands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Apart from a couple of regional studies there remains little in the way of discussion in the secondary literature. For the seventeenth century there is even less, and the little there is has not been considered here.3 There is one happy conclusion for professional 2

Gelderland Archives, Arnhem, Huisarchief Verwolde, nr. 492, 15 February 1828. Only Baars (1973) treats credit, especially mortgages, in the seventeenth century. For the late Middle Ages and the sixteenth century there is the dissertation of Zuijderduijn (2007) on capital markets in Holland.

3

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historians: a wide field of investigation is still open. Many man years can be spent on researching rural credit markets. Many questions still await an answer. I will mention four of them. In the first place, we still have no information on the important dairying areas in the west of the country. The most important period to research for this area would be the eighteenth century, when it was heavily hit by cattle plague. It would be very interesting to investigate the extent of credit which was required to replace the decimated cattle and how and from whom credit was obtained. The second question concerns the role of rural notaries. Nineteenth-century observers depict them as very important middlemen in the rural credit market, but we still have only a vague idea of the importance of this role, how ‘notarial credit’ really functioned and what problems it may have caused. Did some notaries even go bankrupt as some observers seem to suggest? If so, the dossiers of these bankruptcies would be wonderful sources to study this subject. A very important question concerns the strongly differing interest rates of the regional credit markets. Why was credit constantly much cheaper in for instance Twente than in the Beijerlanden? As Trompetter already stated, we are in need of comparative research into interest rates, investment opportunities in agriculture and other economic activities and the availability of capital in several regions to explain these differences. The most interesting question concerns what happened in the nineteenth century. Was it indeed the case that the existing credit system had for a long time been sufficient but was not able to meet to new demands that were made in the second half of the nineteenth century? The best area to study this would be the sandy areas in the east and south of the country because there agricultural change was most profound and farmers were poor. Account books of farmers and probate inventories constitute good sources to research this question and many others concerning credit. This research would be an important contribution to Dutch agrarian history, but also to the pre-history of cooperative banks, because in spite of all the books written about these banks, we still have only a hazy idea about what happened before the ‘big bang’ of 1896, when their success story began.

Bibliography Baars, C. (1973) Geschiedenis van de landbouw in de Beijerlanden, Wageningen. Bieleman, J. (1992) Geschiedenis van de landbouw in Nederland 1500–1950, Meppel and Amsterdam. Bouman, P.J. (1946) Geschiedenis van den Zeeuwschen landbouw in de negentiende en twintigste eeuw en van de Zeeuwsche Landbouw-Maatschappij 1843–1943, Wageningen. Brusse, P. (1999) Overleven door ondernemen. De agrarische geschiedenis van de OverBetuwe 1650–1850, Wageningen. Cruyningen, P.J. van (2000) Behoudend maar buigzaam. Boeren in West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen 1650–1850, Wageningen. Janssen, G.B., and J.C.C.M. Peters (1991) Zij leefden van hun land. Een steenbakkend landbouwgeslacht op het Gelders eiland in generaties gevolgd, Doesburg.

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Paping, R.F.J. (1995) Voor een handvol stuivers. Werken, verdienen en besteden: de levensstandaard van boeren, arbeiders en middenstanders op de Groninger klei, 1770–1860, Groningen. Postel-Vinay, G. (1998) La terre et l’argent. L’agriculture et le crédit en France du XVIIIe au début du XXe siecle, Paris. Priester, P.R. (1998) Geschiedenis van de landbouw in Zeeland circa 1600–1910, Wageningen. Sickesz, C.J., et al. (1890) Uitkomsten van het onderzoek naar de toestand van den landbouw, ’s-Gravenhage. Sluyterman, K., et al. (1998) Het coöperatieve alternatief. Honderd jaar Rabobank 1898–1998, Den Haag. Trompetter, C. (1997) ‘Burgers en boeren – Geld en grond. De betekenis van burgerlijk kapitaal voor veranderende eigendomsverhoudingen in Twente 1760–1832’, NEHAJaarboek 60, pp. 7–35. Vlaanderen, J.C.L. (1900) Nederlandsch landbouwcrediet, Leiden. Vries, J. de, and A. van der Woude (1995) Nederland 1500–1815. De eerste ronde van moderne economische groei, Amsterdam. Westerman, C. (1948) Gedenkboek uitgegeven ter gelegenheid van het vijftigjarig bestaan der Coöperatieve Centrale Boerenleenbank te Utrecht 1848–1948, Utrecht. Wintle, M. (1986) ‘Dearly won and cheaply sold. The purchase and sale of agricultural land in Zeeland in the nineteenth century’, Economisch- en social-historisch Jaarboek 49, pp. 44–99. Zanden, J.L. van, and A. van Riel (2000) Nederland 1780–1914. Staat, instituties en economische ontwikkeling, Amsterdam. Zuijderduijn, C.J. (2007) Medieval capital markets. Markets for renten between state formation and private investment in Holland (1300–1550), PhD dissertation Utrecht.

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7 Credit and the Freehold Land Market in England, c.1200–c.1350: Possibilities and Problems for Research1 Chris BRIGGS, University of Southampton I.

Introduction

As research on rural credit in Europe has developed over the last fifteen years, one area of the subject that has proved particularly important is the relationship between credit and the transfer of land. Several studies have emphasized that it is now inadequate simply to regard the sale of land by an indebted peasant as the only significant way in which the movement of credit and of land interacted in the pre-industrial period. Instead, it is clear that a surprisingly wide range of land transactions performed a variety of subtly differing functions in facilitating the provision or repayment of credit in the countryside (Béaur, 1994; Poulsen, 2004; Furió and Mira Jodar, 2005). It could plausibly be argued that it is no longer possible to study the land market of any European region properly without simultaneously exploring local credit networks, since the two areas were evidently so closely interrelated. Equally, a crucial objective of the study of any set of credit transactions must be to discover how far those transactions were motivated by the acquisition of medieval society’s most prized resource. In 1970, in a formative contribution to the study of the peasant land market of medieval England, Hyams reflected upon the options open to an indvidual who, around 1200, ‘had in some sense the disposal of land but was in need of cash’. He sketched a variety of scenarios through which the hypothetical peasant might have used his land to raise credit, or to generate the liquidity with which to discharge existing obligations (Hyams, 1970: 30–1). For many years after the publication of Hyams’s article, however, little attempt was made to trace such scenarios in the available evidence. Furthermore, research on the land market of medieval England reached a mature stage in the mid-1980s, some years before work on rural credit began in earnest (Dyer, 2005). As such, even when land market studies were at their most popular, the possibility that aspects of that market were explicable with respect to credit networks was considered only in general terms. More recently, however, work on England has followed Continental European research

1

I am grateful to the Provost and Fellows of King’s College, Cambridge, and to the Warden and Fellows of New College, Oxford, for permission to consult their estate archives. Research for this paper benefited greatly from the kind assistance of Caroline Dalton, formerly archivist at New College, and that of Patricia McGuire, archivist at King’s. Paul Harvey and Matthew Tompkins offered very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. The author bears sole responsibility for the arguments expressed, and for any errors.

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in recognizing the need to study land market and credit market in tandem (Schofield, 2004; Schofield, this volume). The focus in what follows is on the land and credit transactions of England’s peasant tenants. The land they held from their lords in this period divides into two main categories, freehold land and customary land, the latter being also known as servile or villein land. To date, consideration of the links between peasant land and credit networks has been concerned almost exclusively with the tenants of customary land (villeins). This largely reflects the fact that the control exercised by landlords over their customary tenancies was much more intense than that applied to the free holdings, with the result that the villeins are better documented than the free tenants. In the present context, a key aspect of this contrast between customary land and free land was that all changes in the tenancy of customary land had to be reported to the lord’s manor court, and take place via the lord rather than directly from old tenant to new tenant. Thus the pre-eminent source for the peasant land market is the manorial court roll, in which all transfers of customary land were recorded (Smith, 1984; Harvey, 1984). The manor court also generated the best source for rural credit before 1350, which is the inter-peasant debt litigation heard by many such courts and recorded upon their rolls. Attention has thus naturally focused on the better-documented villeins, whose land transactions and debt disputes are often detailed side by side in the court rolls. Although it remains at an early stage, work on the associations between land transfer and credit relationships among customary tenants has identified three key areas. The first is the sale of land in order to repay debts. The second is the use of credit structures to facilitate the purchase of land. The third and final area is the use of land as security in order to raise credit. Research to date suggests that the most important of these was the first, the alienation of land by people already indebted as a means of generating liquidity. Somewhat scantier evidence has been found to date of the second kind of association, that is, of individuals who used credit to acquire new parcels of land, either by borrowing money from a third party to pay the purchase price or entry fine, or by agreeing with the vendor to pay the purchase price in instalments. The weakest type of association of the three appears to be the employment of existing landholdings to raise further credit. Full mortgages of customary land are very rare, and relatively few of the short-term inter-peasant leases of customary land noted in court rolls have attributes that indicate that they functioned as ‘gages’ of land, in which a loan was given in return for the lease (Briggs, 2009: Chapter 3; Schofield, 2004). Because transfers of freehold land took place outside the manor court, court roll references to such transfers are inconsistent and oblique (Schofield, 2005b: 252, 265–7). Largely as a result of this, studies of the peasant market in free land are rarer than studies of the customary land market (Campbell, 2005: 24–5). Moreover, little if anything has been done to investigate the extent to which free land conveyances were bound up with credit. Yet scholars have never had a greater awareness than they do at present of the importance of the freeholding peasantry. Prior to the Black Death, around half of tenant land was held in free tenure, and in terms of tenant numbers there were probably more freeholders than villeins. Furthermore, it has recently been argued that the low ‘head rents’ with which free holdings were burdened, combined with weak

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seigniorial control over such holdings, encouraged their repeated subdivision, and contributed to the acute rural congestion and arrested economic development of the period (Campbell, 2005). Given such arguments, a consideration of the possible links between freehold land transfers and credit transactions, and ways of studying them, is particularly pressing. Moreover, it is arguable that conveyances of free land are, if anything, more likely than those of customary land to have been driven by the aim of obtaining credit or discharging debts. For example, lack of seigniorial control allowed holders of free land to split up their holdings to an extent that the holders of standard-sized customary landholdings were not permitted by their lords to do, at least in large areas of midland and southern England. This meant the freeholders were more likely than the villeins to be able to offer the small parcels most suitable for mortgaging. Also, the most acutely land-poor group in this period almost certainly included a disproportionate number of free tenants, so that we might expect such tenants to have been particularly likely to try to raise credit on their security of their tiny holdings.

II. Sources for credit and the freehold land market Several types of source exist which can be used to investigate the land transactions of the freeholders of modest social status, and their possible connections to credit operations. Lawsuits about freehold property came under the jurisdiction of the royal courts, rather than the manor courts, with the result that the plea rolls of the various king’s courts can yield important evidence concerning the context and purpose of disputed land transactions. In quite a few such cases, light is shed on the operation of mortgages and other arrangements associated with the securing of credit (Brand, 2002: 30–1). Furthermore, from the later twelfth century onwards, the practice of recording the transfer of title to freehold land by means of a fictitious lawsuit heard before the royal justices became common even among persons of peasant status. Transfers made using this device were written up in documents known as ‘feet of fine’, many of which have appeared in printed editions. These feet of fine, or fines, have begun to be used to explore the broad progress of the freehold land market in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries (Davies and Kissock, 2004). However, there also almost certainly exists potential for using this source to look at the specific issue of the connections between land transfers and credit operations, for instance by investigating the extent to which mortgages or other credit-related conditional transfers occur in groups of fines. However, the most promising source for the issue addressed in this article is probably the charter. Charters in their many different forms of course constitute a fundamental source for most topics of medieval history up to at least the thirteenth century (Bates, 2005). By the second half of the thirteenth century, it had become routine at village level to use charters to record agreements concerning freehold real estate. In most cases this was a conveyance of a property and its terms. Peasants increasingly created written proof of changes in the title to small pieces of land by means of such charters, attaching their personal seals to the documents for authentification (Harvey and McGuinness,

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1996: 77–9). Clanchy estimated that such peasant charters made in the thirteenth century must have numbered in the hundreds of thousands or even millions (Clanchy, 1993: 50). Only a minority of these documents survive, yet in spite of losses it is nonetheless likely that charters potentially useful for the study of the land market among peasants exist in their thousands (Harvey, 1996: 405). This corpus is scattered across a large number of public and private archives and probably the vast majority of such charters remain unpublished. With some important exceptions, historians have in general not proceeded as far as they might in exploiting the charter material to study the thirteenth-century peasant land market, let alone the possible relationships between the land and credit markets.2 In some measure this reflects the shortcomings of charters and the methodological difficulties involved in using them, some of which are touched on below. However, it is clear that if the circumstances and motivations behind the movement of freehold land are to explored, this cannot be done using court rolls alone. Court rolls shed some light, it is true, on some transfers of the manor’s freehold land. This mainly takes the form of the orders that new freehold tenants should come to court to swear fealty to the lord, or to demonstrate ‘by what right’ they have taken possession of the free holding, which usually means that they must show their charters to the lord. However, if one wishes to know more about the parties, terms and conditions of the transfers mentioned indirectly in the court roll, or about transfers potentially not mentioned there at all, it is necessary to seek out the relevant original charters where they exist.

III. Charters: character, uses and limitations Ideally, an investigation at the local level into the free land market and credit relationships would use charters that, as a group, record every transfer of freehold land made between private individuals within a particular village or parish over a finite and known time period. With such a set of charters, the historian would begin with the best possible chance of determining the quantity of land market activity that was credit related, at least within a specific locality. Unfortunately, archives of charters matching that ideal are very hard to come by. For one thing, most private charters from before c.1300 are undated, and although with careful analysis an approximate date can be attributed to many, it nonetheless remains difficult to establish the chronological parameters of any study of the type proposed here (Gervers, 2000). Perhaps more importantly, although charters do characteristically survive in clusters of documents all relating to a single place, the safest assumption must be that such clusters represent only a minority of all the charters ever created for transfers in that location. In order to be able to interpret the information provided by those of a village’s charters that do still exist, it is necessary first to reflect upon the reasons for the survival of that minority.

2

Exceptions include: Hoskins, 1957; Brooke and Postan, 1960; King, 1973: 61–6, 100–24; Schofield, 2005a.

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Obviously, charters tend to be preserved where it was in the interests of contemporary individuals or institutions to preserve them. The charters that gave powerful religious establishments and landed families title to the properties that comprised their estates were of course the most likely to be retained, either as originals or in copies in a cartulary (Foulds, 1987). Groups of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century charters also remain extant because they served a more specific purpose. To cite one modest example, a small collection of pre-1350 charters pertaining to the village of Cattistock (Dorset) survives in the court of Chancery archive, because they were produced as evidence in a much later lawsuit (TNA C 104/266). In all cases, however, the charters preserved relate only to those properties within a locality in which their preserver held an interest. It is also necessary to ask how far the surviving minority of private charters is likely to contain records of the small-scale transfers between individuals of broadly peasant status in which this article is interested. Unlike their lords, peasant tenants did not make their own cartularies and were perhaps especially prone to discarding charters when they went out of date (Clanchy, 1993: 50). In addition if, as was perhaps most usual, the institutions and families that kept charters and cartularies obtained the majority of their properties from persons of relatively high social status, then most clusters of preserved documents relating to specific properties are naturally unlikely to feature many peasant charters. Finally, even where one has isolated a suspected peasant charter, the terse format of the typical private charter provides little in itself whereby one might establish the identity and status of the parties. Therefore, in order to be certain that particular charters are genuinely capable of shedding light on the peasant land market, the ideal course is to use examples which allow one to link the names extracted with those contained in other contemporary sources, the most significant of which are manorial surveys, court rolls, and taxation listings. What exactly is one looking for when using charters alongside other documents to trace possible associations between the free land market and the credit market? The relevant evidence can be either direct or indirect. The direct evidence comes from charters whose texts themselves make it plain that the property agreement in question was connected to the provision of credit. Such direct evidence would be provided for example, by a classical mortgage of freehold land, which was effected by means of a pair of charters. The first charter of the pair was a standard grant in fee made by borrower to lender. The second, made shortly afterwards, was the ‘defeasance’, or mortgage proper, which stated that the grant of land made in the first charter would only become permanent on the condition that a stated sum of money – the loan – was not repaid by a certain date (Barton, 1967; O’Connor, 1993: 52–54). Obviously, one should be looking out for documents of this type when sifting any body of charters. Historians have also found other charters whose texts show that the land transfer in question was primarily about credit. For example, Rubin identified a cache of thirteenth-century charters in which inhabitants of rural locations leased small areas of land for terms of years to the Hospital of St John the Evangelist in Cambridge, in return for advance payments of rent in a lump sum. It is quite clear that these transactions were actually loans on the security of the leased land (Rubin, 1987: 222–4). Although the lender in these cases was an institution not an individual, it seems reasonable to attempt to trace further examples of such arrangements

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in charters that concern private individuals. Indeed, at least one probable example from existing work can be cited, namely a charter of 1242 in which Geoffrey Illing of Castor (Northamptonshire) leased a small quantity of land to the chaplain of Castor for six years in return for 36s (King, 1973: 62). A crucial question concerns the likelihood of survival of charters that are explicitly concerned with credit, such as the mortgage and leases just mentioned. Are these special types of charter just as likely to crop up within a corpus of extant charters as are the general run of grants, quitclaims, and so on, which have no obvious credit connection? This important issue is returned to briefly in the conclusion to this paper, after some attempt has been made to trace direct references to credit in two sets of charters. Evidence for the connection between free land transfer and credit may also be obtained by indirect means, by using information additional to that in the charter in order to infer the context and purpose of the agreement it records. In addition to the leases just mentioned, Rubin also describes numerous charters in which a property was conveyed outright to the Hospital of St John in return for a large sum of money. The collection of additional information about the vendors in these transactions reveals that they were heavily indebted individuals, often of knightly status, who were clearly disposing of their lands in order to raise sums with which to meet obligations to third parties (Rubin, 1987: 217–21). At a lower social level, it ought also to be possible to establish whether peasant sellers of land by charter were doing so in a context of personal indebtedness, primarily by looking for such individuals among the debtors appearing in contemporaneous manorial debt litigation in the locality concerned.

IV. Credit and the transfer of free land: two case studies Using two separate sets of charters, Section IV offers a preliminary attempt to identify direct and indirect indicators of possible connections between the conveyance of freehold property and the employment of credit. IV.1. Barton, Cambridgeshire The village of Barton lies just over five kilometres south-west of the town of Cambridge (Figure 1). In the later thirteenth century, the average size of a tenant landholding there was relatively small, which probably reflects fragmentation of earlier holdings, especially in the freehold sector. The Hundred Rolls survey of 1279–80 covering Barton and the hamlet of Whitwell in the north of the parish shows that of the 93 tenant holdings – 49 free and 44 customary – whose area is given, 78 (84 per cent) measured only nine acres (3.64 hectares) or less. The 12 holdings of unspecified acreage comprised five cottages, four messuages, and three half-virgates, the latter each perhaps containing some 15 acres of land. The customary sector actually featured a greater share of sub-ten acre holdings than the free, as all the customary holdings whose area is specified fell into this category. There were 15 free holdings in excess of 10 acres in extent, namely three of 12, seven of 15, three of 16, one of 19, and one of 50 acres. Nonetheless, the small freeholder was far from absent, as there were 19 free holdings of sizes ranging from three acres down to half an acre.

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Figure 7.1 Towns and villages mentioned in this chapter

This was also a parish in which lordship was divided: four distinct manors are identifiable in 1279–80. Social structure, as indicated by landholding, was heterogeneous, with several lay lords of relatively modest standing being present, plus at least two holders of sub-manors who, in spite of having their own tenants, must have been indistinguishable from the wealthier direct peasant tenants of the four main Barton manors (Illingworth and Caley, 1812–18: ii, 563–4, Elrington, 1973: 167–8). Thus Barton had many of the chief characteristics of what is sometimes known as the ‘East Anglian’ type of thirteenthcentury landholding structure: plentiful free holdings; divided lordship; and substantial proportions of holdings of below ten acres. This is in spite of its situation some distance

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west of those areas of Norfolk and Suffolk with which the ‘East Anglian’ holding structure is most closely associated. In looking for locations in which transfers of small areas of freehold land were bound up with the use of credit, Barton is clearly a likely candidate. Fortunately, there survive in the archives of King’s College, Cambridge 123 charters of dates from c.1200 to 1329 which record a variety of transactions between private individuals, all but eight of which concern property in Barton and Whitwell (KCA BAR/4, 6–11, 13–40, 42–103, 105–16, 122–32, 134–36, 138).3 The 123 documents comprise 91 grants of property (gifts in perpetuity), 14 quitclaims, five exchanges, four confirmations of earlier grants, four temporary leases, and five items described as agreements. These charters, plus a range of other documentation relating to the village, were preserved in the archive of the Augustinian priory of Barnwell, which lay about 1.5 kilometres north-east of the centre of Cambridge. This archive came to King’s College as a result of the sale of Barnwell’s estates in Barton to King’s following the dissolution of the monasteries. It is almost certain that the 123 private charters subjected to closer study here survive because the properties they describe were later granted to Barnwell Priory. Throughout the period studied, a variety of donors made such gifts, many of which are recorded in a second, separate collection of over 100 charters (KCA BAR/140–247). By contrast with the group of 123 charters, each example in this second group features the priory as the grantee. The 123 private charters probably relate to earlier changes in the ownership of properties subsequently given to the priory via charters in the second group. For example, Geoffrey de Hatfield, sheriff of Cambridgeshire, was an important early thirteenth-century benefactor of the priory. When Geoffrey made his gifts to the priory, earlier charters relating to the lands granted appear to have passed to the religious house, which is why at least 12 of the 123 private charters feature Geoffrey as one of the principal parties. Yet it was not only persons of high status who made grants to Barnwell. Many lesser residents of Barton also gave lands there to the priory (Elrington, 1973: 164). As a result, we can confidently expect to find peasant transactions recorded among the 123 private charters. The detail of those charters reflects the heterogeneous social mix of the priory’s benefactors. A number of charters were clearly made by persons of lordly status. The most outstanding case is that of the three instruments which record the grant of individual villeins and their families, their goods and the land they held (KCA BAR/107, 108, 135). However, the vast majority of the 123 charters are grants of small pieces of land, many of them clearly made by peasant tenants. An example of this from among the dated charters is the conveyance in August 1308 of four selions of land (open-field strips) in Barton and Whitwell from Thomas Everard to Matilda, daughter of Ralph le Mareys (KCA BAR/116). It is possible to gain approximate information about Thomas’s status some seven years later using Barton’s return to the lay subsidy of 1315, a royal tax on movable goods (TNA E 179/81/7 m.25). It is well known that the lay subsidies were paid primarily by the middle and upper ranks of the peasantry. On the Barton return, it can be established 3

For the King’s College estates archives, see the excellent online catalogue created as part of the Estates Records Heritage Lottery Fund Project at: http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/library/archives/ college/hlfproject/estates/index.html

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that a total of 69 taxpayers paid charges ranging from 61/2d up to 10s 1d in 1315. Thomas Everard appears at the end of the list as one of the three taxers, the villagers responsible for valuing their neighbours’ property. The taxers were normally drawn from among the established tenant families of the village. Thomas’s own tax charge was just 9d, the lowest among the three taxers. A low tax charge was no doubt one of the compensations of the taxer’s job, but nor should it necessarily be imagined that Thomas was one of the very wealthiest members of the tenant community. How many of the 123 Barton charters provide direct evidence of a property transaction connected with credit? There appear to be just five that do so. One, dated 1253, is clearly a sale made to raise funds to meet existing debts, the creditor in question being an unidentified member of Cambridge’s Jewish community. In this transaction, John son of Adam of Barton granted a messuage with appurtenances plus eight acres in Barton to his son John, in return for eight marks ‘which he gives me so that I may be acquitted in the Jewry of Cambridge’ (KCA BAR/76).4 There is also a second charter in which the motivation is again clearly the repayment of debts to a Cambridge Jew, although the transaction is slightly different from that in the first. In this early thirteenth-century charter, Hugh son of Ernald of Barton conveyed 12 acres to Walter the cook. It was further provided that Walter should pay 10 marks to the ‘Jews of Cambridge’ to ‘acquit’ the said land. This presumably meant that the property in question had forfeited to the Jews following default of debt repayment, and that Walter had agreed to reclaim it by paying Hugh’s debt for him. Walter also paid a further 11 marks to Hugh in order to receive the grant of the recovered land (KCA BAR/11). This was an arrangement that would have been attractive to the unidentified Cambridge Jews, too, since they could not legally be in seisin of Christian lands. These two charters may be added to evidence that has already been identified of early thirteenth-century credit ties between Cambridge’s Jews and residents of the town’s hinterland. However, given the sums and acreages involved, and what is already known about southern Cambridgeshire’s Christian debtors, it is likely that the two sellers discussed here were borrowers of relatively high social status (Rubin, 1987: 220; Dobson, 1990–2: 13–14; Stacey, 1995: 96). The other three charters giving direct evidence of a land transfer driven by credit are all leases. In the earliest, of probable date June 1243, Alexander son of Henry demised all his land in Barton, namely two acres, to William his brother for six full years then following (KCA BAR/95). In the second, John son of Adam demised one selion to William Mele for a term of five ‘croppings’ (usque ad finem quinque vesturarum) beginning Michaelmas 1252 (29 September) (KCA BAR/80). Finally, Gilbert de Witewell and Mariota his wife demised three ‘sticks’ of land to William Cock for eight ‘croppings’ beginning Michaelmas 1275 (KCA BAR/70). In all three cases, the lessor had received in advance from the lessee a lump sum as ‘rent’ in return for making the demise. In the earliest lease this sum was 10s, and in the second and third charters it was 6s 1d and 7s respectively. Only the lease starting in 1252 mentioned an annual rent payable during the term, in this case 1d per annum. It is thus fairly certain that, as in the very similar leases described by Rubin,

4

The mark sterling was equivalent to 13s 4d. For other examples of conveyances made by charter to raise sums to pay off debts to Jews, see Mundill, 1998: 39, 304.

