How Merchant Towns Shaped Parliaments: From the Norman Conquest of England to the Great Reform Act

Charles Angelucci, Simone Meraglia and Nico Voigtländer

American Economic Review, 2022, vol. 112, issue 10, 3441-87

Abstract: We study the emergence of urban self-governance in the late medieval period. We focus on England after the Norman Conquest of 1066, building a novel comprehensive dataset of 554 medieval towns. During the Commercial Revolution (twelfth to thirteenth centuries), many merchant towns obtained Farm Grants: the right of self-governed tax collection and law enforcement. Self-governance, in turn, was a stepping stone for parliamentary representation: Farm Grant towns were much more likely to be summoned directly to the medieval English Parliament than otherwise similar towns. We also show that self-governed towns strengthened the role of Parliament and shaped national institutions over the subsequent centuries.

JEL-codes: D02 D72 D73 K11 K34 N43 N93 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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DOI: 10.1257/aer.20200885

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