MIGRATION

1 Migration in the Middle Ages c1000–c1500 1.3 England’s immigrants in the Middle Ages
Source 2 The Hanseatic warehouse
in Kings Lynn – the only surviving
building of its kind in England.
Source 3 Georg Gisze from Danzig,
34-year-old merchant at the
Steelyard, painted by Hans Holbein
in 1532. Holbein, who painted
famous portraits of Henry VIII
and his advisers, was himself an
immigrant.
1 Why were London merchants
unhappy about the Lombardy
bankers?
2 In what ways would foreign
merchants and bankers
have helped this country’s
economy?
However, as the Jews had discovered earlier, royal protection was not always a
good thing. During the Great Rebellion in 1381, when the people rose up against
the rulers who had favoured foreigners, migrant communities were targeted.
Around 140 foreigners were murdered: a story goes that they were asked to
say ‘bread and cheese’ and if they had a foreign accent they were beheaded and
their heads were piled in the streets. This took place 12 years after Kempe’s
last appearance in the records. We do not know if he was still alive when the
streets of London flowed with Flemish blood.
Influence of merchants on England’s economy
In the centre of London, on the River Thames, was a settlement called the
Steelyard. This was a base for merchants belonging to the Hanseatic League,
which traded between northern European cities around the Baltic and North
seas. The Steelyard was large enough to contain a warehouse, weighbridge,
church, offices and housing for the merchants that lived there. The Hanseatic
League in England emerged during the reign of Edward I, who granted the
League a Merchant’s Charter in 1303, giving it certain tax and CUSTOMS
privileges. Its members were given special protection and controlled most of
the wool trade. They were here to make money and were perhaps the first
people to make the City of London a world financial centre. The League
traded materials such as timber, furs and flax, and food such as honey, wheat
and rye. Wool and cloth from England were often exported. The Hanseatic
League had a significant effect on England’s economy, helping it become a rich
manufacturing and trading nation.
Relations between merchants and the local population
Although there is little evidence about contact between the Hansa merchants and
the local population, we do have some information. We know, for example, that
in Lynn, merchants from what is now Germany were allowed to have their own
houses rather than being forced to lodge with the locals to make
it easier to spy on them. This suggests that relations there at least
were good. This was not always the case, however. In 1381, during
the Great Rebellion, and again in 1492, the London Steelyard was
destroyed in anti-foreigner rioters. Poorer craft workers and English
merchants felt that the League had a negative effect on jobs and
profits, and they pressed the government to control them. The craft
guilds, in particular, hated the fact that control of the wool and cloth
trade was given over to foreign merchants. They felt these foreigners
were being given special treatment, taking local artisans’ jobs,
pushing up prices and causing a housing crisis. Eventually control
of trade passed to English merchants and in 1598 Queen Elizabeth I
closed down the Steelyard.
The influence of Lombard bankers on England’s
economy
In the 1220s, rich banking families from Florence, Genoa and
Venice – all part of northern Italy, then known as Lombardy –
started arriving in England. They saw a chance to make a profit from
the growing trade in English wool. The pope had ruled that Italian
banks could charge interest on loans, so they also offered to lend large sums of
money to the king, Henry III, who was turning against Jewish moneylenders in
a climate of anti-Semitism. Families such as the Bardis from Florence were given
letters of protection and proceeded to set up business in England. The City of
London was a place for the rich to get richer. For over a hundred years bankers
and the Crown benefited – until Edward III’s debt crisis caused some of these
businesses to go bankrupt.
Uncorrected proof
Source 4 Bristol’s tax rolls.
3 Why are the aliens registers
a valuable source of
information for historians?
Source 5 A modern map from the
England’s Immigrants website,
showing numbers of foreign
migrants in Kent between 1440
and 1550 and where they lived,
according to the aliens register. As
the tax records were not complete,
the actual numbers will have been
higher.
4 What does the map in Source
5 suggest about the way
immigrants were received in
England?
Relations between bankers and the local population
London merchants did not welcome foreign merchants and bankers, and regularly
demanded controls and restrictions on them – sometimes with success. Foreigners
were also often disliked by the general public, who felt that they would simply
make their money then leave. In fact, the money the foreign merchants invested
helped boost England’s economy in many ways, encouraging trade and building
works as well as financing foreign wars. The City of London’s status as a world
financial centre began at this time, and many of the words we use about money,
including ‘bank’, ‘credit’ and ‘debit’, come from Italian. The £ symbol is from the
initial letter ‘l’ of the Italian word for pound.
Sources of information about England’s medieval
immigrants
In the late Middle Ages, about one in every 100 people in England was foreign
born; in London it was six in every 100. We know their stories because
governments imposed taxes called ALIENS REGISTERS on those who were born
outside the king’s realm. These were set up partly to collect money for war and
partly to respond to complaints about foreigners. Thanks to these tax records
we know the names of most immigrants, their occupations and where they
came from.
ACTIVITY
What do the tax records reveal?
The tax records do not give us a full
picture. To begin with they seldom
mention women. They are also much more
detailed in some places than others. They
only list people born outside England, so
second- or third-generation immigrants
are not shown. As they do not record
religion or ethnicity, there is a lot that we
do not know about the people listed – for
example whether any of them came from
beyond Europe. The tax records also
cannot tell us what immigrants thought,
felt or experienced. However, we do get
a window into the lives of immigrants
that we do not gain from the information
written by the rich and powerful.
Look up the England’s Immigrants project at www.englandsimmigrants.com.
Search the database and find out who was living in your city, town or village in 1300,
1450 and 1600. Find where they migrated from and what their occupations were.
What similarities and differences can you find?
Create one of the following:
– a presentation about medieval migration to your area, supported by maps, charts
and graphs you have created using the database
– a ‘time traveller’ story similar to the one about Bristol in the Introduction
– a poster describing medieval migration to your local area, to be displayed publicly
in your school
– a migration tourist trail, if there are still traces in your area of medieval
migrations (historic buildings, street names, monuments etc.).
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