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the lump sums payable at the inception of these leases were cash loans that the lessors received from the lessees in return for land they had pledged as security. It is also significant that two of the leases (those earliest and latest in date) specified that the land would revert to the lessors ‘without contradiction’ at the end of the term. In other words, there does not appear to have been any expectation that the creditor would obtain a permanent interest in the lands demised if the debts were not repaid. Even so, shortterm temporary land transfers such as these could still have represented security from the creditor’s viewpoint, because if the debtor did not repay, the creditor could recover what was owed to him out of the profits arising from the leased land during the term. Arrangements in which land was ‘gaged’ to the creditor as security until the debt was paid off, but which involved no permanent transfer to the creditor, have been described by Brand as common in the later twelfth century (Brand, 2002: 30). In theory, the creditor could also take the profits of the land in addition to the principal debt, a form of illicit gain that was roundly condemned by contemporary commentators on usury (McLaughlin, 1939: 112–115; Haren, 2000: 164–166). Table 7.1

Prices per acre and per selion of land sold, calculated from the gersuma given in 31 Barton charters (pence) Price per acre (N = 20)

Smallest Largest Median Mean

36.0 427.0 152.0 161.9

Price per selion (N = 11) 24.0 240.0 120.0 106.1

Source: KCA BAR/7, 9–10, 13–15, 18–19, 43, 47, 51–3, 55, 69, 73, 81, 86, 91, 94, 98, 102, 106, 111–12, 115, 122, 128–30, 136. What indirect indicators are there to suggest that the Barton freehold land market was intertwined with networks of credit in the village? Here the evidence is perhaps even scantier than in the case of direct indications of land-credit market connections. It is certainly true that a freehold land sale could yield substantial sums, thereby providing the liquidity to repay outstanding debts. The prices of land revealed by the Barton charters are not as high as some of the scattered examples that have been collected from thirteenth-century Norfolk and Suffolk (Campbell, 2005: 52). Yet the sale prices of Barton land nonetheless appear striking when considered alongside the annual ‘head rents’ that tenants paid to lords for their holdings. Thirty-one charters recording grants of land give both the area sold and the gersuma, or purchase price paid by buyer to seller. Many of these descriptions of area are in selions, rather than acres. The area covered by one selion apparently varied considerably. It seems to be the case, however, that one selion did not normally exceed one acre (0.405ha) in extent. The 11 charters that use selions thus provide a rough impression of the value of

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land in Barton, showing that parcels of less than an acre fetched a mean sum of just over 8s 10d (Table 1). A more reliable indication of the value of land comes from those charters which specify in acres the area of land sold. The price paid for land ranged massively from 3s up to 35s per acre (Table 1). The mean purchase price was just under 13s 6d per acre, and the median was 12s 8d per acre. This wide price variation presumably reflects differences in the quality of land, and changes in land values across the period c.1200-c.1300. Around 1300, at about the same time as charters began generally to be dated, they also tended to cease recording the gersuma (Harvey, 1996: 406). Only one dated Barton charter records the gersuma, namely a sale of 1295 in which Walter the Carter of Whitwell sold half an acre of arable for which the buyer paid 11s (KCA BAR/115). A survey of the same year of Barnwell Priory’s manor shows that Walter was a free tenant with six acres, for which he paid the priory a total rent of 2s 5d per annum (Clark, 1907: 302). In other words, the sale of one-twelfth of the holding yielded a sum four and half times greater than a year’s rent for the entire holding. If Walter’s dated charter is typical, it shows that the sale of half an acre in the 1290s could raise a sum capable of repaying a debt much larger than the 2s-3s which the available debt litigation evidence suggests was the median for preplague money debts (Briggs, 2003: 241). On the other hand, of course, in environments like Barton and other parts of eastern England in the later thirteenth century, where many families existed on landed holdings of just a few acres, the outright sale of even half an acre would probably have been very much a last resort. The idea that land was sold in order to repay debts, rather than for other purposes unconnected with credit, remains a mere surmise, unless it can be given greater support by showing, via contemporary manorial debt litigation, that persons who sold land were also being sued for debt at some stage prior to the sale. One may investigate this for Barton using the manorial court rolls that survive for Barnwell Priory’s manor, covering the years 1279–86 and 1326–41 (KCA BAR/261–2). The court rolls have been searched in order to determine whether the names of persons mentioned in the charters as buyers or sellers of land can also be traced in contemporary manor court debt litigation. Such an exercise might also shed light on the possible use of credit structures to facilitate the purchase of land. If, as suggested above, the charters indicate that the price per acre of land was high, then we might expect that some poorer buyers of land would have needed to borrow in order to pay the gersuma. Circumstantial evidence at least of this would be obtained if it were possible to find buyers of land also appearing as debtors in contemporary manorial debt litigation. However, no such nominal links between the charters and the manorial debt litigation can be found. This is perhaps not surprising, as debt litigation is relatively rare in the priory’s court rolls. In fact, no debt litigation whatsoever appears within the brief records of court proceedings documented in the earlier series of rolls (KCA BAR/262). Those rolls do contain some private litigation of unspecified type which may actually have concerned debt, but none of it features parties named in the charters. In the later of the two series around 10 debt actions appear, but, as already stated, none of them includes parties known from charters to have been buyers or sellers of free land (KCA BAR/261). It is possible that debt cases involving people who also bought or sold land were brought to the court of

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a manor or manors in Barton other than the priory’s. It is known from court rolls surviving from 1356 that at least one of those manors – the estate known as Lancaster manor – held an active fourteenth-century court (CCC Archives, XXXVII/1). However, in the absence of relevant earlier court rolls, it is impossible to check fully either the possibility that some of the conveyances detailed in the charters were made with the aim of discharging unpaid debts, or the possibility that they were facilitated by the use of credit. It is certainly worth pursuing information arising from all extant debt litigation in local manor courts when trying to identify the parties to a particular set of charters, and the circumstances of their transactions. Even court rolls relating to another village altogether, albeit one close by, can shed light on individuals named in the charters. Five of the Barton charters, with dates from 1320 to 1326, record purchases of odd selions of land in Whitwell made by an individual named either John Wyot the chaplain, or John Wyot of Drayton (KCA BAR/29, 30, 32, 33, 138). These grants were made by three different individuals. Turning to the very full court rolls of nearby Oakington, which also cover a manor in Dry Drayton, reveals that an individual named John Wyot, sometimes styled ‘of Drayton’ or chaplain of Drayton and then, from 1316, vicar of Comberton, was among the most prolific creditors of the pre-plague period recorded in the Oakington rolls (for the villages named, see Figure 1) (CUL Q Boxes 3 and 4). The Barton charters and Oakington rolls without doubt refer to the same man. It is known that Wyot, who was still alive in 1327, acquired the land of at least one of his Drayton debtors, since the Oakington rolls show that in 1316 he obtained the virgate of land formerly held by William Fraunce, who died in that year. Wyot’s claim to Fraunce’s land presumably arose from Fraunce’s numerous debts to him, some of which appear still to have been outstanding at Fraunce’s death (Briggs, 2002: 137–9). Was Wyot, from his base in Drayton and then Comberton, in the 1310s and 1320s extending credit to individuals in several nearby villages, including Barton and Whitwell, and buying up or otherwise acquiring the lands of those who could not repay him in the difficult conditions of those decades? We do not know for sure whether those who sold Whitwell land to Wyot had borrowed from him, but it would not be at all surprising if turned out that they had in fact done so. Overall, then, the Barton charter evidence provides relatively little sign that land transfer was driven by credit arrangements. Only a small minority of the extant charters suggest by their content that the transactions concerned were facilitated by credit, or that they were undertaken to pay off debts or to secure credit. An attempt to approach the issue indirectly by examining court rolls in order to establish the contexts of the charter conveyances has also yielded little, though here the conclusions must necessarily be tentative given the incomplete nature of the information at our disposal. To what extent is the picture from Barton confirmed by a similar examination of a second set of charters? IV.2. Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire Great Horwood, located on the heavy clay soils of northern Buckinghamshire, contained three manors in this period. That held by Newton Longville Priory was much the largest. Although tenant landholding in the village was dominated by the standard customary virgates and half-virgates of the priory’s manor, some freehold land was present (Illingworth

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and Caley: ii, 336–7; Page, 1925: 372–4; Page, 1927: 426–7). Nineteen fourteenth-century charters of dates up to 1352 survive relating to small parcels of Horwood land (NCA Horwood Charters 18, 22, 27, 28, 30–1, 33, 39, 41–2, 44–52). It is not entirely clear how these charters came to be in the priory’s archive. However, it can be shown that at least five Horwood charters relate to lands that much later came into the lord’s possession, either through purchase or other means. The result of this was that earlier charters pertaining to the holdings were lodged in the seigniorial archive. It is probable that similar reasons lie behind the accumulation and survival of the other charters in the collection.5 Do any of the Horwood charters provide direct evidence that land transfer was connected with credit? One of them, an indenture dated 25 June 1352, is particularly interesting in this respect (NCA Horwood Charters 27). It recites an earlier charter in which Henry Arblaster had granted two acres of arable and five perches of meadow to John de Horwood senior of London. The earlier charter does not appear to have survived. Although there is a second charter involving the same parties, dated 26 March 1352 (NCA Horwood Charters 46), the properties mentioned in it are slightly different from those referred to in the charter of June 1352. The June 1352 document goes on to state that the previous conveyance will be null and void if Henry pays John 20s within 15 days from the following Michaelmas. This document has every appearance of being a mortgage, or defeasance. The 20s was almost certainly a loan advanced by John to Henry in return for the grant of land effected by the first charter; if Henry repaid the money in time he would get his land back. In the meantime, most probably, John would get the proceeds that issued from the land as a form of interest. Both men are familiar from the court rolls of Newton Longville Priory’s manor (NCA 3912–3914). Henry Arblaster was definitely of peasant status and makes about 111 appearances in the court rolls, serving as constable and chief pledge (head of a tithing, the basic unit of local peacekeeping) in the early 1350s, though there is no information in the rolls about his landholdings. John de Horwood, as his name suggests, was a local man. He was a substantial free tenant who maintained his ties and land in the village although his main focus was in London (he is sometimes referred to in the court rolls as ‘citizen of London’). The content of only one other charter is of a nature to suggest that the real purpose of the conveyance of land was to raise credit. In this, the only lease among the 19 charters, one acre of arable together with adjacent meadow was demised in 1345 by Alan le Wolf and his wife Alice for a rent of 3s per annum (NCA Horwood Charters 30). Significantly, Alan and Alice acknowledged that three years’ worth of rent had already been paid in advance. Was this lump sum actually a loan secured on the leased land, as it clearly was in the leases studied by Rubin, and in the three Barton leases discussed earlier in this study? Of potential importance is the identity of the lessee in this arrangement. The lessee was John de Horwood of London, the man who acted as lender in the Henry Arblaster’s 1352 mortgage. The only evidence against the supposition that this lease acted primarily as security for a loan is the fact that it was a lease for the life of one of the lessors, rather than for the term of years that has been observed in the other examples of leases acting as security.

5

I am grateful to Matthew Tompkins for this information.

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Do the Horwood court rolls provide indirect indicators that the persons who sold land by charter did so because they were indebted? Alternatively, do they suggest that persons who bought land by charter became indebted as result of making that purchase? Certainly, 10 of the principal parties named in the charters are also known to have been active creditors and debtors, because they acted in contemporary debt litigation recorded in the court rolls of the manor of Newton Longville Priory. In this respect Horwood provides a contrast to Barton, where none of the buyers and sellers of land by charter appear in the surviving manorial debt litigation. In searching for buyers and sellers of free land in the Horwood debt disputes, attention was focused on two scenarios. First, where an individual had sold land by charter, I attempted to locate debt cases occurring within a two year period prior to the sale which might be taken as evidence that the seller had been indebted, and had then sold to generate liquid funds. Second, I sought instances where a buyer of land had subsequently acted as a debtor in a debt case within two years following his or her land purchase. Such a scenario was of potential interest with respect to the possibility that a buyer of land might borrow extensively from a third party in order to fund the purchase. The first of these scenarios can be shown to have obtained in the case of two of the sellers of land by charter. In May 1316, Hugh Neel acknowledged in court that he owed Thomas le Sweyn one bushel of wheat, and then in August of the same year he conveyed one messuage with a house upon it to his son Richard (NCA Horwood Charters 44). However, the small size of Hugh’s recorded debt, in combination with the intrafamilial character of the land transaction, hardly suggest a crisis sale to a wealthy outsider made in an effort to stave off debt-related disaster. The second coincidence of positive evidence of indebtedness followed by a sale involved Henry Arblaster, the borrower already encountered in the mortgage charter discussed a earlier. In July 1351, Henry acknowledged in court a debt of 11d to William le Carpenter. Then, in March 1352 came the grant to John de Horwood cited earlier, in which two and a half acres and one rod with meadow were conveyed. That grant was then followed in June by the mortgage to John. Thus in crude numerical terms, direct evidence of the connection between land transfer and credit was somewhat greater at Horwood than Barton, since two out of 19 Horwood charters showed such evidence, as opposed to five out of 123 at Barton. There is also more tangible indirect evidence for Horwood than for Barton to suggest that freehold land transfer was driven by the need to raise or discharge credit, or that such transfer was financed via credit structures. However, that indirect evidence applies to just two or perhaps three of Horwood’s small collection of extant charters.

V.

Conclusions, and possibilities for further research

The interpenetration of the medieval English peasant land and credit markets is more difficult to study where freehold land is concerned than it is in the case of customary land. However, it is clear that enough appropriate charters survive to make investigation of

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this subject feasible. Scope certainly exists for greater efforts to seek out this underexploited category of source material. If this is not done, then there is a risk that historians’ views of the pre-plague land and credit markets will remain somewhat imbalanced, because they are based disproportionately on the experience of the customary tenants of those larger church estates that generated most of the best preserved series of manorial court rolls. This preliminary examination of two groups of charters leads to the tentative conclusion that the associations between the transfer of land and the giving and receiving of credit were not as extensive in England between c.1200 and c.1350 as in some other rural settings of pre-industrial Continental Europe.6 The majority of the charters studied record land transactions that appear to have been made for purposes unconnected with credit. This small-scale study suggests also that documentary traces of the impact of credit upon the free land market are no more numerous than those that indicate credit’s impact upon the customary land market. At the same time, some differences have been identified that concern the types of interconnection between land and credit transactions evident in the two sectors. In particular, there is some positive direct evidence among the Barton and Horwood charters that free land was transferred as security for debts. This is in contrast to the customary sector, where virtually no hard evidence for such devices has yet been adduced from court rolls of this period. It should also be stressed that just because the parties to a charter cannot be traced in contemporary manorial debt litigation, this does not constitute absolute proof that the persons involved did not undertake the documented land transaction as a consequence of credit relationships in which they were engaged. It simply means that such credit relationships have not left their mark in the debt litigation proceedings of those law courts whose records happen to survive. In order to obtain firmer conclusions about the true extent to which land market activity was stimulated by credit networks, and vice-versa, new research must be carried out on several fronts. Most importantly, it is necessary to collect data from greater numbers of private charters with the objective of testing the patterns identified in the small charter collections studied here. The main aim of such an exercise would be to look for the incidence of those charters that give a direct indication that the transaction recorded was stimulated by credit. As relatively little labour is required to abstract the essentials of a single charter, it might be possible to generate relatively large databases of such material. These could then be used to indicate the importance of mortgages and leases that functioned as security for a loan (or ‘security leases’) as a proportion of all charters. Much care would have to be taken when considering the criteria for selection of charters for inclusion in such a database. One option would be to gather as many charters relating to a particular county or counties as possible. Precedents for such

6

Not every European regional study has found extensive connections between land and credit markets. For example, there was no great tendency to buy land using credit in early fourteenthcentury Trets (Provence) (Drendel, 2004: 297).

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an approach exist, notably the collection of 2,768 Derbyshire charters assembled by Isaac Jeayes on the basis of what was patently a very thorough search of the available archives (Jeayes, 1906).7 This collection contains some 894 private charters dated 1350 or earlier. Of these, just two are described in Jeayes’s calendar as mortgages, and four as defeasances. A further 47 are leases, but it is not possible to determine how many of these, if any, were security leases.8 These Derbyshire charters thus appear to support the Barton and Horwood case studies by indicating that charters explicitly connected with credit are exceptional. Such investigations of large bodies of charters could of course also make use of the increasing number of online catalogues of charters, such as those made available by the DEEDS project at the University of Toronto, or that relating to the British Library’s Wolley charters (URLs: www.utoronto.ca/deeds/; www.bl.uk/ catalogues/wolleycharters/Home.aspx.). However, any such use of online catalogues would of course demand that the charters be indexed not only by person and place but also by type of document, in a way that would allow items such as mortgages to be identified reliably. It is also crucial to address the difficult issue of whether mortgages and security leases are rare in charter collections partly because they were less likely to be kept than the ordinary grants, quitclaims, and so forth. One might, for example, imagine that a mortgage deed would be quite readily discarded, once the debt it referred to had been repaid. However, it seems equally possible that the mortgagor/borrower would have been especially keen to retain the terms of the transaction recorded in the mortgage document, perhaps because he or she was fearful of losing title to the mortgaged land in the event of a dispute about the loan repayment. Progress in understanding such issues might be achieved by studying closely those mortgages and security leases that do survive, in order to determine whether special circumstances are likely to have accompanied their creation or preservation. Indeed, in order to pursue fruitfully the topics considered in this article, there is a general need for closer study of the circumstances underlying the creation and subsequent uses of individual peasant charters, and of collections of such documents.

7

See also the calendar of all known private deeds before 1547, original or copies, from a defined area of south-east Hampshire. This volume, edited by K.A. Hanna, is forthcoming in the Portsmouth Record Series. 8 Charters involving religious corporations and persons described as ‘knight’ or ‘earl’ are excluded.

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Bibliography Manuscript sources Cambridge University Library (CUL): Queens’ College (Q) Boxes 3 and 4 (Oakington court rolls) Cambridge, King’s College Archives (KCA): BAR/4, 6–11, 13–40, 42–103, 105–16, 122–32, 134–36, 138 (Barton charters); BAR/140–247 (Barton charters: grants to Barnwell Priory); BAR/261–2 (Barton court rolls, Priory manor) Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Archives (CCC Archives), XXXVII/1 (Barton court rolls, Lancaster manor) Oxford, New College Archives (NCA): Horwood charters; NCA 3912–3914 (Great Horwood court rolls) London, The National Archives (TNA): C 104/266 (Chancery Masters’ exhibits); E 179/81/7 (Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely lay subsidy roll, Twentieth of 1315) Printed and secondary sources Barton, J.L. (1967) ‘The common law mortgage’, Law Quarterly Review, 83, pp. 229–239 Bates, D. (2005) ‘Charters and historians of Britain and Ireland: problems and possibilities’, in M.T. Flanagan and J.A. Green (eds), Charters and charter scholarship in Britain and Ireland, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 1–14 Béaur, G. (1994) ‘Foncier et crédit dans les sociétés préindustrielles: des liens solides ou des chaînes fragiles’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, XLIX, pp. 1411–28 Brand, P. (2002) ‘Aspects of the law of debt, 1189–1307’, in P.R. Schofield and N.J. Mayhew (eds), Credit and debt in medieval England c.1180-c.1350, Oxford, pp. 19–41 Briggs, C. (2002) ‘Creditors and debtors and their relationships at Oakington, Cottenham and Dry Drayton (Cambridgeshire), 1291–1350’, in P.R. Schofield and N.J. Mayhew (eds), Credit and debt in medieval England c.1180-c.1350, Oxford, pp. 127–148 Briggs, C. (2003) ‘Credit and the peasant household economy in England before the Black Death: evidence from a Cambridgeshire manor’, in C. Beattie, A. Maslakovic and S. Rees Jones (eds), The medieval household in Christian Europe, c.850-c.1550. Managing power, wealth and the body, Turnhout, pp. 231–248 Briggs, C. (2009) Credit and village society in fourteenth-century England, Oxford Brooke, C.N.L., and Postan, M.M. (1960) Carte nativorum. A Peterborough Abbey cartulary of the fourteenth century, Oxford (Northamptonshire Record Society; vol. 20) Campbell, B.M.S. (2005) ‘The agrarian problem in the early fourteenth century’, Past & Present, 188, pp. 3–70 Clanchy, M.T. (1993) From memory to written record. England 1066–1307, 2nd edn., Oxford Clark, J.W. (1907) Liber memorandum ecclesie de Bernewelle, Cambridge

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Davies, M., and Kissock, J. (2004) ‘The feet of fines, the land market and the English agricultural crisis of 1315 to 1322’, Journal of Historical Geography, 30, 2, pp. 215–30 Dobson, R.B. (1990–2) ‘The Jews of medieval Cambridge’, Jewish Historical Studies, 32, pp. 1–24 Drendel, J. (2004) ‘Le crédit dans les archives notariales de Basse-Provence (haute vallée de l’Arc) au début du XIVe siècle’, in F. Menant and O. Redon (eds), Notaires et crédit dans l’occident méditerranéen médiéval, École Française de Rome, pp. 279–305 Dyer, C. (2005) ‘The peasant land market in medieval England’, in L. Feller and C. Wickham (eds), Le marché de la terre au Moyen Âge, École Française de Rome, pp. 65–76 Elrington, C.R. (1973) The Victoria history of the county of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely volume V, London, Institute of Historical Research Foulds, T. (1987) ‘Medieval cartularies’, Archives, 18, 77, pp. 3–35 Furió A., and Mira Jodar, A. (2005) ‘Le marché de la terre dans le pays de Valence au bas Moyen Âge’, in L. Feller and C. Wickham (eds), Le marché de la terre au Moyen Âge, École Française de Rome, pp. 573–623 Gervers, M. (2000) Dating undated medieval charters, Woodbridge Haren, M. (2000) Sin and society in fourteenth-century England: A study of the Memoriale Presbiterorum, Oxford Harvey, P.D.A. (1984) The peasant land market in medieval England, Oxford Harvey, P.D.A. (1996) ‘The peasant land market in medieval England – and beyond’, in Z. Razi and R. Smith (eds), Medieval society and the manor court, Oxford, pp. 392–407 Harvey, P.D.A., and McGuinness, A. (1996) A guide to British medieval seals, British Library and Public Record Office Hoskins, W.G. (1957) The midland peasant. The economic and social history of a Leicestershire village, London Hyams, P. (1970) ‘The origins of a peasant land market in England’, Economic History Review, 23, 1, pp. 18–31 Jeayes, I.H. (1906) Descriptive catalogue of Derbyshire charters in public and private libraries and muniment rooms, London Illingworth, W., and Caley J. (1812–18) Rotuli hundredorum temp. Hen. III & Edw I London, Record Commission, 2 vols King, E. (1973) Peterborough Abbey 1086–1310: A study in the land market, Cambridge McLaughlin, T.P. (1939) ‘The teaching of the canonists on usury (XII, XIII and XIV centuries)’, Mediaeval Studies, 1, pp. 81–147 Mundill, R. (1998) England’s Jewish solution. Experiment and expulsion, 1262–1290, Cambridge O’Connor, S.J. (1993) A calendar of the cartularies of John Pyel and Adam Fraunceys, London (Camden Fifth ser.; vol. 2)

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Page, W. (1925) The Victoria history of the county of Buckingham volume III Page, W. (1927) The Victoria history of the County of Buckingham volume IV Poulsen, B (2004) ‘Rural credit and land market in the Duchy of Schleswig c.1450– 1660’, in B.J.P. van Bavel and P. Hoppenbrouwers (eds), Landholding and land transfer in the North Sea area (Late Middle Ages-19th century), Turnhout (CORN 5), pp. 203–217 Rubin, M. (1987) Charity and community in medieval Cambridge, Cambridge Schofield, P.R. (2004) ‘Credit and the peasant land market in the medieval English countryside’, in S. Cavaciocchi (ed.), Il mercato della terra secc. XIII-XVIII. Atti delle ‘Trentacinquesima Settimana di Studi’ 5–9 Maggio 2003, Instituto Internazionale di Storia Economica ‘F. Datini’, Prato, pp. 785–96 Schofield, P.R. (2005a) ‘The market in free land on the estates of Bury St Edmunds, c.1086-c.1300: sources and issues’, in L. Feller and C. Wickham (eds), Le marché de la terre au Moyen Âge, École Française de Rome, pp. 273–95 Schofield, P.R. (2005b) ‘Manorial court rolls and the peasant land market in eastern England, c.1250-c.1350’, in L. Feller and C. Wickham (eds), Le marché de la terre au Moyen Âge, École Française de Rome, pp. 237–71 Smith, R.M. (1984) Land, kinship and life-cycle, Cambridge Stacey, R.C. (1995) ‘Jewish lending and the medieval English economy’, in R.H. Britnell and B.M.S. Campbell (eds), A commercialising economy. England 1086 to c.1300, Cambridge, pp. 78–101

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8 Peasants and contract in the thirteenth century: village elites and the land market in eastern England Phillipp R. SCHOFIELD, Aberystwyth University

In a perceptive and wide-ranging discussion of the land market, as part of his study of a sixteenth-century Piedmontese priest and exorcist, Giovanni Levi ponders the nature of the relationship which underpinned the transfer of land in peasant communities. He contrasts, in particular, the desire to maximise market opportunities with a series of ‘general problems’, including ‘resources, power, survival, solidarity, and continuation or change in existing social relations and values’ (Levi, 1988: 80). He concludes that ‘an intense commerce in land existed . . . but the operation of this market fails to tell us enough about how land became a marketable good and leaves us in a quandary concerning the real nature of the exchanges’ (Levi, 1988: 80). Levi suggests that the price of land was in part determined by social conventions and relativities of scale, so that ‘prices in all transactions must have been established by personal negotiation between buyer and seller rather than by competition between anonymous sellers and buyers, and . . . must have reflected the relational context in which the transaction took place’ (Levi, 1988: 81). In a short but incisive review of elements of the secondary literature from medieval England, intended to show where debate over commercialisation of land has led scholars in other contexts, Levi describes how any discussion of an impersonal market in medieval England had, apparently, been refuted by identification of a single, abiding feature of a significant proportion of transfers, namely the kinship of the parties to the transaction (Levis 1988: 81–3). He, however, proceeds to challenge this approach, arguing that, in no respect should we assume that family relationship and commercial exchange were incompatible. Famously, he argues that ‘it is less important to emphasize who sells and who buys than it is to ask what mechanism lay at the heart of the transaction and how the price came to be set [his italics]’ (Levi, 1988: 4). Where, as Levi observed, historians of the medieval land market had adopted an implicit model for peasant land transfer, it was identifiably Chayanovian (Levi, 1988: 82). M.M. Postan’s early articulation of the medieval peasant land market is torn between the theory of a Chayanovian explanation and the persistent demands of evidence that encourages at the very least equal claim for a more aggressively Leninist characterization (Postan, 1973). Thus, in describing land transfer on the estates of Peterborough Abbey, transfers which include, as the evidence of the Carte Nativorum illustrate, villein purchases of free land, Postan acknowledges that external ‘pressures and inducements . . . were bound to stimulate sales and leases of land’ (Postan, 1973: 114). He also suggests that, in circumstances of increasing land hunger, it was the wealthier peasants who may have chosen to sell their land while some may have also have speculated, buying plots to sell again at profit. Despite this, Postan argues, a commercial motive for the land market was

