Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages

by Charles Phythian-Adams

• ISBN13: 9780521525008
• ISBN10: 0521525004
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-27
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book is a contribution to both national and local history. Coventry is taken as a richly documented case-study of the crisis which marked the end of the medieval period for many substantial towns. Its demographic and economic decline is followed from the fifteenth century to a dramatic period of short-term crisis between 1518 and 1525. Attention is then focused on the traditional structure of the community: the life-cycles of the citizens are related to the intricate pattern of social positions within a multi-dimensional survey. The author illustrates how the occupants of this structure were depleted by crisis and decline, through devastating depopulation, the attrition of the male labour-force, and the failure of the population to reproduce itself. The results included an uncontrolled insurrectionary riot, the emergence of a radical programme for reform along very early 'Commonwealth' lines in the 1530s and, ultimately, the erosion of the old communal organisation and its ideals.

Table of Contents

Frontispiece

List of tables

List of illustrations

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction

Part I. An Urban Panorama: Part II. Desolation of a City: 1. The tempo of decline

2. The hastening of decline

3. Crisis 1518-25

Part III. Anatomy of a City: 4. Introductory

5. The working context

6. Formal groups (i): the household

7. Formal groups (ii): the craft fellowship

8. Formal groups (iii): gilds and councils

9. Formal groups and the citizen's life-cycle

10. Informal groupings (i): social stratification

11. Justifications of obedience

12. Social mobility

13. Informal groupings (ii): the extended family

14. Informal groupings (iii): social topography

15. Mirrors of a community

16. Conclusion on social structure

Part IV. An Anatomy Deformed: 17. Introductory

18. The depopulation of households 1520-3

19. The distribution of the people

20. Servants and the economy

21. Children and the future

22. Coventry and the size of the late medieval urban household

23. Violence and structural stress 1520-5

24. Matters for reform: the 1530s

25. Institutional and social change

26. Medieval mirrors shattered

Part V. Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages: Appendices

Index.