Yesterday I came across an interesting article summarising recent work by a group of Cambridge University historians and geographers which had looked at the legal rights of medieval English peasants. This argued that they had more rights by customary law within their manors than popular stereotypes might suggest, and indeed that rights and obligations varied across the country. Any study of manorial patterns and management over English regions reveals that, depending very much upon the geography of the area and historic patterns of settlement. The Common Law might be less important to the peasantry but it was not without import in their lives. The image of the oppressed, downtrodden villein has received a further knock from the historical evidence. That is not to deny that agricultural life was hard - it always is - but it was balanced by customary rights, and not without breaks in the routine mandated by the Church.
The article can be read at The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure,
By coincidence last weekend I published here on the blog my review of Constance Brittain Bouchard’s study of French medieval peasant life Negotiation and Resistance which draws similar conclusions about the situation in east central France in the tenth to twelfth century.
Another book I read a few years back which serves as a good introduction to and summary of English medieval rural life is Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies. This concentrates on the manorial court rolls of Elton in Huntingdonshire, which was a possession of Ramsey Abbey.
Both Bouchard and Gies are available on Amazon, including Kindle.
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