Agricultural History Review, Volume 56 Part 1 (2008), p. 100

This important book reminds us that tithes as indicators of agricultural production were much studied on the continent and especially in France in the 1960s and 1970s, but only now are historians beginning to make sustained use of the English tithe records. The French work was focussed on the early modern period, and the statistical series was interpreted in the light of the prevailing Malthusian view that a period of growth came to an end in the late seventeenth century. Here the period under examination stretches from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, and the records are seen as supporting the interpretation that peasants, though buffeted by external changes, were sensitive to the market and adjusted their production accordingly.

Dodds suggests that tithe records for England have been neglected because the wealth of manorial accounts (unique to English estates) have attracted most historical attention. Tithes, however, provide information about aspects of agriculture which are otherwise obscure. The manorial accounts tell us mainly about lords’ demesnes in the period 1270–1430 – but as the title of this book shows, tithes reflect peasant production, and sometimes the series continue into the sixteenth century. This book is based on the tithe records of Durham Cathedral Priory, which have survived in unusual quantity. There are methodological problems to be overcome, as only occasionally do the records itemize the tithe receipts in terms of quantities of grain gathered into the barn. In the records used here, only those for Billingham provide this information over a long period. Instead the monks of Durham recorded sums of money agreed with a purchaser of the tithes, which is taken to reflect the quantity of crops. The calculation is helped by statistical devices such as the use of a deflator as pioneered by the continental scholars. The problem of evasion must also be faced, and we have to put some faith in the vigilance of the collectors, who under the system of cash sales were directly rewarded for diligence. Collection took place in the open and public space of the fields after the harvest, as the tithe buyer’s men picked one sheaf in ten from those standing in the stubble. Our trust in the calculations is encouraged by Dodds’ open and fair discussion of the problems. It would be difficult to believe that the overall pattern of high tithe receipts around 1300 and low figures after 1430, or indeed the more subtle movements from year to year, simply reflected changes in the honesty of the cultivators and the efficiency of the collectors.

The research is based on the rich archive of Durham, which reminds us that high quality documents are not confined to eastern, midland and southern England. The parishes which belonged to the Durham monks on the low-lying eastern side of the county grew a range of crops not dissimilar from those found further south, including good quantities of wheat. The results of this research are not therefore only applicable to a peculiar northern province, but to a substantial part of lowland, arable England, though Durham did have a special characteristic in its abundant wastes, which meant that the villagers had ample sources of pasture and opportunities to expand their arable fields. This was not a region overshadowed by Malthusian threats.

Much of the book is taken up with presenting the series of tithe records. They show a rising trend in the late thirteenth century, continuing up to about 1310. Then Durham suffered doubly, from bad weather, culminating in the famine of 1315–17, and the Scottish raids of 1312–22. Production plummeted, but then began to recover in the 1330s and 1340s. In the half century after the Black Death of 1349 grain production halved, though this was not a continuous process, as there was a rising trend in the 1360s, and the main period of decline came in the last years of the fourteenth century. After 1430 corn production remained generally low, though with signs of short-term recovery in the late 1450s. Poor returns from arable crops persisted until the end of the series of records in the 1530s. The early sixteenth century appears, as in other works, as a paradoxical period, with signs of growth, but also suffering from an apparent malaise that held back demographic and economic expansion.

The survey of trends is followed by a useful appraisal of peasant economic behaviour, which identifies peasants’ responses to market conditions, and which argues against the view that they were primarily concerned with subsistence. A chapter on the tithe buyers shows that many of them were peasant entrepreneurs.

This book is about local trends in agricultural production based on a single source, but it avoids the traps of narrowness and localism. The analysis of the influences on production brings into the picture towns, trade, rents, taxes, industry, fishing and other features of the regional economy. This inevitably means making use of a variety of sources. The approach is comparative throughout, with constant reference to the findings of other historians in all parts of England. But even more exemplary are the very relevant parallels drawn with continental Europe in the middle ages and early modern period, or the references to peasant societies in the contemporary Third World. At each stage the various influences on trends in production are identified and assessed with imagination and a cool logic. This is a broad-minded book in every respect, and it shows that new sources, new approaches and new insights are opening up avenues of future research in the history of agriculture and rural society of the Middle Ages.