Paternalism and the politics of ‘toll corn’ in early modern England

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines controversies related to a neglected aspect of early modern English grain marketing: toll corn. Such disputes and the litigation that they occasioned provided opportunities for individuals of various positions – including those who sold grain on the market – to reassert normative ideals about the considerations that should take precedence in the market: specifically, the belief that the needs of the poor should outweigh the interests of private individuals (or, less often, corporate entities), and that those in authority had a paternalistic duty to ensure that the poor’s needs were met. That these points were articulated in toll corn-related suits throughout the period indicates their continued hold in some quarters, even after they had ceased to be reflected in ‘official’ policies regarding grain provision. However, controversies about toll corn also demonstrated the extent to which such thinking could ring hollow in practice. Individual authorities’ willingness to fulfil the material component of their duty to their inferiors was not accompanied by a mandate that they do so kindly. The politics of toll corn – like contemporary ideologies and practices of paternalism – both enabled and circumscribed the labouring population’s ability to shape the terms of their subordination in early modern England.