Bibliography - Professor Mavis E. Mate
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The economic and social roots of medieval popular rebellion: Sussex in 1450-1451, by M. Mate, published November 1992 in The Economic History Review (vol. 45, issue 4, article, pp.661-676) accessible at: British Library   View Online

The East Sussex Land Market and Agrarian Class Structure in the Late Middle Ages, by Mavis E. Mate, published May 1993 in Past & Present (no. 139, article, pp.46-55)   View Online

Daughters, Wives and Widows after the Black Death: Women in Sussex, 1350-1535, by Mavis E. Mate, published 2 April 1998 (235 pp., Boydell Press, ISBN-10: 0851155340 & ISBN-13: 9780851155340) accessible at: The Keep [LIB/500095] & West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries

It has long been thought that the post Black Death period offered unparallelled opportunities for women. However, through a careful consideration of economic and legal changes affecting women of all social classes and conditions, the author shows that this was not the case, taking issue with orthodox opinion. She argues that marriage at a late age was not customary for women, and that the ability of wives to supplement their income with intermittent paid labour (at harvest time, for example) was not so great as has been supposed: rather, most married women spent more time on unpaid agricultural labour on their own land than their peers had done in the pre-plague economy. Professor Mate also demonstrates that there is little evidence to support the current belief that widowhood was the period in a woman's life when she enjoyed most power, freedom, and independence; moreover, legal changes were a mixed blessing for women, leaving some widows with a larger portion and a more secure title to land, but totally depriving others. Throughout, the book pays much attention to class as well as gender, showing how many things were determined by it, from what a woman wore or ate to the age at which she married, her power within the household, and even her vulnerability to rape

Trade and Economic Developments, 1450-1550: The Experience of Kent, Surrey and Sussex, by Mavis E. Mate, published 1 February 2006 (270 pp., Boydell Press, ISBN-10: 1843831899 & ISBN-13: 9781843831891) accessible at: East Sussex Libraries

The changes that affected the English economic landscape between 1450 and 1550 are examined here through a close study of three south-eastern counties which provide a rich variety of sources. Mavis Mate pays particular attention to the growing commercialisation of the brewing industry and its impact on women, the expansion of trade with Normandy, Brittany and the Low Countries, and the rise of trade outside the market place. Using material from the lay subsidy rolls of 1524-5, she finds a sharp difference between towns in their distribution of wealth, the size of their alien population and the number of men earning wages of forty shillings. Although the growth of London undoubtedly influenced the areas south of the Thames, its markets were always in competition with local markets and the need to provision Calais. Other changes included the increasing exploitation of woodland to produce fuel, wood and charcoal, and the intensive cultivation of gardens, with the growing of hemp, saffron and all kinds of fruit trees. These developments would not have been possible without changes in the customary land market that allowed gentry, the yeomen, and merchants to buy up former bond-land and build up substantial holdings. As land accumulated in new hands, the former small-holders either disappeared or held their land under different terms. Their standard of living, which had improved in the hundred years after the Black Death, dropped when wages failed to keep pace with prices.