ABSTRACT
When the Hainaulter Jean le Bel came to England in 1327, he was pleasantly surprised by the wealth of the land. He stayed at York for six weeks, and wrote: ‘We never ceased to marvel at how so great an abundance could come there.’1 It is tempting to assume that the military successes of the English, notably under Edward I and Edward III, were achieved because the country was prosperous with many resources of money, manpower and supplies which could be mobilized for war. English writers, however, painted a dismal picture of the economic fortunes of the country. The St Albans chronicler, William Rishanger, described a great storm in 1289, and stated that for some forty years after that there was a scarcity of grain, with consequent high prices. Edward II’s biographer commented on the famine years 1315-16: ‘Alas, poor England! You who once helped other lands from your abundance, now poor and needy are forced to beg.’2 Official records from the early 1340s give a picture of infertile lands and poverty stricken villagers, incapable of paying their taxes. Then in 1348 came the first visitation of the Black Death. The chronicler Henry Knighton wrote that ‘After the pestilence many buildings both great and small in all cities, towns and boroughs fell into total ruin for lack of inhabitants; similarly many small villages and hamlets became desolate, and no houses were left in them, for all those who had dwelt in them were dead.’3 Was it then the case that war offered a means of escape from economic hardship, rather than being the product of a booming economy?
