REVIEW ARTICLE
THE TORONTO SCHOOL'S RECONSTITUTION
OF MEDIEVAL PEASANT SOCIETY:
A CRITICAL VIEW*
IN RECENT YEARS STUDENTS OF MEDIEVAL ENGLISH RURAL SOCIETY
have tended to rely more heavily than ever before on manorial court
roll data. These records are not only a mine of information on many
aspects of peasant life but they also survive in abundance. As many
lords exercised both seigneurial and public jurisdiction over their bond
and free tenants, the competence of the manorial courts was very wide
indeed and might cover conveyances and other transactions in land;
regulations for the control of open fields and commons; entry into
tithings; disputes about inheritance, roads and boundaries; trespass
against lord and neighbour; failure to render services, pay rent and
other seigneurial dues; disturbances of public order; infringement of
the assize of ale and bread; breach of agreements between neighbours;
debts; election of jurymen, reeves and other officials. In addition the
court might record deaths, marriages, illegitimate births and the
departure of serfs from the manor.
In some manors the court sat only once, twice or three times a year
but in many others a court was held as frequently as every three weeks.
The proceedings of the court were often diligently recorded by the
manorial clerks, and lords took great care to preserve the court rolls
since they served as a kind of land register. The earliest surviving
court roll dates from 1245, but thereafter they become quite common.
Since Seebohm, Maitland and Vinogradoff historians of medieval
peasant society have often used court roll evidence in their studies. But
much of the data available in these records about individual peasants
and the range of their social and economic activities remains largely
unexploited. In recent years, however, Professor J. A. Raftis and his
colleagues of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto
have published a number of studies based on manorial court rolls. In
these they have demonstrated that a systematic and quantitative
analysis of the data available in court records opens up new horizons
for the study of the peasantry.1
* The comments and suggestions of C. Dyer, H. Stopes-Roe, D. Katz, D. Spitzer
and Professor R. H. Hilton have been of great assistance in the preparation of this
article.
1
J. A. Raftis, Tenure and Mobility: Studies in the Social History of the Medieval
English Village (Toronto, 1964); J. A. Raftis, Warboys: Two Hundred Years in the
Life of an English Medieval Village (Toronto, 1974); J. A. Raftis, "Social Structures
(com. onp. 142)
I42
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 85
Raftis and his associates have examined the court rolls of the
Ramsey Abbey manors in Huntingdonshire, which date from the last
quarter of the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth centuries, and
have utilized the evidence so obtained to measure demographic and
migration trends, residence patterns of peasant families, even the
amount of friction to be found in certain villages. They have examined
the structure of the peasant family and have identified the various
roles assumed by specific groups of families in village economy and
society. They have traced changes in the degree of cohesion and interpeasant co-operation in the village community. They have even tried,
by means of their analysis of the court records, to secure some insight
into the collective psychology of villagers. Their work in these fields
has demonstrated the potential value of these records as a source for
the study of peasant society. Nevertheless various uncritical uses and
misinterpretations of the records appear in their work and it is on
these that I would like to concentrate here. It will also be of value to
examine some of their fundamental assumptions about the nature of
the medieval peasantry and society.
*
#
•
One of the main problems in using court roll evidence to study a
village population is the difficulty of isolating and identifying the
various individuals whose names appear in the records. Although
some English peasants already had surnames in the thirteenth
century, these were in fact neither fixed nor stable.2 Individual
villagers frequently appear in the records under more than one name
and many under more than two. They were variously styled by the
clerks according to either occupation, township, locality, place of
origin, family relationship or outstanding personal characteristics.
For example, Alexander, a villager from Romsley in the west midlands, who appears in the court records between 1274 and 1293, lived
in the small hamlet of Kenelmestowe, near the church of St. Kenelm,
and was a clerk by profession. Consequently he appears in the court
records under three different surnames: "de Kenelmstowe", "de St.
(note 1 com.)
in Five East Midland Villages", Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xviii (1965), pp. 83-99;
J. A. Raftis, "The Concentration of Responsibility in Five Villages", Medieval
Studies, ixviii (1966), pp. 92-118; J. A. Raftis, "Changes in an English Village after
the Black Death", Medieval Studies, xxix (1967), pp. 158-77; E. B. Dewindt, Land
and People in Holywell-Cum-Needingworth (Toronto, 1972); A. Dewindt, "Peasant
Power Structures in Fourteenth-Century King's Ripton", Medieval Studies, xxxviii
(1976), pp. 236-67; E. Britton, "The Peasant Family in Fourteenth-Century England", J7- Peasant Studies, v (1976), pp. 2-7; E. Britton, The Community of the Vill:
A Study in the History of the Family and Village Life in Fourteenth-Century England
(Toronto, 1977).
1
The instability of peasant surnames has been observed by G. C. Homans, who has
made a careful study of numerous medieval court rolls: G. C. Homans, English
Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (New York, 1975 edn.), p. 217.
