Life in a Medieval Village

by Frances Gies

  6. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, pp. 111-112.

  7. Ibid., p. 112.

  8. Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life, p. 282.

  9. Cart. Rames., vol. 3, pp. 257-260.

  10. J. A. Raftis, Warboys: Two Hundred Years in the Life of an English Medieval Village, Toronto, 1974, pp. 67-68.

  11. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England, pp. 230-237.

  12. Rot. Hund., pp. 656-658.

  13. V.C.H. Hunts., p. 161.

  14. Rot. Hund., pp. 656-658.

  15. Cart. Rames., vol. 1, pp. 299-300, 310, 324, 336, 345, 350, 357, 361, 365, 393-394, 460-461, 475, 483; vol. 2, pp. 45-46.

  16. E.M.R., p. 128.

  17. Ibid., p. 268.

  18. Ibid., p. 10.

  19. Raftis, Estates of Ramsey Abbey, pp. 224-227.

  20. E.M.R., pp. 5-6.

  21. Ibid., pp. 28, 78, 181, 227, 287-288, 334.

  22. Rot. Hund., p. 657.

  23. E.M.R., pp. 93, 150.

  24. Ibid., pp. 147, 151.

  25. Ibid., pp. 147, 201, 255.

  26. Ibid., p. 10. See also Postan, “The Famulus,” pp. 7-14.

  27. E.M.R, p. 93.

  28. Ibid., p. 261.

  29. Ibid., p. 249.

  30. Ibid., p. 44.

  31. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, p. 32.

  32. E.M.R., p. 43.

  33. Ibid., p. 44.

  34. Ibid., p. 10.

  35. Ibid., p. 126.

  36. Ibid., p. 43.

  37. Ibid., p. 43.

  38. Ibid., p. 43.

  39. Ibid., p. 196.

  40. Ibid., p. 115.

  41. Bedfordshire Coroners’ Rolls, p. 114.

  42. E.M.R., p. 34.

  43. Ibid., p. 89.

  44. Ibid., p. 190.

  45. Ibid., p. 254.

  46. Ibid., p. 261.

  47. Ibid., p. 257.

  48. Ibid., p. 261.

  49. Ibid., p. 293.

  50. Anne De Windt, “A Peasant Land Market and Its Participants: King’s Ripton 1280-1400,” Midland History 4 (1978), pp. 142-149.

  51. M. M. Postan, “Village Livestock in the Thirteenth Century,” Economic History Review 2nd ser. 15 (1962), pp. 219-249.

  52. Trow-Smith, British Livestock Husbandry, vol. 1, p. 103.

  53. E.M.R., p. 200.

  54. Bedfordshire Coroners’ Rolls, p. 87.

  55. Ibid., p. 82.

  56. Edmund Britton, The Community of the Vill: A Study in the History of the Family and Village Life in Fourteenth-Century England, Toronto, 1977.

  57. Edwin De Windt, Land and People in Holywell-cum-Needingworth: Structures of Tenure and Patterns of Social Organization in an East Midlands Village, 1253-1453, Toronto, 1972.

  58. E.M.R., p. 3.

  59. Ibid., p. 44.

  60. Ibid., pp. 120-121.

  61. Ibid., p. 122.

  62. Ibid., p. 146.

  63. Ibid., p. 200.

  64. Ibid., p. 234.

  65. Ibid., p. 2.

  66. Ibid., p. 30.

  67. Ibid., p. 46.

  68. Ibid., p. 34.

  69. Ibid., p. 116.

  70. Ibid., p. 120.

  71. Ibid., p. 95.

  72. Ibid., p. 261.

  73. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, the Promised Land of Error, trans, by Barbara Bray, New York, 1978.

  74. E.M.R., pp. 5-6.

  CHAPTER 5. THE VILLAGERS: HOW THEY LIVED

  1. Beresford and Hurst, Deserted Medieval Villages, p. 122; Cantor, “Villages and Towns,” in Cantor, ed., The English Medieval Landscape, pp. 173-174; Chapelot and Fossier, Village and House, pp. 204—205; Hurst, “The Changing Medieval Village,” p. 44.

