Current explanations of long-run changes in the medieval English economy
have largely used models in which changes in the money supply play very
little part. Here a fresh approach is taken and the money supply is seen
as one of the main variables in the workings of the economy.
In Part One, theories and problems in using monetary theory and
numismatic evidence to model the medieval economy are fully discussed,
as are the coins in circulation and the practical challenges faced in
putting into circulation millions of coins struck by hand. The aim is to
provide the reader with an informed background to the discussions in the
chronological sections that follow in Part Two. Here, three broad
periods are considered: 973-1158; 1158-1351; and 1351-1489. Each
occupies a particular space in the history of money and the money
economy. In the first there was a limited money supply, a shortage of
coin and a 'monetised' economy. The second saw a more than tenfold
increase in the money supply, accompanied by growing literacy and
numeracy; new accounting methods; and laws that gave greater protection
to creditors, leading to growth in the credit market. Together these
factors produced the full money economy necessary to support the
expansion of the thirteenth century. The
final section challenges the idea that monetary deflation, combined with
population decline, caused a general crisis in the post-plague society.
The money economy was challenged but it survived by finding new ways of
extending the money supply using flexible and transferable credit
instruments which were eventually used as forms of 'paper money'.
Medieval material is used throughout to illustrate the argument.
