Böcker av Christopher Dyer

First full analysis of the rich records surviving from medieval English town courts.Town courts were the principal institution responsible for the delivery of justice and urban administration within medieval towns. Their records survive in large quantities in archives across England, and they provide an unparalleled insight into the lives and work of thousands of men and women who lived in these towns. The court rolls tell us much about the practice of law at the local level within towns, as well as yielding a broad range of perspectiveson the economy, society and administration of towns. This volume is the first collection dedicated to the analysis of town courts and their records. Through a wide range of approaches, it offers new interpretations of the role that these courts played. It also demonstrates the wide range of uses to which court records can be put to in order to more fully understand medieval urban society. The volume draws on the records of a considerable number of towns and their courts across England, including London, York, Norwich, Lincoln, Nottingham, Lynn, Chester, Bromsgrove and Shipston-on-Stour. RICHARD GODDARD is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Nottingham; TERESA PHIPPS is Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of History at Swansea University. Contributors: Christopher Dyer, Richard Goddard, Jeremy Goldberg, Alan Kissane, Maryanne Kowaleski, JaneLaughton, Esther Liberman Cuenca, Susan Maddock, Teresa Phipps, Samantha Sagui

Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society is a history of the large church estate of Worcester from its foundation until the Reformation.

Provides for a new interpretation of the agrarian economy in late Tudor and early modern Britain.This volume revisits a classic book by a famous historian: R.H. Tawney's Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912). Tawney's Agrarian Problem surveyed landlord-tenant relations in England between 1440 and 1660, the period of emergent capitalism and rapidly changing property relations that stands between the end of serfdom and the more firmly capitalist system of the eighteenth century. This transition period is widely recognised as crucial to Britain's long term economic development, laying the foundation for the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. Remarkably, Tawney's book has remained the standard text on landlord-tenant relations for over a century. Here, Tawney's book is re-evaluated by leading experts in agrarian and legal history, taking its themes as a departure point to provide for a new interpretation of the agrarian economy in late Tudor and early modern Britain. The introduction looks at how Tawney's Agrarian Problem was written, its place in the historiography of agrarian England and the current state of research. Survey chapters examine the late medieval period, a comparison with Scotland, and Tawney's conception of capitalism, whilst the remaining chapters focus on four issues that were central to Tawney's arguments: enclosure disputes, the security of customary tenure; the conversion of customarytenure to leasehold; and other landlord strategies to raise revenues. The balance of power between landlords and tenants determined how the wealth of agrarian England was divided in this crucial period of economic development - this book reveals how this struggle was played out. JANE WHITTLE is professor of rural history at Exeter University. Contributors: Christopher Brooks, Christopher Dyer, Heather Falvey, Harold Garrett-Goodyear, Julian Goodare, Elizabeth Griffiths, Jennifer Holt, Briony McDonagh, Jean Morrin, David Ormrod, William D. Shannon, Jane Whittle, Andy Wood. Foreword by Keith Wrightson

Dramatic social and economic change during the middle ages altered the lives of the people of Britain in far-reaching ways, from the structure of their families to the ways they made their livings. This book presents a fresh view of the British economy from the ninth to the sixteenth century and an account of medieval life.

Taken from a conference of the Society for Medieval Archaeology held at York University in 2002, these fifteen papers, with an introduction and conclusion from the editors, examine the nature of urban and rural life in the Middle Ages.