MEDIEVAL PEASANT SOCIETY
143
3
Kenelm" and the "Clerk". It seems that peasant surnames tended to
stabilize after the Plague and the number of aliases appearing in the
post-1350 court rolls is therefore greatly reduced. However, there is
a second obstacle to any positive identification of individual villagers
in post- as well as pre-Plague court records, namely the frequent
appearance of different people bearing the same Christian name and
surname. Peasants in medieval villages made use of a limited number
of forenames, with the result that relatives often had names which
were identical.4 In the manor of Halesowen in the 1330s, for example,
no fewer than four villagers belonging to different branches of the
same family were called "Thomas de Oldebury". 3 And of course
Halesowen was not unusual in this respect. When two or more individuals can hide behind a single name and a single peasant may be
designated by more than one name, it is clear that a list of names
extracted from the court rolls may not be identical with an accurate
list of villagers. The usefulness of any such name-counting exercise is
therefore greatly reduced. Only when a reasonably complete series of
records is available will it be possible to identify individuals, and even
then, only after a long and arduous sorting process.6
Nevertheless in spite of these serious methodological difficulties
Raftis and his colleagues have not refrained from working on the
Ramsey court rolls, even though they are too fragmentary to permit of
any reliable identification of individuals. Rather, they have chosen to
ignore the problem altogether.7 They have proceeded on the assumption that each name in the court records denotes a different individual
although it is clear that this is not always the case. In the Warboys
court rolls of 1291 and 1316, for example, one finds the two names
"Alexander Chamberlain" and "Alexander Chamberlain of Wistow"
respectively. Raftis has assumed the two names to represent two
different people, though clearly they could as easily be two designations for the same person.8 Similarly in the Broughton court rolls
5
Z. Razi, "The Peasants of Halesowen, 1270-1400: A Demographic, Social and
Economic Study" (Univ. of Birmingham Ph.D. thesis, 1976), p. 2.
4
Analysis of the Warboys court rolls for the years 1290-1347 shows that 865
villagers shared thirty-eight different Christian names, but 752 (87 per cent) of the
villagers shared only twelve different Christian names. See Raftis, Warboys, pp. 64-5.
5
Razi, op. cit., p. 78.
• Ibid., pp. 19-36.
7
The abbey of Ramsey usually held only two court sessions a year and the majority
of the court records have been lost. From the court rolls of Holywell between 1288
and 1457 the records of only 47 years (27 per cent) have survived; from the court rolls
of Warboys between 1290 and 1458 only those for 63 years (37 per cent); and from
the court rolls of Broughton between 1288 and 1340 only those for 31 years (58 per
cent). By contrast, from the court rolls of the manor of Halesowen between 1300 and
1400 the records of only 2 years are missing and the records of 659 court sessions are
available.
• Raftis, VParboyt, pp. 19, 39. Other examples of the uncertain identification of
villagers are: "William Hyrst" (1322) and "William son of John Raven of Hyrst"
(1326); "William Bonde" (1326-43) and "William son of Robert Bond" (1326): ibid.,
pp.27, 17.
144
PAST
AND PRESENT
NUMBER 85
between the years 1288 and 1316 the names "Alexander Wodeward"
and "Alexander Forrester" appear. And again, while it is apparent
that these names might refer to the same person, Dr. E. Britton has
assumed that they represent two different individuals.9 The same
holds true for "Aspelon son of Alan" (1294-1331) and "Aspelon
Aleyn" (1290-1311),10 "Ellen wife of Hubert Chapman" (1311) and
"Ellen Hubert" (1308-16), and many others.11
In addition to the various misidentifications which result from the
false assumption that peasant surnames were stable, an examination
of the lists of villagers obtained from the Warboys and Broughton
court rolls reveals many more instances of dubious identification.
First, both Raftis and Britton have included in their lists peasants who
appear in the records without any surname at all — for example, John
son of Thomas, Joan daughter of Richard, and Robert servant of
William Clericus.12 But if any of these also appear in the records with
a surname (as frequently happens) they are counted twice. Similarly,
since servants in the course of time often had more than one employer,
the inclusion of such individuals by name of employer inevitably leads
to double or even triple counting. Secondly, Raftis and Britton include
in their lists of villagers those women who appear in the court records
without a forename, but simply as "mother of X", "wife of Y", or
"daughter of Z". This also is bound to result in multiple counting,
since such women may be assumed to appear elsewhere in the records
with forenames in their own right. For example, the woman noted in
the Warboys court rolls in 1299 as "mother of Roger de Haugate"
might well be the same woman who appears in 1294 as "Margaret de
Haugate". 13 Thirdly, Raftis and Britton have mistakenly counted as
"real" surnames those names which merely denote the occupation or
office of particular individuals — such as reeve, miller, smith, shepherd and the like. For example, Hugo Beneyt (1294-1347) of Warboys
was a reeve between 1294 and 1299 and therefore appears additionally in the records of these years as "Hugo Reev", 14 but "Reev" is
not a surname. The grouping of peasants into "fictitious" families in
this way according to occupation or office also leads to double counting. Fourthly, although sometimes Christian names do indeed become
actual surnames over the course of time, it is a highly dubious practice
to group all villagers designated as the "son of Thomas" or the "son of
Richard" into single families, as both Raftis and Britton have done.
• Britton, The Community of the Vill, pp. 221, 235. Manorial clerks often used the
words "Woodward" and "Forester" as synonyms.
