economic development: trade, exploration, prosperity and depression

Question 1

What was the population of England at the beginning of the 15th century?

Answer 1

Around 2.2 million.

Question 2

Where were a majority of the population living in the beginning of the 15th century?

Answer 2

The countryside, relying on farming for a living.

Question 3

What was the population of London in the beginning of the 15th century?

Answer 3

Probably exceeding 50,000, making it different to the other much smaller towns of the country.

Question 4

What town was the only other town with a population exceeding 10,000?

Answer 4

Norwich.

Question 5

What were the main industries in the urban areas?

Answer 5

Wool and cloth.

Question 6

What were the other smaller industries in urban areas?

Answer 6

• Mining tin, lead and coal
• Metal working
• Leatherwork
• Shipbuilding
• Papermaking

Question 7

What type of farming was there evidence of moving towards between 1480 and 1490?

Answer 7

Sheep farming.

Question 8

Why was farming moving towards the sheep industry?

Answer 8

There was falling profitability in arable (crop) farming as well as increased profitability in sheep farming due to wool being demanded internationally.

Question 9

Why was the transition to sheep farming a negative thing for peasants and when did this start becoming a problem?

Answer 9

They lost their access to land and their common rights, as people wanted to use their fields to graze their sheep, rather than growing crops, which took up more space.
It started to become a problem in the first half of the 16th century.

Question 10

What trade was responsible for 90 percent of the value of English exports?

Answer 10

The cloth trade.

Question 11

How much of an increase was there in the volume of cloth exports during Henry’s reign?

Answer 11

Estimated to be 60%.

Question 12

Where was raw wool exported through?

Answer 12

Calais by the Merchants of the Staple, from east coast ports such as Boston, Lynn and Yarmouth.

Question 13

What led to the development of weaving?

Answer 13

The domination of finished cloth within the trade.

Question 14

How was weaving done?

Answer 14

Through a domestic process, and fulling, and dyeing which were commercial enterprises.

Question 15

What did weaving offer?

Answer 15

Opportunities for rural employment to replace the lack of agrarian incomes.

Question 16

Why did historic cities such as Winchester and Lincoln suffer significant decay?

Answer 16

The cloth industry tended to move from older corporate boroughs to newer manufacturing centres in smaller market towns and villages in the east of England, the West Riding of Yorkshire and parts of the West Country.

Question 17

Who was an increasing proportion of finished cloth exported through?

Answer 17

The Merchant Adventurers.

Question 18

What did the Merchant Adventurers do for London?

Answer 18

They reinforced London’s commercial dominance within the country and established a commercial axis with Antwerp, which was the commercial metropolis of Europe and its main money market.

Question 19

Why couldn’t the Merchant Adventurers achieve complete domination of the cloth trade?

Answer 19

They were unable to overcome the trading privileges that the Hanseatic League had access to, which had been reasserted by a treaty in 1474 and again in 1504.

Question 20

Why did Henry VII have to reassert the treaty that gave the Hanseatic League trading privileges?

Answer 20

He needed to make sure they didn’t offer support to the Earl of Suffolk, Yorkist claimant to the throne.

Question 21

Why did England remain dependent on trading cloth?

Answer 21

Other industries remained small and failed to compete effectively internationally.

Question 22

Where were Germany and Bohemia dominant?

Answer 22

In mining and metallurgy.

Question 23

Where were Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands dominant?

Answer 23

In shipbuilding.

Question 24

Where was tin mined?

Answer 24

In Cornwall.

Question 25

Why did the Crown’s approach to trade during Henry VII’s reign have little consistency?

Answer 25

Henry was clearly interested in maximising customs revenue, but it was also clear that he was quite prepared to sacrifice revenue and trade in interest of securing the dynasty.

Question 26

What was Henry’s biggest issue concerning trade?

Answer 26

His biggest issues stemmed from his trade embargo with the Netherlands. He did this due to his fear brought about when Margaret of Burgundy offered support to Perkin Warbeck.
The embargo meant that instead of trading directly with the Netherlands, merchants had to direct their trade through Calais.
This invited retaliation from the Netherlands.

Question 27

How did the trade embargo with the Netherlands end?

Answer 27

It ended with the Intercursus Magnus, despite the terms being debated for two years after.

Question 28

What did the Intercursus Magnus set down?

