FROM MANOR TO MARKET: STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN ENGLAND, 1536-1640

This work offers a causal explanation for the transformation from manorial to market labor allocation in England between 1536 and 1640. Social structure is diagrammed for the periods before and after the Black Death, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and in the early seventeenth century. The period, 1536-1640, is thus identified as the 'window' during which the structure of land and labor allocation and control changed to an extent unprecedented in English history.; The manor is defined and described as a micro structure, and as an element in a larger structure which includes a macro level at which elites competed for resources and authority. A tripartite elite of crown, clergy, and lay landlords shared power at both structural levels. The divergence of elite interests limited the autonomy of individual manor lords, while peasant solidarity on the micro level circumscribed the outcomes of conflicts over land tenure. Demographic cycles and landlord-peasant conflicts are shown to have not significantly altered manorial structure.; The Dissolution of the Monasteries was a culmination of elite conflict, and eliminated the clergy as an independent power at both structural levels. The crown, due to its lack of a bureaucracy, and the fiscal demands of its position in an international system of states, was unable to retain the micro level property and power seized from the monasteries. Lay landlords assumed the bulk of monastic manors and income rights taken by the crown. The structural division between crown and lay landlords was sharpened by the Elizabethan effort to undermine the micro bases of magnate challengers to crown authority. Micro level powers once held by crown, clergy, and magnates was concentrated in the hands of county-based gentry.; Gentry micro level strategies were responses to the threats of crown challenges from the macro level and peasant land tenure claims on the micro level. 'Tight' county elites were able to gain full ownership of manor lands, pushing a plurality of peasants into landless status, blunting threats to gentry land control. Poor relief and market labor control were structural outcomes of gentry strategies to maintain micro level authority in the context of a structure changed by macro level elite conflicts. A market structure of labor allocation was an immediate outcome of conflict over land control.