10
Ibid., pp. 192-3. The name "Aleyn" is a common variant of the name "Alan".
See Raftis, Warboys, p. 14.
11
Britton, The Community of the VUl, pp. 199, 207.
"Ibid., pp. 219, 235-6.
13
Raftis, Warboys, p. 213.
14
Ibid., pp. 16, 36, 224.
MEDIEVAL PEASANT SOCIETY
I45
This also produces many "fictitious" families and again leads to multiple counting.
Raftis and his colleagues have also used their lists of names from the
Ramsey court rolls to measure population trends and to make other
demographic observations. Yet, for the reasons already outlined, we
have already seen that these lists do not necessarily reveal very much
in the way of useful information about the actual peasants who lived
in the village, and therefore provide an extremely weak foundation
on which to base demographic observations. The problem for the
demographer is that the sources of the errors given above (and the list
is by no means exhaustive) lead inexorably to a systematic bias, which
could be considerable. Any valid use of manorial records must come to
terms with this problem.
In addition to their uncritical use of court roll data Raftis and his
associates have made a good number of faulty demographic inferences. For example, Raftis has estimated that in 1300 about 1,150
people lived in Warboys, this figure deriving from the total number of
names of villagers noted in the court records between the years 1290
and 1318.13 However, it is manifestly absurd to assume that the total
number of villagers noted over a period of twenty-nine years is
identical to, or indeed even similar to, the actual number of people
who actually lived in the village at any given time during this period.
Moreover the Warboys list, on which Raftis bases his estimate of the
population trend for the period between the years 1290 and 1458, includes a large number of outsiders. This he attempts to justify on the
grounds that the number of outsiders can be assumed to balance the
number of those native villagers who are not listed in the court rolls at
all, rather overlooking the fact that he has, of course, no means by
which to estimate the numbers of those so omitted.16
Dr. E. B. Dewindt has estimated that the population of Holywell
fell between 1300 and 1327 by no less than 32 per cent.17 Yet he denies
that subsistence had been a major problem in the village in the prePlague period18 because, "despite the limited amount of land available to them, a large number of peasants was surviving".19 One might
as reasonably argue according to this logic that subsistence is not a
major problem in Third World countries today since, notwithstanding
the very low income per capita in these countries, so many of their inhabitants manage to stay alive.
"Ibid., p. 213.
i« Ibid.
" Dewindt, Land and People in Holywell-Cum-NeedmgzDorth, p. 169.
lt
Jbid., pp. 193-205.
" Ibid., p. 203.
I46
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 85
Britton has observed that the population of Broughton declined in
the pre-Plague period.20 Unlike Dewindt, however, he is prepared to
admit that there was a subsistence problem in Broughton, as in other
villages at the time. But he does argue that its scale has been exaggerated by historians, since the population decline resulted not only
from a rise in mortality rates but also from a rise in emigration. In
order to make his point he has compiled statistics of all those peasants
whose departure from the village was actually recorded, as well as of
outsiders illegally admitted by local villagers. Britton claims his
statistics show that during the period 1288-1340 emigration rose by 80
per cent and immigration fell by 44 per cent, and thus concludes that
the number of people who left Broughton was higher than the actual
number of people who came to settle there, and that consequently
emigration had been a significant cause of the downward trend in the
pre-Plague period.31 But in fact this cannot be inferred from the
statistics. As the departure of villeins from the manor is only partially
recorded in the court rolls and that of freemen not at all, it is exceedingly doubtful whether the fluctuations in the small number of
recorded departures of villeins from the manor represent any real
trend in emigration. As far as any pattern of immigration is concerned, there is no reason to suppose, as Britton does, that there is any
relationship whatsoever between the number of casual labourers
illegally admitted by local villagers in the periods of highest demand
for labour (notably at harvest) and the number of immigrants who
permanently settled in the village. But even if Britton's statistics were
representative and if between 1288 and 1340 there actually was a relative rise in emigration and a relative fall in immigration, they do not
give any clue as to the overall effect of migration on the population of
Broughton because we know neither the actual number of people who
left the village during the period under study, nor the number of those
who settled there.
It would appear that Raftis and his colleagues have made somewhat better use of the Ramsey court rolls in their study of social rather
than demographic problems. But here too some of their methods are
questionable, interpretation is unsound, and conclusions inevitably
suspect.
It is of course well known that in medieval villages there were
marked differences in the economic status of the individual peasants.
Historians have in the past usually used the size of holdings recorded
in manorial and state surveys to study these differences and to idenw
21
Britton, The Community of the Vill, p. 138.
Ibid., pp. 144-63.
MEDIEVAL PEASANT SOCIETY
I47
tify the various strata of village society, as well as to measure their
relative size." But as the actual size of the holdings of many villagers
who appear in the court records is not given, Raftis and his associates
have ventured to employ a different criterion. Observing that members of well-to-do families tended on the whole to take a far more
active part in village government, as jurors, capital pledges, reeves,
ale-tasters, woodwards and the like, than members of poorer families,
they have opted for "office-holding" as the sole criterion for stratification, classifying the different families into groups of "main", "intermediate" and "minor" families. The first, or "main", group consists
of families whose members participated frequently in village government; the second or "intermediate", of families whose members held
only a very few offices; and the third, or "minor", of families whose
members never held office at all. 23
The use of office-holding as the sole variable in determining social
stratification within a village raises a number of problems. First, it is
not clear to what extent this classification accurately reflects the
economic differences which undoubtedly existed within the village.
