The Origins of a Peasant Land Market in England1
T lo a medieval social or economic historian study of the land resources of a group is an obvious first step towards understanding it. Because so many of the available documents are concerned with land, there is much to be said for approaching problems from this side. The case is strongest for the group closest to the land, the peasantry. By concentrating on changes in the distribution of peasant land, and the machinery by which this was effected, one may hope to advance knowledge even though our information about peasant landholding will never approach completeness. Something may also be learnt about peasant social mobility, since, for example, a relatively fluid land market may be expected to carry with it important social effects. This article studies some of the evidence for the working of a peasant land market in England from about I 200. It takes as its text the most interesting discussion of the idea to appear recently, that of Prof. Postan in his introduction to the Carte Nativorum, a fourteenth-century cartulary of peasant charters from Peterborough Abbey.2 It will examine his arguments in detail and will try to take them a little farther with the aid of some new evidence, mainly from legal sources. For a start, let us try to summarize Prof. Postan's position as accurately and as briefly as possible, and then state in advance the conclusions to which our reexamination appears to lead. Prof. Postan believes that the Carte ]fativorur3 are best regarded as local examples of new methods which many lords were beginning to use, at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, to regulate the land transactions of their villein tenants. For various reasons lords had an interest to prevent, or at least control, peasant alienation of land, just as the peasants had an opposite interest to alienate. Hence the documentary evidence on which we depend to a large extent for our knowledge of the peasant land market in the later thirteenth century fails to show that this actually existed much earlier. The real reason for this new documentation is that lords felt that the time had come for stiffer control of peasant land transactions, their motives being mainly financial. The pressure on land resources pushed land values higher, creating a situation where lords had both the interest and the opportunity to take their share of the rise. The early emphasis may have been on short-term leases for years, and the change to outright sales may have roughly coincided with the lords' attempt to regain control over peasant alienations, with a consequent magnification of social effects. Prof. Postan, then, argues for a peasant land market over the whole country,