Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England, episode 179, Town Life and the New

Farmers. Just very quickly to remind you that I am part of the Agora Podcast Network

now and to urge you when you are looking for a good old bit of casting, to check out

the Agora Podcast Network website, inspiring you named, you guessed it, agorapodcastnetwork.com.

This month's featured podcast is Ten American Presidents by Roy Field Brown.

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Now then, episode 179, good golly Miss Molly have I really just spent five years of my life

making podcasts on the History of England. Must be mad.

Anyway, no turning back now, only a few hundred years to go. So, last week we covered some stuff

about the economy, populations, but mainly towns, with a vast amount of verbiage about making cloth

which bored you to tears. Even here in my shed, I can hear the sound of Bored History

not eating their livers in pain and frustration. No more about cloth making today, promise,

cross my heart and hope to die. Instead, what we'll do today is talk about the way that towns

organise and manage themselves. And we'll talk then about the countryside to boot and the new

farmers who are able to change their lives through the changes that the 15th century brought.

There's a general feeling I think that the medieval town was the root to freedom and success.

The countryside was a great, dark, medieval place full of feudal oppression and swerved him.

While across the barra border folks hopped and skipped around in the sunlight of creative self-expression.

If that is the image you have in your mind, gentle listeners, put it aside. I mean, yes,

there was plenty of opportunity for entrepreneurship in the towns. And in fact, that's a feature of

the 15th century more than ever before. But that was a feature of the 15th century, that is to say,

a feature of the 15th century royal economy as well. The other point to make is that the towns

...