ABSTRACT
Virtually invisible in the passing crowd of 16th-century English historians, Craig Muldrew stealthily dropped a bomb into analyses of inequality. Muldrew looked closely at uses of credit in commercial transactions, which expanded rapidly after 1540 or so as England engaged more heavily in textile production and continental trade. Legal tender then consisted almost entirely of gold and silver coin. The money supply, however, expanded much more slowly than production of goods and the pace of commerce. Most likely some deflation and some acceleration in monetary circulation occurred as a consequence. But expansion of interpersonal credit—more to the point, of credit among households and the commercial enterprises embedded in those households—far outstripped changes in money as such. Note some crucial effects:
As credit networks became more complicated, and more obligations broken, it became important before entering into a contract to be able to make judgements about other people’s honesty. The more reliable both parties in an agreement were in paying debts, delivering goods or in performing services, the more secure chains of credit became, and the greater the chance of general profit, future material security and general ease of life for all entangled in them. The result of this was that credit in social terms—the reputation for fair and honest dealing of a household and its members—became the currency of lending and borrowing. Credit … referred to the amount of trust in society, and as such consisted of a system of judgements about trustworthiness; and the trustworthiness of neighbours came to be stressed as the paramount communal virtue, just as trust in God was stressed as the central religious duty. Since, by the late sixteenth century, most households relied on the market for the bulk of their income, the establishment of trustworthiness became the most crucial factor needed to generate and maintain wealth. (Muldrew 1998: 148; see also Muldrew 1993)
