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In the medieval mind, Yarmouth was associated with herring, a
high-protein food important to the diet of the lower classes, which
featured less meat than is eaten today. The thirteenth century seal
of the borough bore depictions of a ship sailing herring-inhabited
waters and, on the other side, St. Nicholas, a
patron saint of fishermen. The fishery
provided the reason for Yarmouth's foundation and the principal source
of its medieval economy.
Great Yarmouth the qualifier distinguishing it from its southern
neighbour, Little Yarmouth is situated near where several rivers,
among them the Yare, flow into what was once a very broad estuary
(much larger than the present-day Breydon Water) opening out into
the sea. In Roman times there was a port and market town a little
further north, at Caistor, and a small fort at Burgh Castle; these were
later abandoned. Subsequent settlement focused on the site of Great
Yarmouth itself. Tradition has the first settlement there established by
the Saxon leader, Cerdic, ca. 495, but this is unsubstantiated and doubtful.
More certain is that silting in the mouth of the "Great Estuary" over
time formed a
sandbank that came to be several miles long, leaving
the Yare access into the sea through two channels at either end of the
sandbank; one channel separated Yarmouth and Caister, the other ran
southwards for some miles and separated Great and Little
Yarmouth/Gorleston before entering the sea. This sandbank eventually
became firm enough to support dwellings, perhaps preceded by more
temporary facilities for the drying, salting and smoking of herring,
as well as the sale of herring. Fishermen from the Cinque Ports
claimed a long-standing right to beach their boats and to dry their
nets there. A fair may have been in operation there by the time of
Edward the Confessor, during the forty days from Michaelmas to Martinmas
when the fishery was at its peak; in later times this important fair
attracted not only the Cinque Ports men, but also fishermen from the
continent. The Cinque Ports had authority over the fair, through
officers they appointed, which was subsequently resisted and then
contested by Yarmouth. Another indication that Cinque Ports fishermen
were likely among the founders of the town is that rents from some
Yarmouth properties were due to the Ports.
Yarmouth was a borough in the royal
domain before and at the time of the
Domesday survey, but an earlier
shared jurisdiction is reflected in that Yarmouth had to pay every "third
penny" of all public revenues (e.g. tolls and rents) to the earl. The
number of burgesses living there 70
in 1066 according to Domesday suggests that its fishery was
already important by this date, although Yarmouth was certainly a
small town compared to Norwich or Ipswich, with a few hundred residents
in all. As a "frontier town" it had no important role in regional
administration; the king never licensed a mint there. Domesday noted
one church there, dedicated to St. Benedict.
Throughout the late medieval period the town suffered from progressive
silting of parts of the channel used as a haven for ships. Early
settlement appears to have focused on the most elevated part of the
sandbank, near the northern channel. In 1101 the
of Norwich built a chapel in that neighbourhood (superseding a more
modest building on the beach intended to celebrate divine service during
the fishing season) and, in the 1120s founded St.
Nicholas' church by the northern channel; a Benedictine cell of the
Norwich cathedral-priory was established in association with St.
Nicholas'. Here too was the site of the borough
originally stretching east-west across the width of the town from the
river channel to the beach facing the sea, although over the course of
the Middle Ages the original shape of the market was obscured as parts
were built upon including the hypothetical western section, but also
a large chunk on the eastern side was consumed by the foundation of
St. Mary's Hospital.
Silting of the northern channel, to the point where it was unusable,
subsequently encouraged population to expand southwards along the
line of the southern-running channel and to relocate the haven in this
channel. The bank of this channel became lined with
quays, in contrast to the opposite side of
the town the great beachy area, or "Denes"
(dunes?) facing the sea, on which would have been visible fishing-boats,
nets stretched out to dry, and windmills. Although the section around St.
Nicholas had been abandoned by most residents when wall construction
was begun, the church itself remained important to the town; a major
expansion was undertaken shortly before the mid-fourteenth century.
Consequently, the line of the town wall was extended just far enough north
to encompass the church. The southern channel too, however, experienced
problems and at various times in the Late Middle Ages the townsmen had
to cut new harbours.
|Development of local government
In the twelfth century we have mentions of a reeve as the governing
authority of Yarmouth, but this was an officer appointed by the king.