Admittedly both Dewindt and Britton have shown that many "main"
families were economically better off than the others. 24 But they have
failed to show that there were any significant economic differences
between families whose members held one office a few times and
families whose members never held office at all. It is therefore unclear
whether or not "intermediate" and "minor" families do indeed comprise two distina socio-economic strata within the structure of the
village.
The second major problem is that this particular form of classification does not take account of social mobility. If any member of a
family appears in the court records as an office-holder, that family is
classified as "main" or "intermediate" for the entire period of its
residence in the village, even if no other members of the family are
noted, previously or subsequently, as office-holders. For example, the
Balde family was resident in Broughton from 1288 to 1340 and one of
its members, John Balde, served between 1288 and 1309, once as a
juror and once as an ale-taster. Britton has accordingly classified the
Balde family as "main", even though there is no evidence that any of
another six male members of this family, noted frequently in the
22
M. M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society (London, 1972), pp. 126-42;
E. A. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth
Century (Oxford, 1956), pp. 197-225; R. H. Hilton, A Medieval Society: The West
Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century (London, 1966), pp. 113-23.
23
Raftis, "Social Structures in Five East Midland Villages", pp. 83-7; Dewindt,
Land and People in Holywell-Cum-Needingworth, pp. 206-49; Britton, The Community of the Vill, pp. 12-15, 7 0 - 8 6 , 191-2.
24
Dewindt, Land and People in Holywell-Cum-Needingworth,
pp. 2 1 7 - 2 0 ; Britton, The Community of the Vill, pp. 70-6, 79-86.
I48
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 85
records from 1309 to 1340, participated in any way in village government. JJ Similarly, though the Cristemesse family is noted for the first
time in the Holywell court rolls in the 1370s, members of this family
started to participate in village government only sixty years later.
Nevertheless the family has been classified by Dewindt for the whole of
the period as a "main" family.26 It is clearly misleading to consider an
individual as belonging to the village elite simply because either his
forefathers or his descendants belonged to this group. And Britton
himself has observed that among the forty-five "main" families
resident in Broughton between 1288 and 1340, only fifteen families
(that is, 27 per cent) were able to maintain their "main" status from
one generation to the next, the other thirty families suffering a marked
decline.27 But in spite of these methodological difficulties Britton
treats all the members of these families as belonging to a uniform
group, and retaining the same social status throughout the entire
period of his study.
Thirdly, as a result of another dubious assumption, Raftis and his
colleagues have attributed to many peasants a higher social status
than they actually enjoyed. When a villager appears more than once in
the court records as an office-holder, not only he himself, but also all
his relatives, have been classified as members of the village ilite, even
if there is no evidence to suggest that they themselves held any village
office. Such a procedure might have some force if it could reasonably
be assumed that all adult members or all branches of a peasant family
enjoyed the same or a similar socio-economic status. But Britton
himself has produced evidence which indicates that such an assumption is quite unfounded. His research showed that although the village
of Broughton practised impartible inheritance, 44 per cent of "main"
famines and 34 per cent of "intermediate" ones had at least two sons
settled in the village as independent landholders.2* Although land was
in very short supply in the pre-Plague period, it is possible that some
younger sons nevertheless succeeded in maintaining the same status as
their elder brothers who, of course, inherited the bulk of the family's
holding. But it is quite implausible to suggest that all of them could
have succeeded in doing so. Thus in each generation some of the
second and third sons of "main" and "intermediate" families must
inevitably have "descended" in the social scale. Nevertheless such
villagers have been classified by Raftis and his associates as members
of the highest rank of village society.
Office-holding alone is therefore an extremely dubious criterion to
use in classifying peasant families, because each group so derived will
" Britton, The Community of the VM, p. 194.
Dewindt, Land and People in Holyuell-Cum-Needmgworth,
27
Britton, The Community of the Vill, p. 123.
24
a Ibid., p. 6 1 .
p. 209.
MEDIEVAL PEASANT SOCIETY
149
include an unacceptable range of socio-economic status. The indistinctness of the three categories of families must inevitably introduce a serious element of uncertainty into many of the observations of
Raftis and his colleagues.
The failure of Raftis, Dewindt and Britton to employ court roll
evidence to identify clearly the different social strata in a village does
not mean that it cannot be done. Anna Dewindt in her study of King's
Ripton has demonstrated that it can. In order to determine the status
of families reconstituted from the court rolls she has taken into
account not only the degree of their participation in village government, but also the size of their holding, the numbers of their animals,
the extent of their agricultural and pastoral activities, and the involvement of their members in the land market, in credit operations and in
pledging.29 As a result she has been able to construct a stratification of
King's Ripton rural society which is both well-founded and completely
persuasive.
