England S Second Domesday And The Expulsion Of The English Peasantry

Centred on close scrutiny of the royal commission of 1517 - 'England's Second Domesday' - this study reveals how capitalism began, grew and thrived on widespread illegal clearances of rural people and their culture during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The world-shaking forced evictions of English peasants during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are treated by most historians as largely a 'Tudor myth'. For them, the peasantry disappeared much later through fair means thanks to industrialisation and trade. Centred on close scrutiny of the royal commission of 1517 – 'England's Second Domesday' – this book overturns these accounts. It demonstrates, unequivocally, that capitalism carved fundamental and irreversible breaches into the English countryside between 1400 and 1620. It began, grew and thrived on widespread illegal clearances of rural people and their culture by the English ruling class, long before the British industrial revolution.

This account of the changing relationship between lords and peasants in medieval England challenges many received ideas about the "origins of the manor", the status of the Anglo-Saxon peasantry, the 12th-century economy and the origins of villeinage. The author covers the period from the end of the Roman empire to the late-12th century, tracing in post-Conquest society the continuing influence of developments which originated in Anglo-Saxon England. Drawing on work in archaeology and landscape studies, as well as on documentary sources, the book describes a fundamental division within the peasantry: that between the very dependent tenants and agricultural workers on the "inland" of the estates of ministers, kinds and lords, and the more independent peasantry of the "warland". The study leads to the expression of views on many aspects of the development of society in the period.

An account of the daily and yearly round of the English peasant in the Middle Ages.

The 1279-80 hundred rolls are one of the most important sources for later thirteenth century England, yet this is the first comprehensive study of the inquiry which brought them into being. A Second Domesday will be an indispensable working tool for historians and is based on the latest knowledge of the returns. More of these are being discovered all the time and one of the aims of this book is to stimulate the recognition of other surviving texts. The book places the inquiry in its historical context, continental as well as English. This is followed by an examination of its purpose and whether or not it was conceived deliberately as a second Domesday Book. Central to the study is a consideration of the geographical range of the inquiry, how it was conducted and the way in which the returns were compiled. The way in which the inquiry was used, by historians as well as contemporaries, along with the introductory chapters will be particularly helpful to students. The book concludes with a description of all known returns, which, together with the appendices, are designed to assist future users.

The conflict between landlords and peasants over the appropriation of the surplus product of the peasant holding was a prime mover in the evolution of medieval society. In this collection of essays Rodney Hilton looks at the economic context within which these conflicts took place. He seeks to explain the considerable variations in the size, composition and management of landed estates and investigates the nature of medieval urbanisation, a consequence of the development of both local commodity production and long distance trade in luxury goods. By setting the broader economic context – the nature of the peasant and landlord economies and the commercialisation of peasant production – Hilton's essays enable a thorough understanding of the relationship between landlords and peasants in medieval society.