Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain 850-1520Dramatic 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. In this masterly book, preeminent medieval historian Christopher Dyer presents a fresh view of the British economy from the ninth to the sixteenth century and a vivid new account of medieval life. He begins his volume with the formation of towns and villages in the ninth and tenth centuries and ends with the inflation, population rise, and colonial expansion of the sixteenth century. This is a book about ideas and attitudes as well as the material world, and Dyer shows how people regarded the economy and responded to economic change. He examines the growth of towns, the clearing of lands, the Great Famine, the Black Death, and the upheavals of the fifteenth century through the eyes of those who experienced them. He also explores the dilemmas and decisions of those who were making a living in a changing world--from peasants, artisans, and wage earners to barons and monks. Drawing on archaeological and landscape evidence along with more conventional archives and records, the author offers here an engaging survey of British medieval economic history unrivaled in breadth and clarity. |
Contents
Living on the land C850C1050 | 13 |
ii Expansion | 17 |
iii Estates and lords | 26 |
iv Peasants | 35 |
Crisis and new directions C850C1050 | 43 |
ii The growth of the state | 50 |
iii The origins of towns | 58 |
Conquest C1050C1100 | 71 |
iv Techniques of trade and manufacture | 212 |
v Urban government | 218 |
vi Towns in a feudal economy | 225 |
Crisis C1290C1350 | 228 |
ii Contraction and change | 236 |
iii Historical debate | 246 |
iv Crisis in Scotland | 251 |
v Explanations | 254 |
ii New aristocracy | 80 |
iii England in 1086 | 91 |
Expansion and crisis C1100C1350 | 101 |
Lords C11ooC1315 | 106 |
ii Managing the estate | 119 |
iii Lords and peasants | 137 |
iv Lords and towns | 145 |
v Knights and gentry | 147 |
vi Aristocratic achievement? | 152 |
Peasants C1100C1315 | 155 |
ii Peasants and their holdings | 160 |
iii Peasants and the market | 163 |
iv Peasants and lords | 178 |
v Individuals and communities | 183 |
Towns and commerce C1100C1315 | 187 |
ii The urban environment | 197 |
iii Urban occupations | 201 |
Making a new world C1350C1520 | 265 |
The Black Death and its aftermath C1348C1520 | 271 |
ii Low population C1348C1400 | 278 |
iii Revolts | 286 |
iv The economy C1348C14oo | 293 |
Towns trade and industry C1350C1520 | 298 |
ii Urban economies | 313 |
iii Consumers | 322 |
iv Old and new | 327 |
The countryside C135OC1520 | 330 |
ii Gentry | 340 |
iii farmers | 346 |
iv Peasants | 349 |
Conclusion | 363 |
Further reading | 366 |
| 390 | |
Other editions - View all
Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain 850-1520 Christopher Dyer Limited preview - 2002 |
Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain 850–1520 Christopher Dyer Limited preview - 2003 |
Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain 850-1520 Christopher Dyer No preview available - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
Abbey acquired acres agricultural animals arable aristocracy artisans assarting Black Death borough building burh Bury St Edmunds cash cent centres changes church Cistercian cloth clothmaking countryside courts crafts crops cultivation Danegeld demand demesne developed Domesday Domesday Book earls early fourteenth century east East Anglia economy eleventh century England English especially estates example farming fifteenth century gentry Gloucestershire grain growth harvest holdings household houses income increased industry king king's knights labour services land landholding larger leased Lincolnshire living London lord's lords magnates manor marriage medieval merchants midlands monasteries officials Oxfordshire oxgangs paid pasture peasants period plough population produce profit recorded regions rents revenues royal rural Scotland Scottish selling settlements sheep smallholders social tenants thegns thirteenth century towns townspeople trade twelfth century urban Viking village villeins wages Wales Warwickshire Welsh woodland wool Worcestershire workers yardland