Answer 28

• That English merchants could export to any part of the Duke of Burgundy’s lands apart from Flanders.
• Merchants would be granted swift and fair justice, and effective arrangements would be put in place for the resolution of disputes
• Proved a solid basis for trading relationships

Question 29

When did Philip of Burgundy confirm the Intercursus Magnus?

Answer 29

In 1499.

Question 30

What was the Intercursus Malus?

Answer 30

A treaty that was extorted from Philip due to his weakness in 1506, but it had never become fully operative and by 1507 trading relationships had been restored on the basis of the Intercursus Magnus.

Question 31

Why did Henry begin to panic in 1503 and how did he deal with it?

Answer 31

The claim of the Earl of Suffolk was once again being taken seriously around Burgundy.
He tried to reimpose the embargo but was fortunate that circumstances in 1506 meant that he could negotiate the Intercursus Malus, despite the terms never being put in place.

Question 32

Did Henry prioritise English merchants?

Answer 32

No, it was clear that he prioritised foreign policy and dynastic interests rather than trade agreements. This was shown through how several trade treaties were concluded but all were of minor importance.

Question 33

What did the Treaty of Etaples try to do in terms of Trade?

Answer 33

Tried to encourage Anglo-French commercial relations, despite not being a trade agreement.

Question 34

When were most remaining trade restrictions removed?

Answer 34

In 1497.

Question 35

When were weaknesses in trading policy shown?

Answer 35

When the attempt to make a significant breakthrough in Mediterranean trade proved a great failure, whilst the Hanseatic League was very successful in limiting the development of English trading interests in the Baltic.

Question 36

When were the Navigation Acts passed?

Answer 36

In 1485 and 1489.

Question 37

What were the objectives of the Navigation Acts?

Answer 37

To encourage English shipping by trying to ensure that only English ships could carry certain products to and from English ports, but this only had limited usefulness as foreign vessels continued to transport a large proportion of English exports.

Question 38

What nationalities were the explorers who had opened up much of the world?

Answer 38

Spanish and Portuguese.

Question 39

What had the Portuguese specifically benefit from?

Answer 39

Their domination of the spice trade.

Question 40

What were Bristol merchants and seamen interested in?

Answer 40

The possibilities of transatlantic discovery.
It was rumoured that such a discovery had been made before 1465, and there is evidence that Atlantic exploration was taking place from 1480.

Question 41

Who was John Cabot and when did he arrive in Bristol?

Answer 41

He was a native of Genoa, and he seems to have been a merchant involved in the Venetian spice trade.
He arrived in Bristol in 1494/5.

Question 42

Why were Bristol fish merchants been looking for alternative fishing grounds?

Answer 42

They’d been excluded from Icelandic waters by the Hanseatic League.

Question 43

What did Cabot receive authority from Henry VII to do?

Answer 43

‘To search out any isles, countries, regions or provinces of heathens and infidels whomsoever set in any part of the world soever, which have been before these times unknown to all Christians’

Question 44

What had Cabot found when he set sail in 1497 and what did he report?

Answer 44

Newfoundland and reported the existence of extensive fishing grounds.

Question 45

What happened when Cabot set off on his second voyage?

Answer 45

He never returned, presumed lost at sea.

Question 46

What was so significant about John Cabot?

Answer 46

He established that a ‘substantial land mass did exist within reasonable sailing from Europe’ and laid the way for Bristol fishery.

Question 47

Who was William Weston and how was he significant?

Answer 47

He was a Bristol merchant who might have set foot on the American mainland in 1499/1500, but even if he hadn’t he was still the very first Englishmen to lead an expedition to the New World.

Question 48

What did John Cabot’s son, Sebastian Cabot, recieve from Henry VII?

Answer 48

Sponsorship, where he led an unsuccessful attempt to find the ‘north-west passage’ to Asia in 1508.

Question 49

Why is there little evidence to estimate the extent of prosperity and depression?

Answer 49

Apart from a temporary rise in the 1480s, prices seem to have remained steady. The available evidence suggests that the same happened to wages.

Question 50

What items had there been a declining export price in during the 1490s and what does this imply?

Answer 50

Wool and in the price of grain and animal products.
It implies both a reduction in farming profitability and a rising in real incomes for domestic consumers.