Having united many English counties by trade ties, such towns as London and Bristol began to play a very significant role in forming the national market because before the 14th — 15th centuries domestic trade was to a great extent regional, arranged within narrow borders. There were rather favourable conditions for establishing such a market in England: early centralization of the country, a relative balance between the development of agriculture, industry and trade, and existence of a single economic centre. By the end of the 15th century, as the main part of overseas trade was concentrated in London, the role of Bristol in domestic trade had fallen because it was closely connected with its export and import. A new rise of Bristol as a regional capital in the West of England begins from the time of entering into permanent relations with North-American colonies.
In the 14th –17th centuries essential changes took place in the social sphere too. Rapid growth of industry and trade put forward the richest and most enterprising people. We can see that sometimes a merchant and a production organizer were one and the same person. Documents show how the two ways of capitalist entrepreneurs’ emergence were interwoven: not only a merchant became a manufacturer but, in its turn, a producer transformed into a merchant. Developments in social relations could be seen in the changes of the character of patriciate. There appeared “new” patricians who were closely connected with entrepreneurial activity and strove to drive old patriciate out of town governing.
Processes that took place in craft guilds show that expropriation of the immediate producer and the formation of the wage labour market in the town had begun long before mass peasants’ dispossession of land in the 16th century. Complaints of guilds’ craftsmen that they were being ruined, turning into tramps and paupers show that there was a deep stratification inside the guild already in the 14th century. It seems that enclosures in the English village of the 16th century were connected not so much with the development of Flanders’ manufactory as with the establishment of new forms of cloth production in England itself, all the more so as in the end of the 14th century it was forbidden to export unfinished cloth. Domination of cloth export over wool export by the middle of the 15th century proves that there was the growth of demand for raw materials in England and this was the reason that caused mass enclosures since the end of the 15th century.
Rapid development of entrepreneurship could not but affect social psychology of medieval townspeople. Especially clearly it was manifested in towns with wide international links. Merchants and craftsmen meeting people from other countries learned to perceive themselves not only as citizens of a town (they had never forgot about that) but as English people as opposed to foreigners. With the expansion of trade and production, their confidence and pride for their achievements were also growing. This was expressed in building stone houses, in their wish to keep up with feudal lords in the luxury of their clothing, in pompous tombstone and so on.
At the given period the ideas about a social position of the woman began to change. Their participation in external trade activity, financial operations and disposal of inheritance shows the growth of their economic and legal independence. Certainly, we cannot compare the burghership of a small town somewhere in the hinterland and a big port like London, Bristol or Southampton. Property and social stratification, naturally, took place quicker in such urban communities where big capital was involved into trade.
At the end of the period under review, a small country, England, was becoming, first, the centre of world maritime trade and then the centre of the empire. In the 17th century, the pattern of thoughts and life habits both in the town and village were deeply affected by overseas countries. Eastern goods brought into England by merchants of various companies became ordinary decorations in many town and country mansions. Passion for collecting different things turned some mansions of the nobility into a kind of museums. Nevertheless, despite huge changes taken place in the life of England from the 14th to the 17th century only an insignificant part of country dwellers had an idea of urban way of life. The greater part of England’s population continued to maintain medieval customs and traditions until the Industrial Revolution.