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secondary to ‘certain abiding featues of peasant life’; it was the changing needs to the peasant family that dominated the distribution of land in the village, creating ‘“natural” sellers and buyers’ (Postan, 1973: 114–15.). Importantly, Postan proceeds from this explanation of this demographic prime-mover of a peasant land market to conclude that the stimulant for such a market came from those with insufficient land who sought to supplement the family farm. ‘Thus, relatively few of the buyers or lessess of land were substantial enough to figure among the men who served regularly on juries or inquests or acted as pledges’ (Postan, 1973: 117). Later studies of the peasant land market have also tended to permit family life-cycle a primary role in determining the velocity and behaviour of that market. King, whose study of the estates of Peterborough Abbey also employed the evidence of the Carte Nativorum, detected significant familial influence in the transfers of plots of small land, transfers that were intended both to preserve the integrity of the principal family holding and to furnish offspring with the few odd acres necessary to establish households of their own (King, 1973: 124–5). Historians examining the land market on other estates and in other regions within medieval England have supported this broad conclusion, as the work of, for instance, Williamson on manors in Norfolk illustrates (see, for example, Williamson, 1984). In offering a summary of this collective work on the peasant land market, Harvey, writing in 1984, acknowledged that the market might both arise in areas of particular prosperity and be driven by buyers keen to acquire larger holdings; he also argues, making direct reference to Chayanov, that ‘economic ambition need not have been the only reason for acquiring extra lands’. He concludes that ‘economic amibition, immediate provision for an expanding family, provision for non-inheriting children after his death might all have played their part in any one purchase’ (Harvey, 1984: 349–353). There is then some broad acknowledgement that, in addition to the demands of family, economic desire and acquisitive behaviour must have played their part in the behaviour of the peasant land market. While, historians have tended to favour the influence of familial pressure as a vital force in the peasant land market, as well as to acknowledge the coercive effects of the market, lordship and community, they have admitted, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, a degree of befuddlement in identifying motive for those who entered that market. ‘The late-medieval peasant may well have been no more capable than his historian 500 years later of analysing his motives when he set about acquiring more lands’ (Harvey, 1984: 353. For discussions of the role of lordship in the peasant land market, see, for example, Harvey, 1977; Dyer, 1980; Schofield, 1996; Whittle, 1998). But, there is a persistance of the general conviction that economic motive was likely to be secondary to those other factors that may have driven and/or constrained the transfer of land. Associated with that conviction is a disinclination to accept a characterisation of the village economy as, in its essentials, market-orientated (See, for example, Razi, 1981: 368; Britnell, 1993: 120–3). Levi, who had gathered his thoughts on the peasant land market and the comparative English medieval perspective in the 1980s, of course, fails to reflect later developments in discussion of the medieval peasant land market in England. One key contribution, which must have appeared on the heels of Levi’s survey was that provided by Richard Smith, whose trenchant and thorough discussions of factors which played upon transactions in land had appeared in a series of articles and chapters in the early 1980s (Smith,

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1983; Smith, 1984a; Smith, 1984b). Smith, in an important introduction to a collection of essays on Land, kinship and life-cycle, published in 1984, placed the corpus of work on the English peasant land market of the Middle Ages within the contrasting conceptual frameworks proposed by Chayanov and by Lenin; employing his own research on East Anglian manors in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and establishing some distance between his own position and that of anything approximating to an orthodoxy, Smith concluded that there was ‘no clear-cut life-cycle dynamic identifiable in the pattern of land transactions’ (Smith, 1984a: 21). Smith also noted that Chayanov’s model ‘apparently assumed that finance was readily available to all on equal terms’; he noted that historians could not easily detect evidence for ‘such a voluntaristic approach to human behaviour’ in the stratified conditions that his and other research had shown existed in medieval English villages (Smith, 1984a: 22). Smith finds more that is apparently identifiable within the Leninist model in that part of the medieval English countryside with which he is familiar and is largely dismissive of the view that the medieval peasantry should necessarily be associated with an anti-economic view of land transfer (Smith, 1984a: 31). While the work of Smith and some later contributors to the discussion has challenged earlier and persistent work on the peasant land market, a principal purpose of such work has been to illustrate the velocity of the market and, in elaborating upon the form of such a market, to suggest a varied function for the same. Smith’s work has attracted a good deal of interest, his initial research notoriously encouraging MacFarlane to characterise the peasant land market as impersonal and individualistic (MacFarlane, 1978; cf. Smith, 1984a: 11; Levi, 1988: 82). Importantly, Smith’s work can be accommodated within a thesis that promotes aspects of commercialisation in the medieval rural economy. A series of case-studies of urban hinterlands and rural marketing structures has illustrated the extent to which medieval England was, at least within particular regions, a closely integrated commercial economy, supported by networks of trade and of finance (for example Hilton, 1984; Dyer, 1990; Campbell, Galloway, Keene, and Murphy, 1993; Kowaleski, 1995; Smith, 1996). It is also important to note that, along with an acknowledgement of a commercialised peasant economy, in which the domestic unit was not as inwardly focussed and ‘anti-economic’ as has always been assumed, there comes the potential to perceive a peasant mentality that was also integrated into rather than separated from the wider socio-economic context. Thus, peasants, as has been described by more than one commentator, were, of necessity drawn into political, cultural, social and legal relationships with a wider community of the burgeoning ‘state’ (for example, Hyams, 1996; Schofield, 1998a; Schofield, 2003). What was gleaned from such contacts could be and was re-employed by peasant producers so that, for instance, legal knowledge or merchant capital might be redirected at a local level. Historians have also challenged any notions of a largely monolithic rural community; instead, through examination of local court records and, above all, nominative listings such as rentals and taxation assessments on moveable goods, they have illustrated the considerable degree of stratification within village society (Masschaele, 1997; Raftis, 1997). Close studies of the peasant land market have illustrated the inequalities of the land market, have outlined processes of accumulation which appear to have been determined by other than the fluctuating size of the peasant family, and have, most recently, begun to explore the relationship between the local land market and sources of financing, both internal and external to the local community (Smith, 1984b; Schofield, 1997; Schofield, 2002; Briggs, this volume). Britnell has also made the

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important observation that, if an entrepreneurial frame of mind existed in the thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century village, it was to be found amongst only those who could afford to think, to speculate, in such terms. For the majority, of smaller farmers, ‘their marketing was still more a matter of response to compulsion’ (Britnell, 1993: 123). In this chapter, I wish to explore further, for thirteenth-century England, issues raised by Levi in his discussion of sixteenth-century Piedmont and, above all, reflect upon the likely function and nature of the peasant land market there. Examination of function and nature takes us, as Levi noted, beyond mere observation of form and demands some approach to mentalité. Simple statements regarding fluctuation in land market velocity or the blood- or marital-relationship of participants may imply motive but they can do no more than encourage a limited argument founded upon basic correlations. I have argued elsewhere that any general association of perceived motive with behaviour, as for example the sale of land by the desperate in years of harvest failure, requires a more careful elaboration than has necessarily been attempted to date (Schofield, 1997: 1). Exploration of function and nature will, of necessity, involve some correspondence of the data on the land market with related material, especially the surviving records of litigation. The processes which explain ‘how the price came to be set’ were far from constant and, above all, were far from dependent upon ‘certain abiding features of peasant life’ (Postan, 1973: xxxiv). These same processes that informed land market behaviour included an elaborate negotiation of both complementary and conflicting elements, informed by family and communal loyalties but also by a range of ‘external’ factors, including market conditions, shared cultural norms and legal mechanisms. While acknowledging Harvey’s assertion, quoted above, that motive may be no more identifiable by historians of the peasant land market than it was for the parties involved in the market itself, we might, at least, attempt to offer some thoughts on both the collective sense of appropriate behaviour and responses that dictated the nature and function of such a market and the community it served, and the conditions that helped generate this normative behavior (see above: 130).

I.

The land market in the late-thirteenth century: form

In this first section, the intention is to describe the features of a peasant land market in thirteenth-century England. In later sections, an attempt will be made to explain the context for such a market. The study draws on manorial court records from eastern England and, in particular, the manor of Hinderclay, a Suffolk manor belonging in the Middle Ages to the Abbey of Bury St Edmund.1 The manorial court records for this manor, which have been employed in earlier studies of the peasant land market and of inter-peasant litigation survive in broken sequence from the mid-thirteenth century, becoming increasingly full and detailed from the close of the thirteenth century ((Schofield, 1997; Schofield, 1998 (a); Schofield, 2008). The manorial court rolls, essentially the records of seigniorial jurisdiction, contain a range of entries pertinent to aspects of the village economy, including the record of the land

1

University of Chicago, Bacon Mss 114A-120.

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transfers, both inter-vivos and post-mortem, of the lord’s unfree tenants (For a discussion of the use of manorial court rolls for the study of the peasant land market, see Schofield, 2005a). The inter-vivos transfer of unfree peasant land is recorded from the earliest court rolls and, during the second half of the thirteenth century, the form of the entry develops a consistency; we will return to a consideration of the message which such development might contain for examination of the nature of the market itself but, in the first instance, we need to set out that change in form. Smith, writing in 1983, set out aspects of this change in the form of land transfer at Redgrave and Rickinghall, manors of the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, identifying a ‘bewildering array of forms’ in the early 1260s, with individuals purchasing licences to sell (vendendi), to lease (allocandi), or to buy (emendi) (Smith, 1983: 108). Smith also discovered, for these East Anglian manors, as was similarly observed by Slota on the manors of the Abbey of St Albans, a standardisation of entry so that, by the 1280s on the Bury manors, the largely consistent form of transfer was that of surrender of the unfree land by the purchaser into the lord’s hands followed by admittance of the buyer to the use of the same (reddere sursum ad opus) (Smith, 1983: 108–9; Slota, 1988: 122; see also Williamson, 1984: 59, n. 108, where she notes a similar development on the Norfolk manor of Gressenhall, identifying a change of form in transfer ‘between 1281–2 and 1282–3; in the earlier rolls, transfers were recorded as sales, but from 11 Edward I they were recorded as surrenders ad opus’). Importantly also, tenants were admitted to hold to themselves and their heirs (sibi et heredibus suis) which Smith sees as part ‘of the increasing stabilization and standardization of language of property transfers which occurred during the thirteenth century’ (Smith, 1983: 108). As Smith also notes, while the lord’s acceptance of peasant transfers in unfree land which afforded rights to the incoming tenant and his heirs (as well as, on occasion, assigns), challenged, in a strict sense, common law distinctions between the rights of villeins and free tenants to hold and to alienate property, alienation of unfree holdings in late thirteenth-century village society and economy did not, in reality, challenge the legal status of the land or the parties to the transaction (Smith, 1983: 110; Williamson, 1984: 59; Hyams, 1980: 45). For Smith, the standardisation of terminology instead served to protect the interests of all parties, including those of the lord, and was, in that sense, a response to prevailing economic conditions. The development of a standardised form of transfer, as outlined in the previous paragraph, should not necessarily be equated with an extension or intensification of a land market; instead, as also discussed, it may reflect a response to a variety of expectations and influences, including the concerns of lordship in relation to the tenurial status of their customary land and tenants, the protection of the parties to the transaction, and the external influence of a common law of property which was mirrored in private jurisdictions (Hyams, 1980; Smith, 1983; Razi and Smith, 1996). Instead, what is reasonably evident, as the records of transfers seem to indicate, is that a market in unfree land pre-existed any standardisation of terminology and that we may, in fact, identify, in any increase in transfers in the last decades of the thirteenth century, not so much a real increase in land market activity but an increasingly effective system for recording these transfers. In fact, there is good evidence to suggest an active peasant land market in this part of England from at least the end of the eleventh century (Schofield, 2005b). It is most certainly the case that the land market in eastern England, by at least the early thirteenth century, was active, large-scale, and volatile. Information on price, which we

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might anticipate to be the most fruitful index of changing demand for land, is extremely sparse in manorial court rolls. While a few series of land prices have been extracted from later series, evidence for prices from the thirteenth-century land market is very thin indeed (Whittle, 2000: 110–19; Dyer, 1989: 179). The thirteenth-century court rolls for Hinderclay include details of 246 transfers, of which we know the price paid in two instances only, the huge sum of 9s. 6d. for a quarter acre of land, and 13s. 4d. paid for 2 acres of land and an acre of marsh with appurtenances.2 Using rather more entries that offer some indication of price, though still a sample that is very small in proportion to the total number of observable transfers, Smith has also found evidence of very high prices for small plots of land in vills neighbouring Hinderclay and has calculated that the per acre price for this land was far in excess of the rent obligations attached to it, in at least one instance ‘ten to twelve times the combined values of the entry fines, the annual rent in kind and the cash value for the service obligations to the lord’ (Smith, 1983: 118). Indications of volatility and frequency of the land market, more easily extracted from the manorial court rolls than is the price data, further encourage our sense of an active market in unfree land, one that is evident from the earliest of the manorial court rolls. On the manor of Hinderclay, transfers in unfree land are recorded in the first of the manorial rolls, which commence in the late 1250s (For evidence of an earlier market, see Hyams, 1970; Schofield, 2005(a)). Figure 8.1 illustrates the number and frequency of transfers at Hinderclay between 1257 and 1300. While, as already noted, there is a clear trend of increased velocity in the land market which may not be wholly mendacious, there are incidental references in the same source that are suggestive, though not quantifiably demonstrable, of a reasonably large, market in unfree land from the earliest observable decades, and one that met differing expectations. Thus, in the very first of the surviving manorial courts, that for 24 December 1257, an order was made ‘to seise in the lord’s hands all lands of the villeins demised to freemen within the fief either at term or at lease’.3 In the next court, a William Tachere paid 6d. in a single entry for licence to sell (vendere) half a rod to Adam Grop and for licence to farm (dimittere) one third of an acre to Radulfus Kempe.4 We should also note that the earliest rolls, as well as describing licences to sell, 2

Hinderclay, General court, 10 October 1272, Alicia Alwine et Margeria Alwine filia eius venunt in plena curia et concesserunt et quietum clamaverunt pro se et heredibus suis Waltero le Neue et heredibus suis totum ius et clamium quod habuerunt vel aliquis modo potuerunt in duabus acris terre et dimidiam et i acram marisci cum pertinentiis in Hyldercle dequibus habere ipsum in predicta curia placitaverunt et per sic dat eis dimidiam marcam et domino dimidiam marcam ut infra. Bacon Ms. 114A, m. 10 face. Hinderclay, General Court, 12 May 1318, Robertus filius Ade atachiatus est ad respondendum Radulfo Crane de placito debiti unde queritur quod iniuste ei detinet xiid. Et eo iniuste quia predictus Radulfus vendidit dicto Roberto i rodam terre pro xs. vid. unde dictus Robertus ei soluit ixs. vid. et quod ei detinet xiid. Et quod ita sit fecit etc. Idem Robertus venit et defendit vim etc. quod nullo denario eidem detinet sicut ei inposuit offert eidem legem et dictus Radulfus negavit legem et ideo in misericordia et dictus Robertus exiit sine die. Bacon Ms. 115, m. 3 dorse. 3 Hinderclay, Court of 24 December 1257, Preceptum est seisandum in manum domini omnes terras villanorum dimissas liberis hominibus in feodo vel ad terminum seu ad locacionem, Bacon Ms 114, m. 1. 4 Hinderclay, Court of 4 November 1258, Willelmus Tachere dat vid. pro licencia vendendi dimidiam rodam terre Ade Grop et pro licencia dimittendi tertiam partem unius acre terre, Bacon Ms 114, m. 1.

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Figure 8.1 Inter-vivos transfers: Hinderclay, 1258-1300

5

30

4.5 4 3.5

20

3 15

2.5 2

10

1.5

Transfers: average per court

Number of transfers

25

Inter-vivos transfers Inter-vivos transfers: average per court

1

5

0.5

89 12 0 91 12 2 93 -4 12 95 12 6 97 12 8 99 -0

12

58 12

12 68 12 9 70 12 1 72 12 3 76 -7 12 78 12 9 80 12 1 82 -3

0 -9

0

Year (Michaelmas to Michaelmas)

Source: Bacon Ms 114A-117 to buy and to lease, also include details of grants of licences to exchange (escambere) and to give (dare). These distinctions are lost in later entries as standardisation of the formula of transfer ossifies but these early entries serve as a valuable indicator of the influences which brought individuals to the land market. In particular, licence to give (licencia dandi) is especially evident in transfers between members of the same family, especially when land passes inter-vivos between parent(s) and offpsring. While, therefore, the majority of these early transfers were in the form of licences to sell, licencia vendendi, the impression is of both an active market and one that countenanced a variety of forms in the transfer of land, including leases as well as permanent alienations. It also encourages a view of the mid-thirteenth century peasantry as familiar with a market in land and its manipulation.

II. The nature of the late-thirteenth-century land market If, as can reasonably be supposed, the peasant land market, in its responsiveness to prevailing conditions, was, in certain measure, a manifestation of the ‘nature’ of the peasant economy, we might wish to attempt to associate a number of features of high and late medieval rural society with the behaviour of the local land market as elaborated in the previous section. These could include features consistent with the theses of those who have sought to promote the dynamic of the peasant family as central to the behaviour of that market; we should also highlight the weight of communal expectation as to the nature of that market or,

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for instance, the articulation of shared cultural norms drawn, in no small part from Christian teaching on charity but also from deep-rooted conceptions of the proprieties of landholding and of land transfer, aspects of which might also have constrained or regulated a peasant land market (for example, Sullens, ed. 1983). Further, the demands of the state and the dictates of local, regional and national and international markets may also have had significant influence upon the local market, as may well the containing force of lordship. While there are a number of routes into discussion of this putative ‘nature’, most, as Levi has articulated, are dependent upon assumed relationships: thus, kinship and familial motive for transfer is assumed in transfers between individuals with the same surname or the exigencies prompted by harvest failure are used to explain peaks of sales in years characterised by high grain prices. While it may certainly be the case that familial expectation and dearth both acted upon the land market and that observation of these correlations help explain, in no small part, the nature of that market, these are posited relationships rather than closely defined ones: they may take us close to explanations of function but they do not really speak as to motive. If we are to come closer to an understanding of the nature and/or function of the peasant land market, then we need to look beyond the immediate record of the market itself, that is, the records of transfer recorded in the manorial court and to consider other information which can inform our understanding of that market. For the peasantry of medieval England, the best and most widely available source for such an analysis remains the manorial court rolls, which furnish us with the bulk of our bald data on the peasant land market but also permit us other insights, including entries relating to additional points of contact between parties involved in land market transactions. Thus, we can attempt to construct mini-biographies of individual peasants, to make reasonably well-founded assessments of their economic circumstance, and to observe, in the most revealing of entries, litigation between parties. In this attempt we are also supported by sources additional to the manorial court rolls, notably taxation assessment lists, rentals, and the records of freeholdings, charters. Essentially, the purpose of such an investigation is to comprehend more fully the processes which brought individuals, as buyers and sellers, to the land market and, in so far as this is attainable, to understand the preconceptions with which, as well as the intellectual, political, socio-cultural, and economic context in which, individuals entered that market. In attempting this elaboration and contextualisation of motive, we can move from the relatively simple observations (the apparent proportion of kin to non-kin in land market transfers, for instance) to those that are more nuanced (for example, the extent to which an active participant in the land market was a creditor or debtor). We can also address this issue by exploring two partially-related aspects of the peasant land market: (i) the parties to the land market; (ii) contractual agreement and the land market. II.1. The parties to the land market II.1.a. Kinship and non-kinship It is evidently inappropriate to suggest that inter-vivos transfers recorded in the manorial courts did not include gifts or exchanges of land from one family member to another in return for money or money’s worth at a rate that was below that of the market. We can find examples in the rolls that, in their simple detail, indicate such simple, seemingly

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non-commercial transfers. However, examination of inter-vivos transfers on the two Bury manors of Redgrave and Hinderclay reveals that, where a crude indicator of kin is applied, a small proportion of transfers (approximately 20–30 per cent) appear to have taken place between kin (Smith, 1984 (b): 155–4, 182; Schofield, 1997: 10). While, as is generally acknowledged, the available evidence will inevitably distort our impression of intra-familial land market activity, and, given the difficulties in identification of those related through marriage, always serve to diminish its role, it is, of course, also the case that even observable kin transfers do not necessarily imply non-commercial exchange just as inter-familial exchange may be devoid of commercial motive. Thus, for instance, earlier work on the relationship between intra-familial transfer, notably inter-vivos transfer of land between siblings, and periods of dearth, has described increases in such transfers during years of high grain prices, an association which has been explained as indicative of weakened familial relationships (Smith, 1988). II.1.b. Buyer:seller ratio A further basic elaboration of the investigation of the imperatives that may have driven some parties into the land market can be attempted by a simple calculation of the frequency of land market activity for those individuals involved. Here we can make apparent distinctions between those who seldom entered the market, and often only once, and those who were drawn to the market on numerous occasions. Table 8.2 illustrates the frequency of land market activity of villagers at Hinderclay and reveals the tendency for only a small proportion of individuals to be particularly active in the land market. While the limited data from the earliest rolls includes some weak indication that individual buyers may have been more active in the market than were individual sellers, the same message is relayed to stronger effect in the data gathered for later years. Inter-vivos transfers in the late 1270s, 1280s and 1290s clearly tended to take place between individuals who seldom entered the market, a significant minority of whom were evidently related; however, a small proportion of persons were far more active in the market, either as sellers or as buyers. While it is in the late 1290s that we see certain individuals acting most obviously as frequent buyers and sellers, it is clear that, from the earliest rolls, some villagers bought or sold on more than one occasion. What is more, importantly, those individuals who sold or bought on more than one occasion tended to do either one or the other, and relatively seldom was it that they did both. Analysis of the buyers and sellers in 236 transfers in the twenty years either side of 1300 reveals that while forty-five individuals both bought and sold during that period, sixty-four only bought and seventy-nine only sold. The disparity between the number of parties and the actual number of transfers serves also to remind us that certain individuals bought and sold on more than one occasion. In the earliest court rolls, as Table 8.1 indicates, the tendency was for the annual ratio of the number of buyers to sellers to remain at one, i.e. the same number of sellers as the number of buyers are found in any one year. In later decades, especially the 1290s, the buyer-seller ratio alters significantly and we find the tendency was, in a single year, for the number of sellers to outstrip the number of buyers (See also Schofield, 1997; Smith, 1984b: 162–3 for a very similar trend). While the clear indication here is that a process of accumulation developed in the second half of the thirteenth century so that, perhaps as a result of increased pressures on resources by the close of the century, a more stratified

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Table 8.1

Hinderclay: Inter-vivos land transfers, heriot, pleas of debt 1257–1259; 1277–1299 No. of courts surviving

Intervivos transfers

Inter-vivos transfers: average per court

1257–8 1258–9 1259–60

1 9 4

– 9 2

– 1 0.5

1267–8 1268–9

4 4

3 –

0.75 0

1

1270–1 1271–2 1272–3

1 9 6

1 6 6

1 0.66 1

1 1

1276–7 1277–8 1278–9 1279–0 1280–1 1281–2 1282–3 1283–4

4 8 – 3 8 3 5 5

1 9 – 9 18 5 15 19

0.25 1.1 – 3 2.25 1.7 3 3.8

– – – – – 1 – –

1288–9 1289–0 1290–1 1291–2 1292–3 1293–4 1294–5 1295–6 1296–7 1297–8 1298–9 1299–0

1 10 6 11 7 4 7 6 5 6 5 5

1 13 11 7 6 3 23 12 17 26 16 10

1 1.3 1.8 0.6 0.9 0.8 3.3 2 3.4 4.3 3.2 2

1 1

Year

Postmortem transfers (heriot)

Pleas of debt

buyer:seller ratio – 1 1

1 2 2 3 1 3 3 2

2 6 – 1 6 2 2 4 1 1 6 9 4 8 9 4 10 6 1

1.6?? – 1.07 1 1.23 0.89 1 1.11 1 0.66 0.75 0.6 0.74 0.82 0.82 0.76 0.77 0.82

Source: Bacon 114–117. market was in existence by the 1290s than had existed in the 1250s, there is already, by the earliest rolls, some evidence of multiple selling and, though less clearly observable, multiple buying. Thus, although not yet detectable on an annual basis, the court rolls of the 1250s, 1260s and early 1270s, illustrate the way in which some villagers tended to sell

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Table 8.2

The frequency of land market involvement of individual sellers and buyers at Hinderclay, 1258–1299 1258–1260

Number of sales/ individual 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Total

Sellers

Buyers

11 11

2 7 9

1267–8 Sellers

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Total

Buyers

Sellers

Buyers

2 3 3

1278–84 Number of sales/ individual

1270–3

Sellers

3 3

14 14

1288–93

Buyers

Sellers

1294–99

Buyers

Sellers

Buyers

1

1

1 1

1 1

1 7 6 27 43

10 12

1 2 10 44 57

4 26 31

3 4 17 24

1 2 4 10 54 73

4 10 40 56

Source: Bacon 114–117. whilst others tended to buy. At Hinderclay, William Heyward sold land in two successive years in the late 1250s; similarly Robert Litleman sold land in 1267/8 and 1271/2; he also exchanged land in 1272/3.5 Robert Litleman continued to sell land into the 1280s.6 5

We should note that while entries which record exchanges of land offer an impression of a market of equal advantage, it is possible that one of the two parties to the exchange may have been encouraged into an essentially disadvantageous relationship. Lacking data on the relative worth of the land exchanged, only further information on the relative status of the parties to the exchange will help establish the parity/disparity of such transactions. 6 Bacon Ms 115, courts of 8 Nov. 1279; 7 Jan. 1281; 23 Oct. 1284.

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As well as those who were frequent, sometimes multiple, sellers, there was also those who came to dominate the market as buyers. Thus, for example, in the late 1270s and early 1280s, a Robert de Stanton bought land on six occasions while, between, 1290 and 1299, William son of Adam purchased land on eleven separate occasions.7 Who were the individuals who bought and/or sold in this land market? II.1.c. Relativities of wealth and power In direct contrast to the suggestion of Postan, the buyers of peasant land in the medieval villages included the village elites. We can explore the identities of the participants in the land market by considering their behaviour in the land market both in the context of their other activity, as chiefly revealed through the manorial court rolls, and also through taxation listings and other ancillary material which provide some clues as to wealth and status. If we begin with the court-roll recorded activity of participants in the land market, we are able to describe some significant contrasts between those, especially, who were involved relatively frequently in the market as buyers, and the other participants in the market. Thus, to take the quinquennium 1294–1299 as an example, the average number of court roll entries recorded for each individual who sold land in the land market at Hinderclay was 8.5; amongst those who purchased land the average was 11.5. In the same five-year period, the most active purchaser of land, William the son of Adam, appeared a total of 57 times in the manor court rolls; in the vast majority of these entries, when he was not appearing as purchaser (8) or plaintiff (12), William acted as pledge (29), juror (5), or inquisitor (5). His high status biography is mirrored elsewhere in the record, but only in a small minority of instances, and may be indicative of the quality of the more active purchasers in this peasant land market. Similarly, it is the wealthy that we identify as major purchasers of land in this period. By using taxation assessment data from 1283 and recorded land market transfers from the later thirteenth century for the manor of Hinderclay some attempt has already been made to establish a crude measure of the relative wealth of buyers and sellers in the peasant land market (Schofield, 1997). It has been shown that the most active purchasers in the land market between 1292 and 1299 were to be counted amongst the wealthiest fifty per cent of those assessed for taxation, in other words a possible top fifteen per cent of the local community.8 If, using the same court roll material and the 1283 taxation assessment, we attempt to restrict such an analysis to the five years of courts surviving from the late 1270s and early 1280s, in other words the period exactly contemporaneous with the taxation assessment, we in fact find a pattern that is in all essentials very similar to that for the 1290s, with the relatively frequent purchasers tending to appear amongst the upper bands of those assessed for taxation whilst the occasional buyers and sellers, where they 7

Robert de Stanton: Bacon Ms 115, courts of 17 Sep. 1277, 11 Oct. 1279, 18 Sep. 1280, 23 Feb. 1281, 18 Oct. 1282, 1 Dec. 1282; for William son of Adam, see Schofield 1997: 11. 8 Assuming that the wealthiest 30% of any community is liable to the payment of lay subsidies in this period, on which see also Briggs 2002: 145, n. 29, and references there. For the data, see Schofield 1997: 17.