Raftis and his associates have searched Ramsey court rolls not only
to find evidence of the social and economic activities of peasants, but
also to secure some insight into the workings of their minds, their
general outlook and motivation. Britton has noted that between 1288
and 1340 thirty-one Broughton villagers were fined for adultery and
thirty-four women for fornication. He has noticed also that these
offences were more common among members of "main" families than
among members of "intermediate" or "minor" families, and that the
parties involved in a significant number of these offences were from
different social groups. Britton argues that the fact that these offences
were presented in the manor court by the local jurors indicates that
members of the village elite were attempting to curb the "irresponsible" sexual conduct of the villagers in order to preserve the
solidarity and dominance of their families and the purity of their
blood.30 This accords well with his rather curious notion that village
society was divided into classes, complete with class-consciousness,
and also with Raftis's equally bizarre view that the leadership, energy
and ingenuity manifested by the village notables were qualities which
were genetically determined.31 But Britton's conclusion is purely
speculative. The jurors on Ramsey manors, as on other manors of the
period, were liable to heavy fines for failing to present certain offences
to the court. No evidence has been presented to sustain the argument
*» Dewindt, "Peasant Power Structures in Fourteenth-Century King's Ripton",
pp. 244-67.
*• Britton, The Community of the Viil, pp. 35-7, 52-4, 247-8.
31
Ibid., p. 105; Raftis, Warboys, p. 229.
150
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 85
that, when they presented villagers guilty of adultery and fornication,
the jurors in Broughton had any other motive besides a natural inclination to avoid losing money. Moreover jurors presented in the
manorial court a wide variety of offences.32 If we accept Britton's
claim that the village notables reported certain offences only because
it furthered their aims, it is hard to explain, for example, why they
reported the serfs who evaded paying for licences to marry their
daughters, to allow their sons to take holy orders, or in order to leave
the manor.
Raftis and Dewindt have also attempted by means of the court
records to gain some knowledge of the collective psychology of the
peasants. They have argued that the readiness of peasants in the prePlague period to pledge one another in the court points to the existence
of a cohesive village community with a strong spirit of co-operation.
The existence of such a spirit is also indicated by fines for group
trespasses, exchange of land, credit arrangements and other agreements between the peasants.33 After the Black Death the social atmosphere in the village changed dramatically: "the old cohesive and
deeply interpersonal and interdependent aspect of village life was
fading, as private and independent interests and activities took precedence over those of groups". 34 A rise in individualism and the weakening of community spirit were reflected, according to Raftis and Dewindt, by the refusal of villagers after 1350 to support one another in
the court, the consequent sharp decline in the institution of personal
pledge, and also a marked increase in the incidence of violence and
trespass committed by peasants against one other.33
It is certainly possible that the social atmosphere in Ramsey villages
did indeed change considerably in the post-Plague period. But the
evidence produced by Raftis and Dewindt does not substantiate this
hypothesis. First, it has been shown that a weakening of village cohesiveness and a strong spirit of particularism is not the only possible, or
even the most likely, explanation for the sharp decline in the incidence
of personal pledge. It could indeed quite simply have happened
because pledging requirements were relaxed by the manorial courts,
not because the villagers refused to support one another.36 It is
certainly a fact that after the mid-fourteenth century the institution of
personal pledge does not disappear altogether from Ramsey manorial
« For a typical list of offences which jurors had to present in the manorial court,
see J. Z. Titow, English Rural Society, 1200-1350 (London, 1972), pp. 189-90.
" Raftis, Warboys, pp. 213-16; Dewindt, Land and People in Holytoell-CumNeedingtoonh, pp. 242-63.
34
Dewindt, Land and People in Holyxoell-Cum-Needingworth, p. 274.
» Raftis, Warboys, pp. 216-24; Raftis, "Changes in an English Village after the
Black Death", pp. 159^65; Dewindt, Land and People in Holyaell-Cum-Needingworth, pp. 263-75.
** J. S. Beckerman, "Customary Law in English Manorial Courts in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries" (Univ. of London Ph.D. thesis, 1972), pp. 239-40.
MEDIEVAL PEASANT SOCIETY
15I
court procedure. It was invoked in special cases, as for instance when
the movement of villeins from the manor and the maintenance of
customary holdings were concerned.37 In such cases pledges are
always to be found, thus it is very likely that this would also have held
true should the court have required pledges for other types of case.
Another possible reason for the decline in the incidence of personal
pledge may quite simply have been a change in litigation procedures.
J. S. Beckerman has shown that during the fourteenth century villagers in England "progressively initiated fewer personal and private
lawsuits, preferring the relative ease of obtaining presentment to the
possibility of securing compensation for a wrong".3* As presentments
in the manorial court did not require a personal surety, the institution
of personal pledge declined.
Secondly, Raftis and Dewindt argue that the weakening of community spirit and the rise of individualism reflected by the decline of
pledging was a result of changes which occurred within the village in
the post-Plague period. But in fact the significant decline in the use of
the personal pledge in Ramsey courts had actually begun some twentyfive years before the Plague — that is, at a time when, according to
Raftis and Dewindt, peasant society still retained its cohesiveness and
its spirit of co-operation.39
Thirdly, the rise in the number of trespasses in the post-Plague
period, many of which were caused by straying animals, does not
necessarily mean that villagers ceased to respect the property of their
neighbours.40 In that period, as more pasture became available and
the price of grain fell, the peasants on Ramsey manors, as in many
other parts of the country, turned more and more to stock-raising.
