INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE AND PROPERTY - Wardship in Britain, 14851660

Secure property rights are widely considered to be an essential prerequisite for sustained economic development; in Britain it is debated whether they have been secure since the medieval period or only established in the mid-seventeenth century. Within this context, Sean Bottomley examines wardship - the Crown's prerogative right(s) to appropriate landed estates which had descended to a legal minor until they attained their majority, to take custody of the child and, where they were unmarried, to decide their marriage partner. Bottomley demonstrates that this constituted a significant yet grossly inefficient and corrupted source of crown revenue, one that inflicted tangible economic penalties. It was also indicative of the decaying capacity of the early Stuart state and Bottomley concludes that without the constitutional changes of the mid to late seventeenth-century, Britain would not have industrialised in the eighteenth-century.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. Wardship and the feudal incidents, 1066-1540; 3. The court of wards and liveries, 1540-1642; 4. The court of wards: officers and servants; 5. The early Stuart fiscal-state; 6. Law in the court of wards; 7. The economic consequences of wardship; 8. 'Like horses in Smithfielde'. buying a wardship; 9. Wardship and the wars of the three kingdoms; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

About the author

Sean Bottomley is an economic historian at Cardiff University. His first book, The British Patent System during the Industrial Revolution (2014), won both the Economic History Society's biennial First Monograph Prize and the Selden Society's David Yale Prize.

Product details

• Authors: Sean (Cardiff University) Bottomley, Bottomley Sean
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2025
• EAN: 9781009384353
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0938435-3
• No. of pages: 272
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Business > General, dictionaries; BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic History, Economic history, United Kingdom, Great Britain, c 1000 CE to c 1500, 17th century, c 1600 to c 1699, 16th century, c 1500 to c 1599, c 1500 to c 1600, C 1600 To C 1700, Later 15th century c 1450 to c 1499