Henry 8 - Economy Flashcards
By mid 1500’s how many blast furnaces were there?
26
From 1550’s what percentage of cloth exports were transported by English merchants?
70%
What were the increasing exports counterbalanced by?
Increasing wine imports
Wool and cloth exports
Almost doubled
Accounted for 90% of exports
Significant increase in export of tin (prized export) and hides
True or false?
True
Trade routes
Increasingly cloth exported from London - negative impact on provincial traders and other ports
Where was London increasingly supplied with coal from
Newcastle - transported by sea
Henry VIII and exploration
No interest
Only exception was Robert Thorne’s continued involvement in Iceland and Newfoundland fishery
1523 Subsidy assessment indicated considerable urban poverty
What percentage of Coventry were recorded as having no personal wealth?
Over 50%
How many rural labourers migrated to London per year due to growing unemployment
Over 5000
Population change?
From 1525 - population grew significantly with general decline in mortality rate
Debasement
Began 1526, frequent by 1540’s
Temporary artificial economic boom, but long term cost to living standards
Reformation contributed to this (increased volume by gold/silver seized)
What happened to real wages?
Decline for many, especially in 1540’s when effects of debasement most evident
What happened to grain and meat prices by 1530’s?
Doubled since 1510
Effects of engrossing?
Some made homeless
Difficult to determine extent or effects
Legislation ineffective
Effects of harvests?
Bad harvest 1535 was a cause of the Lincolnshire rising
Good harvest 1537-1539 helped reduce discontent caused by continuation of dissolution
What were the effect of 1520-21, 1527-29 bad harvests?
Led to significant food price rises
Small signs of capitalism
Landowners benefitted from pop increase
Cheap and plentiful labour and wages declined
Society more polarised
Upper classes increasingly saw poor as idle
Rich slightly richer, poor slightly poorer
How many cases did wolsey’s enclosure commission (1517) bring against people
188
Extent of enclosure?
Extent and scale undetermined
Largely small scale regional practice - mostly in East Midlands villages
Legislation against enclosure
1489 and 1515 - muddled and ineffective
1534 - limited results (attempted to limit sheep ownership and engrossing)
Why did Wolsey agree to abandon enclosure policy for 18 months?
In return for 1523 subsidy
The majority of damage caused by enclosure occurred prior to what year?
1485
Who highlighted the harmful effects of enclosure that Wolsey responded to by establishing an enclosure commission?
Thomas Mores ‘Utopia’ (1516)
What was enclosure regarded as?
A moral problem causing poor to be homeless
By 1547 what proportion of the population was employed in agriculture?
90% - mainly subsistence farming
