Desolation of a City
Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages

A richly documented case-study of urban crisis and decline in late-medieval England.

Charles Phythian-Adams (Author)

9780521525008, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 June 2002

376 pages
21.8 x 14.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.521 kg

This book is a contribution to both national and local history. Coventry is taken as a richly documented case-study of the crisis which marked the end of the medieval period for many substantial towns. Its demographic and economic decline is followed from the fifteenth century to a dramatic period of short-term crisis between 1518 and 1525. Attention is then focused on the traditional structure of the community: the life-cycles of the citizens are related to the intricate pattern of social positions within a multi-dimensional survey. The author illustrates how the occupants of this structure were depleted by crisis and decline, through devastating depopulation, the attrition of the male labour-force, and the failure of the population to reproduce itself. The results included an uncontrolled insurrectionary riot, the emergence of a radical programme for reform along very early 'Commonwealth' lines in the 1530s and, ultimately, the erosion of the old communal organisation and its ideals.

Frontispiece
List of tables
List of illustrations
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. An urban panorama
2. Desolation of a city
3. Anatomy of a city
4. An anatomy deformed
Appendices
Bibliography of sources cited
Index.

Subject Areas: Urban communities [JFSG], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], British & Irish history [HBJD1]