In 1208, the king leased to the town (in return for a
fee farm of £55) its first powers
of self-administration; the royal charter granted:
When, in the 1220s, holders of the borough executive office begin to be
identified, we see there to be 4 bailiffs, elected annually, rather than
the earlier single reeve. This multiplication is probably associated
with the fact that the town was divided into four
"leets" (wards) for administrative
purposes. Unlike in Norwich, where the leets reflected early
settlements that coalesced into one city, there seems no special
rationale in the Yarmouth divisions; the original boundaries are unknown
and the names indicate a straightforward division of the town into
northern and southern halves, each of which was in turn subdivided.
Political conflict in or shortly before
1272, serious enough to have become violent, resulted in a set of
reform ordinances which included the introduction of a
town council to assist the bailiffs in
governing Yarmouth. A few years later, officers
responsible for the borough treasury (known as "the pyx") its
safeguard and the deposit and withdrawal of funds were introduced.
In 1426 we see further constitutional changes, as the balance of power
within the community shifted from
democracy to oligarchy; the number of bailiffs was reduced, a
second-tier council was created, and
chamberlains were put in charge
of borough finance. Lesser officials of Yarmouth's administration
included, in addition to the usual town clerk and
sergeants (or sub-bailiffs), a
water-bailiff involved in the collection
of customs at the port, and occasionally officers (muragers) responsible
for supervising the building of town walls and collecting the revenues to
support that activity (later the chamberlains took over the collecting
The centre of medieval administration was originally the Tolhouse
(which still stands today), the site of the borough court; this building
must have been too small for community assemblies and we hear in
mid-fourteenth century of a "common hall", which may have been the same
as the sixteenth-century Guildhall on the south side of St. Nicholas'
- the status of a "free borough";
- the right to choose the executive officer of local government;
- administration of justice (in certain matters of common law and local
custom) through a weekly husting court;
- a merchant gild, although such an
institution has no prominence in Yarmouth's medieval records its role
and privileges (such as the right to make the first offer for
newly-arrived herring catches) perhaps quickly being absorbed into local
citizenship/government; in the sixteenth century, the Trinity Gild had
ceremonial functions that suggest it to have been a possible successor
to, or remnant of, a merchant gild;
- exemption for the burgesses from paying tolls on goods they brought
into other English towns (London excepted);
- and various other powers or exemptions typical of that period.
The borough court sat each Monday to deal with civil pleas, most
criminal pleas being reserved for the borough coroners or the king's
courts. As the volume of business increased, sessions were extended
to other days and some specialization such as in legal transactions
dealing with real estate or debt began to take place, although this
ceased when court business dropped off in the fifteenth century. One
day each June was dedicated to hearing presentments from each of the
leet courts. Cases involving merchants
from other places might be held on any day, in order to render swift
justice. During the annual fair, court sessions were held daily rather
than weekly again reflecting the need for quick resolution of
commercial disputes; these sessions were, at least by 1277, presided
over jointly by Yarmouth's bailiffs and those representing the Cinque
Ports, although perhaps previously by the latter only. The Cinque Ports
bailiffs had been given by the king, in 1215, the right to administer
justice in cases involving their fellow townsmen while in Yarmouth, and
Hastings had (or claimed) an even older legal jurisdiction there.
The jurisdiction of Cinque Ports bailiffs during the time of the
herring fair did not sit well with the Yarmouth authorities, and
relations with the Cinque Ports were frequently quarrelsome if not
violent in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Following the
suppression in 1265 of de Montfort's rebellion, which the Cinque Ports had
supported, Henry III showed some favour to Yarmouth, but in 1272
disturbances in the town and Yarmouth's role in the
Norwich riots counteracted this. In
1277, after complaints from Yarmouth, Edward I intervened to impose a
compromise involving shared jurisdiction. But this proved no solution,
and there were repeated mediations, attempts at settlements, as well as
fines for breaches of the peace during the reign of Edward I. At one
point the Yarmouth and Cinque Ports contingents of a royal fleet set to
fighting each other, with the loss of at least 25 Yarmouth ships
resulting. In 1300, Yarmouth's administration passed
ordinances attempting to regulate the fair; for example, they specified
that townsmen should be appointed to assess the quality of goods offered
for sale. By 1314, the Yarmouth authorities were so much in the ascendant
that it was the Portsmen's turn to seek the king's support for their
jurisdictional rights at the fair. By 1316, matters had deteriorated
to the point where the sides were preparing fleets to attack each other.