  2. R. K. Field, “Worcestershire Peasant Buildings, Household Goods and Farming Equipment in the Later Middle Ages,” Medieval Archaeology 9 (1965), pp. 105-145.

  3. E.M.R., p. 115.

  4. Ibid., p. 151.

  5. Ibid., p. 300.

  6. Beresford and Hurst, Deserted Medieval Villages, p. 104; Hilton, A Medieval Society, pp. 96-97; Trow-Smith, British Livestock Husbandry, vol. 1, p. 114.

  7. Wood, English Mediaeval House, pp. 300-302; Chapelot and Fossier, Village and House, pp. 284-314; Colvin, English Farmhouse, pp. 21-36.

  8. Beresford and Hurst, Deserted Medieval Villages, p. 105.

  9. E.M.R., p. 170.

  10. Beresford and Hurst, Deserted Medieval Villages, pp. 98, 100; Wood, English Mediaeval House, pp. 257-260.

  11. Hali Meidenhod, ed. by O. Cockayne, London, 1922, p. 53.

  12. Owst, Literature and Pulpit, pp. 27, 35-36.

  13. Barbara Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England, New York, 1986, pp. 45-49; Hoskins, The Midland Peasant, pp. 295-296; Hilton, A Medieval Society, pp. 100-101; Field, “Worcestershire Peasant Buildings,” pp. 121-123.

  14. Wood, Mediaeval English House, pp. 368-374.

  15. E.M.R., pp. 12, 62, 78, 133, 209.

  16. Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life, p. 65.

  17. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, p. 164.

  18. H. E. Hallam, “The Life of the People,” in Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2, pp. 830, 838.

  19. Cecily Howell, Land, Family, and Inheritance in Transition, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 164-165; Grenville Astill, “Fields,” in Astill and Grant, eds., Countryside of Medieval England, p. 118.

  20. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England, p. 240.

  21. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, pp. 147-148; H. S. Bennett, Life on the English Manor, A Study of Peasant Conditions, 1150-1400, Cambridge, 1960 (first pub. in 1937), p. 95; Hallam, “Life of the People,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2, p. 824; J. Z. Titow, English Rural Society, 1200-1350, London, 1969, p. 79; Howell, Land, Family, and Inheritance, p. 159.

  22. Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages, an Essay in Social History, trans, by Arthur Goldhammer, New Haven, 1986, pp. 194-195.

  23. Anear MacConglinne, “The Vision of Viands,” in The Portable Medieval Reader, ed. by James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin, New York, 1966, pp. 497-499.

  24. John Gower, Miroir de I’Omme, II, lines 450-460, in Complete Works of John Gower, ed. by G. C. Macaulay, Oxford, 1899-1902, vol. 1, p. 293.

  25. E.M.R., p. 47.

  26. William Langland, Piers Plowman’s Crede, ed. by W. W. Skeat, London, 1867, pp. 16-17.

  27. John Stow, Survey of London, London, 1603, p. 92, translating William Fitzstephen’s description of twelfth-century London, cited in Bennett, Life on the English Manor, p. 261.

  28. Homans, English Villagers, p. 358.

  29. Bennett, Life on the English Manor, p. 262.

  30. E.M.R., p. 172.

  31. Homans, English Villagers, p. 362.

  32. Ibid., p. 365.

  33. Ibid., pp. 368, 370.

  34. E.M.R., p. 69.

  35. Homans, English Villagers, p. 372.

  36. E.M.R., p. 172.

  37. Robert Manning, Handlyng Synne, ed. by Idelle Sullens, Binghamton, New York, 1983, p. 224.

  38. Owst, Literature and Pulpit, p. 362.

  39. Bedfordshire Coroners’ Rolls, pp. 97-98.

  40. Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, pp. 44, 60.

