What was life really like in England in the later middle ages? This comprehensive introduction explores the full breadth of English life and society in the period 1200–1500. Opening with a survey of historiographical and demographic debates, the book then explores the central themes of later medieval society, including the social hierarchy, life in towns and the countryside, religious belief, and forms of individual and collective identity. Clustered around these themes a series of authoritative essays develops our understanding of other important social and cultural features of the period, including the experience of war, work, law and order, youth and old age, ritual, travel and transport, and the development of writing and reading. Written in an accessible and engaging manner by an international team of leading scholars, this book is indispensable both as an introduction for students and as a resource for specialists.
ROSEMARY HORROX is Fellow in History, Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, and lectures and writes extensively on later medieval English history. She is the author of Richard III: a study of service (1989) and The Black Death (1994), and editor of Fifteenth-Century Attitudes (1994) and Beverley Minster: an illustrated history (2000).
W. MARK ORMROD is Professor of Medieval History at the University of York and is a specialist in the history of later medieval England. He is the author of The Reign of Edward III (1990) and Political Life in Medieval England 1300–1450 (1995), and has edited (with Philip Lindley) The Black Death in England (1996) and (with Nicola McDonald) Rites of Passage: cultures of transition in fourteenth-century England (2004).
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© Cambridge University Press 2006
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First published 2006
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-78345-3 (hardback)
ISBN-10: 0-521-78345-3 (hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-78954-7 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-521-78954-0 (pbk.)
1. Great Britain – Social life and customs – 1066–1485. 2. Great Britain – History – Medieval period, 1066–1485. I. Horrox, Rosemary. II. Ormrod, W. M., 1957–
DA185.s63 2006
942.03 – dc22
ISBN-13 978-0-521-78345-3 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-78345-3 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-78954-7 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-78954-0 paperback
List of illustrationspage | Page vii | |
Preface | viii | |
List of contributors | x | |
List of abbreviations | xi | |
1 | Introduction: Social structure and economic change in late medieval England S. H. Rigby | 1 |
2 | An age of deference Peter Coss | 31 |
3 | The enterprise of war Michael Prestwich | 74 |
4 | Order and law Simon Walker | 91 |
5 | Social mobility Philippa C. Maddern | 113 |
6 | Town life Richard Britnell | 134 |
7 | The land Bruce M. S. Campbell | 179 |
8 | A consumer economy Maryanne Kowaleski | 238 |
9 | Moving around Wendy R. Childs | 260 |
10 | Work and leisure Mavis E. Mate | 276 |
11 | Religious belief Eamon Duffy | 293 |
12 | A magic universe Valerie I. J. Flint | 340 |
13 | Renunciation Janet Burton | 356 |
14 | Ritual constructions of society Charles Phythian-Adams | 369 |
15 | Identities Miri Rubin | 383 |
16 | Life and death: the ages of man P. J. P. Goldberg | 413 |
17 | The wider world Robin Frame | 435 |
18 | Writing and reading Paul Strohm | 454 |
19 | Conclusion Rosemary Horrox | 473 |
Further reading | 480 | |
Index | 505 |
7.1 | Agricultural prices, agricultural wages and real wages in England, 1208–1466 (five-year moving averages) | 216 |
6.1 | The twenty wealthiest English towns in 1524, with changes in ranking since 1334 | 154 | |
7.1 | Estimated English seigniorial landed incomes in the early fourteenth century | 202 | |
8.1 | The changing labour cost of a basket of consumables, 1220–1500 | 202 |
This book is intended as a comprehensive and accessible account of the society of England between the early thirteenth and the late fifteenth centuries. The dates 1200–1500 conventionally describe the ‘later middle ages’ in England, but are obviously not impermeable: some of the contributions that follow necessarily take certain matters back to the eleventh and forward to the sixteenth centuries. The book is organised around five large chapters which provide analyses of the historiographical background and the debate about demography (chapter 1), the social hierarchy and attitudes towards it (chapter 2), the experience of life in towns (chapter 6) and in the countryside (chapter 7), the forms of religious belief current in the society (chapter 2) and the other kinds of identity, individual and collective, that built on and helped to inform social organisation (chapter 15). Around these chapters is a series of shorter, more specialised studies that develops further some of the major themes from war to work, law to literacy, consumerism to magic.
The book thus aims to respond to a new agenda of social history which has extended the range of the sub-discipline from a preoccupation with the material existence of the lower orders to include a range of non-material aspects of life including attitudes to work and to crime, the development of ideas about nationality, and the existence (or otherwise) of self-consciousness or ‘individualism’. As such, this book draws no distinction between ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ history, and tries to represent the experience of those who lived in the later middle ages in as broad a manner as possible. An important part of this holistic approach involves an understanding that interpretation of historical evidence is often unstable, reflecting in turn the patchy nature of the evidence. This is particularly evident with regard to the estimates of the population of England before and after the Black Death, and we have aimed not to impose arbitrary figures but to allow different contributors to set out their own arguments on this important and still controversial theme.
In the notes the place of publication is London, unless otherwise stated.
Richard Britnell | University of Durham |
Janet Burton | University of Wales, Lampeter |
Bruce M. S. Campbell | Queen’s University of Belfast |
Wendy R. Childs | University of Leeds |
Peter Coss | Cardiff University |
Eamon Duffy | Magdalene College, Cambridge |
Valerie I. J. Flint | University of Hull |
Robin Frame | University of Durham |
P. J. P. Goldberg | University of York |
Rosemary Horrox | Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge |
Maryanne Kowaleski | Fordham University, New York |
Philippa C. Maddern | University of Western Australia, Perth |
Mavis E. Mate | University of Oregon |
W. Mark Ormrod | University of York |
Charles Phythian-Adams | University of Leicester |
Michael Prestwich | University of Durham |
S. H. Rigby | University of Manchester |
Miri Rubin | Queen Mary, University of London |
Paul Strohm | Columbia University, New York |
&draggar;Simon Walker | University of Sheffield |
Ag. Hist. Revi. | Agricultural History Review |
AmHR | American Historical Review |
BL | British Library |
EcHR | Economic History Review |
EETS | Early English Text Society |
EHR | English Historical Review |
JEH | Journal of Ecclesiastical History |
JMH | Journal of Medieval History |
P&P | Past and Present |
PRO | Public Record Office (The National Archives) |
RS | Rolls Series |
TRHS | Transactions of the Royal Historical Society |