The Cinque Ports' rights were confirmed by Edward III in the Statute of
Herring (1357), which revealed the extent of Yarmouth's control over the
fishery. The quarrel between the two sides gradually quietened, as
they refocused their hostilities against a common enemy, France, but
was not finally resolved until the Tudor period.
Yarmouth also turned its attentions to another rival. The constant
silting up of Yarmouth's harbour, combined with merchants' desire to
avoid paying borough customs, was during the second half of the
fourteenth century prompting ships to land goods at Kirkley Road in
the Lowestoft area. Using the argument that the town had become
depopulated and impoverished and its ability to defend the coast as
well as its financial obligations to the king were in jeopardy,
Yarmouth successfully petitioned Edward III to annex this haven and to
prohibit loading or unloading of cargo (or the holding of a rival fair)
anywhere else within a seven-mile radius (1372); the king added
£5 to the town's fee farm as payment for this extended jurisdiction.
Naturally, Lowestoft was not pleased about this. The Yarmouth-Lowestoft
struggle became a factor in national politics: the king (who had to be
concerned about the supply of herring as well as the viability of
Yarmouth as an element in coastal defence) was largely sympathetic,
but parliament was hostile to Yarmouth and repealed the annexation in
1376. However, Yarmouth managed to obtain the patronage of John of Gaunt
and overturn the repeal. For some years the matter went back and forth,
with repeals and restorations, ending eventually in a compromise in
The interminable and largely insoluble disputes with the Cinque Ports
and Lowestoft were fairly typical manifestations in a medieval town
seeking to define and expand its authority. Similar rivalries found
expression with Norwich, a long-standing rival for trade using the
River Yare, and with Little Yarmouth/Gorleston, regarding jurisdiction
over the Yare and associated harbourage. The latter produced several
royal charters attempting, with little success, to bring matters to a
satisfactory compromise; the general tenor was to confirm Great
Yarmouth's jurisdiction over the haven, allowing the men of Little
Yarmouth that victuals or goods not subject to customs could still
be landed on their side of the river, but forbidding them to try to
entice other cargos there.
Note the grill (below), which
allowed prisoners in the gaol to
beg necessaries from passers-by.
photos © S. Alsford
|Buildings and fortifications
Yarmouth is famous for its
a series of passages too narrow to be called streets separating the
medieval tenements; by the end of the Middle Ages there were some 150 of
them. The close packing of buildings, with only narrow streets separating
the rows of houses, was not unusual in medieval towns, although the extent
to which this was applied in Yarmouth is atypical; many of Yarmouth's
passages survived into the twentieth century only to be destroyed (with a
few exceptions) during the Second World War. This system of laying out
the land-holdings of the townsmen is evidenced as early as 1198, and
continued into the thirteenth; most rows were named after some
prominent family residing there. During that period the population
of Yarmouth expanded considerably; we hear from chroniclers that 2,000
inhabitants died during floods in 1286, and 7,000 died in the Black Death,
although these figures must be taken with a pinch of salt the town's
population in the early fourteenth century was more likely around 5,000.
The rows all ran east-west (i.e. between the river and the shore), while
the few main streets of the town ran north-south, reflecting the gradual
spread of population southwards from its original focus. Apart from
routes by the waterfronts, there were three main
streets cross-cutting the rows: Northgate, Middlegate and Southgate.
However, it is debateable whether this grid pattern warrants Yarmouth
being considered a "planned town".
During the fourteenth century, Yarmouth's government was faced with
two major construction challenges which were very expensive: the
provision of stable harbour facilities, and the building of town
Yarmouth is one of the English towns where a relatively large percentage
of the medieval town
walls is still standing. These walls were built over a long period,
without any apparent overarching plan, although the intent was primarily
defence against maritime-based enemies: the line of the wall, with its
many gates and towers, protected the seaward facing side of the town,
leaving the Yare channel to be an obstacle to any attack from landside.
Royal licence to enclose the town with wall and ditch, and to collect
special tolls under the title of murage,
was first acquired in 1261 (in the context of the de Montfort rebellion).