Simultaneously, because of the scarcity of labour and a rise in the
number of vacant holdings, it became increasingly difficult to keep
hedges, fences and ditches in good repair, and there was therefore a
sharp rise in trespasses by straying animals. These factors alone are
quite sufficient to account for the increase of trespass; it is surely unnecessary to advance the alternative explanation of a decline in community spirit.
Fourthly, it is argued that as village society lost its old cohesiveness
after the Black Death there was a marked increase in violence and that
newcomers figured prominently among those responsible.41 In fact it is
37
Raftis, Tenure and Mobility, p. 104.
Beckerman, op. cit., p. 241.
" Raftis, Tenure and Mobility, p. 103. Britton has found that in Broughton the incidence of personal pledge declined between the periods 1288-99 ano< 1330-40 by 72
per cent and between the periods 1320-9 and 1330-40 by 44 per cent. See his The
Community of the Vill, p. 108.
40
Dewindt, Land and People in Holytoell-Cum-Necdingtoorth,
pp. 266-7.
41
Raftis, Warboyt, pp. 218-21; Raftis, "Changes in an English Village after the
Black Death", pp. 164-5.
3i
152
PAST AND PRESEKT
NUMBER 8 5
not altogether clear that there actually was a significant increase in
violence in post-Plague Ramsey villages. According to Dewindt such a
rise did not occur in Holywell,42 and a comparison of the number of
acts of violence recorded in pre- and post-Plague Warboys court rolls
does not support Raftis's claim that the second half of the fourteenth
century was more violent than the first.43 As far as Upwood is concerned, no evidence has been produced to show that the peasants were
more aggressive after 1350 than before.44 Since the proportion of
newcomers among the inhabitants of Warboys and Upwood has not
been estimated we cannot know whether or not newcomers were
proportionately more involved in violence than other villagers. But
even assuming there was a significant rise in violence among the
villagers in the post-Plague period it would not necessarily indicate
that they had become less neighbourly and less co-operative. Indeed
the hypothesis that violence increased after 1350 as a result of the
strengthening of the co-operative and interdependent nature of village
society, which in turn created more grounds for friction, is just as
feasible as the alternative hypothesis advanced by Raftis and Dewindt.
The Ramsey court rolls rarely specify the circumstances in which acts
of violence were committed or the motives behind them, and very little
can be learned about the psychology of the peasants from mere fluctuations in the numbers of acts of violence committed.
Britton and Dewindt have claimed that historians like Maitland,
Vinogradoff, Kosminsky and Hilton failed to penetrate to the realities
of medieval peasant life because of their general social theories and
political beliefs, which led them to concentrate on the manor rather
than on the village. Britton and Dewindt claim that they, on the other
hand, have uncovered the actual life-style of the peasants since, by
their use of court rolls, they have looked at the structure of the village
from within and attempted to understand the villagers on their own
terms. 43 Yet an examination of their own allegedly innovative theories
reveals that they have in fact interpreted the evidence according to the
old ready-made organic and functional social theory.
42
Dewindt, Land and People in Holywell-Cum-Needingworth,
pp. 266-7.
*' Court rolls for 21 years arc available for Warboys during the second half of the
fourteenth century and, o f these, only the records for 1360, 1375-6 and 1382 show a
rise in violence. In actual numbers, there were 19 acts of violence recorded for 1360,
with 6 for 1375-6 and 19 for 1382. By contrast, 10 acts o f violence are recorded in
the court rolls for 1306, with 18 for 1322, 24 for 1325, 15 for 1334, and 2 0 for 1343.
Raftis, Warboys, pp. 218-21.
44
Raftis does not provide any data about the incidence of violence in pre-Plague
Upwood.
45
Britton, "The Peasant Family in Fourteenth-Century England", p. 2; Britton,
The Community of the VUl, pp. 1-5, 166-71; Dewindt, Land and People in HolywellCum-NeedingiDorth,
pp. 1-3.
