This information is a bit of a surprise to me, I had always thought of the land as belonging to the crown, the church and the aristos.
From the Cambridge University Press:AbstractThis paper uses a data set of freehold land and property transactions from medieval England to highlight the growing commercialization of the economy during that time. By drawing on the legal records, we are able to demonstrate that the medieval real estate market provided the opportunity for investors to profit. Careful analysis of the data provides evidence of group purchases, multiple transactions, and investors buying outside their own localities. The identification of these “investors” and their buying behaviors, set within the context of the English medieval economy, contributes to the early commercialization debate.
Aims
The subject of this article is the role of freehold land and property in the developing commercial economy of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As we will detail, in many circumstances, property in medieval England could be bought and sold as a means of accruing profit. During our research we have created the largest data set of English property buyers and sellers to date, detailing close to 100,000 records. By analyzing the data and identifying trends, we will argue that this type of commercial activity signals the beginning of the development of property as an asset class. Speculation enabled “medieval investors” the ability to “profit” both in terms of the social advancement that landownership bestowed and from the economic value of the real estate equity and rental incomes. We further highlight this dynamic through a number of case studies of some prominent investors identified from the data set. These investors made group purchases, were involved in multiple transactions, and bought land in areas outside their own local influence.
The study is divided into two sections. In the first, we examine the social background of the individuals involved in this market and how this changed over time. In the second, we attempt to examine the motivations of the individuals involved in freehold property transactions for evidence of investment activity. To date, analysis of medieval property investment has been based largely on case studies, which, though useful, are limited in their ability to quantify the extent and overall character of this phenomenon; furthermore, many existing studies have focused on property investment by ecclesiastical institutions rather than individuals.1 This is in part due to the difficulty inherent in attributing motives to buyers; it is problematic to label someone an “investor” without detailed investigation of his or her transaction history and business practices on a case-by-case basis. We attempt to tackle this problem by defining some key characteristics of an investment transaction. We use a broad definition of investment, signified by purchase for means of profit rather than consumption. Evidence for property investment is taken from three main indicators: (1) the buyer has purchased property as part of a group, suggesting the existence of business partnerships or syndicates; (2) the buyer engages in multiple transactions within a relatively short period of time; and (3) there is a significant distance between the regional origins of the buyer or seller (as stated in the source) and the location of the property. We will argue that an increasing number of transactions of this type took place over the course of the fifteenth century, in line with the growing commercialization of the English property market....
....MUCH MORE
