Limits to the power of economic elites?: Wealth, authority, and inequality in eastern English villages, c. 1350–c. 1550

Spike Gibbs

Economic History Review, 2026, vol. 79, issue 1, 247-280

Abstract: This article investigates the impact of local political institutions on inequality in eastern England between c. 1350 and c. 1550. Specifically, it examines the extent to which wealthier individuals controlled local governance structures in the form of manor courts through linking the identities of individuals who served as manorial officials with the rent payments made by tenants as a measure of landed wealth. This provides two key findings. Firstly, there was no straightforward relationship between political power and landed wealth, with many villages witnessing no correlation between higher rent payments and officeholding. Secondly, even the communities which were marked by a clear relationship between wealth and officeholding were not those characterized by higher levels of overall inequality, suggesting that elite control of local political structures did not necessarily increase inequality. The findings highlight both practical limitations which prevented local elites dominating political power structures and the continuing importance of non‐economic status markers and cultures of community‐building in preventing political rent‐seeking by wealthy elites. They support recent calls to better consider the equalizing impacts of communal structures in explaining patterns of pre‐industrial inequality, but also models that highlight the growth of state‐level institutions in explaining growing patterns of inequality in the early modern era.

Date: 2026
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