Economy and society in the fourteenth century: The estate of the abbot of St. Edmund's, 1335-1388 (England, William de Bernham, John de Brinkley, John de Timworth)

By the fourteenth century, the abbot of St. Edmund's estate had coalesced into twenty demesne manors in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex. It represented the principal source of support for the abbot and his household. When William de Bernham (1335-61) assumed the abbacy, personal exploitation of the demesne still had considerable vitality. Abundant labor and favorable prices recommended this approach. The challenge facing abbot William and his successors--John de Brinkley (1361-78) and John de Timworth (1378-89)--was how to accommodate the estate's management to circumstances that ceased to redound to their benefit.; The decisive event was the Black Death of 1348-9. It reduced the pool of customary labor services which the abbot could devote to the demesne and tipped the balance in negotiations between landlord and tenant in tenant's favor. The initial and subsequent appearance of the pestilence inflicted a blow to customary arrangements from which there was ultimately no recovery. By 1388 the decay of customary arrangements was general and the viability of cultivation with servile labor was at best questionable.; The abbot's response to this challenge was fundamentally conservative. Unable to restore pre-plague conditions, he relied more heavily on the famulus--the paid estate-laborer--and the wage-laborer, who received generally improved compensation. The expanding role of the famulus and the wage-laborer points to the obsolescence of the estate's customary arrangements.; The abbot did not in any substantial fashion alter his agricultural practice due to these demographic changes. The most apparent change was in the acreage tilled. Demesnes shrank universally in the decade following the plague of 1348-9. Despite a brief recovery on some manors in the 1360s and 1370s, all the estate's demesnes contracted significantly during the 1380s.; The abbot also had to contend with an influx of vacant land once held by customary and free tenants. He initially leased these lands on a per-year, per-acre basis to reduce his losses. Longer term farming arrangements and even life-leases begant to appar. However, the abbot clearly resisted any irreversible changes. Moreover, the leasing of the demesne, even as the area in cultivation shrank, was eschewed.; Nor did the abbot compensate for more difficult grain agriculture by placing greater emphasis on less labor-intensive animal husbandry. The abbot's flocks of sheep were substantial before the plague; however, they did not grow universally following the pestilence. The mixed picture forestalls any unequivocal assertion that the commitment to pastoralism grew after the plague.; The management by abbots Bernham, Brinkley, and Timworth was ultimately conservative. Even as demographic shifts fundamentally altered the economic landscape, they clung to the points of reference that had been in place when the direct cultivation of the demesne had been most viable.