Circulation

Abstract

This chapter analyses the logic and dynamics of the circulation of wealth (both movable and immovable) in Northumbria. Its main contention is that wealth circulation is an element that organizes the ruling class as it redistributes the access to the labour of the peasantry among them. The first part of the chapter will analyse how monasteries might have been founded as a strategy to grant autonomy to particular factions of the aristocracy. The second part will analyse how coinage could also represent both the display of power and the ability to extract surplus from the peasantry, highlighting the connection between land donation to the Church and the submission of the peasantry.