A. T. Brown's Rural Society and Economic Change in County Durham: Recession and Recovery, c.1400–1640, based on a Durham University PhD dissertation, is a well-written, thoroughly researched, and compellingly argued analysis of landholding in county Durham in the late Middle Ages and the Tudor and early Stuart periods. It is an important contribution not only to the history of the county, but more generally to the economic and social history of England as a whole.

Brown's account begins around 1400, when England was experiencing a deep recession, and continues into the sixteenth century, when the population rose steeply, and prices did likewise. Brown discusses the strategies that landowners developed to deal with the problems they faced and argues that the policies they adopted (or the paths they selected) in the years of recession constricted their choices in the age of inflation, with effects that sometimes caused substantial difficulties for them. This idea of “path dependency” plays a major explanatory role in Brown's argument. Durham is unusual in that so much land was owned by the church, and in particular by the bishop and the cathedral priory (later the dean and chapter). The church could not sell or alienate these lands, unlike lay landlords, who could do both. In the first two chapters Brown discusses the ecclesiastical lands. The next chapter is about a few great lay landlords, and the fourth chapter concerns the gentry. The coal industry of the northeast of England expanded greatly from the second half of the sixteenth century, and in the fifth chapter Brown discusses the impact of this new industrial wealth upon landownership. The final two chapters concern leaseholders on ecclesiastical estates and the diverging experiences of yeomen and smallholders.

Brown's major theme is that many of the wealthier landlords abandoned demesne farming in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, when the demand for agricultural products was low, and instead lived on rents. Once the population and prices rose again, it sometimes proved difficult for them to readjust, and greater economic opportunities awaited those who could profit more directly from high food prices, or who exploited mineral deposits on their lands. In the sixteenth century, the owners of the greatest estates often faced difficulties because they were too dependent upon rental income, whereas those a little further down the social scale were better placed to profit from inflation. Brown argues that in Durham the sixteenth century witnessed both a crisis of the aristocracy and the rise of the gentry (or, more strictly, a crisis for rentiers, and an age of opportunity for those who put their land to productive use).

Brown contends that the strategies adopted on the bishop of Durham's lands differed markedly from those which prevailed on the estates of the cathedral priory (and later the dean and chapter), and that notably divergent outcomes ensued. The bishop was less successful in increasing his income than the dean and chapter, though this resulted in part from royal intervention in his affairs rather than from his own policies. By the end of the period, a few yeomen on the bishop's lands had amassed substantial estates that approached those of the gentry in size, while many of the other inhabitants were impoverished smallholders. On the lands of the dean and chapter, by contrast, there was much less diversity in the size of holdings, or in types of tenure (21-year leases became the rule), and much greater economic equality. Brown argues that the divergent outcomes on the two great ecclesiastical estates were the consequence of “path dependency” and resulted from policies introduced early by the bishop and the priory. But Brown also shows that the crown's actions had a serious impact on the bishop's room to maneuver. Queen Elizabeth confiscated many of the bishopric's estates and forced the bishop to grant tenants long leases on manors and mines. It is difficult to quantify how much effect royal policy (and other factors) had, and therefore it is also difficult to clinch the thesis about “path dependency.” Moreover, Brown presents relatively little evidence about what might have motivated the bishops and other landowners to adopt the policies they did, and more generally on the ideas that underlay economic decisions, perhaps because such evidence is scarce or lacking.

By the early seventeenth century, few of the lay families who had formed the social elite in 1400 retained importance. They had been replaced in significance by rising lesser gentry and by coal merchants. Brown convincingly rejects the conventional notion that merchants standardly aimed to join the landed elite and to trade urban for rural wealth. Many of them had no such ambitions, and social theory often already ranked merchants as the equals of gentlemen. Brown argues that the decay and fragmentation of many of the great estates was the result not simply of individual misfortune but of long-term economic factors. Arguably, crown policy was also of central importance. Brown notes that the reduction in the size of northern estates was a deliberate aim of Elizabethan governments. For example, the great estate of the Neville Earls of Westmorland was forfeited to the crown after the earl joined the Northern Rising in 1569.

Brown convincingly contends that 1500 is not a useful dividing line between periods, at least as far Durham is concerned. It contributes valuably to the historiography of feudalism and capitalism, the rise of the gentry, and much else. Durham was in some ways exceptional. It was a border region, with unusually large and compact ecclesiastical and lay estates, and a precocious coal industry. But much of what this Brown has to say is relevant to the social and economic history of late medieval and early modern England as a whole, and this fine first monograph deserves a wide readership.