  41. Bedfordshire Coroners’ Rolls, pp. 2-3.

  42. Ibid., pp. 55-57.

  43. Ibid., p. 108.

  44. Ibid., p. 51.

  45. Ibid., pp. 71-72.

  46. Ibid., p. xxiii.

  47. Ibid., p. 7.

  48. Ibid., pp. 12-13.

  49. Ibid., p. 116.

  CHAPTER 6. MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

  1. Frances and Joseph Gies, Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages, New York, 1987, pp. 157-177.

  2. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, p. 138.

  3. P. D. A. Harvey, A Medieval Oxfordshire Village: Cuxham, 1240 to 1400, Oxford, 1965, p. 124.

  4. Rosamond Jane Faith, “Peasant Families and Inheritance Customs in Medieval England,�
� Agricultural History Review 4 (1966), p. 91.

  5. Ibid., pp. 86-87.

  6. E.M.R., p. 208.

  7. Court Roll of Chalgrave Manor, ed. by Marian K. Dale, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 28 (1950), p. 10.

  8. E.M.R., pp. 56, 68, 70.

  9. Ibid., p. 392.

  10. Ibid., p. 313.

  11. Ibid., pp. 84-85, 264, 317.

  12. Ibid., p. 313.

  13. Cart. Rames., vol. 1, p. 416.

  14. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 294, 306, 320, 330, 352.

  15. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 359, 384.

  16. Court Roll of Chalgrave Manor, p. 9.

  17. Trow-Smith, British Livestock Husbandry, pp. 100-101.

  18. Britton, Community of the Vill, pp. 59-64.

  19. Anne De Windt, “Peasant Land Market,” pp. 151-153.

  20. Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life, p. 284.

  21. E.M.R., p. 96.

  22. Ibid., p. 261.

  23. Ibid., p. 5.

  24. Eleanor Searle, “Seigneurial Control of Women’s Marriage: The Antecedents and Function of Merchet in England,” Past and Present 82 (1979), pp. 3-43; also Searle, “Freedom and Marriage in Medieval England: An Alternative Hypothesis,” Economic History Review 2nd ser. 29 (1976).

  25. E.M.R., p. 28.

  26. Ibid., p. 132.

  27. Judith M. Bennett, “Medieval Peasant Marriage: An Examination of the Marriage License Fines in Liber Gersumarum,” in Raftis, ed., Pathways to Medieval Peasants, p. 195.

  28. Ibid., p. 197.

  29. Ibid., pp. 205-209, 213-214.

  30. Ibid., pp. 208-209.

  31. Cart. Rames., vol. 1, p. 432.

  32. Bennett, “Medieval Peasant Marriage,” pp. 200-204.

  33. E.M.R., pp. 61, 132, 208-209.

  34. Gies, Marriage and the Family, pp. 135-141.

  35. William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, ed. by A. V. C. Schmidt, London, 1984, passus ix, lines 162-165, p. 97.

  36. Manning, Handlyng Synne, p. 279.

  37. Ibid., p. 277.

  38. G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, London, 1926, p. 269.

  39. Ibid., p. 269.

  40. Cart. Rames., vol. 1, p. 312.

  41. Gies, Marriage and the Family, pp. 242-245, 299-300.

  42. Manning, Handlyng Synne, p. 211.

  43. E.M.R., p. 3.

  44. Ibid., pp. 132, 146.

  45. Ibid., p. 200.

  46. G. G. Coulton, Medieval Village, Manor, and Monastery, New York, 1960 (first pub. in 1925), pp. 477-478.

  47. J. A. Raftis, in correspondence with the authors.

  48. Britton, Community of the Vill, pp. 34-37.

  49. Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, p. 216.

  50. John Myrc, Instructions for Parish Priests, ed. by E. Peacock, London, 1868, pp. 18-19.

  51. Manning, Handlyng Synne, pp. 240-241.

  52. Myrc, Instructions for Parish Priests, pp. 4-5.

  53. Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, pp. 172-173.

