Chapter 8 addresses the evidence for the presence of people from religious and racial minorities in England between 1300 and 1550. While stressing that the numbers of people who can be thus identified remains very small, it urges a corrective to the body of scholarship that supposes the general absence of minorities (including black people and Muslim people) in England before the middle of the sixteenth century. The chapter includes an assessment of the 1290 expulsion of the Jews from England and the wider impact of this measure on attitudes to minorities in the centuries that followed, before going on to identify examples of 'Saracens', 'Moors' and people of 'Inde' in the English records of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The chapter concludes with a reassessment of the supposedly racist tendencies of sixteenth-century English governments and provides a case study of the 'mass denization' of French people resident in England (and some others) during the reign of Henry VIII.

Chapter 4 is the first of two chapters that deal with immigrants to England under the various 'national' labels that were ascribed to them by the English crown and its agents. It assesses the numbers, social profile and geographical distribution of Welsh, Irish, 'Islander' and Scottish immigrants to England. The data for the Welsh is poor; although it seems likely that the highest concentrations of Welsh migrants settled close to the Welsh border in the English West Midlands and South-West, there is some evidence for Welsh settlement further afield, too. The Irish evidence is stronger, and reveals that a significant proportion of Irish migrants to England may have been skilled and prosperous people who made targeted decisions about the optimal places to settle. The 'Islanders' were people from the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the Orkney Islands (the latter being treated separately from Scotland because, at the time, they were still under the jurisdiction of the king of Norway). They appear in small numbers. Finally, the evidence for the Scots presence in England is the strongest of all, and reveals significant numbers of Scots migrating across the border into the northern counties of England, many of them transient agricultural workers but some of them being higher-status individuals such as merchants and members of the clergy. These higher-status Scots also settled more generally around England, and were a recognised presence in the South and East.

Chapter 9 is the first of two chapters that consider the cultural aspects of the topic of immigration to later medieval England. It eschews the language of 'assimilation' and instead considers degrees of acculturation, stressing not only that the lives of immigrants were altered by the process of movement but that English culture (and 'Englishness' itself) were influenced and changed by the immigrant presence. After reviewing contemporary understandings of national characteristics, and the various (and often derogatory) stereotypes that the English used for their European neighbours, it considers those who effectively changed nationality (whether through denization or through other means) in the given period and whether their change of status can be seen to have been an affective, or merely a pragmatic, process. The chapter then proceeds to consider the internationalism of the royal court and its patronage of alien writers, musicians and artists. Next, it considers the role of language and the methods by which immigrants acquired various degrees of understanding of the English vernacular. Finally, the chapter reviews the evidence of immigrants' personal names as represented in English government records and considers what these can tell us about the perpetuation or loss of 'foreign' identities.

Chapter 5 is the second of the two chapters that focus on the 'national' identities of immigrants to later medieval England as evidenced by contemporary governmental records. It identifies five groups: the French (who were often identified and subdivided by region as the Bretons, the Normans, the Gascons, etc.); the 'Dutch' (a catch-all term to describe people from the Low Countries and the area covered by modern Germany); Scandinavians and Icelanders; the Italians; the Iberians; and the 'Greeks' (a term used to describe a variety of people from the eastern Mediterranean). The French and the 'Dutch' appeared in comparatively large numbers in England, while those from the Mediterranean, though much fewer in number, were often socially and economically prominent. The chapter considers the impact of the Hundred Years War on patterns of migration between France and England. It also discusses the consequences of Ottoman advance in the eastern Mediterranean as a contributing factor to the migration of 'Greeks' into England in the later fifteenth century.

Immigrant England, 1300–1550 provides a comprehensive account of the identities, nationalities, occupations, families and experiences of first-generation immigrants to England during the later Middle Ages. It addresses both official policy and public responses to immigration in the age of the Black Death, the Hundred Years War and the early Tudor monarchy, revealing how dramatic changes in the English economy fundamentally affected the levels of tolerance and discrimination allowed to immigrants. Drawing on data unique in Europe before the nineteenth century, the book provides both a quantitative analysis of immigrants and a qualitative assessment of the reception that these incomers received from English society at large. Accounting for 1 per cent or more of the population of England in the fifteenth century and coming from all parts of Europe and beyond, immigrants spread out over the kingdom, settling in the countryside as well as in towns, and in a multitude of occupations from agricultural labourers to skilled craftspeople and professionals. Often encouraged and welcomed, sometimes vilified and victimised, immigrants were always on the social and political agenda in late medieval England.

Chapter 6 is the first of two chapters dedicated to an analysis of the economic activities of immigrants to England in the later Middle Ages. It begins by outlining the economic changes in England as a result of the Black Death of 1348 and the major redistribution of wealth that occurred over the following century. In this process, more English consumers had more money available for purchasing non-essential goods. The result was a considerable demand for high-quality products which were either not available in England or were not produced there to the necessary standard or quantity. All of this prompted the migration to England of skilled people working a range of identifiable crafts: in the clothing industry, in the building trades and in victualling (especially the production of beer). Special consideration is given to the cloth industry, since this has often been regarded as providing the defining model for the introduction of alien skilled labour into England in the relevant period. The chapter also considers the role and function of alien merchants in England.