The following year saw complaints from non-local merchants that murage
was being collected from them, but they saw no evidence that any
wall-building was going on; the king consequently seized the money
collected. In 1279 he audited the town's murage accounts, after
receiving complaints of corruption. It seems that construction work
had still not begun; in fact, no work is known to have been undertaken
before 1285. Nonetheless, the king recognized the importance of
Yarmouth as a coastal defence and authorized murage on several occasions
during the fourteenth century. However, particularly in those periods
of greatest threat of invasion, which spurred renewed efforts on the
defences, income could not keep pace with expenditure, despite occasional
bequests from townsmen towards the work. In the face of a renewed
French offensive, all townsmen were, in 1369, ordered by the king to
contribute to the costs of strengthening the defences. By 1385/86,
construction was still incomplete, and some of the walls that had been
built were by now falling into disrepair; again the threat of invasion
prompted the king to order everyone owning property in the town to
contribute to costs. In 1457 the king allowed Yarmouth to apply to
the work £20 of the fee farm due him.
Maintenance and periodic relocation of the haven must have been a
similarly daunting task, but one even more crucial to Yarmouth since
the commerce on which the borough economy (including local government
revenues) depended was in turn dependent on a safe harbour. Silting
had necessitated a new harbour entrance to be cut in 1346. By 1378,
silting had resulted in the water no longer being deep enough to
admit ships into the harbour. Despite a partial refocus of its
attentions on the harbour at Kirkley Road, in the 1390s Yarmouth
built a new haven, financed partly through a special levy of a shilling
per last of herring. But by 1409 this too was in trouble and the king
gave permission for £100 to be taken each year for 5 years from
import/export customs, to finance yet another new haven. This one
lasted for the remainder of the medieval period, although costly to
maintain (again prompting the king to release the town, for several
years, from part of its fee farm).
Yarmouth's medieval defences
Two towers from the southern stretch of the borough's walls.
photos © S. Alsford
Like several other East Anglian towns, Yarmouth's location gave it
advantageous access to the Low Countries and the Baltic, as well as
to the river system leading into the English interior. Its economy
was relatively specialized, it being the country's principal centre
for the herring fishery; this stimulated related industries, such as
the curing of herring, and boat-building an industry which also
provided vessels for other mercantile activities.
Yarmouth did all it could to monopolize the trade in herring, largely
through provisions for hosting.
One of the forms this took was that visiting merchants were assigned
to townsmen, who supplied accommodations and business assistance in
return for a quarter of the hosted merchant's merchandize. Another
form was for a townsman to equip and supply a fishing-boat during a
season, in return for the right to purchase the entire catch of that
boat. Yarmouth's leading merchant families dominated the hosting
system; they also acted contrary to fair market practice by
buying herring catches while
still at sea and by threats of violence to encourage fishermen
to sell their catches or to discourage foreign merchants from buying
herring. The king's Statute of Herring (1357) targeted particularly
at Yarmouth, after complaints were voiced in parliament attempted to
combat such monopolistic features, as well as to limit the commission
hosts demanded for selling the herring of hosted merchants and to limit
the amount of profit from re-sale of herring by merchant middlement.
But it proved difficult to enforce the provisions, there being no will
locally to do so. Ordinances drawn up by the Yarmouth administration
aimed at reinforcing the dominance of local men.
Those of 1300 restricted the rights of
outsiders with fish to sell, while defining the rights of hosts and
the rights of all townsmen to demand a share of cargoes.
Those of 1413 created wardens to supervise
the herring trade and required fishermen to sell a portion of their
catches (regardless of any arrangements with hosts), through these
wardens, to townsmen.
In part because of its fishery, but also because it was a key defensive
post on the east coast, Yarmouth was also an important maritime base.
Many townsmen were ship-owners, and during the first half of the
fourteenth century the town was the largest provider of ships north
of the Thames for the navy during the wars with Scotland and France;
for the siege of Calais in 1346, for example, it supplied 43
ships compared to 25 from London, 19 from Lynn, 12 from Ipswich, and
25 of the king's own ships. At different times, three townsmen were
even appointed to the rank of admiral of the northern fleet (notably
John Perbroun, who commanded the northern
fleet at the victory of Sluys).