MEDIEVAL PEASANT SOCIETY
153
Both Dewindt and Britton, the first implicitly and the second
explicitly, maintain that peasants and their lords formed organically
interrelated groups and that their mutual relationship was not that of
oppressor and oppressed but one of "two different interest groups in
which conciliation was more common than conflict".4* In order to
substantiate this theory Britton claims that the court rolls show that
although there were some aspects of the manorial system, like fines,
which impinged upon the village community, their negative effects
were somewhat limited. The fines and rents which the abbot of
Ramsey received from his tenants were both modest and reasonable,
considering the amount of capital that the tenants themselves were
able to accumulate. As the exactions of the abbots were both just
and fair, he argues, tenants had little reason to resist them. The very
frequent evasion of labour services by the villagers of pre-Plague
Broughton and even the "general strike" (refusal to perform such
services) declared by them in 1290, do not indicate, according to
Britton, that the peasants were attempting to resist oppressive
exploitation by the abbot of Ramsey. This, he maintains, is because
there is no evidence in the court rolls that the abbot employed any
physical coercion, or even threatened to do so, in order to compel the
peasants to perform these services.47
It is true that peasants and lords constituted two very different interest groups, but as they had opposing interests they coexisted in a
constant state of tension and conflict rather than in harmony. The
lords' pre-eminence in medieval society largely depended on their
ability to extract from their tenants a substantial proportion of their
produce. The peasants for their part had a strong interest in resisting
the lords' claims on their produce since the effectiveness or otherwise
of these claims largely determined the amount of food available for
their own consumption, their standard of living, and their ability to
reinvest in their holdings.48 As a result medieval lords reduced many of
their tenants to serfdom and used political and legal means of coercion
to force them to comply with their demands. Britton's insistence that
this accepted historical view is incorrect, simply because he does not
find any indication in the Broughton court rolls that the abbot of
Ramsey exploited his tenants and that they in turn resisted his oppressive demands, is unacceptable. And indeed, even if his interpretation
« Britton, The Community
47
of the VUl, pp. 168, 171.
Ibid., pp. 168-71.
** Postan has calculated that in the thirteenth century, even without extramanorial obligations, the money dues of a villein tenant would absorb a very large
proportion of his output. He has estimated that this proportion was very frequently
near or above the 50 per cent mark. M. M. Postan, "Medieval Agrarian Society in its
Prime: England", in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, i, The Agrarian
Life of the Middle Ages, 2nd edn., ed. M. M. Postan (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 603-4.
See also Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth
Century, pp. 319-59; Hilton, A Medieval Society, pp. 131-48.
154
PAST
A 1 4 0 PRESENT
NUMBER 85
of the court rolls had been a valid one, it would not prove that during
the period under study harmonious relations existed between the
abbots and their tenants, because there are other sources which show
the contrary. In his study of the estates of Ramsey Abbey, based on a
wider variety of sources than is his work on Warboys, Raftis himself
has demonstrated that in the last quarter of the thirteenth and the first
half of the fourteenth century, Ramsey villagers, freemen and villeins
alike, suffered equally under the manorial regime of the abbots. While
net production on their own holdings was falling, villagers were frequently taxed huge sums to enable the abbots to pay off their heavy
debts and high taxes.49 In addition the level of entry fines rose significantly, trebling after 1300.30 As a result villeins who found their
traditional obligations too burdensome showed from the 1270s onwards considerable opposition to the severity of their conditions. This
manifested itself primarily as a widespread refusal to perform the
extremely onerous labour services which prevailed on Ramsey
manors. The abbots' reaction to the "revolts against services", as
Raftis rightly calls them, was not to lighten the burden of these
services, nor to persuade the villeins to conduct themselves like good
and dutiful Christians, but rather to use their seigneurial jurisdiction
to force surrender to their demands.51 It is quite possible that, in addition to fines and the seizure of chattels or beasts, the abbots of Ramsey,
like other contemporary lords, used more drastic measures against
their rebellious tenants. The reason that Britton could find no
evidence of the employment of physical coercion by the abbot is that
such evidence is usually found not in manorial court rolls but in other
records.32 For example, in the last quarter of the thirteenth century
the customary tenants of the manor of Halesowen in the west midlands waged a bitter struggle against their increased exploitation by
the abbey.33 The only evidence of this struggle to be found in the
manorial court records is an entry for 1279 in which Roger Ketel,
probably the leader of the peasants, was fined 1 oos. for impleading the
abbot in the royal courts. 34 In 1286 the customary tenants suffered
their final legal defeat when the king's court declared them to be
"villeins for ever". But the matter obviously did not rest there. The
records of the royal assize for Shropshire in 1292 state that, upon his
** J. A. Raftis, The Estates of Ramsey Abbey: A Study in Economic Growth and
Organization (Toronto, 1957), pp. 228, 234.
'0 Ibid., pp. 237-8.
" Ibid., pp. 227-8.
31
R. H. Hilton, "Peasant Movements in England before 1381", Econ. Hist. Rev.,
2nd ser., i (1949-50), pp. ! 17-36.
33
This struggle has been studied in detail by Homans and Hilton: Homans,
English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century, pp. 276-82; Hilton, A Medieval Society,
pp. 159-61.
« Court Rolls of the Manor of Hales, 1270-1307, ed. J. Araphlett, S. G. Hamilton
and R. A. Wilson, 2 vols. (Worcs. Hist. Soc., Worcester, 1910-33), i, p. 119.
