This thesis explores how rural society adapted to the fifteenth-century recession, and
how this affected the ability of their sixteenth-century counterparts to respond to inflation. It
does so through three primary sections: the first explores how the Bishops of Durham and the
monks of Durham Cathedral Priory responded differently to the fifteenth-century recession
and analyses the subsequently divergent development of their estates. By the seventeenth
century, all of the Dean and Chapter’s lands were consolidated holdings on 21-year leases,
whereas a confused mixture of copyhold and leasehold land had developed on the bishops’
estate. The second section explores the balance of landed power in the Palatinate of Durham
from the late-fourteenth to the mid-seventeenth century amongst the laity. This further
explores whether the ‘crisis of the aristocracy’ and the ‘rise of the gentry’ are misnomers
more adequately phrased in terms of land usage as the ‘rise of agricultural producers’ and the
‘crisis of rentier landlords’. The final section explores how the tenantry of the above estates
survived this period, with the gradual stratification of landed society and the emergence of
the yeomanry as a social group. It especially focuses upon how the divergent development of
the two ecclesiastical estates impacted upon the opportunities and challenges facing the
tenants of Durham. The overall conclusion reached by this thesis is that estate management
and institutional constraints were often crucial factors in the transformation of the English
countryside: these two neighbouring ecclesiastical estates faced broadly the same problems
and yet the composition of their estates diverged significantly across this period. Institutional
constraints had a profound effect not only on levels of rent, but also the tenure of holdings
and ultimately their relative size; three of the most important factors in the formation of
agrarian capitalism.