England’s Immigrants 1330 – 1550 Resident Aliens in the Late Middle Ages

The East Midlands

Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Rutland, Northamptonshire

The tax assessments for the East Midlands show a diverse if not especially large immigrant population. The French, Scots and Irish were most numerous, together with various people from the Low Countries, but there were also a few Italians and Scandinavians, and even an Aragonese servant and a Portuguese sawyer. Most towns had only relatively small communities of recorded aliens, and probably the largest, Coventry, was seemingly omitted in 1440. However, later returns show that both Coventry and Nottingham were home to groups of Icelanders, and the port town of Boston contained 80 alien taxpayers in 1440, although few details about them are known. The vast majority of those with a recorded occupation were servants or labourers, but the textile trade was also well represented, with a number of tailors and weavers being assessed.

Cite this page:

England’s Immigrants 1330 – 1550 (www.englandsimmigrants.com, version 1.0, 19 March 2024), http://www.englandsimmigrants.com/page/sources/alien-subsidies/the-east-midlands