Idea of pursuing competitiveness while promoting the common good began as early as the medieval period, write Catherine Casson, Mark Casson, John Lee, and Katie Phillip

Casson, Catherine

Casson, Mark

Lee, John

Phillips, Katie

LSE Research Online

6/5/2017Compassionate capitalism: Lessons frommedieval Cambridgeblogs.lse.ac.uk /businessreview/2017/06/05/compassionate-capitalism-lessons-from-medieval-cambridge/Contemporary businesses are frequently challenged to invest the profits from their commercial successes intoprojects that benefit society. Yet the idea that the pursuit of international competitiveness should also promote thecommon good is not a new one. It began as early as the medieval period!England in the late thirteenth century had a dynamic economy. Legal advances created a lively property market andcommodity trade; cutting-edge technologies improved water management and bridge-building; and towns grewdramatically, both in number and size. The period from c.1200 to c.1350 is now recognised as a period ofcommercial growth that was as significant as the later Industrial Revolution.However thirteenth-century expansion was not based on individualistic capitalism. Family bonds and communityloyalty were strong. Successful entrepreneurs used their new-found wealth to support their local community. Theyinvested in new infrastructure to improve transport links and security and financed hospitals to care for the poor andinfirm.Using recently discovered documents on medieval Cambridge we have investigated how money was made throughproperty speculation and how the profits of successful speculation were spent. Our analysis is based on over onethousand properties recorded in the so-called ‘Second Domesday’ – the Hundred Rolls of 1279.Property markets developed in medieval England when burgage plots were laid out in new or expanding towns bylocal landowners (‘lords’), with the king’s permission. To acquire a plot a burgess had to pay a perpetual rent anderect a building conforming to local plans. He could bequeath or sell his plot. Capital gains could be taken as lumpsum payments or as an additional perpetual rent paid to the seller. Plots returned to the rent-recipient (e.g. the lord)if rent was not paid.Cambridge in the thirteenth-century was not yet a famous university town, but rather an inland port whosemerchants specialised in wholesale agricultural trade. The town had origins dating from at least the 10th century,1/6and in 1068 a castle was constructed there, followed by three religious houses in c. 1092, c. 1133 and c. 1203. TheRiver Cam provided a navigable network of waterways to Ely, Peterborough and Huntingdon, and to ports atWisbech and Lynn. At the time of the Hundred Rolls visitors from London would enter through the Trumpington Gate,with the King’s Mill to the left and the King’s Ditch on the right. Heading north, the visitor would enter the businessdistrict, with the market to the right, just behind Great St. Mary’s church – one of fourteen churches in the town. Onthe left would be buildings later demolished to make way for King’s College Chapel.Continuing up the High Street past the Jewry would bring the visitor to the Round Church. On the left would beHospital of St. John the Evangelist, later re-founded as St John’s College. Continuing to the Great Bridge (nowMagdalene Bridge) the visitor would pass St. Clement’s church, through the area where the wealthiest peopleresided. Passing over the bridge they could look up the River Cam to the great stone house (now called the Schoolof Pythagoras) where the influential Dunning family lived. The visitor would then ascend the Huntingdon road, withthe Castle (now a mound near Shire Hall) to the right and views over the grounds of St. Radegund’s Nunnery (nowJesus College) towards Barnwell priory. A walk up the Newmarket Road would led to hospital of St Mary Magdalenewith its chapel (still standing today), and the site of Stourbridge Fair.Property was a desirable asset in medieval Cambridge, much as it is today! Medieval speculators invested in avariety of properties (Figure 1). Land was popular, including fields, curtilages (the area of land around a building),vacant urban land and crofts (land adjoining dwellings, often used for agricultural purposes). Buildings were alsovalued assets, both residential (messuages – houses with land and often outbuildings – and houses) andcommercial premises (shops and stalls – usually temporary structures in marketplaces). Statistical analysis of thelevels of rent shows that messuages and shops were the most valuable properties.Figure 1. Types of property2/6Property hot-spots with