Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The project investigated the credit arrangements of a series of English kings (Edwards I, II and III) with a number of Italian merchant societies (mainly but not exclusively the Ricciardi of Lucca, the Frescobaldi of Florence, and the Bardi and Peruzzi of Florence) between 1270 and 1345. The key research questions were: how important was credit to the functioning of the medieval English government and how these credit relationships were managed; what happened in cases of default and why merchants continued to lend following previous defaults; and whether interest was charged. The project has made a number of original contributions to the understanding of medieval sovereign borrowings. It suggested a more nuanced account of the sovereign defaults that occurred in this period; established a more robust methodology for calculating interest rates than currently used by historians; and demonstrated how pan-European credit systems facilitated ‘cashless’ methods of business and trade.Main Topics:The project analysis is founded on a new dataset of financial transactions between the English crown and the merchant societies, compiled from a systematic search of the major published and unpublished royal records. The details of all the transactions between the kings and the merchants were identified, transcribed and entered into a number of databases tailored to the particular historical sources and merchant societies. In order to interpret this material correctly, it was also necessary to reconstruct the accounting practices of the royal Exchequer (which changed significantly during the period under study). The key details of every single unique transaction were then entered into a master dataset as either a credit or as a debit to the king’s account with the merchants. This was used to track the advancing of loans and subsequent repayments and thus to estimate the balance of the king’s account over time.