In 1200 the Suffolk town of Dunwich was one of medieval England's wealthiest ports. However, a succession of marine inundations in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries drastically reduced its size and importance. Evocative descriptions of Dunwich's long struggle against the sea abound, but little has been written about the medieval town itself.
The bailiffs' Minute Book of 1404-30 is the single most substantial and informative document to have survived from the borough's medieval archive. It provides new insights into the town's bitter legal dispute with neighbouring Walberswick, its system of government and the men who administered and financed the town. Of even greater importance are the many references to the fortunes and organisation of the fishing industry. Additionally, the Minute Book contains a number of detailed tax assessments, thus revealing how local communities shared the burden of royal lay subsidies. These assessments are among the first of their kind to be published.
[East Anglian] The Suffolk town of Dunwich was one of medieval England's wealthiest ports, until a succession of floods in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries drastically reduced its size and importance. The bailiffs' Minute Book of 1404-30 is the single most substantial and informative document to have survived from the borough's medieval archive, and provides new insights into the life of the town, including its bitter legal dispute with neighbouring Walberswick, its system of government and the men who administered and financed it. There are also many references to the fortunes and organisation of the fishing industry on which the town largely depended - and a number of detailed tax assessments, revealing how local communities shared the burden of royal lay subsidies, which are among the first of their kind to be published.
MARK BAILEY is Fellow and Tutor of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.