Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Regions/Yorkshire/Economy of Yorkshire
The economy of Yorkshire by the 17th century was built on more than its famously exported pudding, although why they needed to export anything else is a mystery to me! (BN: You cannot export Yorkshire pudding. It must be eaten fresh out of the oven!) Like many provincial territories in England, the majority of economic production was rural based. The typical gentlemen of Yorkshire, like Henry Best,[1] and many of the middling to lower classes, found monetary gain through a variety of agricultural efforts. Some of the principal rural activities in Yorkshire were sheep shearing for the purpose of gathering wool[2] – the sheered wool would then be transported to London where it was shipped to the Netherlands for processing – bee keeping,[3] and the cultivation of hay.[4] Despite Yorkshire’s rural driven economy York, one of the largest cities in the North of England, emerged as a sort of commercial conurbation.
Along the Yorkshire coast, as is typical with most coastal communities, there was an emphasis on fishing and to a lesser extent trade: however, the majority of trade to Europe went through the official ports of London in the 17th century. Almost as a logical consequence of this, Yorkshire was host to an increase in the nefarious activity of smuggling, specifically in the Bay of Robin Hood.[5] It had in fact gotten so bad that the Customs Commission in 1701 hired more staff just to deal with the rampant escalation of smuggling.[6] Another sort of unique feature of Yorkshire’s economy through out the 17th century was what David G. Hey called a dual economy. Based on Hearth Tax Returns, Hey determined that Ecclesfield, a parish in South Yorkshire, was able to turn a profit through a dual focus on both rural products, like sheep and bees, and industrial production of iron and steel.[7] Ecclesfield’s dual-focus on agricultural and industrial manufacturing was commonplace in South Yorkshire, unlike the more commonly seen mono-economic parishes found in England[8].
- ↑ Henry Best, Rural economy in Yorkshire in 1641: Being the farming and account books of Henry Best of Elmswell, in the east riding of the county of York (London: Whittaker & Co., 1857), 174.
- ↑ Ibid., 27.
- ↑ Ibid., 61.
- ↑ Ibid., 38.
- ↑ John Rushton, "The Yorkshire Smuggler - the smuggling of contraband," Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre, http://www.scarboroughsmaritimeheritage.org.uk/arushtonsmuggling.php
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ David G. Hey, “A Dual Economy in South Yorkshire,” The Agricultural History Review 17, no. 2 (1969) 1.
- ↑ Ibid., 1.