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appear at all, tend to occupy lowlier positions on the scale.9 Where we also find evidence of wealth within the manorial court rolls themselves, this also confirms the impression of a direct association between wealth and land market activity (Schofield, 1997; 2002; cf. Soens and Thoen, this volume: 32). Investigation of the court-roll recorded careers of individuals identified in the manorial court rolls as buyers and sellers of unfree land does not necessarily indicate that the market was dominated by the demand of wealthier villagers but, as we have seen, it does show that there were a few villagers who made frequent forays into the market whilst the majority engaged with it intermittently at most. The profiles of those who were most active as buyers suggests that they were, typically, both wealthy and operated within the village elites, frequently appearing as manorial officers and as functionaries, including jurors, in the manor court. Before we leave this discussion of the nature of the parties who were constituents of the peasant land market, we also need to recognise that, further to our observations to date, a proportion of participants in local land markets came from beyond the vills in which they were active. II.1.d. Location: propinquity and familiarity While we tend to associate the incursion of individuals from outside of vills into the local land markets with the developments of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it is evident that, at least in parts of eastern England, relative strangers were involved in peasant land markets in the thirteenth century (See also Schofield, 2004; for the intrusion of extranei into the customary land markets of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see, for example, Davies, 1978). At Hinderclay, when comparison of buyers in the local land market is made with the names of individuals listed in national taxation assessment data, it is possible that, in some very few cases, purchasers included free tenants from beyond the immediate community. Thus, for instance, there is only one Robert le Heyward identifiable in the lay subsidy assessment for the Hundred of Blackbourne in 1283; a free tenant at Coney Weston, he may also have been the same Robert le Hewyard who purchased a small plot of land at Hinderclay in 1278 (Powell, ed. 1910: 25; Bacon 115, 8 Mar. 1278). We also know, from injunctions in the earliest courts at Hinderclay, that unfree tenants sold land to free tenants, who could as well have included tenants from beyond as within the local community (Bacon Ms 114 m. 1 court of 24 Dec. 1257). Finally, we can also find evidence of unfree villagers from within and beyond Hinderclay making purchases beyond their immediate vills and manors.10 Undoubtedly, though, the majority of purchasers came from within the immediate community. Of far more importance than their role as buyers, as we shall see, it was the contributions of wealthy freemen

9 Suffolk Hundred; Bacon Ms 115. Here, though, Robert de Stanton stands out as an important exception: a purchaser on five occasions, but in each case from the same individual, a Robert Walnote. Robert de Stanton cannot be found in the 1283 assessment; he may have been too poor to have been included or he may have resided elsewhere. 10 For example, Bacon Ms 117 m. 15, court of 23 July 1297, surrender of 1 parcel of land by William Pikele of Rickinghall. William is listed as a resident of Rickinghall in the 1283 lay subsidy assessment, Suffolk Hundred, sheet 24.

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and, possibly, villeins from outside of the vill as sources of capital that was central to the nature and function of the local land market in this period. II.2. Contract and litigation In the previous section, we have developed the argument that, in parts of eastern England in the second half of the thirteenth century, the land market, while it may have responded to a number of agendas, betrays features that are consistent with a monetarised market, and that, above all, there were individual villagers and outsiders who engaged with relative frequency in such markets and did so in ways that tended to be consistent, i.e. they tended either to buy or to sell.11 We now need to move beyond the identification of parties to consider how those participants engaged with the market. Unsurprisingly, it is the most active participants, either as sellers or as buyers, who attract most of our attention, and this typically because they appear as more prominent in the record. In a final section we will attempt to address the relationship between the activity of these individuals, especially the frequent purchasers, and the wider socio-economic context of the local community. It will be suggested that the contribution of these energetic buyers and sellers was to construct a particular nature of transfer which could not help but impact upon the dealings of their fellow villagers, and this in ways that have been described in other contexts for the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (McIntosh, 1998; Spufford, 1995). In this section we can examine the ways in which wealthy villagers set out about that construction by considering the nature of the agreements which may have offered some foundation to the land market. In particular, we should note an apparent association between land market activity and other aspects of commercial or seeming-commercial activity, especially the extension of capital on secure terms. II.2.a. Credit and the land market – direct associations If we investigate the land market activity of creditors, for the last quarter of the thirteenth century, creditors here identified as those who appear as plaintiffs in pleas of debt at Hinderclay, the results are instructive. When we consider the twenty-five creditors identifiable in the manor court rolls between 1290 and 1299 in relation to land market activity for the same period, we find that seven (out of sixty-nine purchasers in these year or 10.1 per cent) of the purchasers of land in this decade came from this cohort of twentyfive. In relation to the total number of transactions, these seven creditors were involved in twenty-eight purchases out of a total of 113 for the same period (or 24.8 per cent). Similarly revealing results can be achieved if we consider the sellers of land for this same decade. Of the twenty-six debtors identifiable for the same period, nine can be identified amongst the eighty-nine sellers of land (also 10.1 per cent); as sellers, however, these nine debtors were involved in twenty-five transactions out of the same 113 for the decade (or 22.1 per cent). Thus, while observed creditors and debtors did not, therefore, dominate the buying and selling of land, accounting for no more than 10 per cent of all buyers and 11

The pattern found at Redgrave, namely that villagers established portfolios of holdings which they then redistributed is not so easily detectable at Hinderclay, where it would appear that individuals either acquired land or sold it; they seldom did both, cf. Smith, 1984c.

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sellers, it is clear that, in comparison to the actual size of this cohort, the extent of their land market activity was disproportionately high and we might, from this information alone, be encouraged to infer a direct relationship between land market activity and the extension of credit. This close association of buying and selling with the particular and discrete profiles of creditor and debtor should encourage us to seek further and more immediate associations between credit agreement and inter-vivos land transfer. In particular, is there an obvious and immediate association between creditor-buyers and debtor-sellers? (For a recent discussion of the same themes, see especially Briggs, 2009: 82–92, 156–69.) There are a number of ways in which, we can suggest, the land market was directly associated with credit agreements. It is intended here that we consider, in particular, the direct relationship between the transfer of land between two or more parties and the provision of capital through agreement between the same parties. In such an instance, in other words, we are seeking examples where the transferee was also, typically but not exclusively, the creditor, while the transferor was the debtor. In all such instances, the land transferred will offer one of the parties, the creditor, security for a credit agreement or will present opportunities, through the acquisition of the land, to generate further capital for the debtor (see also Briggs, 2009: 82–4). We might wish, therefore, to make formal distinctions between a range of proprietary dispositions available to those engaged in land and lease market activity in this period. In particular, we should distinguish between the usufructgage, either as vif-gage or mort-gage, and the forfeiture-gage (Hazeltine, 1909: 650ff). Legal commentators distinguish between two forms of usufruct-gage: the vivium vadium or vif-gage, where agreement is made that rents and profits from land held by the gagee, that is the creditor, shall reduce the debt, and the mortuum vadium or mort-gage, in which the rents and profits do not reduce the debt but are set against the interest accruing from the debt (Hazeltine, 1909: 650). By contrast, the forfeiture-gage establishes a rather different relationship between the parties; in this case the land is employed directly as security for the debt, with the gagee either given immediate possession but with seisin dependent upon the default of the debtor or given seisin at the initiation of the credit agreement but subject to repayment of the debt (Hazeltine, 1909: 652). Is it possible to identify such arrangements in the local court records of the medieval village? As we have already discussed, the majority of transactions in unfree land in the thirteenth and early fourteenth-century land market appear to have been conducted between members of the same community; there is relatively little evidence of external purchasers active in the manors studied to date. It is, therefore, to exchanges between villagers that we might look, at least in the first instance, for direct indication of the relationship between the land market and credit agreements. Simple numerical analysis of the relationship between creditors, debtors and parties to inter-vivos transfer fails, however, to encourage a view that foreclosure on land held as security was common (see also Briggs, 2009: 91–2, 168–9 for similar conclusions). If, for instance, we develop the analysis of creditors as purchasers a stage further than that undertaken above, we find that, at Hinderclay, of the twenty-eight purchases made by creditors in this period, only one involved a transaction made between the buyercreditor and a seller who had previously or would subsequently appear in the manorial court rolls as a debtor to the same buyer-creditor. That said, evidence so far discussed in this section relates only to litigation in debt arising from failed credit agreements (court roll recognizances are very few indeed and what we observe in manorial courts

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are, typically, the closure and not the establishment of credit agreements). Since most gages in the form of leases were almost certainly not enrolled in the manor court and most credit agreements were not recorded at their inception, we are overly dependent upon incidence of litigation arising from failed agreements (again a potentially reduced category since many disputes over debt could have been resolved extra-curially) to reveal creditor-debtor relationships in the first instance. We also know, as we have had cause already to note, that there is relatively little information on leasehold and the granting of terms relative to entries recording permanent alienation. We are left then with an impression of a land market that was strongly influenced by creditors; in very few instances, however, was a direct relationship between credit arrangements and the permanent alienation of property evident. It is in the record of detailed litigation and, on occasion, in additional clauses to court roll-recorded conveyance that we come closest to clear indications of the relationship between indebtedness and inter-vivos land transfer and here we are left with tantalising glimpses of credit agreements sustained by inter-vivos transfer. Thus, for example, in a lease licenced in the manor court at Hinderclay, Henry Crane granted Nicholas son of the Reeve half an acre to hold for a term of eight years. It was recorded that Nicholas had paid 5s. 8d. for Henry to one Bartholomew of Coney Weston; Nicholas had in fact paid 5s. 6d. to a Margery of Coney Weston in the previous year, as a licence to agree recorded in the manor court reveals. In order to recoup his debt, Nicholas had taken an effective vivium vadium from Henry and had sought enrollment of the agreement in the manor court.12 A similar example, also from Hinderclay, offers some sense of the expectations which parties brought to credit agreements involving land. In a plea of trespass, in which the issue to be resolved concerned the extent to which a debt had or had not been repaid, the defendant and creditor, Robert son of Adam, responded to the plea by claiming that ‘he had received . . . the said meadow and two acres and one rod of land in February 1295, at which time they were both agreed (ambo computaverunt et fuerunt in cetero) as regards 6 marks, 5s. 8d. which Nicholas [the plaintiff and debtor] owed Robert and that, for the same money (pecunia) he had leased the land for a term of 15 years at 18d. per acre and 2s. for the meadow’.13 Such cases are instructive not least because, in their unusual detail, they offer insight 12

Hinderclay, Court of 17 Feb. 1297, Henricus Crane venit..et petit licenciam dimittendi dimidiam acram terre. . .Nicholo filio Praepositi. usque ad terminum viii anorum . . . et concessa est ... eo quod idem Nicholas soluit pro eodem Henrico Bartholomeo de Coney Weston vs viiid in quibus dictus Henricus tenebatur dicto Bartholomeo et dictus Nicholas dat pro inrotulamento etc. Bacon Ms 117, m. 14. 13 Hinderclay, Court of 17 July 1298, Nicholus le Wodeward queritur de Roberto filio Ade de placito trangressionis unde queritur quod iniuste ei detinet iiii acre terre arabile et i peciam prati in Hydercle et eo iniuste quod cum conventii inter predictos Nicholum et Robertum ad Natalem domini anno Regni Regis Edwardi nunc xxiiio in villata de Hildercle quod predictus Robertus comodaret dicto Nicholo duas marcas argenti a Natale domini usque ad festum sancti Michaelis proximam sequentem. . . . Et dictus Robertus venit. . .et dicit quod recepit de predicto Nicholo dictam peciam prati et ii acras et i rodam terram ad Purificacionem anno Edwardi regni regis nunc xxiii ad quod festum ambo computaverunt et fuerunt in cetero de vi marcas vs. viiid. in quibus dictus Nicholus dicto Roberto tenebatur et pro eadem pecunia dictas ii acras et i rodam terram et pratum predictum ad terminum xv[?-tear] annorum | dimisit [inserted] | viz acras | quolibet terras [inserted] | per xviiid et pratum per iis per annum etc et hoc petit inquiratur etc. . . . Bacon Ms. 117, m. 6.

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into what, typically, we may not know. From other entries in the court rolls we are aware that Nicholas attempted on at least one other occasion to lease in secret other parts of his land to Robert; we also gather, from the above case, that a lease for fifteen years had been agreed between the two men and yet, as far as we can tell, it had not been enrolled in the manor court (hence, in fact, the litigation with regard to it). Since we know so little of a lease market it is a least conceivable that any alienation of land, where we are aware of little or none of the context of the transfer, could have been an effective forfeiture as a result of a failed credit agreement. However, this is clearly far from satisfactory as an argument and, given the lack of substantial evidence either in detailed litigation or arising from a cross-referencing of entries relating to debt litigation and inter-vivos transfer, we cannot conclude that foreclosure was a frequent cause of permanent alienation of unfree land in this period. Neither can we, therefore, suggest that credit agreements were secured by proprietary gages; if such agreements were not secured in this way, we might also speculate that most credit agreements were too small to warrant or to encourage the use of such security and, where they were large, they involved creditors who were typically freemen, sometimes and perhaps often from beyond the local community, and who were disinclined to accept credit agreements secured by unfree land. We might also anticipate that credit agreements could influence the local land market but in ways that in a manner not so immediate as that proposed in this section of the discussion (see also Briggs, 2009: 164–9). II.2.b. Credit and the land market – indirect associations While the search for direct association of contractual agreements, including secured credit arrangements, and the land market is not consistently revealing, we can also consider the extent to which credit agreements indirectly affected the inter-vivos transfer of peasant land. Of course, credit, even in its simplest form, may have underpinned a whole range of economic and quasi-economic interactions in the medieval village and thereby have enjoyed an indirect effect on such interactions. Sale-credits and other simple extensions of capital could have freed or restricted resources in ways that had impact upon the transfer of land; we gain some sense of such arrangement in the local record but little indication of the nature of the agreement or its degree of commercial orientation. The aim here is not to review the range and type of such arrangements but to identify contractual arrangements of a quality that could have informed and helped determine the nature of a market in land within local communities. Here again, litigation recorded in the manor court offers a perspective on the form and nature of agreements. It is evident that the majority of contracts made within the village were oral, and ‘sealed’ only through the presence of witness. The nature of proof, in particular the normal recourse in pleas of debt to witnesses, oath helpers and compurgation, and the very few instances of true court roll recognizances relative to undefended pleas of debt, also encourages this view, as does recent work on peasant wills and issues of intestacy which is highly suggestive of the typicality of oral, death-bed testamentary bequests (Schofield, 2005c). While, therefore, it may be likely that all villagers expected to conduct a significant proportion of their dealing by oral contract, including the most simple of agreements, it is also evident that some villagers expected to use and did use written agreements and that these agreements were

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testimony to a deep familiarity with mechanisms which transcended the local community but, in their use, may have exerted great influence over it. The number of loan agreements, either as recognizances or as defended/undefended pleas, recorded in local courts is relatively few. While it seems reasonably clear that written proof of contract was atypical in the local rural community of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, it is also evident that, on occasion, there was use of tallies, written instruments, and specialties (Schofield, 1998b: 75–81 for examples). In the case of specialty, we would expect to be aware of its use; where we meet a defendant waging his law, then we can reasonably assume that the plaintiff had not presented specialty. That we do sometimes find specialty being proffered in manorial courts of this period is, perhaps, truly indicative of a relatively unusual moment in the business of the court.14 Thus, it is less from the proportion of transfers that their importance can be gleaned but rather in the size of individual transactions and the socio-economic ‘quality’ of the parties involved. (i) Secured and unsecured loans: size Single loans, where identified in manorial court rolls either as recognizances or as pleas, defended or undefended, tended to be larger than debts accruing from single sale credits. While, undoubtedly, a series of sale credits could accumulate on account against an individual and realise significant sums, it is apparent loans, recorded in the manor court, that impress with their relative size. At Hinderclay, credit arrangements in relation to loans, where we can identify the sum involved, indicate that amounts of between 5s. and more were, on occasion, lent; these sums were, in relation to the moveable assets of villagers recorded in the 1283 assessment, large indeed. In an exceptional entry from an early fourteenth-century court roll, which leaves us in no doubt that a loan has been extended, Adam atte Grop acknowledged, through what appears to be a court roll recognisanze, a debt of 30s. of silver, the debt to be repaid at three intervals over the following year (Bacon 120, m. 15d). While loans of this kind were undoubtedly few, their impact on local economies could have been significant. A loan of a mark, or 13s. 4d., was equivalent to approximately one-fifteenth of the moveable wealth of the most properous villager in the late thirteenth century. If, however, we risk the assumption that only the upper third of all villagers were assessed for taxation, a loan of this size accounted for all or more than all of the moveable wealth of perhaps seventy per cent of householders within the village population (Powell, ed. 1910, passim). Given this, the nature of the parties involved is less than surprising. (ii) Secured and unsecured loans: socio-economic status of the parties There is, it is apparent, some correspondence between the size of loans recorded in local court rolls and patterns of court-roll recorded activity. In particular, two features are especially evident: in the first place, the wealthier villagers, who we have already identified as creditor-purchasers, were involved to a relatively large degree in the more significant credit transactions; in the second, those same relatively extensive credit agreements often 14

Although manorial courts were not considered appropriate fora for the employment of specialties as proof, it is clear that this did occur, Beckerman, 1992: 208–9; Schofield, 1998 (b): 81; Briggs, 2009, 80.

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saw these wealthier villagers appear as debtors to creditors who, to all appearances, look to have come from beyond the local community. At Hinderclay, we are aware that the largest of the loans involved the wealthiest and most active (in terms of recorded court roll activity) villagers, both as creditors and debtors (see also Schofield, 2008: 53–9). Between c.1290 and c.1310 at Hinderclay, some eight loans of 5s. or more generated litigation recorded in the manor court. In each of these cases we can identify the litigants. Unsurprisingly, in four of the eight cases, the creditors can be identified amongst the five wealthiest tax payers in 1283, whilst one other can be counted within the first twenty-five; in two other instances, it would appear that the creditor hailed from beyond the vill. As importantly, the defendants are to be found amongst the middling to upper band of villagers, their names associated in the rolls with core families of the vill. Further to this, we discover, as already noted that, certain of the creditors for more substantial loans at Hinderclay included those who made very few, sometimes only single entries in the court rolls, and almost certainly came from beyond the manor and vill; these included Margery of Coney Weston who, as we have already seen, was creditor to a villager for 5s. 6d. (Bacon Ms 117 m. 14, court of 15 Oct. 1296). Thomas King was pursued in debt by one Aylmer de Rickinghall, who only appears on this one occasion in the manor court rolls there and employed an agent to act on his behalf (Bacon Ms 117 m. 11, Hinderclay, court of 1 Oct. 1293). This is a pattern apparently reflected elsewhere. Thus, for example, at neighbouring Walsham le Willows (Suffolk), in 1316, the pledges of Thomas le Kyng de Wattisfield, almost certainly the Thomas King recorded at Hinderclay since in entries there he is also referred to as ‘Thomas King of Wattisfeld’, were amerced because they did not have Thomas in court to respond to a John Maheu of Bury St Edmunds in a plea of debt. John Maheu appointed a local man, Walter Osborne as his attorney in this case and Thomas later paid for licence to agree with John but also attempted, as was not uncommon on the part of debtors, an unsuccessful counter-plea in trespass (Lock, ed., 1998: 30, 31, 45, 50, 58, 60). Also at Walsham le Willows, a local man, Ralph Echeman, was amerced in two separate entries in 1335 because he had ‘demised and mortgaged’ (the Latin in the edition is not given) 3 rods of land and a single acre for 9s. and for 12s. respectively to John the chaplain of Newmarket (Lock, ed., 1998: 187. For other examples of possible clerical creditors at Walsham-le-Willows, see pp. 165 (Adam Syre, identified as ‘chaplain’ in other entries), 208 (Robert Shepherd, chaplain)). Further afield, at Downham (Cambridgeshire), in the early fourteenth century, it was the wealthiest villagers who were involved in the largest credit agreements, those of 20s. and above, and these with apparent non-residents. There is a striking distinction to be drawn at Downham between the number of appearances in the manorial court rolls for the wealthiest villagers and that of their own creditors, who may have pursued them into their local courts. At Downham, it was only the relatively infrequent appearance of these major creditors that suggested they might well be outsiders (Schofield, 2002: 117–19). Details such as these present us with the possibility that outsiders were, by the second half of the thirteenth century in parts of eastern England, providing significant foundation and capital to local communities and the local land market. On occasion this association is made explicit. Thus, to quote a particularly illuminating example, from early fourteenth century Walsham le Willows (Suffolk), in December 1321 John Bande (‘Baude’ where

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he appears in other published sources and hereafter) of Ipswich made his only court roll appearance in the Walsham manorial rolls when he pursued William Wodebite, a villein of the manor who appeared in the manorial records on numerous occasions, into the manor court of Walsham in a plea of debt. William was attached to respond to John. The jurors of the manor court agreed with John that he had delivered 12 marks of silver to William, in 1319, at Ipswich ‘to trade and profit for John’s benefit, and William was required to render faithfully a true account thereof quarterly, in accordance with the Law Merchant and by a certain written agreement’. William had refused on numerous previous occasions to render his account but continued to withhold the debt ‘and the profits therefrom’. It was ordered that John should recover (Walsham-le-Willows: 92; for William Wodebite’s villein status, see ibid.: 96 and the early fourteenth-century list of unfree tenants recorded by E. Powell amongst his earlier material, Suffolk hundred, p. 91. See also Schofield, 2002: 117). As we have seen from earlier investigation of the parties to the local land market, such external elements may not necessarily, or even typically, have engaged directly with the market but their role in helping to sustain it could have been hugely significant. Even those relatively wealthy villagers within local communities may not have themselves sought to engage closely with a local land market (that is, unless particular circumstances, such as aggressive taxation of moveable wealth or falling land prices, encouraged speculation). This may also help explain a relatively limited association of creditor-debtor relationships with buyer-seller relationships in the local record: rather than re-employing capital directly within their local land markets, wealthy villagers may have extended external capital to other, relatively less wealthy villagers. Nightingales’ recent examination of clerical creditors in Norfolk offers a useful example of the potential redeployment of credit within local peasant economies, as does the work of Mundill in establishing the relationship between Jewish creditors and peasant and villein clients in the second half of the thirteenth century (Nightingale, 2002; Mundill, 1998). In meeting the expectations of these local markets, external creditors both reflected and helped develop a particular perspective within medieval rural society. As the work of McIntosh and Spufford has shown us, local elites acted as vital conduits in establishing norms of dealing (McIntosh, 1998; Sufford, 1995).

III. Conclusion In the earliest of the Hinderclay rolls we are offered clear indication of the wide networks in which the unfree peasantry of eastern England operated by the middle years of the thirteenth century. In the winter of 1259–60, the abbot of Bury St Edmunds discovered, through enquiry in the manor court, that a number of his tenants had fled the manor, the majority of them now residing in London. Others lived more locally, including within the town of Bury or were in the service of other lords; in one instance, the tenant is described as ultra mares (Bacon Ms 114, m. 1, Hinderclay, court of c.25[day unclear] Dec. 1259). This is but one of many reminders that the peasantry, free and unfree, were mobile and adept at identifying opportunity. Not all villagers fled so far or made such radical departures;the wealthier villagers in local communities traded in periodic markets, appeared as mainpernors and jurors in County Courts, acted for their lords as manorial agents and officers. In all of this, they secured not only profits but also a heightened sense of market forces, business contacts, price information, and legal knowledge. In turn, such

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acquired relationships and knowledge affected their communities in two ways: in the first place, in terms of relationships, it brought unequal influxes of capital to the community and to the local land market, influxes which help explain the disparities in land market behaviour we have been discussing in this chapter; in the second place, and in terms of knowledge, it may have effected change in perceived norms of dealing. Certain villagers clearly come to dominate litigation in the manor court (Schofield, 1998a). Without doubt, the speedy reception of common law developments in seigniorial courts (such as cui in vita sua) reflects that kind of acquisition (Smith, 1983). When we think of the legal developments in the local courts of the late thirteenth century in eastern England, we are tempted to think of estate stewards who, versed in the property law of common law courts, drove through similar reforms in the private jurisdictions of their lords. While this is surely the case, it is also likely that they responded to demand; Smith and Razi have identified that expectation on the part of free tenants in eastern England at this time, an expectation which, they have also suggested, can be identified in the petitions of rebels in the Baronial Civil War (Razi and Smith, 1996). We might also suspect, in reflecting on the extra-manorial activity of the unfree tenants of manors such as Hinderclay, that the unfree tenants also helped develop fora that met their own heightened demands also. To quote one instance, Robert son of Adam, one of the wealthiest villagers at Hinderclay in 1283, and a peasant who, since his considerable wealth was based in a single grain, may have been a substantial trader, was evidently also well-versed in law. An aggressive litigant he also provided legal support for his fellow villagers (Schofield 1998a). He also acted as a conduit to external supplies of capital, that access facilitated undoubtedly by his dealings and by his reputation. In the case of Robert, we see this clearly when he sued a fellow villager, William le Wollemongere, for a debt which he had been obliged to pay as pledge for William when the latter had failed to meet payments for a loan of 8s. 8d. The loan was owed to Adam Pistor, a wealthy villager from the neighbouring vill of Redgrave (Hinderclay, court of 9 Sep. 1307, Bacon Ms 119, m. 1. For Adam Pistor, Smith, 1979: 246; Smith, 1984b: 170–1; Smith, 1996c: 473–4, 477.). As we have seen, in exploring the proportions of, for instance, creditors involved in land market activity, not all such activity was dominated by a village elite and, we can reasonably assume, not all such activity was conducted according to the same norms. We may however suppose that a village elite, engaged in a range of dealings within and beyond their local communities, helped impose conventions and modes of dealing that, as we have also seen through our examination of the land market but also in the wider use of law and the market, had direct and indirect consequences which extended beyond their immediate dealings.

Bibliography Primary sources (unpublished) Hinderclay, 1277–1320: University of Chicago, Bacon Mss 114A-120. (published) Lock, R. (1998) ed., The Court Rolls of Walsham le Willows, Suffolk Record Society, xli.

