Medieval Migration: Reasons, Impact, and Resident Aliens

Who were medieval resident ‘aliens’?

Medieval England attracted people who settled, worked and built relationships there. The authorities described people considered non-English as aliens. This was a legal category, not a description of how unfamiliar they were with English life. A long-established resident could still be treated differently from an English neighbour.

During the later Middle Ages, tens of thousands of migrants came from other parts of the British Isles and from across continental Europe. England was a separate kingdom: migration within what is now the United Kingdom could therefore involve crossing a political boundary. Immigrants lived in the countryside as well as towns, working as agricultural labourers, household servants, skilled craftspeople and professionals. Their experiences were not confined to wealthy merchants or London.

Why people moved to England

Migration reflected both pressures to leave and opportunities elsewhere. Economic distress, political upheaval and environmental disasters could push people from their homes. Employment and opportunities to use specialist skills could attract them to England. Some arrivals were exiles who could not simply return home.

Flemish cloth workers provide an important example. Flanders, in the Low Countries across the Channel, had specialist textile skills. Flemish exiles working in London could obtain wool more cheaply and securely than competitors across the Channel. They also benefited from royal support. Edward III supported immigrant artisans because he believed their work could serve the common profit, meaning the benefit of the kingdom as a whole.

War could redirect migration too. Gervase de Vulre, a scribe from Bruges in Flanders, worked for the English administration in France. After 1435, French military advances and the collapse of English rule overseas led him to follow his employers to England. His move combined political insecurity with the opportunity to continue his career.

Work, skills and economic impact

Immigrants supplied labour in households, farming and crafts, while some brought specialist knowledge. London’s Flemish weavers produced luxury coloured cloth and striped or checked cloth known as ‘rays’. These required skills that native London producers did not possess at the time. Their products served wealthy customers, including the royal court: in 1362–63, Jacob Bone from Ghent supplied twenty-eight rayed cloths directly to the royal Wardrobe, which organised purchases for the court.

Some immigrant producers also participated in overseas trade. ‘Cloth of Flemish manufacture’ appeared among London’s recorded cloth exports between 1362 and 1366. This connected immigrants’ work in England to wider European markets.

Their impact was therefore more than an increase in population. They contributed specialised goods, labour and commercial connections. However, the benefits were not distributed evenly, and established workers could resent royal support for newcomers.

Protection from rulers, opposition from workers

A guild was an organisation that regulated a trade and defended its members’ interests. Native London weavers wanted immigrant cloth workers brought under their guild’s control. The Flemings instead defended a royal charter granted in 1352 that allowed them to work independently. Both groups petitioned the authorities: immigrants were active in defending their position, rather than simply accepting whatever treatment they received.

The dispute was not a straightforward case of immigrants taking English workers’ customers. Flemish weavers specialised in different cloth. Native London weavers faced serious difficulties from cheaper provincial cloth and restrictions on selling their own products. Control over the Flemings could have given them access to specialist skills and capital, as well as helping with the guild’s financial obligations.

In 1376, native weavers asked the king to cancel the immigrants’ charter or release them from their annual payments to the Crown. The Flemings defended their privileges by arguing that their work benefited the realm. On 4 March 1380, the Crown again confirmed their privileges, including the right to work outside the native guild. Royal economic priorities could therefore conflict with local workers’ interests.

Hostility and the influence of war

Popular responses could become violent. During the Peasants’ Revolt, on 14 June 1381, up to forty Flemings were taken from St Martin Vintry in London and killed. The revolt gave an outlet to longstanding grievances, including hostility towards immigrant workers. Royal privileges had not guaranteed personal safety.

England’s relationships abroad also shaped treatment at home. Fear of a French invasion helped create demands to expel French residents, and a request for their expulsion was granted in 1377. Foreign residents could become targets because of their origins, regardless of their individual actions.

After 1435, the Duke of Burgundy, who ruled Flanders, abandoned his alliance with England and sided with France. This encouraged anti-Flemish feeling in England. Gervase de Vulre presented himself as French rather than Flemish, downplaying an origin that had become politically disadvantageous. His experience shows how changing international alliances could alter the risks attached to an immigrant’s identity.

Legal barriers and routes towards integration

From 1440 to 1487, the authorities collected alien subsidies, direct taxes on non-English residents. Tax returns recorded names, residences, origins and sometimes occupations. Immigrants could be established members of local communities while still being singled out for taxation.

From the 1380s, immigrants could pay for letters of denization. These granted certain rights normally reserved for English people, including owning real estate, paying taxes at lower rates and suing in central courts. They offered a route towards a stronger legal position, but involved a fee and did not mean that every immigrant obtained equal treatment.

Gervase obtained letters of denization in 1441. He nevertheless appeared in an alien subsidy assessment that October, living with his wife in London’s Bishopsgate ward. Legal privileges and classification as an alien could coexist.

How far did immigrants integrate?

Integration meant becoming part of the society where immigrants settled. Work, marriage and everyday relationships could connect them closely to English communities. Katherine, the English wife of the Flemish weaver Gilbert Strynger, brought a legal case after her husband’s murder in 1377. Their marriage demonstrates personal integration; his murder demonstrates its limits.

Gervase reached an influential position as a royal secretary responsible for correspondence with France. When the Commons tried to remove him in 1450, he defended himself by stressing his French-language expertise. The attempt failed, as did later efforts to remove him. His skills helped him maintain a successful career, although he still faced hostility. In his will of 1467, he acknowledged that he had been born in Bruges.

Medieval immigrants could therefore be economically valuable, socially connected and professionally successful without being fully accepted or legally equal. Their experiences depended on occupation, resources, royal protection, local relationships and England’s changing connections with the wider world.