'There was probably never a decade in the Middle Ages which did not see the death of one or more villages' (M. Beresford, 1954/1983).
Beresford's outline of the spatial and temporal incidence of village desertions has been modified little by subsequent research except perhaps to indicate a higher casualty rate in the period before the Black Death. The absence of tax assessments before 1297 and the imperfections of later sources and archaeological dating methods inhibit accurate dating of many known desertions. Most disappearances can, however, be located within broad time periods. With the notable exception of the central Midlands, John Hales' observation in 1549 that 'the chief destruction of villages was before the reign of King Henry the Seventh' (i. e. 1485) holds true.
The incidence and causes of desertions varied regionally and over time. A universal feature, however, especially marked before the late fourteenth century, was the greater vulnerability of smaller villages. Factors such as soil type and proximity to neighbours may have restricted growth and predisposed smaller villages to loss of economic viability when the agricultural terms of trade shifted unfavourably and certain demographic conditions prevailed.
Twelfth-century desertions were largely due to the sheep farming activities of Cistercian Houses and local factors such as coastal erosion and border raids. Desertions between the late thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries can be attributed to the retreat from marginal land colonized during the population expansion of the late Middle Ages, due to a combination perhaps of soil exhaustion and the demographic contraction under way before the Black Death. Recurrent plague epidemics thereafter rarely caused the demise of villages directly. Rather, the casualties of the next 150 years seem associated with the continued abandonment of marginal arable land and the emergent comparative advantage of pastoral production occurring in the context of demographic stagnation and demand shifts. Particularly at risk were places, many in the Midland counties, where the relative advantage of pastoral or arable production was not strong.
Enclosures, so villainized by contemporary commentators, were clearly, then, a symptom rather than a cause of village desertion prior to 1500.
E. M.Turner
World History