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Powell, E. (1910) ed., A Suffolk hundred in the year 1283. The assessment of the hundred of Blackbourne for a tax of one thirtieth, and a return showing the land tenure there, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sullens, I. (1983) ed., Robert Mannyng of Brunne, Handlyng Synne, New York. Secondary sources Beckerman, J.S. (1992) ‘Procedural innovation and institutional change in medieval English manorial courts’, Law and History Review, x, 1992, pp. 197–252. Briggs, C.D. (2002) ‘Creditors and debtors at Oakington, Cottenham and Dry Drayton (Cambridgeshire), 1291–1350’, in P.R. Schofield and N.J. Mayhew (eds.), Credit and debt in medieval England, c. 1180-c.1350, Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 127–48. Briggs, C.D. (2009) Credit and village society in fourteenth-century England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Britnell. R.H. (1993) The commercialisation of English society, 1000–1500, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Campbell, B.M.S., Galloway, J.A., Keene, D., and Murphy, M. (1993) A medieval capital and its grain supply: agrarian production and distribution in the London region, c. 1300, London. Davies, R.R. (1978) Lordship and society in the march of Wales, 1284–1400, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dyer, C.C. (1980) Lords and peasants in a changing society: the estates of the bishopric of Worcester, 680–1540, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dyer, C.C. (1989) Standards of living in the later middle ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dyer, C.C (1990) ‘The consumer and the market in the later middle ages’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 42, pp. 305–327 Harvey, P.D.A. (1984) ‘Conclusion’, in P.D.A. Harvey, ed., The peasant land market in medieval England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 328–56. Hilton, R.H. (1984) ‘Small town society in England before the Black Death’, Past and Present, 105, pp. 53–78. Hyams, P.R. (1970) ‘The origins of a peasant land market in England’, Economic History Review, xxiii, pp. 18–31. Hyams, P.R. (1980) Kings, lords and peasants in medieval England. The common law of villeinage in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hyams, P.R. (1996) ‘What did Edwardian villagers understand by law?’, in Z. Razi and R.M. Smith, eds., Medieval society and the manor court, Oxford: Oxford University Press , pp. 69–102. King, E. (1973) Peterborough Abbey, 1086–1310. A study in the land market, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kowaleski, M. (1995) Local markets and regional trade in medieval Exeter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Levi, G. (1988) Inheriting power. The story of an exorcist, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. First published in Italian as L’eredità immateriale: Carriera di un esorcista nel Piemonte del Seicento, Turin, 1985. MacFarlane, A. (1978) The origins of English individualism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Masschaele, J. (1997) Peasants, merchants and markets. Inland trade in medieval England, 1150–1350, Basingstoke: Palgrave. McIntosh, M.K. (1998) Controlling misbehavior in England, 1370–1600, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mundill, R.R. (1998) England’s Jewish Solution: Experiment and Expulsion, 1262–1290, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nightingale, P. (2002) ‘The English parochial clergy as investors and creditors in the first half of the fourteenth century’, in P.R. Schofield and N.J. Mayhew, eds, Credit and debt in medieval England, c.1180 – c. 1350, Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 89–105. Postan, M.M. (1973) ‘The charters of the villeins’, in idem, Essays on medieval agriculture and general problems of the medieval economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 107–49 [first published in Carte Nativorum. A Peterborough Abbey cartulary of the fourteenth century, eds, C.N.L. Brooke and M.M. Postan, Northants. Rec. Soc., xx, 1960]. Raftis, J.A. (1997) Peasant economic development within the English manorial system, Stroud: Sutton. Razi, Z. (1981) ‘Family, land and the village community in later medieval England’, Past and Present, 93, pp. 3–36. Razi, Z., and Smith, R., (1996) ‘The origins of the English manorial court rolls as a written record: a puzzle’, in Z. Razi and R.M. Smith, eds., Medieval society and the manor court, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 36–68. Schofield, P.R. (1996) ‘Tenurial developments and the availability of customary land in a later medieval community’, Economic History Review, xlix, pp. 250–67. Schofield, P.R. (1997) ‘Dearth, debt and the local land market in a late thirteenth-century Suffolk community’, Agricultural History Review, xlv, pp. 1–17. Schofield, P.R. (1998a) ‘Peasants and the manor court. Gossip and litigation in a Suffolk village at the close of the thirteenth century’, Past and Present, 159, pp. 3–42. Schofield, P.R. (1998b) ‘L’endettement et le crédit dans la campagne anglaise au moyen âge’, in M. Berthe, ed., Endettement paysan et crédit rural dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne, Flaran xvii, Toulouse, pp. 69–97. Schofield, P.R. (2001) ‘Extranei and the market in customary land on a Westminster Abbey manor in the fifteenth century’, Agricultural History Review, 49, pp. 1–16. Schofield, P.R. (2002) ‘Access to credit in the medieval English countryside’, in P.R. Schofield and N.J. Mayhew (eds.), Credit and debt in medieval England, c. 1180-c.1350, Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 106–26. Schofield, P.R. (2003) Peasant and community in medieval England, 1200–1500, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

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Schofield, P.R. (2004) ‘Credit and the peasant land market in the medieval English countryside’, in S. Cavaciocchi (ed.), Il mercato della terra secc. XIII-XVIII. Atti delle ‘Trentacinquesima Settimana di Studi’ 5–9 Maggio 2003, Instituto Internazionale di Storia Economica ‘F. Datini’, Prato, pp. 785–96 Schofield, P.R. (2005a) ‘The market in free land on the estates of Bury St Edmunds, c.1086-c.1300: sources and issues’, in L. Feller and C. Wickham (eds), Le marché de la terre au Moyen Âge, Rome: École Française de Rome, pp. 273–95 Schofield, P.R. (2005b) ‘Manorial court rolls and the peasant land market in eastern England, c.1250-c.1350’, in L. Feller and C. Wickham (eds), Le marché de la terre au Moyen Âge, Rome: École Française de Rome, pp. 237–71 Schofield, P.R. (2005c) ‘Intestat et testaments paysans en Angleterre et Pays de Galles au XIIIe siècle et au début du XIVe siècle’, in N. Vivier, ed., Ruralité française et britannique, xiiie-xxe siècles. Approches compares, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, pp. 207–18. Schofield, P.R. (2008) ‘The social economy of the medieval village in the early fourteenth century’, Economic History Review, 61, S1, pp. 38–63. Slota, L. (1988) ‘Law, land transfer, and lordship on the estates of St Albans Abbey in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, Law and History Review, 6, pp. 119–38. Smith, R.M. (1983) ‘Some thoughts on “Hereditary” and “Proprietary” rights in land under customary law in thirteenth and early fourteenth century England’, Law and History Review, 1, pp. 95–128. Smith, R.M. (1984a) ‘Some issues concerning families and their property in rural England 1250–1800’, in R.M. Smith, ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–86. Smith, R.M. (1984b) ‘Families and their land in an area of partible inheritance: Redgrave, Suffolk 1260–1320’, in R.M. Smith, ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 135–95. Smith, R.M. (1988) ‘Transactional analysis and the measurement of institutional determinants of fertility: a comparison of communities in present-day Bangladesh and pre-industrial England’, in J.C. Caldwell, A.G. Hill and V.J. Hull, eds., Micro-approaches to demographic research, London and New York, pp. 215–41. Smith, R.M. (1996) ‘A periodic market and its impact upon a manorial community : Botesdale, Suffolk, and the manor of Redgrave, 1280–1300’, , in Z. Razi and R.M. Smith, eds., Medieval society and the manor court, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 450–81. Spufford, M. (1985) ‘Puritanism and social control’, in A. Fletcher and J. Stevenson, eds, Order and disorder in early modern England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 41–57. Whittle, J. (1998) ‘Individualism and the family-land bond: a reassessment of land transfer patterns among the English peasantry, c. 1270–1580’, Past and Present, 160, pp. 25–63. Whittle, J. (2000) The development of agrarian capitalism. Land and labour in Norfolk, 1440–1580, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williamson, J. (1984) ‘Norfolk: thirteenth century’, in P.D.A. Harvey, ed., The peasant land market in medieval England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 30–105.

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9 Credit and land in eighteenth-century France Gérard BÉAUR, Centre de Recherches Historiques, CNRS/EHESS, Paris I.

Introduction1

The scarcity of money in peasant households was long regarded regarded as one of the many signs of poverty in village societies, before it came to be seen as one of the causes, or at least symptoms, of the archaic nature of enterprises that were stuck in a rut (Béaur, 2000). Deliberately shunning the market, thus lacking in cash, handicapped by the absence or nearabsence of any means of payment, though subject to numerous levies and exposed to the body blows of subsistence crises, they appeared to be correspondingly crippled by chronic debt, whatever the period or circumstances (Goubert, 1960; de Saint Jacob, 1960: 159–61). Loans were essentially seen as evidence of a monetary famine and, at the same time, as a sign of the distress of a peasantry trapped in its dreams of autarchy and resolutely hostile to trade. In fact, credit was everywhere in the eighteenth century; so much so that one is driven to conclude that liquid assets were extremely rare and that money did not circulate in the countryside. The proof is all those inventories after death depressingly lacking in coins but abounding in debts – active in the case of a few happy creditors, passive in that of unhappy debtors grappling with demands for repayment impossible to meet and piously transmitted to their successors (de Saint Jacob, 1960: 159–61). A large majority of the deceased bequeathed debts to their heirs. In Alsace, the inventories show this in over 80 per cent of inheritances (Boehler, 1994: 1180). It needs to be borne in mind, furthermore, that a large proportion of this credit wholly eludes us: it often required no formality that would make it accessible and, most of all, many loans were agreed verbally and so, by definition, left no trace. All these elusive loans were contracted between people who knew each other well or involved sums so small that it was not thought necessary to guarantee them by a written deed. It was usually only when things became more complicated that this informal credit assumed different forms and gradually moved towards more formal types which allow historians, at last, to identify them. The classic view thus paints a particularly sombre picture of the credit relations resulting from such circumstances, emphasizing the extent of peasant indebtedness to urban creditors or to a minority of usurers and local notables, and the inexorable expropriation that ensued. According to the model bequeathed by Postan and recalled by Richard Smith, there were clear ‘natural buyers’ and ‘natural sellers’ in this unequal battle for land (Smith, 1984). Such a categorical conception of social relations and the mechanisms of accumulation are not wholly consistent with the functioning of the peasant economy as described by Chayanov, who rejected the model of social expropriation 1

The author and editors would like to express their thanks to Jean Birrell for her translation of this chapter.

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and emphasized the familial reasons for land transfers (Chayanov, 1966). In the Postan model, the circulation of land was indeed linked to an ‘almost timeless “respiration” of the peasant family’s life-cycle’ but the market was clearly influenced by credit and economic forces, which also gave it a unilateral direction, the poor (‘deficient in labour and or stock or tools’) being dispossessed by the rich (‘wealthy . . . capable of providing themselves with the necessary stock’) (Postan, 1973: 115). In the Chayanov model, it was the life cycle of families that governed the land market, in which, with absolute regularity, the processes of accumulating and shedding land succeeded one another, the structure of ownership remaining unchanged; credit was either disadvantageous or relatively neutral in determining the movement of property, which was designed to maintain the balance of patrimonies. In contemporary historiography, however, the tendency is to reject both these models in favour either of the thesis that debt had a positive impact on the peasant economy or, on the contrary, that credit relations and the land market were unconnected.

II. The importance of credit in traditional societies To pay taxes, seigneurial dues and rents, to honour légitimes (the portion secured by law to legitimate heirs) or indemnify co-heirs, even to obtain seed corn or food, peasants were frequently forced to resort to borrowing. Of course, whether their situation was critical or not, they shamelessly resorted to delayed payment of taxes and seigneurial dues. Tax collection, as is well known, was always a particularly laborious task and, in a given year, the treasury had usually not yet succeeded in collecting the taxes for the preceding year, or even the year before that. Lords were usually in the same plight and arrears accumulated until they resorted to judicial proceedings, sign of their impatience (Aubin, 1989). But playing for time was not always enough, and peasants often had to resign themselves to the use of credit. In which case, they turned to those with liquid assets, that is, for the most part, to the towns – once, that is, they had exhausted their family circle and the neighbours and accepted that having recourse to some professional money-lender in a nearby village was not enough. Everywhere, the town was the purveyor of money to the countryside, at least of last resort, and it invariably appears as its net creditor. In the face of the difficulties of every sort that beset them over the years, the peasants had no other alternative than to proceed to the notary and arrange a loan. The contracts drawn up in notarial offices could take one of three main forms: annuities that were either ‘constituted’ (rentes constituées) or secured by land (rentes foncières), both perpetual but repayable at the wish of the debtor; life annuities (rentes viagè res), which ended with the creditor’s death; or bonds (obligations) granted for a limited period, up to three or four years, but often much less – nearly half of those contracted before a notary in Strasbourg were for a theoretical duration of between one and five years, and an almost equal number for less than one year (Boehler, 1994: 1180). The total sum borrowed increased during the course of the eighteenth century. In Alsace, the inventories after death show that over 80 per cent of the deceased left passive debts. This was hardly new. However, both the overall volume of this credit and the individual sums borrowed rocketed upwards. Between 1700–29 and 1760–89, the former

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grew by some 60 per cent at Holtzheim and 282 per cent at Schillersdorf, the latter by 50 and 126 per cent respectively. This reveals, clearly, a growing need for cash in the countryside, and also a greater recourse to the loan contract (Vogler, cited in Boehler, 1994). As is well known, this can be an automatic consequence of the non-repayment of debts, but the growth of the outstanding debt is also a sign of the increasing penetration of the countryside by money. There were other significant developments that testify to the changes in the credit system: the stabilization of rates around the legal maximum of 5 per cent, and even their fall below this threshold in the case of rentes; the slow advance of bonds, more flexible because they allowed the creditors to recover their money at the date fixed and adjust the rate more freely, once it was never stipulated in the contract (Postel-Vinay, 1998). Everywhere, there was a decline in all types of rente in favour of short term loans, which were better suited to contemporary needs. The choice of contract depended, of course, on the needs of the debtor and the attitude of the creditor, who might be anxious to control the date of repayment or to procure income over the long term. It also varied with the size of the loan granted: rentes were usually associated with the larger sums. It depended, lastly, on the region, some favouring the perpetual annuity, others the bond. This form of credit accounted, however, only for a tiny minority of credit arrangements. There was a whole hinterland of verbal promises and informal agreements that made provision for loans and repayments without resort to paper. Intra-familial loans were certainly mostly of this type: no more that 6–7 per cent of notarial contracts were between relatives at Bar-sur-Seine or Château-Thierry, though admittedly the figure was 33 per cent in the Vivarais (Postel-Vinay, 1998). It was only when trust was less complete, or when repayment seemed to give rise to some concern, that informal credit was abandoned and, sooner or later, other forms were adopted. A note was drawn up by private agreement, to be torn up when the debt was repaid. At the least hint of uncertainty, the precaution was taken of paying a modest sum to have the note recorded in the registers of the Contrôle des Actes. These recorded notes were the equivalent of the notarized acts of credit around Château-Thierry on the eve of the Revolution, and probably represented a quarter of such transactions around Chartres.2 They accounted, of course, for only a small proportion of the total number of bills negotiated (Postel-Vinay, 1998). If there were complications, if the amount of the loan was large, if the parties did not know each other well, or even at all, or if, as was often the case, they had used the services of the notary to find a lender, or a potential debtor, a formal deed was necessary. What were the causes of this indebtedness? Historians have often emphasized the poverty of families confronted with insurmountable economic problems. The importance of subsistence indebtedness has long been overestimated; it has even been claimed that it accounted for the majority of the accumulated debt. Today, the trend is to play down the importance of the phenomenon, regarding it as a relatively marginal aspect, even when evidence of it is found. At the end of the ancien régime, around Albi, purchases of consumer goods and seed still accounted for a third of the number of loans throughout the eighteenth century, a situation that was hardly improving, as the percentage increased from

2 According to my sampling in the archives of the Contrôle des Actes of the Chartres bureau for the decade 1751–60.

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about 1750 on. It rose, in fact, from 15 to 40 per cent between the beginning and the end of the century. The sums involved were mostly small, but they are a sign of the distress of the poorest sectors of the population when conditions deteriorated (Boyer, 1988). It is true that loans for food purposes seems rather to have been decreasing elsewhere, for example in Provence (Baehrel, 1961). But even in the nineteenth century, at Augerolles, in the massif central, out of 433 loan contracts known through legal proceedings before the justice of the peace, 28.4 per cent related to debts for food, a third of them resulting from the purchase of wheat. Further, nearly 40 per cent of the loans were granted for reasons that escape us, which tends to suggest that the proportion was actually much higher. Here, too, the sums involved were extremely small, between 30 and 50 francs. Even if this type of loan accounted for only a small proportion of the outstanding debt, it would be unreasonable to ignore this evidence of poverty (Brunel, 1992). Another unmistakeable sign lends weight to the idea of an indebtedness of distress: the delays in payment requested by debtors. They were often very slow indeed in clearing their debts. No doubt they often did not try very hard. Even so, payment of compensation to co-heirs or promised dowries was often delayed a very long time indeed. In Auvergne, at Cunlhat, more than 50 per cent of dowries were paid after more than ten years (Poitrineau, 1965). At Augerolles, in Forez, the average period before signature of the liberating quittance was between six and fourteen years, depending on individual wealth (Brunel, 1992). Yet these beneficiaries could count themselves lucky, because the sums due in familial indemnities were often never paid. The case of Emblavès is fairly typical of this painfully slow process (Sabatier, 1966). This inertia on the part of the debtors was not peculiar to familial loans. Whatever their origin, the majority of loans were repaid only after periods which bore no relation to those initially stipulated: 47 per cent of bonds drawn up by a notary in Alsace in 1751 waited more than ten years, and this after 40 per cent of them, of which all trace was lost and which would never be paid, were extracted from the sample (Boehler, 1994). Debt was stubborn, therefore, and it is understandable that the creditors might eventually become alarmed, grow impatient and eventually resort to drastic measures.

III. Credit as an accelerator of the land market? When the debt reached a critical level, the demands for securities became more stringent and the threats of distraint more specific. Peasants could anticipate future harvests, but day labourers had only their labour to offer as collateral. A postponement might be obtained if the situation of the farmer was healthy or if the labour force made available was sufficient. If not, disaster threatened and the prospect of the hammer blow of sale by auction or a forced sale loomed. The sale by auction was carried out to the benefit of a creditor, on condition he agreed to pay the rentes or sums due to other lenders, or to the benefit of a third party, in which case the profit from the sale served to compensate whoever had filed the petition (requête) against the debtor. It should be noted, however, that the settlement of outstanding debts was not always achieved through a procedure of distraint. Many apparently consensual sales were in reality dictated by the demands of creditors anxious to recover the sums loaned. In the Ariège, near Montgailhard, debt was the main reason for alienation in more than 80 per cent of

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cases. In 35 per cent, the origin of the debt was not specified, but in more than 12 per cent it was linked to a failure to pay fiscal or seigneurial dues, in more than 27 per cent to family settlements that had not been honoured and in fewer than 6 per cent to a subsistence crisis (Poujade, 1995). The unfortunate debtors, unable to honour the bonds they had signed, surrendered a few plots of land to grasping creditors. The traditional historiography has with good reason criticized these opportunistic ‘land grabbers’, who took advantage of the distress of the farmers to employ loans as levers to add to their own possessions (Goubert, 1960; Jacquart, 1974). Without going to such extremes, the admitted impossibility of paying debts forced some debtors to negotiate a ‘transfer of property in payment of rights’ (cession de biens en paiement de droits) to compensate their co-heirs for their légitime in the south-west, or a ‘lease in payment’ (bail en paiement) in the Midi provençal for similar reasons. Elsewhere, in the Lyons region, or round Forez, a ‘respite’ (relâche) made it possible to pay off family members following an inheritance or a creditor who was a stranger (Béaur, 1991). Some contracts allowed the creditor to dispose of the securities, like all those including a provisional land transfer to his benefit, whether they took the form of a ‘pawn’ (engagement), the ‘antichresis’, the ‘sale with option of repurchase’ (vente à réméré) or the ‘buy-back agreement’ (pacte de rachat). In the first case, the creditor took the fruits of the land until the debt was repaid, which triggered an automatic retrocession of the property. In the same vein, the ‘appropriation of land in case of non-payment’ (affectation de biens-fonds en cas de non-paiement) enabled the creditor to enjoy the fruits of the land until his debtor succeeded in clearing his debts. In theory, the transfer was provisional and represented only a guarantee and compensation for the creditor. In practice, it might be protracted and even never end if the debt was not repaid. The provisional might become the definitive and ‘for a term’ turn into a simple grant of property, as in any other expropriation (Béaur, 1991). In the second case, the creditor became the real owner of the property in question, the seller retaining only the possibility of recovering it by reimbursing the price of the sale. The delay stipulated for recovery of land relinquished in this way varied considerably: a year, a year and a day, 13 months, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, even, in some extreme cases, in perpetuity (Béaur, 1991). A clause of this type seems to introduce a high degree of insecurity for the purchaser who, for a longer or shorter period, remained under the threat of an exercise of the right of redemption which would seriously undermine his possession. In practice, such retrocession was relatively rare. It was more of a dream or an illusion for the debtor, who by this means retained the utopian hope of one day recovering his land – a costly dream in that the negotiating conditions were in no way comparable: a piece of land sold with the option of repurchase was sold for less than an identical piece of land ceded in perpetuity. In fact, it seems clear that in the majority of cases this option was illusory, as is suggested by a study of transfers in Ariège. This reveals a derisory rate of recoveries of lands by this means, and everything suggests that the indebted sellers paid a high price for the utopian hope of recovering the land surrendered in this way (Poujade, 1995). The geography of this practice is significant. It was rare in the Paris region, but spread rapidly through the land market in the south. It was also found in certain very specific

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places, such as Normandy, for example around Sées, where it was almost systematic (Béaur, 1997). Does this mean that the Normans had more illusions than most regarding the possibility of an early reversal of their fortunes? It is more likely that it was a device to counter the consequences of familial retrenchment than a true conditional sale linked to a firm intention of recovering the land surrendered once the seller’s financial situation had been restored. In fact, it authorized the relatives of the seller to exercise their preemptive right over the land sold, since it derived originally from a transmission within the family, and to take the place of the original purchaser. The réméré was a sort of antimissile missile against familial retrenchment. However that may be, it is clear that here, too, the market in credit was an integral part of the market in land. This was even more marked when times were hard. In a crisis, there was a real risk of a rapid slide into over-indebtedness. Typical in this regard are migrants, who usually repaid their debts on their return, but had to negotiate a delay if circumstances were adverse, and who did not always succeed in extricating themselves from this difficult situation (Poitrineau, 1965). Caught between rising expenditure and falling income, the lesser peasantry, farmers of tiny holdings or day labourers, were hit hard. They reduced their consumption, borrowed more heavily if they could and sold property or land if they had to. The example of Maintenon shows that cereal or viticulture crises acted as a lever promoting such practices among the owners of tiny vineyards (Béaur, 1984). They sold massively in such periods, as the small landowners of the Beauvaisis or Hurepoix had done before them in the seventeenth century, and as the tenants of the region of Roanne would be forced to do in 1693–4 and 1709 (Goubert, 1960; Jacquart, 1974; Dontenwill, 1975). The example of Saint-Etienne shows the extent to which this land market could be linked to the indebtedness of the owners, especially the most vulnerable of them. The similarity between the movement of bonds, sales of land and the price of rye speaks volumes as to the relationship of cause and effect between the three types of activity (Garnier, 1982). As soon as the price of the basic foodstuff began to rise, the number of loans shot up and the number of sales of land followed suit. The graphs reveal this convergence with great clarity. The same sudden hikes in contracts of alienation and debt are visible in Alsace in the barony of Grand Huningue and Roggenhouse (Boehler, 1994). The Breton example confirms this, since on two occasions, in 1740 and 1770, sales of plots of land proliferated in hard times (Jarnoux, 1996). In the same way, around Albi, the similarity between the movement of bonds and the cereal situation is equally close (Boyer, 1988); and in Auvergne, around Ardes and Vic-le-Comte, sales by auction corresponded to deteriorations in conditions (Poitrineau, 1965). Nevertheless, all regions were not equally sensitive to the pressure of crises. While at Maintenon, in an area of smallholdings relatively close to Paris, the land market became increasingly active at the expense of small farmers, here mostly vine-growers, around Janville, not so very far away, in an area of large farms leased by rich farmers, the relationship was much less clear (Béaur, 1984). The well-off peasantry resisted expropriation. There remains this surprising paradox: the near-instantaneous response of the land market to pressure of circumstances. How are we to explain the fact that the sale took place immediately, without a first resort to credit? Are we to conclude that the peasants sold land as easily as they borrowed money, and therefore that they had only a marginal preference for land as opposed to money, seeing it as one possession among others, devoid of any privileged status in their value system? Or should we think, rather, that their financial position was so depressed, even before

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the crisis arrived to administer the final blow, that it was impossible for them to find a creditor, the reliability of the securities offered being too weak, or even all prospect of loans being exhausted? Did the whole of rural society suffer financially from subsistence crises? It would be easy to believe that the well-off peasants, financially more resistant, finally emerged unscathed from a corn crisis. It might even be assumed that they benefited by selling their corn more dearly. In this case, they ought to appear as masters of the soil and as net creditors, wholly out of line with the majority of the rural world. Is this really the case? It is true that around Janville, in the middle of Beauce, a region of large-scale farming, at the end of the eighteenth century, the farmers sold scarcely any more land than normal in times of high prices; on the other hand, they seem almost to have stopped buying it. In other words, they tended to shun the market and postpone their acquisitions, either voluntarily, out of caution or constrained by lack of cash (Béaur, 1984). True, a century earlier, the consequences of the louis-quatorzien crises had been very different. Confronted with the terrible years that marked the turn of the seventeenth century, the big farmers of the Ile-de-France had been forced to appeal for delayed payment of the sums stipulated in the leases they had contracted with the landowners and burden themselves with debt for the rents they were unable to pay, hoping for better days ahead. Salvation being slow to arrive, this moratorium was not always enough and they were often only saved by the postponements granted by the landowners. The self-serving leniency of the lessors did not always protect the farmers, however, many of whom were forced into bankruptcy, provoking a dramatic turnover in the small world of agricultural entrepreneurs (Moriceau, 1994). Even if the impact of this crisis was exceptional, it reveals in the starkest fashion that the whole of rural society felt the effects of economic depressions and, to survive hard times, was obliged to resort to credit, granted with varying degrees of willingness by the landowners or by those with liquid assets.

IV. The land market as generator of credit, land as medium for credit It would be a mistake, however, to think that credit was a response only to the distress of debtors. We should not underestimate the importance of loans granted for the purpose of buying land, because investment in land was also a powerful motor of indebtedness. Alongside subsistence loans, indicators of deep distress, there are many loans linked to the acquisition of innumerable plots of land, which testify to the mania for buying it, but also to the theoretical solvency of the peasantry. Conversely, the possession of land gave access to hypothecated credit, which was, of course, unattainable without solid guarantees. In the Vannetais, the growth of hypothecated credit throughout the century enabled the peasants to finance the expulsion of tenants who held land on terminable leases (à domaine congéable), a form of grant specific to western Brittany (Le Goff, 1989). As a general rule, whenever it is possible to identify the motives for borrowing, the acquisition of plots of land or large tracts and lordships emerges, together with inheritance

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procedures, as most important. It can be argued, therefore, exaggerating only a little, that land was the reason for a large proportion of the sums borrowed and that it was the land market itself that caused large-scale indebtedness. We may even risk the hypothesis that credit alone made the land market possible, since it was almost totally dependent on the borrowing capacity of the purchasers: no credit, no land market. We should probably qualify this stark assertion. When we examine the terms of payment recorded in the archives of the Enregistrement des bureaux of Bourgneuf-en-Retz (near Nantes, in Poitou) or of Lamballe, in Brittany, it is clear that the conclusions are much less clear-cut.3 Payment in cash was by no means rare. The frequent repetition of the phrase ‘so many livres counted’ or ‘paid’ attests to the importance of cash sales. In the region of Bourgneuf, 27 per cent of sales were transacted wholly in cash. And Poitou was in no way exceptional. Inevitably, this method of instant payment applied primarily to small contracts, essentially those involving properties worth less than 200 livres. At this level, half the transactions were in cash. Above 200 livres, sales wholly in cash accounted for only 10 per cent of the total. Thus payment without an immediate minimal provision of money remained a pipedream. The only exception was the bail à rente, a type of contract which made it possible to take possession of a property in return for payment of a perpetual annuity. The tenant retained the land as long as he paid the rente negotiated with the seller, and he could not only transmit it to his descendents but mortgage it or sell it, on condition the new owner continued to pay the initial rente to the first lessor. Admittedly, even in this case, which remained exceptional, the ability to pay without putting any cash at all on the table was to some extent illusory. Few contracts for a bail à rente can have omitted to stipulate for a backhander or an introge,4 that is, an entry fine accompanying payment of the perpetual rent. With almost only this exception, more widespread in some regions than others (a geography of it would be revealing), the majority of contracts skilfully combined a larger or smaller payment in cash and a larger or smaller payment on credit. In no case, however, was the role of cash negligible. As a result, the role of credit in the global financing of acquisitions made on the Bourgneuf market ranged from 15 to 38 per cent, depending on whether one includes an exceptional operation of 1,452,000 livres agreed entirely for credit (Béaur, 1994b). The same proportion is found close to Saint-Etienne in the seventeenth century (20–30 per cent), and near to Liège, in the ban of Herve, in the eighteenth century (15 per cent) (Garnier, 1982: 183–184; Servais, 1982: 71–72). In fact, there was a threshold that buyers anxious to avoid recourse to credit found it difficult to cross. This threshold was roughly the same at Bourgneuf and Lamballe and also in another district (bureau) of the Vivarais, at Verviers. It stood at 200–300 livres, 3 Béaur, 1994b and also a study of the registers of the centième denier (hundredth penny) of the Archives départementales des Côtes-d’Amor, 2C (then unclassified), Bureau de Lamballe, centième denier 1771–90; Archives départementales de la Loire-Atlantique, IIC 986–94, Bureau de Bourgneuf-en-Retz, centième denier 1771–90; Archives départementales de l’Ardèche, 3Q 3520–22, Bureau de Viviers, centième denier 1771–90. 4 This payment is found at the time of the contract in many French bureaux of the eighteenth century according to the hundredth-penny registers I have been able to consult.

