Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500This important study examines the market trade of medieval England by providing a wide-ranging critique of the moral and legal imperatives that underpinned retail trade. James Davis shows how market-goers were influenced not only by practical and economic considerations of price, quality, supply and demand, but also by the moral and cultural environment within which such deals were conducted. This book draws on a broad range of cross-disciplinary evidence, from the literary works of William Langland and the sermons of medieval preachers, to state, civic and guild laws, Davis scrutinises everyday market behaviour through case studies of small and large towns, using the evidence of manor and borough courts. From these varied sources, Davis teases out the complex relationship between morality, law and practice and demonstrates that even the influence of contemporary Christian ideology was not necessarily incompatible with efficient and profitable everyday commerce. |
Contents
| 1 | |
1 Images of market trade | 34 |
2 Regulation of the market | 137 |
3 The behaviour of market traders | 274 |
4 An evolving market morality? | 410 |
Other editions - View all
Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace ... James Davis No preview available - 2014 |
Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace ... James Davis No preview available - 2011 |
Common terms and phrases
alehouses aletasters alewife amerced argued assize assize of bread average amercement Ayenbite of Inwyt bailiffs bakers baking bargaining Black Death brewers brewing Bristol Britnell Bromyard burgesses Bury St Edmunds butchers buyer Chaucer Church cloth commercial Commercialisation common consumers cooks court rolls Coventry craft debt pleas Dyer early enforcement English fish forestalling fourteenth century fraud Gower grain guilds Hilton households Ibid innkeepers Ipswich John John Gower justice Langholm late fourteenth late medieval leet leet court legislation Leicester Liber Albus London manor manorial marketplace meat medieval England medieval market merchants middlemen moral economy moralists Newmarket Newmarket and Clare Northampton Norwich offences officials ordinances petty traders Piers Plowman pillory plaintiff production profit punishment recognised regraters retail Royal Regulation Seabourne sell seller Shipman's Tale Similarly small towns social society sold Statutes Suffolk thirteenth century Thomas trade urban usury victuals weights and measures William wine women