  54. Ibid., pp. 175-179.

  55. Bedfordshire Coroners’ Rolls, p. 1.

  56. Ibid., p. 51.

  57. Ibid., pp. 59-60.

  58. Ibid., p. 98.

  59. Barbara Hanawalt, “Childbearing Among the Lower Classes of Late Medieval England,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8 (1977), pp. 20-21.

  60. Owst, Literature and Pulpit, pp. 34-35.

  61. Ibid., pp. 33-34.

  62. Ibid., p. 34.

  63. Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, pp. 166-167.

  64. Cart. Rames., pp. 300-301.

  65. M. M. Postan and J. Titow, “Heriots and Prices on Winchester Manors,” Economic History Review 2nd ser. 11 (1959), pp. 392-410; Hanawalt, Ties That Bound, pp. 228-229; Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, pp. viii-ix.

  66. E.M.R., p. 311.

  67. Elaine Clark, “Some Aspects of Social Security in Medieval England,” Journal of Family History 7 (1982), pp. 307-320.

  68. Manning, Handlyng Synne, pp. 30-32.

  69. J. A. Raftis, Tenure and Mobility: Studies in the Social History of the Mediaeval English Village, Toronto, 1964, pp. 43-44.

  70. Ibid., pp. 44-45.

  71. Homans, English Villagers, p. 146.

  72. Clark, “Some Aspects of Social Security,” p. 313.

  73. Ibid., pp. 312-313.

  74. Raftis, Tenure and Mobility, p. 45.

  75. Ibid., p. 44.

  76. Clark, “Some Aspects of Social Security,” pp. 310-311.

  77. Howard Morris Stuckert, Corrodies in English Monasteries: A Study in English Social History of the Middle Ages, Philadelphia, 1923; Hilton, A Medieval Society, pp. 111-113.

  78. Hilton, A Medieval Society, p. 163.

  79. Bedfordshire Coroners’ Rolls, p. 4.

  80. Ibid., p. 89.

  81. Manning, Handlyng Synne, pp. 280-281.

  82. Myrc, Instructions for Parish Priests, pp. 53-59.

  83. Roberti Grosseteste Epistolae episcopi quondam Lincolniensis, ed. by H. R. Luard, London, 1861, p. 74, cited in Homans, English Villagers, p. 392.

  84. Homans, English Villagers, p. 392.

  85. Cited in Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, p. 268.

  CHAPTER 7. THE VILLAGE AT WORK

  1. E.M.R., p. 90; Raftis, “Farming Techniques,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2, p. 329.

  2. Ault, Open-Field Farming, pp. 22-23.

  3. Gray, English Field Systems, especially pp. 39—49 and 71-82; Gray expresses the change from two-field to three-field as bringing “under tillage one-sixth more of the [total] arable” (p. 76); Homans, English Villagers, p. 57; Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life, pp. 22-23, 92-96; Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, pp. 88-97.

  4. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, pp. 89-97 for a general discussion of field systems; Homans, English Villagers, p. 54; Trevor Rowley, “Medieval Field Systems,” in Cantor, ed., The English Medieval Landscape, pp. 36-38.

  5. Maurice Beresford, Studies in Leicestershire Agrarian History, London, 1949, p. 93, cited in Ault, Open-Field Farming, p. 52.

  6. E.M.R., p. 4.

  7. Ibid., p. 34.

  8. Ibid., p. 30.

  9. Ibid., p. 3.

  10. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, p. 99.

  11. Ibid., p. 123.

  12. E.M.R., p. xxx.

  13. V.C.H. Hunts., vol. 1, p. 75; Rot. Hund., p. 657.

  14. Cart. Rames., vol. 1, pp. 323-324.

  15. Raftis, Estates of Ramsey Abbey, pp. 194-195; Robert R. Reynolds, Europe Emerges: Transition Toward an Industrial World-Wide Society, 600-1750, Madison, 1967, p. 132.