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which was by no means ridiculous for a peasantry assumed to be short of cash (Béaur, 1994b). After all, a day labourer could earn as much in wages in a good year. Up to this uppermost limit, the buyers were frequently still able to pay the sellers entirely in cash. Beyond it, they had to hedge their bets. The case of Lamballe, in Brittany, suggests that the rule was to pay about 50 per cent of the agreed price up to a total value of 400–600 livres, and we find once again the limit of 200–300 livres which marked the maximum of cash it was possible to lay out. In practice, it would have been necessary to give a little more than the 50 per cent, because to this basic price had to be added the backhander (for men) or pins (for women), which came to 6, 12, 24 or even, for the big deals, 48 livres, but also to give a little less, because the rentes owed to the lord and those owed to the creditors and bailleurs à rente were payable in instalments.5 With a few noteworthy exceptions, the share of cash consistently declined in line with the increase in the sums exchanged, and the resort to credit then became systematic. In contrast, the small transactions which made up the majority of the market were largely financed without a loan, or with only minimal recourse to loans. Hence there are two ways of conceiving the role of credit in the land market. While it is true that the majority of the land market (in value) was based on the use of credit (Postel-Vinay, 1998), it is also the case that the majority of transactions (in number) included payment of a large proportion of the total before the notary and that the majority of buyers mobilized a considerable sum of money. But what sort of credit was it and what sort of money would it be? Credit featured either as the constitution of an annuity (the famous rente constituée), the conclusion of a hypothecated annuity (or bail à rente), usually perpetual and therefore – and this is the most one can say – very long term, or the acceptance of payment of a rent to a previous creditor. In the latter case, of course, the sum of the capital of this rent was a deduction from the price payable. But it was much more common for there to be an agreed staggered payment to the seller. One is immediately struck by the brevity of the terms fixed: 5 or 7 years at most, even for very large sums (several hundred thousand livres), in which case the transaction went beyond the rural world, but usually a few months, even a few weeks, or even until taking possession (appropriement), which was virtually no term at all and hardly really counts as a form of credit (Béaur, 1994b). A proportion of this activity then vanishes into thin air. Conversely, where did the cash put on the notary’s table by the happy buyer come from? Is it reasonable to assume that all these people disposed of a nest-egg they felt free to raid at a given moment? I have always been suspicions of the complete lack of cash in peasant households as it emerges from the documents of the period (Béaur, 2003a; Béaur, 2003b). Was it really possible to survive without any cash at all? Conversely, I doubt very much that it was common for large sums of money to be kept on the premises, except by a few unrepentant misers or clever usurers, of which there were no doubt a few in the countryside. Is this true of the majority of our contemporaries? In these circumstances, without an influx of new money, for example during one of those tactical operations involving the sale of

5

Payments found more or less everywhere, according to my studies of the hundredth-penny registers.

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one piece of land to buy another that was nearer or better, or after the sale of a beast, it was probably necessary to turn to the people around one to procure the necessary sums: familial loans, secured by a verbal promise, or loans from friends of the family, neighbours or the traditional creditors, secured by recognizances of debt or notes under private seal; in fact, the barrel must have been scraped. It is still doubtful whether this appeal to solidarity, even self-interested solidarity, would have been enough. It was certainly necessary to have some money to embark on a small or medium scale operation. For larger operations, there was no land bank appearing on the horizon, in spite of all the attempts made in the eighteenth century (Perrot, 1985). It must have been necessary to find a money-lender. There was probably one in the village, known to all and ready to lend at prohibitive rates, but this was not necessarily enough, nor necessarily the best method. At this point we come to the professional lenders and the landed ambitions on which so much emphasis has been put. Is this with good reason?

V.

Credit disconnected from the land market?

The information gleaned from the notary by potential borrowers and lenders gave greater security than rumour and hearsay, even though informal credit probably remained common in the countryside of the ancien régime. In fact, the notary played a crucial role in the financing of the land market, and this for one simple reason. No guaranteed procedure existed for defining with any accuracy the level of indebtedness of a borrower or the extent of the charges that weighed on the tenure. The lender did not know, therefore, a priori, except by public report – which was not without its value – whether the borrower was solvent or not. Only the notary, because he was well-informed about the financial resources and shortfalls of everybody, was in a position to bring together those looking for funds and those wishing to place them profitably, and only he was able to ensure that the loan was reasonable. The loans granted were usually secured by land bought or owned. Property was a very convenient means of procuring money, which is why it was so heavily burdened with rentes. The downside was that any failure in the payment of the annual rentes carried a risk of immediate sanction, that is, seizure to the benefit of the creditor, so he could recover the sums that ought to have come to him but had not been paid. This chronic indebtedness would appear to have paved the way for the expropriation of the peasantry and it is often argued that the granting of loans was simply a mask employed by those with liquid assets to get their hands on the property of imprudent debtors and carve out a patrimony for themselves in a closed market. Were the creditors all rampant ‘land grabbers’? This has long been believed because there are so many examples of persons who alternated between money lending and land transactions at the expense of foolhardy borrowers. The tendency today is to believe that things were not quite as clear or as systematic as has been claimed. Was it so very desirable to acquire land? We should remember that the buyer was ignorant of the precise nature of the obligations to hypothetical creditors that would become incumbent on him. It was always possible that loans might have been taken out

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and not revealed by the seller or that ownership of the land might entail the payment of annuities. It was not the custom to redeem the mortgages when a property was transferred (Massaloux, 1989; Aubin, 1989). The buyer was always at risk of discovering obligations entered into by a previous owner, which he knew nothing about when he concluded the contract. He did not know, therefore, precisely what he would have to pay. Or would not have known without recourse to the one person who could limit, if not eradicate, this risk, thanks to his extensive knowledge of local society, that is, the notary. It was necessary, therefore, to turn to him, or else take a gamble. To take possession of land at the expense of a hard-pressed owner was one thing, but how far down the road to bankruptcy was he, just how deeply was he in debt? One can well imagine that there were some wealthy men who were reluctant to seize the property of an insolvent debtor. But one can go further: it can be argued that when the lenders advanced money it was not necessarily because they coveted the property of their debtors. The example of Oisans in the Alps illustrates this abstentionist choice which is wholly at odds with the classic view conveyed by the historiography (Fontaine, 1991). What was to be done with this property once it was acquired? How was it to be put to use? What could be expected from land from which strictly financial profitability remained modest? To become the owner of tiny, scattered plots, without prospect of exploiting them on favourable terms, might be more of a burden than an investment. The creditors of Oisans sometimes put off as long as possible the time when they proceeded to the seizure of the property of their debtors. Some of them lent, surely, without thinking beyond the value of the collateral, so had no desire to eject their debtor. The over-indebtedness of the peasantry came about through this deliberate inattention, which continued as long as the creditors found it to their advantage, and could end, therefore, in disaster. One can understand how the peasants of Champagne came to be in debt beyond the value of their land and mobilized their houses as ultimate security for their excessive loans (Brennan, 2006). After all, other creditors, or the same ones, were avoided bidding for property auctioned at their request, preferring to recover their debts from the purchase price agreed by another buyer. At worst, they took possession of the property at the time of the auction only to dispose of it immediately, as if their only ambition was to get rid of it as quickly as possible (Fontaine, 1994). In which case, why did they lend, if they had no appetite for land? It was probably to prevent the bankruptcy of the borrower and in the hope of salvaging their loans. It was perhaps also because they were to some extent constrained by social pressures. And it was even more because they looked for something else from a loan: the exercise of a power over the debtor that guaranteed them the availability of the labour they needed for other activities, trade (peddling in the case of Oisans) or stock farming. They wanted to control the work force and prevent it escaping. The cornered lender had no choice but to offer his labour to his creditor. Thus to ruin him by taking his land would be counter-productive. He would simply join the pack of migrants or vagabonds who had deserted their village in order to seek their fortune elsewhere or because there was no way they could remain where they were. This would explain why, even where land and cultivation were highly concentrated, for example in the Paris region, on the cereal plains of Beauce or the Ile-de-France, the day labourers retained, against all logic, a few residual plots of land. The big farmers had nothing to gain by taking the extreme measure of expropriating the micro-landowners and turning their workers into a proletariat.

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What they needed, rather, was to find a way of stabilizing their labour force. To protect this small-holding peasantry and extend them credit facilities was the most effective way of doing this. In other words, the behaviour of these creditors was economically wholly rational and reveals the strategies of an elite bent on increasing its profits. The absence of proletarianization or of tenant expulsions tells us nothing, therefore, about these tenants’ financial distress or prosperity. Conversely, does the increasing resort to credit and the growth of indebtedness invariably signify that the situation of the peasantry was taking a turn for the worse? Is debt always a negative symptom of developments in the countryside, a veritable incurable sickness of the peasantry, as tends to be claimed? Because, getting into debt could equally well be a way of investing in and ‘modernizing’ a farm. Could the expansion of credit, as it has been possible to observe it in the eighteenth century, be a sign of agricultural progress? In which case, buying land would have little to do with landed ambitions but a lot to do with another preoccupation: constituting a security that made it possible to offer greater security to creditors, hence to borrow and improve farming conditions. One can understand why some historians have argued that the growth of credit was something other than a symptom of deep agricultural crisis. On the contrary, it would seem reasonable to see it as the indicator of ongoing agricultural expansion, any reduction then being interpreted not as loosening the noose that had been strangling the peasantry but as proof of a contraction of investment (Postel-Vinay, 1998). Such an interpretation assumes that the sums acquired through borrowing were used primarily to finance the improvement of the equipment or methods of cultivation. The meagreness of the farm capital, until a late date, in the majority of cases hardly tends in this direction. On the other hand, and this is what is meant by those who adopt a positive view of the loan for interest, a minority of big farmers participated in this drive to invest and used landed capital as security to underwrite loans which were actually mobilized with a view to expanding the financial possibilities of the peasant farmers. But here what is needed is to add a socially selective dimension in the use and the impact of appeals for credit. It becomes clear from a comparison of the accepted views of the classic historiography and the critical revisions that have emerged over the last few years that the relations between land and credit are very much more varied than used to be thought (Béaur, 1994a). Land is still seen as a traditional facilitator of credit, since it was the most acceptable security for those with the desired cash, as well as a cause of indebtedness among those who exploited, transmitted or acquired it. It was in order to buy land that you got into debt; it was in order to be able to borrow that you had to own land. Credit did not serve only one purpose. It was sometimes a lifeline for peasants in danger or a variable that could be adjusted to implement family settlements, sometimes the first step towards expropriation, proletarianization or even dire distress for peasants beset by financial perils they had not anticipated or which they could have done nothing to prevent; it was sometimes a tool at the disposition of farmers anxious to improve the productivity or profitability of their farms, sometimes a way of financing otherwise inaccessible landed acquisitions; it was sometimes a lever to concentrate ownership in the hands of a few clever and patient speculators who performed their role of ‘land grabbers’ in accord with the prevailing canons, sometimes an operation devoid of any landed calculations,

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since some lenders deliberately avoided investing in land. Going against the prevailing rules in a society which valued land ownership above all else, they opted for other aims and looked for other sources of profit than the constant accumulation of plots of land, as and when their debtors got into difficulties. How are we to explain these discrepancies? They may be spatial, and the experience of Champagne suggests that the relationship between village communities and debt could fluctuate greatly, not only according to circumstances, as we have tried to show, but also according to prevailing economic conditions. The use of debt remained very uneven according to the degree of openness to the market and the degree of proximity or intensity of the potential connections with urban markets. But even more, the use of credit was socially selective and the relationship to land was equally differentiated according to social category and family calculations. Whereas the very poorest suffered the consequences of their indebtedness, the better-off used credit to expand their enterprises. The increasing hold of the bourgeoisie of Reims on the international trade in the wines of Champagne provides a clear illustration of this trend (Brennan, 2006). It was the choices of the actors, the resources at their disposal and the constraints by which they were bound that determined the role played by credit in the conduct of societies and explain why we should be cautious in our attempts to clarify its relationship with land in past societies.

Bibliography Aubin, G. (1989) La seigneurie en Bordelais d’après la pratique notariale (1715–1789), Rouen: Publications de l’Université de Rouen, n° 149. Baehrel, R. (1961) Une croissance: la Basse-Provence rurale de la fin du seizième siècle à 1789. Essai d’économie historique statistique, 2 vols, Paris: SEVPEN; repr. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1988. Béaur, G. (1984) Le marché foncier à la veille de la Révolution. Les mouvements de propriété beaucerons dans les régions de Maintenon et de Janville de 1761 à 1790, Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS. Béaur, G. (1991) ‘Le marché foncier éclaté. Les modes de transmission du patrimoine sous l’Ancien Régime’, Annales ESC, XLVI, 1, pp. 188–203. Béaur, G. (1994a) ‘Foncier et crédit dans les sociétés préindustrielles, des liens solides ou des chaînes fragiles’, Annales HSS, XLIX, 6, pp. 1411–28. Béaur, G. (1994b) ‘Au comptant ou à crédit. Comment financer une acquisition foncière au XVIIIe siècle’, in Paris et ses campagnes sous l’Ancien Régime. Mélanges offerts à J. Jacquart, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, pp. 47–56. Béaur, G. (1997) ‘Le marché foncier en Basse Normandie à la fin de l’Ancien Régime. Domfront, Livarot et Sées autour de 1780’, Enquêtes Rurales, 2, pp. 71–86. Béaur, G. (2000) Histoire agraire de la France au XVIIIe siècle. Inerties et changements dans les campagnes françaises entre 1715 et 1815, Paris: SEDES. Béaur, G. (2003a) ‘Familles, argent et marchés dans la France d’Ancien Régime’, in Dessureault, Christian, Dickinson, John A. and Goy, Joseph (eds), Famille et marché, XVIe-XXe siècles, Sillery: Septentrion, pp. 19–32.

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Béaur, G. (2003b) ‘Des sols contre de la terre. L’argent dans les transactions foncières au XVIIIe siècle’, in L’argent des campagnes. Échanges, monnaie, crédit dans la France rurale d’ancien régime, Journée d’Études tenue à Bercy, Paris: Publications du CHEFF, pp. 171–83. Boehler, J.-M. (1994) Une société rurale en milieu Rhénan: la paysannerie de la plaine d’Alsace (1648–1789), Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg. Boyer, S. (1988) ‘Endettement et société rurale à Albi à la fin de l’Ancien Régime’, mémoire de maîtrise, University of Toulouse-Le-Mirail. Brennan, T. (2006) ‘Peasants and debt in eighteenth-century Champagne’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 37, 2, pp. 175–200. Brunel, B. (1992) Le vouloir vivre et la force des choses. Augerolles en Livradois-Forez du XVIIe au XIXe Siècle, Clermont-Ferrand, University Blaise Pascal, Institut d’Études du Massif Central. Chayanov, A. V. (1966) Daniel Thorner, Basile Kerblay and R. E. F. Smith (eds), The Theory of Peasant Economy [1925], Homewood, Illinois: American Economic Association. Dontenwill, S. (1975) ‘Mutations foncières lors des crises de 1652 et 1709 dans l’élection de Roanne: un exemple d’utilisation des sources notariales dans l’analyse d’une crise social’, Actes du 98e Congrès National des Sociétés Savantes, Saint-Etienne, 1973, Histoire Moderne, Paris, CTHS, vol. 2, pp. 29–52. Fontaine, L. (1991) ‘Le marché contraint, la terre et la Révocation dans une vallée alpine’, Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, pp. 275–94. Fontaine, L. (1994) ‘Espaces, usages et dynamique de la dette dans les hautes vallées dauphinoises (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles)’, Annales HSS, 49e année, 6, November-December, pp. 1375–91. Garnier, J. (1982) Bourgeoisie et propriété immobilière en Forez aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Saint-Etienne, Centre d’Études Foréziennes. Goubert, P. (1960) Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730. Contribution à l’histoire sociale de la France du XVIIe siècle, 2 vols, Paris: EPHE; repr. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1982. Jacquart, J. (1974) La crise rurale en Ile-de-France 1550–1670, Paris, Armand Colin. Jarnoux, P. (1996) Les bourgeois et la terre. Fortunes et stratégies foncières à Rennes au XVIIIe siècle, Rennes: PUR. Le Goff, T. (1989) Vannes et sa région. Ville et campagne dans la France du XVIIIe Siècle, with preface by Jean Meyer, Loudéac: Yves Salmon. Massaloux, J.-P. (1989) La régie de l’enregistrement et des domaines aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. Étude historique, Geneva: Librairie Droz. Moriceau, J.-M. (1994) Les fermiers de l’Ile-de-France. Ascension d’un patronat agricole (XVe-XVIIIe siècles), Paris: Fayard. Perrot, J.-C. (1985) ‘Aléas d’une innovation : Les banques foncières au XVIIIe siècle’, Économies et Sociétés, Cahiers de l’ISMEA, XIX, (10) pp. 5–36, repris dans Une histoire intellectuelle de l’économie politique (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle), Paris, éd. EHESS, 1992, pp. 195–215. Poitrineau, A. (1965) La vie rurale en Basse-Auvergne au XVIIIe siècle (1726–1789), Paris, Presses Universitaires de France.

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Postan, M.M. (1973) ‘The charters of the villeins’, in idem, Essays on medieval agriculture and general problems of the medieval economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 107–49 [first published in Carte Nativorum. A Peterborough Abbey cartulary of the fourteenth century, eds, C.N.L. Brooke and M.M. Postan, Northants. Rec. Soc., xx, 1960]. Postel-Vinay, G. (1998) La terre et l’argent. L’agriculture et le crédit en France du XVIIIe au début du XXe siècle, Paris: Albin Michel. Poujade, P. (1995) ‘Les ventes de biens fonciers au XVIIIe siècle: l’exemple de Montgailhard, diocèse de Pamiers (1731–1786), Annales du Midi, CVII, 2, pp. 231–42. Sabatier, G. (1966) ‘Une économie et une société en crise: l’Emblavès au début du XVIIIe siècle (1695–1735)’, in Léon, P. (ed.), Structures économiques et problèmes sociaux du monde rural dans la France du sud-est (fin du XVIIe siècle-1835), Paris, Les BellesLettres, pp. 33–140. Saint Jacob, P. de (1960) Les Paysans de la Bourgogne du nord au dernier siècle de l’Ancien Régime, Paris, Les Belles-Lettres, LX-644 p., rééd. Rennes, Association d’Histoire des Sociétés Rurales, préface de Jean-Marc Moriceau, LXVIII–644 p., 1995 (Bibliothèque d’Histoire Rurale, 1). Servais, P. (1982) La rente constituée dans le Ban de Herve au XVIIIe siècle, Brussels: Publications du Credit Communal de Belgique. Smith, R.M. (1984) ‘Some issues concerning families and their property in rural England 1250–1800’, in R.M. Smith, ed., Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–86.

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10 Urban capital and agrarian reforms: rural credit markets in nineteenth-century Westphalia1 Christine FERTIG, University of Münster I.

Introduction

Rural credit markets were a cause for concern amongst observers in nineteenth-century Germany. Though contemporaries tended to lament the lack of credit in the countryside, it often remained quite unclear as to what exactly these people considered to be lacking. On the one hand, the absence of available money to meet the demand of the peasantry for credit was seen as a problem; on the other hand, Prussian reformers complained about a surplus of cash that led to the excessive indebtedness of peasants inexperienced in this form and level of financial dealing (Blömer, 1990: 28). As regards creditors, peasants’ dependence on outsiders, often Jewish traders, was also a cause for complaint and concern. Such creditors were generally and typically suspected of taking advantage of the needs of the peasantry and of exploiting their lack of experience by demanding extortionate interest rates (Blömer, 1990: 2–43; Blessing, 1997: 879). As to the debtors themselves, commentators tended to view their indebtedness as a product of accident, and not of operational investment. Damage caused by war was often referred to as a likely cause, as were bad harvests, and also good harvests (which caused price collapses), and the penetration of the land market by outsiders who drove up prices for farms (Blessing, 1997). For northwest Germany, inheritance compensations for children were often blamed for the heavy indebtedness in eighteenth and nineteenth century Westphalia (Henning, 1964: 23–25; Henning, 1976: 306). In this region, where impartible inheritance was customary, siblings of the heir to the farm were compensated by payments of cash or in kind. However, until now, studies approaching the issue of rural credit and its incidence, from the basis of a micro-study, hardly exist. This chapter aims to give first results from a project examining social networks and economic strategies in the Westphalian countryside.2 The movement of resources occasioned by personal relationships and credit as a means of wealth management are at the core of our interest. As part of the work of the project, group databases were constructed in order to permit the collection of data 1

The participants of the CORN conference have provided many helpful comments on the draft version. I would also like to thank the members of the research group ‘Rural Westphalia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’ for their useful criticisms: Ulrich Pfister, Georg Fertig, Volker Lünnemann und Johannes Bracht. The draft of this chapter was completed in 2004 and the author has not included reflection here upon the important article by Johannes Bracht (Bracht, 2006). See, for some brief comment, below, n. 8. 2 The project ‘Social Relationships and Resources in Rural Society: Social Networks in Westphalia in the nineteenth century’ is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The project is headed by Ulrich Pfister (Münster).

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relating to landed property, credit, transfer within families, inventories, and so on. The information gathered has been connected by nominal, non-automatic record linkage, and has been linked to family reconstitutions. Here the data on hypothec entries in the land title registers of two Westphalian parishes will be compared.3 On this basis an attempt will be made to address three main questions. The first question we can ask relates to the reasons why peasants in nineteenth century Westphalia raised mortgages on their landed property. Although the reasons given for lending money are seldom recorded in the land title registers, an increase in the number of credit agreements at particular moments may indicate the significant impact of agrarian reforms. A second subject concerns the origin of the money borrowed by peasants. The sources of credit have to be placed within the triangle of social proximity to kin or neighbours, the exploitation of the peasants’ difficult situation by profiteers, and the development of financial markets. The third and final question refers to the relationship of local rural society with the ‘outside world’. It will be suggested in what follows that manifold relations to towns and access to supraregional markets could have had a considerable influence on the social and economic relationships within local rural communities.

II. Methods and sources This article is based on data regarding persons and landed property. The existence of family reconstitutions was a precondition for the choice of the parishes examined (Clarenbach, 1938; Schlien, 2001). The other main group of sources is a product of the attempts of the Prussian administration to gain a grip on landed property in order to levy taxes. Between 1822 and 1835 land registers (Kataster) were compiled. In the early 1830s complete compilations of all plots of land for each taxation unit were also produced. These contain exact information on the size and the taxation value of each parcel (Kopsidis, 1996: 148–155; Müller-Wille, 1940). These compilations were then updated in 1861–1865, with reassessed values for the purposes of taxation.4 The most important sources for this study are the land title registers. The registers were established in the 1810s and contain information on property rights, manorial rights and encumbrances.5 Since the Prussian state was keen to record size and value of plots of landed property in order to levy taxes, the information in the registers is complete in the sense that the registers cover whole taxation units (in our case, units roughly equivalent to the parishes studied). However, they are not complete for the whole of the period under study. Since public registration was not compulsory, and was dependent upon voluntary registration by landholders, the land title registers only 3

The hypothec is, generally speaking, a gage or security linked to land but conferring no direct title in the land to the gagee. For ‘hypothec’ and some suggestions regarding its relation to mortgage, see, for instance Pollock and Maitland, 1968: 118–119, and especially, n. 1, p. 118. 4 Staatsarchiv Münster, Katasterbücher Arnsberg Nr. 84, 90, 92, 6022, 6023; Katasteramt Herford, Güterverzeichnisse and Güterauszüge. 5 Staatsarchiv Münster, Grafschaft Mark, Großgericht Soest, Nr. 20,1: Hypothekenbücher der Soester Börde: Borgeln; Staatsarchiv Detmold, Außenstelle Alverdissen, Hypothekenbücher LöhneBeck 1(Nr. 212) und Löhne-Königlich 1 – 4 (Nr. 213–215, Nr. 2863).

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slowly developed a decent coverage and not all farms were registered in the first years of the registers’ existence. Not unusually, it was only at the moment of property transfers that registration of holdings took place and for this reason it was not before many years that some peasant farms were registered. Additional sources for this study are inventories and contracts discharging the farmed demesne from its manorial obligations (in German, Ablösekontrakt), though the latter are available only for one parish at the present state of the project. All relevant data were collected in relational databases through nominal, non-automatic record linkage.6 For Borgeln this equates to 1,455 transactions of property rights, 1,662 records relating to manorial rights and mortgages, 58 inventories, and 11,160 persons.7 More than 10,400 persons were identified from the family reconstitution, and nearly 700 more have been added from other sources. The Löhne database contains 1,918 transactions of property rights, 1,203 data records as regards manorial rights and mortgages, and 8,753 persons, of whom 8,228 are also identified through family reconstitution. The databases continue to be expanded in order to study different issues in relation to these Westphalian parishes as the project develops. This present chapter is above all concerned with entries relating to hypothecation. Entries relating to hypothecs were registered in order to secure loans, not to record the clauses of the credit transactions upon which they were based. Therefore only specific information was transferred from the underlying credit contracts into the hypothecation entries; most notably, the reasons for indebtedness were hardly ever mentioned. Normally such entries include three key dates: the date of contract, the date of registration and the date of cancellation. Missing are any details regarding repayment of the loan. The date of cancellation and of deletion of the hypothec from the record marks only the latest possible time of repayment, loans could have been repaid long before the final date. Between the dates of registration and cancellation several acts could have taken place: one possibility is that the creditor sold his bond to a third person without modifying the hypothecation entry; on the other hand the debtor could have passed on the hypothecation bond. Neither were compelling reasons for the immediate cancellation of the hypothecation entry in the register. When a loan was repaid, the mortgage bond became the property of the farm owner. As some additional entries reveal, these registrations were sometimes charged again with new credits. This proceeding was quite reasonable, since every act of recording generated additional costs. There are suggestions of such occurrences at different points in the land title registers, but they are sporadic and were evidently not recorded systematically. 6

Datenbank Familie, Bodenmarkt, Kredit und Besitz in Borgeln, (Bearb. I. Großkraumbach, Program. M. Küpker, unter Mitarbeit von C. Fertig, M. Schall, L. Kreutzer, V. Lünnemann) März 2003; Datenbank Familie, Bodenmarkt, Kredit und Besitz in Löhne, (Bearb. C. Fertig, Program. M. Küpker, unter Mitarbeit von A. Berger, S. Dopheide, G. Fertig, G. Korte, V. Lünnemann) März 2003. 7 The parish of Borgeln contains five settlements. In order to restrict the expenditure to a reasonable limit, the village of Berwicke has been left out of the area under research. With regard to the number of inhabitants, about 30 per cent of the parish is not within the research area.

