The Economic and Cultural Impact of the Origins of Property: 1180-1220

Abstract

The development of property in England between 1176 and 1220 was the result of a complicated interaction between social mores made law and bureaucratic action. In the Assize of Northampton, Henry II undertook regular supervision of proprietary decisions to prevent his men from preparing a rebellion like that of 1173-74. The supervision assumed peacetime feudal norms, but in the hands of bureaucratic justices even prior to 1200 this supervision increasingly restricted lords' power to discipline their tenants, at a time when disciplinary power was far more important than proprietary decisions. By 1220, the relative importance of proprietary matters and disciplinary power had been reversed. But proprietary action by the lord was so attenuated that seisin—lawful possession—was possible now even without lordly acceptance. Such insulation of the tenant from his lord was a bond established between the tenant and his tenement: property.

People and Things: Power in Early English Development

“…The usury-bearing money of the twelfth century differed from the silver coins of the ninth century (Spufford 1988); the property of the twelfth century was not the land of the ninth century (Palmer 1985a(Palmer , 1985b; and the continuous artificial memory of twelfth-century bureaucratic records was not the literacy of the ninth-and tenth-century law codes (Clanchy 1979;Stock 1986). The conjuncture of new technologies of power for controlling time and space, which occurred during the twelfth century, provides a probable context for the reorganization of medieval rural settlement.…”

“…"Land left the sphere of personal relationships and became property" (Palmer 1985a:24;Palmer 1985b) in twelfth-century England, and the techniques that later evolved to territorialize property emerged in this legal process. The link between land and personal service, the touchstone of early medieval social relations, had grown increasingly attenuated, so that questions of protection and control of the rights of people and things then became more troublesome (Waugh 1986;Milsom 1976).…”

“…The link between land and personal service, the touchstone of early medieval social relations, had grown increasingly attenuated, so that questions of protection and control of the rights of people and things then became more troublesome (Waugh 1986;Milsom 1976). The legal courts of Henry II struggled with the problem of how tenure (property relations) and status (personal relations) were related, eventually dissociating them (Hyams 1980;Milsom 1976;Palmer 1985aPalmer , 1985b. As the common law of real property evolved, the courts had to decide what land was actually free.…”

Land markets and the morcellation of holdings in Pre-Plague England and Pre-Famine Ireland

“…Thenceforth, first freehold land and then villein land (un-free land, exempt from the jurisdiction of the royal courts and originally held by servile tenants in return for money and labour rents) were bought and sold with increasing frequency. This had a galvanising effect upon the growth of a capital market, since land now became a security against which credit could be secured (Palmer, 1985). Moreover, as, in an inflationary and ever more resource-scarce age, land became an appreciating asset, so men increasingly borrowed in order to acquire land.…”

Money and the English Economy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

“…Reactions to Harvey's argument from Miller and Hatcher, Bolton and Mayhew ranged from defence of the older demographic explanation of price rises, to some degree modified by conceding some role to the quantity of money 21 -after all Postan had already done that to a degree-to support on a wider scale for the importance of the quantity of money in explaining prices. 22 There was also an argument from Palmer that posited changes in the velocity of money on the basis of changes in land law as significant, 23 as well as contributions from Bridbury, Farmer and Bolton that might be characterized as skeptical of all these arguments. 24 Harvey's periodization of the price rises was then contested by Latimer, who argued instead for a concentrated period of price rises in the very early years of the thirteenth century, also attempting to extend the range of prices that could be considered.…”