Introduction

First published in 1962, this book challenges the notion that the later Middle Ages failed to sustain the economic growth of earlier centuries, suggesting that historians have been preoccupied with absolute levels of output over more important questions of output per head. It also argues they have ignored the disastrous fall in living standards in the thirteenth century and the astonishing rise that occurred later. Using national taxation records and records of urban government, as well as research from fields ranging from parliamentary history to statistics of foreign trade, the author attempts to establish that the later Middle Ages has also been wrongly defamed in political affairs.