MEDIEVAL PEASANT SOCIETY
155
order, servants of the abbot imprisoned three of the most intransigent
and refractory of the villeins, putting them in the stocks for twentyfour hours. One of them was Roger Ketel, who died shortly after his
release as a result of the thorough treatment administered on his lord's
orders.53
Britton's theory about the nature of the manorial system has caused
him to misinterpret the court rolls and to present an unreal picture of
village society. If one presupposes that peasants reconciled themselves
to a manorial regime which neither oppressed nor exploited them, then
it is reasonable to assume, as Britton does, that lords had little reason
to interfere in their affairs and consequently that the village community lived its own life hardly affected by the manorial regime.56 If
there was an element of dominance and conflict in rural society, he
sees it not in the relationship between lords and tenants, but rather
between rich peasants and poor peasants. The village rich not only
dominated economic and social life but also controlled family and
sexual relationships among the peasantry through the power of the
manorial court. This dominance and the marked economic inequalities which existed within the village generated, according to
him, an atmosphere of antagonism and conflict between the "haves"
and the "have-nots". Therefore, in his view, medieval village society
should be regarded as a class society having class-consciousness.37
Furthermore, reading Britton's explanation for the motives behind
the supposed attempt of the jurors to curb the irregular sexual
behaviour of the peasants, one gets the strong impression that he
believes that the social system which prevailed in the village was
imbued with something akin to caste consciousness rather than just a
simple awareness of class interest.3*
It is true that medieval village society was highly stratified and that
rich peasants dominated and took advantage of their poorer neighbours. It is also true that there was a considerable measure of conflict
and friction in village life. But this by no means substantiates Britton's
claim that village society was a class society, let alone a caste one.59
« This information is in a transcript of the assize rolls of the Pleas of the Crown of
Shropshire: Birmingham Reference Lib., no. 383853. When the abbot's servants
arrested the three villeins they also beat and ill-treated a woman named Alice,
probably the wife of one of them, who was pregnant. As a result she gave premature
birth to twins, who died soon afterwards.
M
Britton, The Community of the Vill, pp. 166-9, 178.
"Ibid., pp. 105, 122-3.
" Ibid., pp. 35-7, 52-4.
" The view that peasant society cannot properly be regarded as a class society is
widely shared by Marxist and non-Marxist historians of medieval rural society. See,
for example, R. H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford,
•975)1 PP- 12-16, 51-3; M. M. Postan, "Legal Status and Economic Conditions in
Medieval Villages", in his Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of
the Medieval Economy (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 278-85.
156
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 85
The unequal distribution of wealth in the medieval village did not
create two separate and distinct groups of "haves" and "have-nots",
but rather a hierarchy of many strata which tended to merge into and
overlap one another. The power and freedom of action of the village
rich was limited by the lords' authority and interests. Moreover, in the
pre-Plague era, shortage of land and the demographic differences
which existed between the various strata within the village hindered
those rich peasants with large families from concentrating their
economic resources from generation to generation; these factors
created a strong downward social mobility and prevented the polarization of village society.60 The tensions and conflicts generated within
the village community were mitigated by a strong element of cooperation and mutual assistance. Rich no less than poor peasants were
oppressed and exploited by the seigneurial regime, and therefore when
tensions erupted in medieval rural society in the form of violent uprisings, they were not directed by the poor peasants against their betteroff neighbours, but by the village community as a whole against the
seigneurial ruling class.61
Dewindt, like Britton, has also interpreted the court roll evidence in
the light of the organic and functional social theory and his observations on the nature of medieval village society are therefore equally
dubious. But whereas Britton overestimates the differences which prevailed within the village community, Dewindt greatly underestimates
them. He describes the pre-Plague village as a community in which
everything ran smoothly and peacefully since the peasants were
"joined together by networks of co-operation arising from and in
service of common needs". 62 The village rich did not dominate the
peasant community because they were greedy or selfish but "either as
a result of their own extensive involvement in and identification with
village life or, perhaps, stemming from a sense of responsibility for
their less secure neighbours". 63
Dewindt's observation about the relationship between lords and
tenants is as far removed from reality as his observation about relationships between the peasants themselves. While Britton argues
that lords and their tenants had no confliaing interests, Dewindt goes
one step further by implying that their interests were actually
identical. This follows from his claim that peasant disregard for the
manor's interests in the post-Plague period — manifested in a rise in
the number of trespasses upon the demesne, in the increased incidence
of failure to perform labour services, or in the poor performance of
these services — is a clear indication that peasants turned away from a
40
Razi, "The Peasants of Halesowen", pp. 131-3.
•' R. H. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the
English Rising 0/1381 (London, 1973), pp. 176-85.
« Dewindt, Land and People in Holyaell-Cum-Needingtaorth, pp. 261-3.
•» Ibid., p. 254.
MEDIEVAL PEASANT SOCIETY
157
strong reliance on co-operation and mutual help, to a selfish pursuit of
private interests without regard for the interests of the village community at large.64 If this claim were to be taken seriously, then the
demand of the rebel peasants in 1381 to abolish the manorial system
can legitimately be regarded as the extreme expression of a wish for
self-destruction.
We must be grateful to Raftis and his colleagues for demonstrating
that a systematic analysis of manorial court rolls provides a means
to penetrate the social, economic and demographic developments of
village communities. But in order to achieve valid and significant
results it will be necessary to refine and to modify their methods, to
recognize more clearly the limitations of court rolls and to be more
cautious in interpreting them. Furthermore, in addition to employing
better data and more sophisticated methods the historian of the
peasantry should try to rid himself of dubious presuppositions about
the nature of medieval society which cloud his view and weaken his
analytical ability.
Tel-Aviv University
44
Ibid., pp. 264-70.
ZviRazi