The availability of credit in the English countryside, 1400-1480

Credit was central to the peasant economy, but its supply varied over time. Using information from the records of three Cambridgeshire manorial courts and a church court, this article charts changes in the number of rural credit transactions initiated in the fifteenth century, and seeks explanations for them. It argues that new credit transactions declined in number in the period studied, though caution is required concerning the real extent of the decline. Legal and institutional changes arising from the decline of the manor courts and the rise of the church courts' debt jurisdiction were key. It is argued that these changes were as important as monetary difficulties in shaping the willingness of rural lenders to give credit