Attitudes towards migrants

Different responses to the same migrants

In medieval Britain, c.1250–c.1500, migrants could encounter welcome, legal discrimination or violence. Their treatment depended partly on their religion, occupation, wealth and place of birth, but also on changing circumstances: a ruler might welcome useful workers while local competitors resented them. The examples here mainly concern England, where royal policies and surviving records reveal these contrasts.

Official responses were the policies and actions of authorities, including the Crown, Parliament and local officials. Unofficial responses were the attitudes and actions of people outside government, from neighbours offering goodwill to crowds attacking migrants. These were connected: complaints from traders could lead to official restrictions, while royal privileges could provoke resentment.

Why rulers welcomed some migrants

Migrants brought skills, trade and finance that rulers valued. Edward III encouraged foreign artisans, including Flemish weavers, to settle and share their expertise. Developing cloth-making helped England move beyond exporting raw wool towards producing manufactured goods. From the Crown’s perspective, welcoming skilled migrants could strengthen the economy.

Foreign merchants and bankers were useful too. German merchants connected England to the Hanseatic trading network, while Italian bankers could provide loans to monarchs. Official acceptance therefore often reflected economic usefulness rather than a belief that all migrants should receive equal treatment.

Legal protection could also make migrants’ lives more secure. By the end of the medieval period, foreigners had the right to a jury which included people sharing their language and origins. Such protection shows why medieval government responses cannot be described simply as hostile.

Denization: greater rights, but not complete equality

A person born outside England could be legally classified as an alien. This status affected rights and obligations; it did not mean that the person had recently arrived or was unwelcome to their neighbours. Children of migrants born in England were not aliens.

From the 1370s, the Crown issued letters of denization. These royal grants allowed foreign-born people to be treated broadly as English-born subjects. Recipients gave up their former loyalties and swore allegiance to the English king. In return, they gained rights including owning land and having cases dealt with in English courts.

Gervase le Vulre, a royal French secretary, and his wife Joan received a grant on 21 January 1441. It recognised his service to the king and gave them extensive property and legal rights. Although the grant described them as originating from France, other records identify Gervase as Flemish. His case demonstrates that royal service and loyalty could matter greatly in securing acceptance.

Denization did not necessarily remove higher customs duties charged to foreigners, and it was not the same as the later process of naturalisation. It was also costly: some grants cost around £2, while fees could reach £50. A skilled worker’s annual gross income was around £5. Many ordinary migrants therefore neither needed nor could afford denization and continued to live in England through the goodwill of their neighbours.

Religious prejudice and the expulsion of Jews

Religion could separate migrants from the wider population. Nearly all inhabitants of medieval England were Roman Catholic Christians, while Jewish communities formed a religious minority. Jews had earlier received royal protection, but this did not prevent prejudice or guarantee lasting security.

False accusations known as blood libels, including one at Lincoln, claimed that Jews murdered Christian children. These were fabricated stories, not evidence of crimes. Religious hostility could combine with economic resentment, particularly towards Jewish moneylenders.

When Italian bankers became available to lend to monarchs, rulers had less need for Jewish lenders. This weakening of their economic usefulness helped undermine royal protection. After harassment and discrimination, England’s Jews were expelled in 1290. Their experience shows how unofficial prejudice and official action could reinforce one another, and how protection could be withdrawn when a community was no longer considered useful.

Competition, resentment and violence

The same skills that made migrants attractive to rulers could make them unpopular with competitors. Some English workers accused Flemish weavers of taking jobs. Italian bankers and German merchants were accused of pushing up property prices, while foreigners more generally were accused of receiving favoured treatment from authorities. These accusations reveal contemporary resentment; they should not automatically be accepted as accurate descriptions of migrants’ effects.

Trade guilds could press rulers to control foreign competitors. This was one route by which unofficial hostility influenced official policy.

Resentment sometimes became violence. During the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, Flemish artisans in London were massacred. Migrants became targets amid wider anger about wealth, power and inequality. This is a clear example of an unofficial response, contrasting sharply with the Crown’s encouragement of skilled foreign workers.

War, restrictions and the alien subsidy

England’s connections with Europe could encourage migration, but war could also increase suspicion. During the Hundred Years War, English setbacks in France intensified anti-foreign feeling, especially in the 1430s and 1440s. Anti-alien petitions reached Parliament, linking public hostility to demands for government action.

In the parliamentary session of 1439–1440, restrictions were approved for foreign merchants. They could no longer buy or sell goods to other aliens within England and had to be supervised by English ‘hosts’. They were also required to sell their goods within eight months and spend their earnings on goods available in England within that period. These rules aimed to prevent what critics believed was wealth flowing out of the kingdom.

In 1440, Parliament imposed an alien subsidy, initially for three years. Alien householders owed 16d a year, while non-householders owed 6d a year; ‘d’ means old pence. The tax reflected the belief that aliens possessed greater wealth than the king’s subjects and singled out foreign-born residents for an additional burden.

There were exemptions, including Welsh people, children under twelve, members of religious orders, alien women married to English or Welsh men, and some denized migrants. Local acceptance of exemptions varied. Official treatment therefore differed both between groups and between places.

Living together as well as conflict

Violence and discriminatory laws are important, but they do not describe every migrant’s daily experience. Fifteenth-century tax records show foreign-born residents across England, while relatively few episodes of anti-migrant violence are recorded. This suggests that many migrants lived peacefully alongside their neighbours, although a lack of recorded violence cannot prove that prejudice was absent.

The overall pattern was mixed. Governments could welcome skills and reward loyalty while also taxing, restricting or expelling migrants. Ordinary people could accept migrant neighbours while others resented competition or religious difference. Economic interests, beliefs and war help explain why acceptance and hostility existed together rather than forming a simple progression from one to the other.

Official responses

• Welcome: Edward III encouraged skilled foreign artisans, including Flemish weavers, to develop manufacturing.
• Legal inclusion: letters of denization, issued from the 1370s, offered greater rights in return for allegiance. Gervase le Vulre and Joan received a grant in 1441; cost limited access.
• Exclusion: religious hostility and declining royal dependence on Jewish lenders helped undermine protection; Jews were expelled in 1290.
• Restrictions: foreign merchants faced trading controls in 1439–1440.
• Alien subsidy, 1440: annual charges of 16d for householders and 6d for non-householders, with exemptions.

Unofficial responses

• Many migrants lived peacefully through neighbours’ goodwill.
• Religious prejudice included fabricated blood libels.
• Competition encouraged accusations about jobs, property prices and unfair privileges.
• Flemish artisans were massacred in London during the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt.

Explain the contrasts

Economic usefulness encouraged welcome; competition encouraged resentment. Religion and wartime suspicion intensified hostility. Public pressure could shape government policy, but royal protection did not guarantee local acceptance.