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Deletion of entries quite frequently occurred on the occasion of property transfers of farms to heirs. At these occasions peasants often made a clean sweep of their financial circumstances in order to regulate the distribution of their fortune to their offspring (Fertig, 2003). Since, therefore, it is unknown when debts were repaid, it is not possible to determine the total amount of debts in circulation at different points of time. It is in particular not possible to distinguish between accumulated debt and debt that was deliberately rescheduled in order to pay off one or more older debts. For this reason all statements based on these entries will be restricted to the extension of credit rather than the recovery of credit and overall indebtedness. At this stage of our research it is impossible to analyse indebtedness of individual households and its development over time. Instead, we will focus upon the demand for credit at different periods, on creditors as money-suppliers, and on credit relationships both within the countryside and within towns. The two communities or parishes employed for this study are located within different regions of the Prussian province of Westphalia, namely Löhne and Borgeln. Löhne is situated in the east Westphalian county of Minden-Ravensberg and was a parish of about 1,200 (1830) up to 1,400 (1866) inhabitants (Fertig, 2007: 61). Compared with other Westphalian regions, agrarian conditions here were rather poor. In the 1820s more than half of the households made their living for the main part by proto-industry, and above all yarn-spinning. Since farming activities needed mainly seasonal work, the north-western German ‘Heuerling system’ was common in this parish. A Heuerling was a day-labourer with a patron-client-relationship with a peasant landholder (Schlumbohm, 1997: 539–620). The Heuerling was a tenant with a very small plot of land at best, living near to his peasant-employer’s farm and paying for accommodation with money and an obligation to work at the demand of his employer. Because these people had no property rights in their possessions, they were not able to mortgage land as security for credits. Since the Prussian sources on the countryside were mostly connected to landed property, these people have therefore left very few traces in our records and cannot be taken into consideration in this study. All credit data in the sources concern owners of landed property, although many holdings were rather small. In the first half of the nineteenth century many small farms were built up, and there was a tendency for existing farms to become smaller (Fertig, 2007: 47). By contrast, Borgeln, located in the agriculturally advantaged region of Hellweg, was quite rich. A labour market for servants and day labourers existed in the region and about 30 per cent of the inhabitants worked as servants on peasant farms. Between 1830 and 1866 the number of inhabitants rose from about 1,200 to nearly 1,500 (Fertig, 2007: 61). Contemporary visitors grumbled that peasants and servants had an inappropriately high standard of living in this region. They complained about farm-girls who brought their illegitimate children with them when they came to live and work at the farm and peasants who kept expensive horses.8 In addition there were many day-labourers in the parish, some of them owning houses with small plots of land. In total, the major part of inhabitants gained their income from agricultural wage labor. The demand for manpower

8

Staatsarchiv Münster, Katasterbücher Arnsberg Nr. 92.

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in agricultural production was so large that it attracted young people from Soest to work for the peasants in the region (Jarren/Wex, 2002). As regards their economic development these two parishes then differed quite markedly in the nineteenth century. Borgeln was situated in a region that is generally known as the ‘granary of the Ruhr’. This region is marked by extremely fertile soil and very good transportation links to adjacent areas. Its main region to which it sold its produce had been the mountainous, agricultural disadvantaged Sauerland, where iron manufacturing business had been of some importance. However, increasing demand in the nineteenth century in the rapidly developing industrial Ruhr area made it more and more attractive for the region to produce cash crops. Between 1822 and 1835 the parish produced twice as much grain as the inhabitants could consume (Fertig, 2007: 63). The participation in supra-regional markets led to significant increases in net value added of land (Wertschöpfung) in this part of Westphalia. Since this agrarian growth was not promoted by the agrarian reforms of the early nineteenth century, but by the availability of supra-regional markets on one hand and the scope for improving the productivity of soil on the other hand, this development was, within the context of Westphalia, quite extraordinary (Kopsidis, 1995; Kopsidis, 1996). In Löhne economic conditions were not so favourable. Although the level of cultivation techniques was fairly progressive in the 1820s, there was not so much scope for economic development in the following decades. Between 1830 and 1866 fiscal net return of land, assessed by tax authorities, decreased about a quarter in totals respectively 40% per capita. Even so there was almost no market-oriented production of livestock (Fertig, 2007: 63). Important for the adynamic development of agricultural production was the lack of a major market within reachable distance. The exact increase in net value added of land (Wertschöpfung) is unknown due to a lack of sources (Kopsidis, 1995; Kopsidis, 1996). However, comparison with similar areas suggests that the growth of yields was relatively low. While agrarian output in Borgeln was very high and peasants produced cash crops for markets, people in Löhne combined agrarian production for their own need with other sources of income (Fertig, 2007: 47).

III. Credit markets, agrarian reforms, and the Rentenbank During the first and second decades of the nineteenth century the Prussian land title registers were yet to be established. In Borgeln the first entries of hypothecs were made in 1818, in Löhne there were only a few credit entries before 1820. Before the opening of these land title registers, the weakly established property rights of Westphalian peasants did not allow for registration of hypothecs without consent of the peasant’s lord (Henning, 1976: 301). For this reason loans in this first period must be regarded as personal loans which were only infrequently registered at a later point. As Tables 10.1 and 10.2 show, only very few loans from this period were actually registered. Unfortunately sources involving personal credit are scarce and allow only for sporadic insights into indebtedness. In Westphalia inventories were recorded in case of parental death where the deceased was intestate and only if parents had died before

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the farm had been handed over. Since inter-vivos transfers were the most common way of intergenerational handing over of resources, inventories tended to be created only in exceptional circumstances. They served the children’s interests in that they were compensated properly, as a rule as soon as the surviving parent wanted to remarry. For the parish of Borgeln only 24 inventories involving debts can be found for the period 1810–1881. Inventories from the early years of the century show that the amounts of debts were sometimes higher than the values of immovables. This tendency has already been found for Westphalian peasant farms in the second half of eighteenth century. The ratio of values of immovables and debts could reach even more than 400 per cent (Henning, 1964: 18). In the case of Borgeln, inventories from later periods show a decreasing ratio between debts and property. The amount of debts rarely exceeded 70 per cent of the value of buildings and real estates. This could point towards an increasing linkage of creditworthiness to the value of real estate possessed. Apart from the total amount of credit, which was quite different at the two rural credit markets, there was also a remarkable degree of resemblance. The local credit market in Borgeln showed a size twice as high as the market in Löhne. It was more than 220,000 Reichsthaler (Rthl.) for Borgeln against about 104,000 Rthl. for Löhne.9 The last columns of tables 10.1 and 10.2 show the distribution of loans over different periods. In both parishes only few loans that had been raised before the opening of the land title registers were registered afterwards. As soon as it became possible to mortgage credit, landholders seized this opportunity to get hold of credit. From this moment on the credit market worked on a level which did not change until the middle of the century. In Löhne the 1840s witnessed a sharp increase in the amount of credit extended per annum. A closer look at individual years reveals that in each parish the demand for credit rose substantially at the same point that a withdrawal of manorial rights commenced. Between 1843 and 1847, several farms escaped the burden of manorial rights.10 The major part of these liberations was in 1846 initiated by the owner of the manorial estate ‘Gut Beck’, most likely in order to convert the rights into cash prior to the sale of the estate. The land title register for the farm of Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Köster-Eickmeyer (Löhnebeck No. 2), for instance, contains an entry concerning the obligation to pay 1,850 Rthl. to the manorial estate ‘Gut Beck’ on account of a contract discharging manorial obligation (Ablösekontrakt, as above). It is not possible to estimate the extent of payments to former lords of the manor for this period in general, since it was not usual to register them. However there is clear evidence that the end of lords’ manorial rights in Löhne took place in two waves, in the middle of the 1840s and during the 1850s. In 1853/54 several farms were registered under an obligation to pay annuities to the Rentenbank in Münster, a governmental institution implemented in 1850 for the purpose of facilitating the financing of peasant farms’ liberation of manorial rights. 9

In Bracht 2006 the numbers concerning credit differ from the numbers in this contribution. The reasons are to be found in the fact that Bracht uses a newer, revised version of the databases and that his criteria for defining which mortgage entries are based on credit transactions are more rigid. See p. 70. 10 For a thorough discussion of liberation from domainial rights and its financing in Westphalia see Bracht 2006.

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19,657

Total

11 12

29,437

383 3,061 2,949 10,424 3,470 9,150

Rthl.

%

100.0

1.3 10.4 10.0 35.4 11.8 31.1

Small farms

31,574

2,512 5,557 6,964 8,179 4,582 3,780

Rthl.

100.0

8.0 17.6 22.1 25.9 14.5 12.0

%

Middle-sized farms

23,457

2,595 1,800 16,504 2,558

Rthl. 11.1 7.7 70.4 10.9

%

100.0

Large farms

104,125

3,635 12,074 12,231 41,417 19,280 15,488

Rthl.

Total

100.0

3.5 11.6 11.7 39.8 18.5 14.9

%

The classification of peasant farms is based on their tax net yields. This measurement combines data on the size of the holding with the taxation value of each parcel. It reflects the economic power of a peasant farm much better than would information on size alone. 12 The basis of the calculation is the date of borrowing, not the date of the entry. Only when the date of contract was missing, the year of recording has been taken as approximate time for the establishment of the contract.

11

100.0

3.8 4.4 2.6 32.1 44.1 13.0

%

Sources: databases, see footnotes 3–5.

740 861 518 6,310 8,670 2,558

Rthl.

Houses

1794–1819 1820–1829 1830–1839 1840–1849 1850–1859 1860–1866

Period

12

Debtors:11

Table 10.1 Volume of credit extended on loan in Löhne

Urban capital and agrarian reforms: rural credit markets in nineteenth-century Westphalia

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IV. The Rentenbank: withdrawal of manorial rights and institutional sponsors In May 1850 debates about ways of pressing forward with peasants’ liberation from lords’ manorial rights led to the establishment of specialised banks in the Prussian provinces. At the same time conditions of redemption were made available for owners of burdened land. The amount of redemption payments was determined by adapting a new conversion factor: peasants had to pay the 18-fold of their former yearly obligations instead of the 25-fold. Nonetheless these sums could still exceed peasants’ ability to pay. Both peasants and lords were entitled to apply for the redemption proceedings. Due to the support of the new banks both parties gained some opportunity to direct this situation. After a lord initiated redemption, the peasant could still choose not to pay the total sum at once. For Westphalian peasants it was possible to call upon the help of the Rentenbank in Münster. If a peasant chose not to pay at once, he could pay debt service to the Rentenbank. The lord received fixed interest securities from the bank, yielding interest of 4 per cent. However the lord could not know when his interest securities would be paid off, because only a sample of securities was redeemed by lot twice a year. But even if peasants agreed to pay principals, the lords also sometimes chose to transact payments through the agency of the Rentenbank in order to secure better terms. The reduction of redemption payments by law of course met with resistance from lords. A compromise was found in employing the agency and financial protection of the bank and the Prussian state. After the peasant paid the principal to the bank, it was loaned to the state on payment of 4.5 per cent interest. The lord received the same fixed interest securities mentioned above. What was so special about these bonds was that they resulted in a higher sum total. Although peasants still paid the 18-fold of their former yearly obligation, their lords could obtain the 20-fold by employing the filter of the Rentenbank. In Borgeln just a few ‘discharge contracts’ (Ablösekontrakt) seem to have been made before 1850. Only after the new laws on the ending of manorial rights and the new Rentenbank had been passed in 1850, were manorial rights extinguished here through payment. In the following years many such manorial rights were abolished. Farm records kept at the local courts contain, amongst many other documents, records of the discharge of this obligation. Although it is probable that these records are no complete collections of farm contracts, they reveal a considerable need for money during this decade. The files contain many such ‘discharge contracts’ dating back to the years 1850 to 1857. Most peasants in Borgeln preferred to pay the redemption sums at once, either directly to their former lords of the manor or by using the Rentenbank as an intermediate. According to the land title registers only four peasants farms opted to reschedule the debt, preferring to commit to a series of repayments to the Rentenbank. Although there was a close connection between redemption of manorial rights in the middle of nineteenth century and an increased raising of credit, the causality of this phenomenon is not clear. It is conceivable that peasants raised credit in order to pay off their manorial obligations. That said, it is possible that these loans were not raised to pay redemption payments, but for other purposes. It is also possible that peasants did not raise loans because

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47,671

Total

12

78,232

1,205 4,936 7,238 16,169 33,658 15,026

Rthl.

100.0

1.5 6.3 9.3 20.7 43.0 19.2

%

Small farms

75,548

1,137 14,085 5,559 2,270 35,685 16,812

Rthl.

100.0

1.5 18.6 7.4 3.0 47.2 22.3

%

Middle-sized farms

19,526

2,930 1,558 3,938 1,000 8,000 2,100

Rthl.

100.0

15.0 8.0 20.2 5.1 41.0 10.8

%

Large farms

220,977

6,870 26,160 22,211 30,528 90,645 44,563

Rthl.

Total

100.0

3.1 11.8 10.1 13.8 41.0 20.2

%

The classification of peasant farms is based on their tax net yields. This measurement combines data on the size of the holding with the taxation value of each parcel. It reflects the economic power of a peasant farm much better than would information on size alone. 14 The basis of the calculation is the date of borrowing, not the date of the entry. Only when the date of contract was missing, the year of recording has been taken as approximate time for the establishment of the contract.

13

100.0

3.4 11.7 11.5 23.3 27.9 22.3

%

Sources: databases, see footnotes 3–5.

1,598 5,581 5,476 11,089 13,302 10,625

Rthl.

Houses

1767–1819 1820–1829 1830–1839 1840–1849 1850–1859 1860–1869

Period

14

Debtor:13

Table 10.2 Volume of borrowing in Borgeln

Urban capital and agrarian reforms: rural credit markets in nineteenth-century Westphalia

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they were indigent and forced to borrow money, but rather because their ability to do so rose remarkably. After the land was freed of its restraints, peasants could offer better mortgage security. From the perspective of money-suppliers, the redemption of manorial rights could have established the opportunity to inject more money into rural credit markets due to the increased creditworthiness of landowners. With this in mind redemption of manorial rights can be seen as a release of rural credit markets from institutional restraints. Figure 10.1 offers a comparison between the development of both credit markets. The patterns displayed have several properties in common. They show a peak in the years of redemption of manorial rights, and a remarkably increased level of credit demand for the rest of the period. This result supports both theses: namely, there was not only an extraordinarily large need for money at the time of redemption, but also a persistent higher level of credit transactions from that point onwards. In Löhne several peasants had to pay redemptions before the Rentenbank was opened. From 1850 onwards peasants could turn to the Rentenbank in order to pay off the cost of redemption by long-term credit agreements, as several peasants here did. Yet deletion notes of annual duty entries point towards a higher number of redemption contracts in the 1850s. For this reason, it is not surprising that the credit demand in the early 1850s was higher than in ‘normal’ years, but had increased by far less than was the case at Borgeln. Figure 10.1 Yearly amount of credit extended (5-years moving average)

14.000 12.000 10.000 8.000

Borgeln Löhne

6.000 4.000 2.000

64

61

18

18

58

55

18

18

52

49

18

18

46

43

18

40

37

18

18

34

18

31

28

18

18

25

18

18

18

22

0

In Borgeln peasants in general did not establish long-term debt service relations with the Rentenbank. They were instead able to pay their redemption debts at once, partly direct to their lords, partly by means of paying the cash principal to the Rentenbank. Afterwards they continued to borrow a large amount of money for the remainder of our observed research period. In Borgeln peasants rarely relied upon the help of the Rentenbank; their use of the credit market, however, becomes more and more evident. Here possibilities

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of participation in cash crop markets and profitable investments had considerable effects on the development of the local credit market.

V.

Creditors at rural credit markets

Landholders in the countryside borrowed money from different groups of moneygivers. The main line can be drawn between creditors from the rural society itself and creditors who lived in towns. In both instances the supply side of the credit markets was dominated by neighbouring towns. Table 10.3 Geographical origin of credit extended in Löhne Region

Place

Total amount of credit (Rthl.)

%

towns nearby (less than 15 km)

Herford other small towns

30,761 6,139

29.5 5.9

more distant towns (less than 30 km)

Bielefeld Minden

11,660 5,640

11.2 5.4

towns far away (more than 30 km)

Düsseldorf, Osnabrück, Berlin, and others

10,446

10.0

countryside (near and far)

Löhne surrounding parishes

27,036 12,332

26.0 11.8

111

0.1

104,125

100.0

unknown Total Sources: databases, see footnotes 3–5.

Most money-suppliers in Löhne lived in towns. About half of the money came from towns not far away, although there also were several creditors from towns outside the region. Most important was the district town of Herford. Herford was, in any case, an important market town. The court in Herford held jurisdiction over the parish of Löhne from about 1830, and people from Löhne mostly went to notaries in Herford in order to record contracts. Further, but less frequent, were relations with three smaller towns in proximate neighbourhood. Notaries from Oeynhausen, Bünde and Vlotho were evidently consulted on a few occasions, and Vlotho had been the court town in the 1820s. Of some importance was Bielefeld, another proto-industrial market place in the region. More important, though, was the parish of Löhne itself. About a quarter of the credit demand was met by other inhabitants of the same parish. Here the villagers themselves provided for a remarkable part of their own internal credit demand.

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In Borgeln the main structure is similar. Most of the money was given by town-dwellers, and only about a quarter originated from the countryside. Yet in comparing Löhne and Borgeln the place of origin of credit differed considerably. Most striking is the predominace of Soest as a source for credit for people from Borgeln. Inhabitants of this town provided almost half of the demand for credit of peasants and other land owners in Borgeln. Comparing the total amount of money, the flow of money from Soest to Borgeln was more than three times as large as that from Herford to Löhne. In contrast to Soest, other towns from the region were rather insignificant. It was more the case that people from further away than the other regional towns served as creditors at the local credit market of Borgeln.11 More astonishing, at Borgeln, again in contrast to the situation at Löhne, is the relatively limited presence of creditors from the parish itself. Only a very small part of the local credit market took place solely within the boundaries of the parish. It is quite likely that peasants here tended to invest their money more in the production of cash crops than in credit markets. Yet people from other parishes nearby seem to have been of far greater importance as creditors. In the next table (Table 10.5) a great part Table 10.4 Geographical origin of credit extended in Borgeln Region

Place

towns nearby (less than 15 km)

Soest15 Werl

more distant towns (less than 30 km)

Ahlen, Hamm

towns far away (more than 30 km)

countryside (near and far)

Total amount of credit (Rthl.)

%

99,879 3,000

45.2 1.4

9,429

4.3

Nymegen, Koblenz, Minden, and others

19,925

9.0

Borgeln surrounding parishes distant manorial estates

14,205 40,487

6.4 18.3

8,515

3.9

25,537

11.6

220,977

100.0

unknown Total Sources: databases, see footnotes 3–5. 15

The land title registers do not always contain notes about creditors’ places of residence. Since these registers as well as most contracts were recorded in Soest, the town appears most likely as the residence of these people, who were, for instance, artisans and office holders.

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of these people will be counted in the row entitled ‘merchants’. Here we find another major difference between the two parishes. In the ‘Soester Börde’, the hinterland of the town of Soest, there also lived many merchants, i.e. in the neighbouring countryside. Therefore the credit given by merchants derived both from Soest and from villages nearby. In East-Westphalia, by contrast and as we have seen by implication in the instance of Löhne, merchants usually lived in towns. The dominance of the town of Soest is also illustrated by the part of creditors within its proximate sphere of influence: merchants lived in the countryside, neither as part of the country-folk nor as part of rural lower stratum.

Table 10.5 Creditors in Borgeln 1767– 1820– 1830– 1840– 1850– 1860– 1819 29 39 49 59 66 (Rthl.) (Rthl.) (Rthl.) (Rthl.) (Rthl.) (Rthl.)

total (Rthl.)

town-dwellers merchants savings banks lords of the manor peasants church others from countryside institutions others and unknown

4,412 1,310

103,682 46.9 52,664 23.8 20,581 9.3

Total

6,870

% of total

16,120 10,581 11,991 49,239 11,339 1,894 4,206 11,138 22,771 11,345 535 3,273 2,429 12,170 2,174

55 587 96

4,126 255 1,200 230

200 959 1,842 328

585 1,181 860 585

310 100

370 430

405 407

1,200

3.1

1,330 14,184 2,531 5,277 500 700 1,464 1,073 530

150

25,160 22,201 29,969 90,535 46,242 11.4

10.0

13.6

41.0

20.9

% of total

20,425 10,258 5,689 3,776

9.2 4.6 2.6 1.7

2,285 1,617

1.0 0.7

220,977 100.0 100.0

Sources: databases, see footnotes 3–5.

Town-dwellers and merchants, both from town and countryside, held more than two thirds of the credit market in Borgeln. Table 10.5 reveals that there were two other important groups of creditors, although less significant than the merchants and towndwellers. Two of these each held almost 10 per cent of the credit market. On the one hand there were savings banks, or more particularly and most obviously the savings bank in Soest. On the other hand owners of manorial estates also became quite important towards the end of period under research. Here we can observe a considerable effect of redemption of manorial rights: not only demand for credit increased considerably

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at the time of redemption payments. After the credit-worthiness of farm holders and the cash assets of former lords had increased, lords became important investors in the rural credit market, meeting 30 per cent of the demand for credit between 1860 and 1866.1612

Table 10.6 Creditors in Löhne 1794– 1819 (Rthl.) town-dwellers 1,340 merchants peasants 410 church 886 other from countryside 49 institutions 770 lords of the manor 180 others + unknown Total % of total

3,635 3.5

1820– 1830– 1840– 29 39 49 (Rthl.) (Rthl.) (Rthl.)

1850– 1860– total % of 59 66 (Rthl.) total (Rthl.) (Rthl.)

5,119 518 4,191 238

5,963 4,000 1,250 19

14,528 8,976 12,422 4,690

3,775 8,303 4,733 1,000

6,099 5,882 1,729 919

662 350

499 100

410 265

1,469

810

996

64 400

12,074 12,231 11.6

11.7

62

49

36,824 35.4 27,679 26.6 24,735 23.8 7,752 7.4 3,899 1,485

3.7 1.4

1,240

0.7

991

1.0

41,417 19,280 15,488 104,125 100.0 39.8

18.5

14.9

100.0

Sources: databases, see footnotes 3–5.

In Löhne, however, peasants were themselves a major group of creditors. The share of almost a quarter of the total credit market held by peasant creditors highlights the role they played here. Again most of the money was lent by town-dwellers and merchants, the latter also almost exclusively living in towns nearby. Manorial lords were also present as creditors, but they provided only a very marginal amount of credit. Missing were savings banks as creditors, and there was no credit relationships between peasants from Löhne and savings banks. Even though the district savings bank in Herford had been established in 1847, it did not serve as a creditor in Löhne.

16

These creditors were not the former lords of the manor of these peasant farms. One farm was beyond domainial rights of the Prussian king, and the other holdings were rather small, only obliged to pay the municipality for the ground they were build upon. Part of these creditors came from manorial estates quite far away.

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VI. Institutional credit for the countryside: the savings banks in Soest and Herford Although there were isolated savings banks in northwestern Germany before 1800, the actual emergence of a bank system did not commence until 1818. That year the first savings bank in Prussia was founded in Berlin. Newly created banks all over the country followed. The first Westphalian savings bank was established seven years later in Soest. It was opened on April 2, 1825 (Trende, 1957: 99). Local notables of the town were the driving force behind its establishment and in their efforts to establish the bank they had two main aims: to strengthen the public finances of the town and to enable the potentially vulnerable population groups to save money in good times in order to take precautions for times of hardship. Of course the founders also hoped this would come to their personal financial advantage. Their social and economic position made them the first to whom others might turn whenever the town’s financial situation made it necessary to do so (Schoel, 1999: 19). Weeks before the opening of the new bank an announcement was inserted in the local urban newsletter. It was addressed to those people who were expected to be its clients: farmhands in the first place, also craftsmen and maids, and every citizen of the town should bring their savings in the promise of investment for interest. Teachers, masters, and principals were called on to recommend investment in the bank: their social inferiors, it was anticipated, should save their money and lead a decent and frugal life (Schoel, 1999: 19). It is unknown if there was, in fact, any change in poor men’s behaviour after the opening of the town’s savings bank; at least there was some success concerning people’s savings. Many servants became clients, but also wealthy citizens and their children, even corporate bodies such poor relief and church fundholders. About two thirds of the savers came from within the town. However, the greater part of the money was borrowed by people from the countryside: only one third of the borrowers were from town, two thirds came from outside (Koske, 1959: 24). At the time the savings bank was opened, its maximum deposit limit was established at about 4.000 Rthl.; two years later, total deposits amounted to more than 9.000 Rthl. In 1849 total deposits had increased to 369.704 Rthl. (Koske, 1959: 24). Obviously the savings bank succeeded in its efforts to gain the savers’ confidence. Soon it had to focus its activities on the other side of banking transactions. In order to be able to pay the interest rates offered, deposits had to be invested. Already in 1828 efforts were made to attract borrowers by newsletter announcements. In 1830 a new kind of steady credit was offered, whose terms for loan were suggestive of a current account (something which was developed only many years later). Debtors could borrow money against mortgage security, pay it back whenever and for what amount they wanted, and get money again on the same mortgage entry (Koske, 1959: 25). In February 1831 the bank management proposed to abandon the principle of mortgage security for every loan. They stated that there were large stocks that had to be invested, but could not be established as mortgage loans. Many credit-worthy

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people would seek loans without being willing to register a mortgage, in part because of the publicity, in part because of the costs. The bank’s proposal was to lend money against bills of exchange supported by the signature of two well-known and well-off townsmen. For that reason they prepared a list of 84 citizens that could be revised every year (Koske, 1959: 25–27). Thus, and against the resistance of the regional government in Arnsberg, the savings bank gained permission from the head of the provincial government in Münster to lend money without the use of a mortgage as security (Koske, 1959: 31). Only a few months after the savings bank in Soest was opened, the regional government in Minden suggested that a savings bank be founded in Herford. Here it was not an initiative of local citizens, but public welfare politics that set the ball rolling. The immorality and recklessness of the lower classes were deplored by contemporary social observers, and a savings bank was almost considered to be a moralising institution in the fight against this. These expectations were based on the conviction that the main reason for poverty was situated in individual behaviour. Education of the poor was the main aim of the government in establishing a savings bank here (Abelshauser, 1996: 34–41). In the first place, however, the town council of Herford refused to pursue this plan. A few years later a bank was founded, but it failed to prosper, and was closed in 1838. It took almost a decade until the next attempt was made. In January 1847 the district savings bank of Herford was opened. From the very beginning it extended its business beyond the remit of a saving institution for the lower classes. The day it opened its doors the management accepted a deposit of 1.100 Rthl., immediately exploding the socio-politically motivated deposit limit of 200 Rthl. On the side of the loans it not only accepted mortgage security, but also bills of exchange supported with the signatures of two well-established citizens (Abelshauser, 1996: 45–61). Once the savings bank in Herford was established, it worked in ways that were very similar to the one in Soest. It was successful as an institution for saving as well for money lending. It is extraordinary that, for the entire period between 1847 (the year of the foundation of the savings bank) and 1866 (the end of the period under investigation) there is no evidence of any credit transactions of the savings bank with landholders from Löhne. Only in 1869 did two already existing loans secured by mortgage pass through the savings bank. It is known that peasants from other parishes were among the bank’s clients. By far the majority of loans were extended against promissory notes and guarantors. In 1857 the share of the credit of this kind was up to 93 per cent of all loans (Abelshauser, 1996: 60). Nonetheless it is an open question as to why the savings bank did not take the opportunity to invest in the hypothec credit market in Löhne. Turning again to Borgeln, the function of the savings bank at this rural credit market will next be considered. Obviously the two credit markets were very different regarding the presence of institutional money-suppliers. Did the availability of institutional credit have any identifiable impact upon rural credit markets? We could assume that a bank, endowed with plenty of money in the form of savings deposits, was able to provide large loans.