high-rents can be identified in three parts of medieval Cambridge: at the road junction by theHospital; west of the market; and near the river just south of the Hospital (Figure 2). Areas of notably low rents werenear the castle, the area of Trumpington Street and the suburb of Barnwell.Figure 2. Map of medieval Cambridge showing property hotspots3/6Note: Adapted from John S. Lee, Cambridge andits Economic Region 1450-1560 (Hatfield, 2005).Individuals and institutions both owned property (Figure 3).Family bonds often underpinned ownership. Cambridge washome to several families who had acquired property throughthe military service of their Norman ancestors, including theDunning family who owned 12 plots in 1279. Property waspassed down through generations. The Wombe familybenefitted in 1279 from a portfolio amassed by an ancestor.The commercial revolution posed some challenges for this‘old money’. The Dunnings mismanaged their assets andeventually left Cambridge.Figure 3. Types of (rent paying) ownersProfits from the property market were recycled back into the community through donations to religious houses,4/6hospitals and churches. Owners allocated more rental income to charitable giving (51 %) than to private individuals(Figure 4). The Barton family, for example, were important patrons of The Crutched Friars and the Nuns of St.Radegunds while the Dunnings gave land to Barnwell Priory, the Hospital of St. John and St Radegunds.Figure 4. Types of recipients of rental incomeProfits from property speculation benefitted individuals, family dynasties and the urban community as a whole.Compassionate capitalism involved high levels of charitable giving to hospitals, monasteries, churches and collegeswhich helped disseminate the economic benefits of the ‘winners’ of the commercial revolution.This self-sustaining system was, however, challenged in the 1340s by the Black Death, the Hundred Years War andpunitive levels of urban taxation. When prosperity returned in the Tudor period a more ruthless form of capitalismtook root, whose legacy remains with us today.♣♣♣Notes:This blog post is based on the authors’ presentation at the Economic History Society’s Annual Conferenceat Royal Holloway, University of London, 31 March – 2 April, 2017.The post gives the views of its authors, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School ofEconomics.Featured image credit: Jesus College, by David Loggan, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons5/6Before commenting, please read our Comment Policy.Catherine Casson is a Lecturer in Enterprise in the Manchester Enterprise Centre, part of theInnovation Management and Policy Division of Alliance Manchester Business School, University ofManchester. She is a medieval historian by training and her publications include a co-authoredbook with Mark Casson on The Entrepreneur in History: From Medieval Merchant to ModernBusiness Leader – Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2013) – and articles in Urban History,Business History and the Economic History Review.Mark Casson is Professor of Economics at the University of Reading and Director of the Centrefor Institutions and Economic History. He has published in Economic History Review, Explorationsin Economic History, Business History Review, Business History, Economic Journal and otherleading journals. He is the co-author (with Catherine Casson) of The Entrepreneur in History  andco-editor (with Nigar Hashimzade) of Large Databases in Economic History.John Lee is a Research Associate at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York. Hehas published Cambridge and its Economic Region, 1450-1560 (University of Hertfordshire Press,2005) and other studies on local and regional markets and trade.Katie Phillips is an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded PhD student in MedievalStudies at the University of Reading. Her thesis, The Leper and the King: the Patronage andPerception of Leprosy by King Henry III of England and King Louis IX of France, is due to besubmitted in 2017. This work follows on from the dissertation produced for her MA(Res), an editedversion of which has been published as ‘The Hospital of St Mary Magdalene – The Leper-House atReading Abbey’, Berkshire Archaeological Journal , (81), 2003, 87-93. Katie is also the author ofanother published article in an online peer-reviewed journal, ‘Saint Louis, Saint Francis and theLeprous Monk at Royaumont’, The Reading Medievalist, (2), 2015Copyright © 2015 London School of Economics6/6

Compassionate capitalism: Lessons from medieval Cambridge

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