  16. E.M.R., p. xxx.

  17. Ibid., p. 4.

  18. Ibid., p. 5.

  19. John Langdon, “Agricultural Equipment,” in Astill and Grant, eds., Countryside of Medieval England, p. 96; Orwin and Orwin, The Open Fields, p. 12; Field, “Worcestershire Peasant Buildings,” pp. 123-125.

  20. Ault, Open-Field Farming, p. 20; Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England pp. 154-155.

  21. Trow-Smith, British Livestock Husbandry, pp. 69-70.

  22. Butser Hill Ancient Farm Project; M. L. Ryder, “Livestock,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 349; E.M.R., p. lix; Trow-Smith, British Livestock Husbandry, vol. 1, p. 123.

  23. Ault, Open-Field Farming, p. 20.

  24. Ibid., p. 22; Orwin and Orwin, The Open Fields, pp. 33-35; Homans, English Villagers, pp. 44-45.

  25. Ault, Open-Field Farming, p. 23.

  26. Thirsk, “Farming Techniques,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 4, p. 166; Walter of Henley, p. 19.

  27. Ibid., p. 19; J. A. Raftis, “Farming Techniques: the East Midlands,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2, p. 327.

  28. E.M.R., p. 249; Christopher Dyer, “Farming Techniques: the West Midlands,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2, p. 378.

  29. Homans, English Villagers, p. 40.

  30. Walter of Henley, p. 13; Ra
ftis, “Farming Techniques: the East Midlands,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2, p. 327.

  31. Dyer, Lords and Peasants, p. 69.

  32. Walter of Henley, p. 15.

  33. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 348.

  34. Ault, Open-Field Farming, pp. 26-27.

  35. Cart. Rames., vol. 1, p. 311; E.M.R., p. 173; Homans, English Villagers, pp. 269-270.

  36. Cart. Rames., vol. 1, p. 311.

  37. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 311, 336.

  38. E.M.R., p. 30.

  39. Ibid., p. 3.

  40. Ibid., p. 69.

  41. Cart. Rames., vol. 1, p. 300.

  42. Britton, Community of the Vill pp. 170-171; H. E. Hallam, “The Life of the People,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2, p. 838.

  43. Walter of Henley (Hosbonderie), p. 69.

  44. Ault, Open-Field Farming, p. 28.

  45. Cited in Ault, Open-Field Farming, p. 31 (Commentary on the Laws of England, vol. 3, p. 212, 1772).

  46. Walter of Henley, p. 69; Homans, English Villagers, p. 103.

  47. Hilton, A Medieval Society, p. 123.

  48. Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century, vol. 1, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, New York, 1981, p. 124.

  49. Ault, Open-Field Farming, p. 29.

  50. Walter of Henley (Seneschaucie), p. 99.

  51. Ault, Open-Field Farming, pp. 42-43.

  52. Langdon, “Agricultural Equipment,” in Astill and Grant, eds., Countryside of Medieval England, p. 103.

  53. Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life, p. 270; F. R. H. DuBoulay, The Lordship of Canterbury, London, 1966, p. 12.

  54. E.M.R., p. 92.

  55. Langland, Piers Plowman’s Crede, pp. 16-17.

  56. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 102-103.

  57. Ibid., p. 105.

  58. Ibid., p. 97.

  59. Trow-Smith, British Livestock Husbandry, p. 129.

  60. Ibid., p. 147.

  61. Ibid., p. 159.

  62. Thirsk, “Farming Techniques,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 4, p. 187.

  63. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, p. 217.

  64. Walter of Henley (Hosbonderie), pp. 76-77.

  65. Trow-Smith, British Livestock Husbandry, p. 128.

  66. Ault, Open-Field Fanning, pp. 48-49.

  67. V.C.H. Hunts., p. 78.

  68. Joan Thirsk, “Farming Techniques,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 4, pp. 192-193.