Contributing ships was an unpopular obligation and was resisted. It of
course exposed townsmen to the risks of damage or loss of their ships
during war for which the king rarely provided compensation. Equally
important, the often long periods of "arrest" of ships, in preparation
for their being called into action, deprived townsmen of the
transportation needed to pursue their livelihoods. Furthermore, the
town was occasionally required to provide supplies for expeditionary
forces, and the king was not prompt in paying for these. By the middle
of the fourteenth century, Yarmouth was seeking
fee farm relief on the grounds
that it had lost more than half of the fleet of some 90 ships
that served it in the 1330s, while the war had made fishing boats one
of the targets for attack and had generally disrupted maritime trade.
Yarmouth's loss of a maritime defensive capability, and the failure of
the townsmen to invest in rebuilding their fleet, is one reason why
the king put more emphasis in the second half of the century on
completing Yarmouth's walls.
A large fleet whose sailors were experienced in naval warfare doubtless
contributed in encouraging Yarmouth ships to resort to
piracy. Such acts were sometimes
directed against the ships of England's enemies, but might equally
well be against ships of its allies, or even English ships. An
investigation of 1340 accused 34 Yarmouth ships of piratic activities.
Yarmouth's ships were similarly the target for piratic attacks. The
fleet also came in useful for raiding the Cinque Ports.
Yarmouth's geographical advantages resulted in it surpassing in wealth
the larger and longer-established Norwich by mid-fourteenth century; of
provincial towns, it had the fifth highest assessment in the national
tax of 1334. But it suffered from the general
economic recession later
in the century, from the continual problems with the silting of its
harbour, from the draining effects of the constant competition with
rivals for control of trade, and from losses to its merchant fleet
from war, piracy and shipwreck. In the second half of the fourteenth
century, the herring trade was in decline, perhaps initially as
depopulation caused by the Black Death reduced demand, but later
because the coastal supply of herring was itself dwindling fifteenth
century fishing took place further out to sea and was subject to
greater competition from the fishermen of northern France and the Low
Countries. This was offset a little by rising prices by the close
of the century herring was no longer the cheap dietary staple it had
been at the beginning.
In the latter half of the fourteenth century, Yarmouth became a
rival to Norwich for the status of staple town controlling the wool
export trade. As early as 1319, Yarmouth was trying to persuade the
king to appoint it a staple town. When Norwich was so appointed in
1353, Yarmouth expressed its resentment by stopping vessels from
proceeding up-river to the city. In 1369, however, Yarmouth was
chosen over Norwich as the staple, and in the 1390s the role fluctuated
between the two towns. Nonetheless, wool exports never became a very
significant part of Yarmouth's trade, nor was the trade in wine
particularly important to the local economy. Local merchants appear
to have relied on smuggling to increase
their profits, which was not too difficult when they themselves were
the holders of the various royal posts associated with customs
collection or policing of smuggling. As the wool trade diminished,
Yarmouth followed the regional trend of turning to the export of
cloth, and this trade was of some importance to the town into the
early sixteenth century.
The following is a small selection of published sources of information
about medieval Yarmouth. For additional secondary sources
as well as primary sources, see the
bibliography to The Men Behind
Ecclestone, J.P., and J.L. Ecclestone. The Rise of Great Yarmouth:
the Story of a Sandbank. Norwich, 1959.
Palmer, Charles John, ed. The History of Great Yarmouth by Henry
Manship, Town Clerk, temp. Queen Elizabeth. Great Yarmouth, 1854.
Palmer, Charles John. The History of Great Yarmouth, Designed as a
Continuation of Manship's History of that Town. Great Yarmouth, 1856.
Palmer, Charles John. The Perlustration of Great Yarmouth, with
Gorleston and South-town. 3 vols. Great Yarmouth, 1872-75.
Rutledge, Elizabeth and Paul Rutledge. "King's Lynn and Great Yarmouth,
two thirteenth-century surveys." Norfolk Archaeology, vol.37
Saul, A. "Great Yarmouth and the Hundred Years War in the fourteenth
century." Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol.52
Saul, A. "Local Politics and the Good Parliament." Pp.156-71 in
Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History,
ed. T. Pollard. Gloucester, 1984.
|Created: August 29, 1998.
Last update: November 11, 2002
Stephen Alsford, 1998-2003