English medieval customs accounts contain a mass of evidence for the volume of trade, the variety of commodities, the changing fortunes of each port, and the traders. Inland trade is much more obscure and we need to know more about the purchasers of a cargo of imports after they were landed. This gap in our knowledge is filled for one major port, Southampton, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by the brokage books. Six volumes (covering six years) of these invaluable sources have been published by the Southampton Record Society (now the Southampton Record Series), but thanks to a research project at the University of Winchester, 13 of the brokage books dated between 1430 and 1540 have been entered onto a database. This volume contains an exhaustive analysis of the brokage books on the database, though unfortunately the data from the published texts were not included.

Carts leaving Southampton had to pay a toll, and those collecting the money recorded the name of the carter, the goods that he was carrying, the cart's destination, and the owner of the goods. The quantity of data is daunting, as between 1,200 and 2,000 carts left the town each year. The team assembled by the editor of this book, Michael Hicks, begin their analysis with chapters on the town of Southampton, the economic context and the seasonality of trade. They then survey Southampton's trade with other towns, dealing with Salisbury, London and Winchester, and the small towns of Hampshire and Wiltshire. Another chapter focuses on the destinations outside the main hinterland, mostly in the Midlands and south-west. This is followed by discussion of such commodities as wine, fish, luxuries, dyes, alum and oil. The results of these inquiries are lavishly illustrated with graphs, pie charts, tables and maps.

The book to some extent confirms patterns already known, such as Southampton's connection with a hinterland within 50 km, and also with London for which it served as an outport. The principal traded goods were wine, fish, dyestuffs and iron. We appreciate the importance of the medieval road network, which was at its busiest in January and February, contrary to common assumptions about the state of the roads in the winter. The volume of Southampton's trade as measured by the brokage records reached some rather high levels in the mid-fifteenth century, but then declined and continued to fall in the early sixteenth century.

There are some surprises, mysteries and insights. Many carts from Southampton travelled to Bristol loaded with wine, despite Bristol's role as a port for French wine, which can be explained because on the return journey cloth from the Bristol region could be carried for export by the Italians based in Southampton. The increasing numbers of cart journeys to Basingstoke point to the phenomenal expansion of that town between 1440 and 1540. Among the curiosities, we find that Weyhill Fair received large quantities of garlic, and that cartloads of iron were delivered to the Hampshire village of Cheriton. We can still wonder that a cart set out from a south coast port to deliver a load to distant Coventry, and even Derby.

We gain so much high-quality evidence from the brokage books, it seems ungrateful to ask for more. The books, however, name the town for which the carts were headed, but the ultimate destination of the goods they carried is not known. Numerous carts left Southampton for Salisbury, itself a centre for consumption, but the city also served as a distribution point from which yet more carts and packhorses were taking the goods to the towns and villages of Wiltshire. We would understand the trading system better if we knew more about those who bought the contents of the carts. Occasionally, a recipient is known, as some carts loaded with wine were heading for inns, and others were servicing the needs of monasteries and aristocratic households. Some of the loads for Winchester belonged to artisans in the cloth industry, who used in their crafts the oil, alum and dyestuffs that were carried by Southampton carts.

The commentaries on the brokage books which fill most of the chapters are focused on the commodities and the towns to which they were carried. At the beginning of the book, references are made to Coleman's idea that Southampton's experience shows that a town could decline while huge amounts of trade flowed through it, as the trade was in the hands of Londoners or the Italians. Ruddock offered an alternative that Southampton's merchants derived some benefit from its international trade. The concluding chapter of this book does not give readers a new hypothesis, but concentrates on technical problems. We are rightly told that the information has potential, which challenges future researchers to build new interpretations from the abundant materials that this book and database has made available.