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Table 10.7 Credits of the savings banks (Borgeln) Debtors

Houses

Small farms Middle-sized Large farms farms

Total

Period

Rthl.

N

Rthl.

N

Rthl.

N

Rthl.

N

Rthl.

N

1825–29 1830–39 1840–49 1850–59 1860–66

110 1,439 1,264 620 1,229

3 25 21 7 11

500 1,049 1,005 950 285

2 15 6 1 2

25 525 260 2,600 250

1 5 2 3 1

200 270

1 2

8,000

3

835 3,283 2,529 12,170 1,764

7 47 29 14 14

total

4,662

67

3,789

26

3,660

12

8,470

6

20,581

111

Sources: databases, see footnotes 3–5. The distribution of loans offered by the savings banks display two peculiarities: the outstanding amounts of money given to middle sized and big farms during the 1850s, and the high number of loans extended to house-owners. In December 1851 Thomas Carl Hohoff, the owner of ‘Trottenborgs Colonie’, a middle sized farm, borrowed 2.000 Rthl. at an interest rate of 5 per cent from the savings bank in Werl. It is striking that, in the following summer, all manorial rights recorded in the land title registers were removed. Similarly, the farm ‘Colonie Blumroth’, one of the biggest farms in the parish with a net income of 432 Rthl. per annum, had to pay annuities to the court counsellor Carl Lentze. On Decembre 10 1853 the entries of manorial rights of Carl Lentze were deleted in the land title registers. On the same day a hypothecation entry for the savings bank in Soest was made, referring to a credit contract over 3.800 Rthl. Another large farm, the ‘Schulzen Colonie zu Nehlerheide’ was freed of its manorial obligations two years earlier, when, in October 1851, all manorial rights were removed. Only six weeks previously the savings bank in Werl had lent 1.500 Rthl. to the farm holder. The first three cases show a very close connection between raising credit and redemption of manorial rights. It seems reasonable to suppose that these loans were raised in order to pay off the redemption sums. The extraordinarily high amount of credit given to owners of bigger farms in this period appears to have been driven by the removal of manorial obligation from peasant farms after 1850. 17 13 More than 60 per cent of all savings banks’ loans were given to proprietors of very small holdings, often of only a small house and some garden. These loans were rather small, with an average amount of no more than 70 Rthl. The savings banks were thus able to provide large loans, yet their main customers were owners of small houses seeking small loans. These small house-owners were often day-labourers or rural artisans. Most of the savings banks’ loans were given to borrowers who possessed only little land and could offer only bad security. Larger loans for owners of big farms were in fact the exceptions;

17

Hypothekenbücher Borgeln, Nr. 1 folio 5, folio 34, Nr. 7 folio 71, folio 82.

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more typically the savings banks had to content themselves with small and badly secured loans. This conclusion is supported by comparing the average credit amounts of the main creditor groups for both parishes (Table 10.8). Table 10.8 Loans extended by the most significant creditors: numbers, sums, and means Mean

N

% of all credits

N

Borgeln

N (all)

Small credits

town-dwellers 230 merchants 187 peasants 34 savings banks 111

25 5 3 4

10.9 2.7 8.8 3.6

88 58 11 81

38.3 31.0 32.4 73.0

452 282 302 185

158 150 200 60

Löhne

Large credits

% of all Arithmetic Median credits (Rthl.) (Rthl.)

town-dwellers 104 merchants 93 peasants 96

8 8 4

7.7 8.6 4.2

26 44 44

24.3 47.3 45.8

354 298 258

250 120 150

Sources: databases, see footnotes 3–5. In Table 10.8 the numbers of loans, both large (1.000 Rth. and more) and small (up to 100 Rthl.), for the most important groups of creditor are compared.18 The first column presents the number of loans each group had extended, distinguished by parish. The structure of the credit markets differed even regarding the absolute presence of creditors within the market. Whereas in Löhne all groups extended roughly equal numbers of loans, Borgeln witnessed a predominance of town-dwellers and merchants in the credit market. The following columns of Table 10.8 shows the proportion of large and small loans extended by each creditor group. For Borgeln three numbers stand out: firstly, town-dwellers gave a lot of loans above 1.000 Rthl.; secondly, although peasants did not extend many loans, a tenth of the loans they did extend were large, and, finally, the savings banks were chiefly responsible for smaller loans. Three quarters of their loans were for 100 Rthl. or less.14 Looking at the average amounts makes these findings even more evident. In Löhne the close proximity of values of loans extended by all creditors is especially striking. Here, as in Borgeln town-dwellers gave on average larger loans than did merchants or peasants, but the differences between the categories was not nearly as large as that to be found in Borgeln. Inhabitants of towns remained important creditors in both parishes, but they did not dominate the East-Westphalian local credit market at Löhne. The high values of loans extended by peasants in proportion to the other groups underline the importance of peasants as creditors in Löhne.

18

Lords of the manor are not discussed here, since they are rather unimportant as creditors for the most time of the period under research.

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VII. Urban citizens and their investments in the countryside Before turning to the credit relationships within the parishes, between peasants and other village inhabitants, the significant presence of town dwellers as creditors in the countryside will be considered. Town-dwellers have hardly been identified as an important group within rural credit markets (Thomes, 1998; Blessing, 1997). However, it appears that urban citizens invested a good deal of money in rural credit markets. This was especially true for the parishes located within the region of the ‘Soester Börde’. Most of the creditors here lived in Soest, and rarely in other towns. It seems reasonable therefore to compare the amount of money loaned by this group with the amount of deposits in the local savings bank. Although the savings bank was very successful and held in 1849 deposits to the sum total of 369.704 Rthl., a good deal of money was invested outside of the town. During the first two thirds of the nineteenth century, creditors from Soest lent money to landholders in Borgeln to a total amount of c.100.000 Rthl., and Borgeln was only one of several parishes within the surrounding area of the town. The Westphalian countryside was obviously a propitious place for investments, at least as far as the rural credit market is concerned. The engagement of urban citizens in the rural annuity business extends back into the eighteenth century (Koske, 2000). For several peasant holdings there exist entries in the land title registers concerning manorial rights of citizens. Most of these manorial rights contained obligations for the delivery of grain, chicken, eggs, and the like. Sometimes even a ‘Heimfallsrecht’ was in the hands of urban citizens, which means the right for the lord to seize the peasant holding in instances where the peasant tenant had died without leaving children to inherit. Ludolph Holle, a justice commissioner from Soest, had manorial rights over three peasant holdings in Borgeln. The Bertels’ farm owed him some barley each year, Remmert’s farm rye and barley, and Rademacher’s farm also barley. The tenants at Rademacher’s farm also owed manorial obligations to others, possibly its original lords: Friedrich von Heidewolff from Oberweimar in Hessen and Ernestine Gräfin von Wicheburg, from St. Pölten in Austria. Their claims were much more extensive. Besides a certain amount of grain they also received nine hens and some money. To offer another example, a carpenter from Soest named Königs also enjoyed manorial rights over three peasant holdings in the parish of Borgeln. Every year he received one hen and a sum of money from Löer’s farm. Another farm in Stocklarn, Schiller’s farm, also owed him hen and money. Finally, there was Trottenberg’s farm in Stocklarn, which was to deliver him eight hens, one pig, some oats, and cash. In addition, the tenants at Trottenberg’s farm owed other manorial obligations to others at Soest owning manorial rights over their property: Wilhelm Stuve, a tradesman in Soest, received barley, Albert Simmons barley and rye. Antoinette Regenherz also received barley and rye, as did another, unidentified, person from Soest. Thus, the manorial rights which existed over these peasant holdings, as they were registered in the nineteenth century land registers, were held by five different people, all of them urban citizens. All these rights were cancelled in the early 1850s. With the redemption of manorial rights these manorial relationships between peasants and town dwellers vanished. They were soon replaced by credit relationships.

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If one looks at land register entries concerning land ownership, townspeople appear very seldom as buyers of land in the countryside. Sophia Rocholl, wife of a tradesman in Soest, bought in 1821 the manorial estate ‘Gut Palmberg’ for 7.000 Rthl. Gut Palmberg was a holding of about 120 Morgen (30 hectares) with a tax net yield of almost 300 Rthl. This transaction included a peasant farm and two smallholdings. In the course of time several parcels were sold, so that this estate shrunk to a size of no more than 60 Mg. and 96 Rthl. in 1866. Another example would be Andreas Boeddecker, a butcher from Soest, who paid 1.200 Rthl. for a meadow of 5,5 Morgen (33 Reichsthaler tax net yield) in 1851. These examples were rather more exceptions than the rule. Towndwellers very seldom turned up as buyers of land in Borgeln. This is quite surprising, since there is such clear evidence for urban appetite in investment in the rural credit market, but hardly in buying landed property. At least for land without manorial charges there were no legal restrictions in free trade in land. This is reflected in the mobility rates of burdened and unburdened land, as Georg Fertig’s analysis of rural land markets in Westphalia has shown. Land without manorial charges was clearly more likely to be traded than was land burdened with the same (Fertig, 2007: 111–117). Nevertheless, and on the whole, urban investors stayed away from rural land markets. There was no such development as, for example, in Holland, a region of the Lower Countries. There, from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards, wealthy town-dwellers made large-scale investments in land, which usually was leased out (van Bavel, 2002: 24). This is the more astonishing as in the ‘Soester Börde’ soil was of the highest quality. The reason for this reserve may be found in the taxation system of the Prussian state. P. Schofield (Schofield, 1997), in his study of credit and the land market in a medieval English community illustrated the impact of taxation systems on market behaviour. Here it is suggested that the anticipation of lay subsidies in times of economic difficulty was an incentive for creditors to call in debts, and to invest their money in landed property. This was quite reasonable, because the money owed to an individual was considered to be available capital and therefore a tax was levied on it. Land, on the other hand, was not levied with subsidies. Differentiated taxation of capital and landed property directed investment capital into different markets. There is some reason to assume that the taxation system of the Prussian state also had some impact on markets for credit and land. Until the introduction of an income tax in 1891 the Prussian tax system was marked by the dualism between the taxable and non-taxable population on one hand, and the dualism between town and countryside on the other. In the countryside a personal class tax and a property tax were imposed, whereas the inhabitants of towns were affected mostly by indirect taxes on consumption. Noblemen in the countryside, however, were free from taxes until 1861. The property tax is considered to have been the most important source of revenue for the Prussian national budget, and in general the countryside was more heavily burdened with taxes than towns (Schremmer, 1994: 110–149). Since the taxation system remained rather heterogeneous during the nineteenth century, the weight of the property tax varied widely from province to province. In western provinces taxation was particularly hard. In Westphalia the property tax was at a level of 10 per cent of the tax net yield, whereas in Posen it was less than 5 per cent (Meitzen, 1868: 20). Here one may discover the motives for the preferences exhibited by urban citizens. In rural markets loans bore a rate of interest between 4 and 5 per cent, more than the savings

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bank – to come back to this institution – paid. Since these loans were secured through mortgages, the risk of losses remained quite low. At the same time there was no tax on yields on capital. As a publication from 1842 stated, taxation of yields on capital was considered feasible on registered loans, like mortgages, at best, whereas personal credit was not within the grasp of the Prussian administration. It follows that only registered loans would have been burdened with taxes, which would have forced the borrowers to bear these costs. Thus the burden of a tax of this kind would merely have been passed on to the borrowers (von Prittwitz, 1842: 173–176). High taxes on landed property, but no taxation of yields on capital, made it more attractive for Prussian town-dwellers to invest their capital in credit markets than in land markets.

VIII. Local and regional credit markets Although people from towns were most important for rural credit markets, there also existed a local credit market within the two parishes researched. Peasants and other villagers, including day labourers, artisans, or underage heirs, lent money to their co-inhabitants. These people have been identified in the family reconstitution, and their kin relations have been found at up to seven degrees of removed relationship.19 Therefore it is possible to show that these local credit markets did not only differ very much in size and structure, but also in the extent to which personal relationships influenced economic transactions.15 In Borgeln the amount of money circulating within the parish was very small. Only about 2,4 per cent of the total credit demand was met by inhabitants of the same village. Peasants usually did not participate in the village credit market as borrowers. There were only a few exceptions to this: in 1827 an old debt of 55 Rthl. from 1784 was registered on the holding of Johann Christoph Balks, a middle sized farm. Another case concerns an entry for about 180 Rthl. on the farm of Stephan Christoph Wilhelm Georg Rohe. A contract from 1836 reveals that the peasant was not able to pay his aunt’s inheritance compensation. The parties found a solution that satisfied each party: the peasant signed a debenture bond and agreed that it would be registered on his land as a mortgage. His aunt would be permitted to sell this bond and register entry afterwards in order to free herself from debts.2016 There existed some few additional credit relations between peasants and other parish inhabitants, but these examples are exceptions. In general peasants did not turn to their neighbours and co-inhabitants when they needed money. The only group who actually did borrow money with some frequency within the parish were house-owners. They were often in the debt of peasants, day labourers, investors of inheritance compensation, and other villagers. However, even this group borrowed more than 90 per cent of its capital outside the parish. The relations between debtors and creditors within the parish do not point therefore towards strong clientage or other relationships based upon

19 20

The kinship network has been programmed by Georg Fertig. Hypothekenbuch Borgeln, Nr. 7 folio 91, folio 81.

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dependency and local knowledge. It is certainly the case that extension of credit passed almost exclusively from the upper to the lower part of society. But usually these loans were single transactions between the two parties. The ordinary debtor borrowed only once within the parish, and the ordinary creditor from within the parish tended only to extend credit once as well. Some people had two or even three credit relationships within the parish, but only twice did the same lender extend credit on two occasions to the same debtor. For the sub-group of house-owners the same rule was as true as it was for the other residents within the parish: urban citizens, merchants and the savings bank were the really important money suppliers, not well-to-do peasants from the same place. What is more, the amounts of these loans circulating within the parish were rather moderate. The highest credit given by a peasant was 400 Rthl., the highest total amount of money lent by one person 775 Rthl. In relation to the entire credit market, these sums were rather low: the arithmetic mean of loans was about 830 Rthl. for all creditors. Creditors from beyond the parish often had much larger amounts of money invested in the place than people from within the parish. The arithmetic mean of credit sums within the parish was about 198 Rthl., the median was only slightly below it (170 Rthl.). Table 10.9 Loans extended within the parishes (in Rthl.) Debtors Creditors

Houses Small farms

Middle- Large farms sized farms

Borgeln

peasants other villagers total

2,525 1,979 4,504

180 514 694

55 – 55

Löhne

peasants other villagers total

5,154 509 5,663

4,574 850 5,424

3,743 1,248 5,591

Total

– – –

2,760 2,493 5,253

6,172 240 7,412

19,643 2,847 24,090

Sources: databases, see footnotes 3-5. Note: The numbers are different from the numbers in table 10.3 and 10.4; here the credits given by institutions, such as poor and church fund and noblemen, have been excluded. In Löhne all groups of parish inhabitants participated as borrowers and lenders within the local credit market. In total, almost a fourth of the credit business was transacted within the parish. The groups of smaller, middle-sized and larger peasant farm owners more or less lent as much money as they asked for within the parish. The sub-group of the house-owners, however, received much more money from co-inhabitants than they lent. The gap in the credit market here was filled by landless people, who had, as grantors, a share of about 20 per cent of the internal parish credit market. These other villagers were especially composed of day labourers or ‘Heuerlinge’, as well as artisans, the parish priest and people who invested their inheritance compensation in the credit market.

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In real contrast to the situation found in the Borgeln credit market, peasants from Löhne and other parishes nearby were important creditors for all groups here. Almost a quarter of the parish’s credit demand was met by peasants. Especially for house-owners and for owners of relatively big farms other peasants were important as a source of money. Yet, in ways quite similar to the situation at Borgeln, credit relationships in Löhne did not point towards clientage and dependency between creditors and debtors. Here people also usually borrowed just once from one another, and creditors also appeared only once in the credit market. There were a few men who borrowed up to six and even eight times from their co-inhabitants, but there is a strong tendency to diversify debts and to borrow money from different creditors. However, one outstanding exception has to be mentioned: Carl Henrich Imort, who started his career as a day-labourer and shoemaker before he managed to buy a peasant farm, was extraordinary active both on the credit and the land market. He granted more than 40 different loans between 1799 and 1853, several of them to the same debtors. As this example indicates, the local credit market in this east-Westphalian parish showed more imbalance than the credit market at Borgeln. Many people participated in the credit market at Löhne, but some were more active than others. This is also reflected by average amounts of credit sums. If one looks at the total credit sums given by each creditor, the two credit markets are quite different. Whereas the local credit market of Borgeln showed an arithmetic mean and a median which were both quite small and very close to each other, these values differed widely in Löhne. The median was 200 Rthl., but the arithmetic mean was much higher: On average almost 540 Rthl. were lent by each creditor within the parish. This means that there were some creditors who granted much more credit within the parish than did others. The most outstanding example was Carl Henrich Imort, who has already been mentioned above. Even if one takes all the other creditors from outside – urban citizens, tradesmen, and others – into consideration, he lent by far the highest amount of money of all creditors: 8477 Rthl. as a whole. But there were also other peasants who lent money to an amount of several hundred Reichsthaler and more. But with the exception of Imort, creditors usually extended only single loans, which does not indicate great concentration of power and influence within the credit market. This result supports the findings concerning the different groups in the parish. Since all groups borrowed and lent money, and the increased demand of house-owners was compensated by investments of landless people, the parish credit market was not marked by a structure of clientage in general. Some credit entries in Löhne have explicitly been connected to land transactions. There are indications that the hypothec has been registered because of an associated purchase of land. In total, loans to an amount of about 5800 Rthl. accompanied land purchases. These credit land purchases involved both owners of large farms as well as smallholders. In the Borgeln land title registers no entries mentioning land purchases have been found. Whenever active debts of creditors are mentioned, these creditors have been tradesmen and the sums were rather small. This is not surprising: the land market in Borgeln was almost non-existent in the nineteenth century, whereas in Löhne a more vibrant land market, here defined as the buying and selling land beyond the field of parents, children, and siblings, has been observed (Fertig, 2007: 141–156).

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In Löhne it also happened that peasant farms went through the hands of intermediate owners, who paid off the original owners and sold the property again on credit. On January 22 1843 Carl Friedrich Gottlieb Eickmeyer, owner of one of the largest farms in Löhne, sold his landed property to Carl Henrich Imort. He left the parish with his wife and his two young sons. Imort was a peasant in Löhne himself, but in this case he did not intend to enlarge his property. Only about six weeks later he sold Eickmeyer’s farm to Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Koester and Anne Marie Catharine Elstermeyer, a daughter of the neighbour farm’s owner. This transaction was a credit sale: Koester’s indebtedness to Imort was registered on the same day. This debt was repaid within the following five years.2117 In this local credit market, most people did not only have relationships business founded upon credit, but many were also related through kinship. Of the 84 instances of interaction between creditors and debtors a kin relationship can be traced in 75 per cent of interactions. Many of these kin relations were distant affinal or consanguinal kin, but several were in an area of closer kinship. Some relations belong to the areas of the nuclear family and close kin: three loans were given by brothers, one each by a mother, a son, a daughter, and a sister’s husband; two uncles and a niece also appeared as creditors. Within these areas it is possible that debts arose as a result of a failure to meet payment obligations arising from inheritance rights. For this reason it remains unclear if the entries were about money borrowed from close relatives, or if inheritance claims were simply secured as future obligations. The latter was considered a way to avoid future indebtedness by postponing rightful claims to inheritance. In Borgeln, however, borrowers in general did not turn to money-givers of close familial and spatial proximity. Only 30 credit relationships of inhabitants of the parish can be found. Some were situated within the area of inheritance claims mentioned above: five loans were given by parents, children, or siblings, and one from an aunt.22 Very few loans were made between cousins and other, more distant relatives. The general tendency points in another direction. Credit relationships mostly took place outside the sphere of social and familial proximity, beyond the borders of kinship, neighbourhood, or parish population.18 The local credit markets of the two parishes under research were marked by quite different structures. Social and familial relations within the rural society seemed to be less important for the availability of credit in Borgeln, the parish with extensive and established relations with the nearby town. After the property rights of land owners had been improved in ways that made it possible to mortgage land with credit, personal relationships within the parish became relatively unimportant in terms of money lending. Typically, the credit networks of people living in Borgeln did not take place within the parish. In this agrarian, but nonetheless market-oriented context its inhabitants were

21

Hypothekenbuch Löhne-Beck 1, Nr. 212, folio 2. This last instance has already described above, it was a case of a registered inheritance claim. See above, p. 185.

22

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expected to turn to markets beyond their immediate horizon, whether they were markets for labour, for agricultural products or for credit.2319 However, the examination of the credit market of Löhne in East-Westphalia supports J. Mooser’s suggestion of a credit market strongly anchored in a local framework within this region. Individuals from all social strata within the parish had versatile relations with each other, relations which were based upon the Heuerling system as well as upon the dense interconnections of agricultural and proto-industrial production (Mooser, 1984: 293–298). The Heuerling system was marked by diverse relations between peasants and their Heuerlinge, including the renting of houses, employment of the work force, loans for consumption, and so on. Examining the markets for labour, agricultural and protoindustrial products, land, and credit, manifold relations connecting all parts of the parish become visible. Although opportunities for the local economy to turn towards interregional markets had occurred during the rise of proto-industry in the second half of the eighteenth century, people at Löhne were much more involved in a local web of personal relationships. In terms of social networks, these people had multiple relationships, which means that already existing relations were ‘doubled’ by means of re-building these ties through new, economic ties.

IX. Conclusion This article is based upon initial attempts to analyse data on mortgaging land in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, some insights into the structure of rural credit markets and in social and economic relations of rural society have been gained. Reasons for peasants’ indebtedness are difficult to detect. Available sources usually remain silent on the reasons for borrowing money. Since peasant households were units of consumption and production at the same time, it is not even easy to distinguish whether money was needed for operational or for more private purposes. Historical research has it that inheritance compensation payments for children who did not take over the farm from their parents were the main reasons for heavy indebtedness. Although compensation payments indeed were fairly extensive in this region, it seems unlikely that peasants made over payments of an amount that would have threatened the survival of their farm. Registers of land title contain notes on payment obligations towards siblings or other close relatives, but these entries achieved the exact opposite effect: if compensation could not be paid off, the claim was secured and by this way postponed to the future. This process avoided indebtedness instead of causing it. However, it seems more likely to find a causal relationship between agrarian reforms and peasants’ credit demand. Redemption payments were due in certain years in nineteenth century. The same periods show a remarkable rise in demand for credit. Although institutional support was available from 1850 onwards, peasants often preferred to borrow money in the credit market rather than entering into a long term obligation to pay debt services. 23

These findings are supported by the results of Georg Fertig’s analysis of the land markets of three Westphalian parishes (Fertig, 2007). In much the same way as the credit market, the land market within the parish was very small.

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Growing demand for credit was met by numerous creditors who invested their money in the countryside. Town-dwellers from nearby were by far the most important group. This interest of urban citizens in annuities from the countryside goes back to the eighteenth century, before mortgaging landed property with credit was even possible. In this earlier period town-dwellers came into possession of manorial rights in several peasant farms and received yearly deliveries of goods in kind. After the improving of property rights for peasants by agrarian reforms, these manorial rights were withdrawn in the course of nineteenth century. Instead, investments now flowed into the rural mortgage credit market. Exploitation of country-folk by Jewish merchants, often lamented in contemporary literature, clearly was nothing but an anti-Semitic stereotype. It was town-dwellers in general who provided the countryside with capital. Yet this close connection of rural and towns has been hardly explored until now. Unlike the credit markets, rural land markets did not attract investments from urban citizens; heavy taxation of landed property may have hindered such considerations. The Prussian taxation system made it more attractive to save and lend money. The difficulties faced by the savings bank in Soest in attempting to place their deposits in the first half of nineteenth century shows that there was no lack of available money, at least not in this part of Westphalia. In particular it was mortgage loans that were sought by investors. Against this background we are unlikely to find a socio-economic structure marked by relations of dependency in the countryside. Although these local credit markets may not have been genuine buyers’ markets, they were certainly not sellers’ markets either. That many suppliers of money had a tendency not to repeat credit relationships with the same borrowers suggests a sufficient demand for credit in these rural credit markets. The comparison of two parishes within Westphalia suggests that social and economic relations in the countryside were strongly influenced by their integration into regional markets. Where peasants had easy access to markets for cash crops, where they could afford to hire labour, in the form of servants and day labourers, at labour markets, and where they were able to give security for loans by mortgaging fertile and productive land, the often quoted networks of personal relationships with kin and neighbours were less significant. Under such circumstances people in the countryside were less dependent on local relations with family or neighbour in order to acquire resources. As this examination of the local credit market of Borgeln has shown, villagers tended, in fact, to avoid economic relationships with people of close social and familial proximity. Since economic conditions differed widely in nineteenth century Westphalia, it is not surprising to find a fairly different structured local credit market in the EastWestphalian parish of Löhne. In this region proto-industrial textile production enjoyed an economic boom in the second half of the eighteenth century, followed by a crisis in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Economic conditions in this region were less advantageous in general: markets for cash crops were remote and difficult to reach, and agrarian productivity remained rather low. Holders of landed property in the region contended with soil that was relatively poor and with a need for costly investments in an increased labour force aimed at improving land productivity, investments which

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could not be covered by returns on sale of crops. In short, people here had less means available to them to build up strong economic relations beyond the local context. This does not mean that parishes in the region were wholly isolated; as the credit market of Löhne illustrates, there were numerous creditors from beyond its boundaries who were prepared to invest their money in this market. Nonetheless there existed manifold socio-economic interconnections within the parish. To borrow money from relatives or other co-inhabitants was not unusual at Löhne. The credit network within the parish was linked to the – at least on a Westphalian scale – active land market. As a whole, the credit market contained many relationships that were multiplied through relations of other types. This structure of a closely connected society reminds us of the typical local economy developing in the eighteenth century. Proto-industrial production, based on agricultural raw material produced in the parish, resulted in multiple relations between all social classes. Although proto-industrial textile markets deteriorated in the course of the nineteenth century, the socio-economic structure of closely tied interpersonal networks was preserved as a result of the weak integration of growing markets for agrarian products. The extent to which the credit market was embedded in social networks in Löhne reflects this economic stagnation.

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