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This book is intended as both a history of judicial developments in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and as a contribution to the intellectual history of the period. The dates 1215 and 1381 mark significant turning points in English history. The product of legal culture and experiences, 'legal consciousness' can be seen both as an active element shaping people's values, beliefs and aspirations and also as a passive agent providing a reserve of knowledge, memory and reflective thought, influencing not simply the development of the law and legal system, but also political attitudes. Focusing on the different contexts of law and legal relations, the book aims to shift the traditional conceptual boundaries of 'law', portraying both the law's inherent diversity and its multi-dimensional character. By offering a re-conceptualisation of the role of the law in medieval England, the book aims to engage the reader in new ways of thinking about the political events occurring during these centuries. It considers the long-term effects of civil lawyer, Master John Appleby's encounter with forces questioning royal government and provides a new explanation for the dangerous state of affairs faced by the boy-king during the Peasants' Revolt over a century and a half later. The book puts forward the view that the years subsequent to the signing of Magna Carta yielded a new (and shifting) perspective, both in terms of prevailing concepts of 'law' and 'justice' and with regard to political life in general.
This chapter outlines some of the major medieval discourses about sexual difference which inform Chaucer's depiction of women in the Canterbury Tales, in particular, the tendency of medieval writers to polarise their views of women, condemning them to the pit or elevating them to the pedestal. It asks whether any of these views can be equated with Chaucer's own position by examining the Wife of Bath's rejection of the pedestal. It explores the alternative to both the pit and the pedestal offered in the 'Tale of Melibee' and the 'Parson's Tale'. It is possible and legitimate for modern critics to argue that Chaucer intended peple to interpret the Wife as a corroboration of misogynist attitudes. It would be wrong to portray medieval views of women as universally or straight forwardly misogynist or to see the idealisation of women as the only medieval alternative to such misogyny.
Critics who consider the social meaning of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales fall into two main schools: those who present his social thought as an expression of the dominant spirit or ideology of his day and those who see Chaucer as possessing a more heterodox voice. This chapter attempts to put the case for each of these views, examining them in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin's distinction between the conservative monologic work and the more subversive, dialogic text, before an assessment of their relative merits. It is possible to reconcile the apparently contradictory 'monologic' and 'dialogic' interpretations of the Canterbury Tales. If the Canterbury Tales left itself open to being read as a dialogic work by modern critics, it could be argued that, given medieval notions of the purposes of literature, such a reading was far removed from that of Chaucer himself and hardly available to readers in Chaucer's own day.
As an index of taste and privilege, music may be seen as a vehicle to express ideas of territory, status and hegemony to society at large. This chapter discusses the issue of where and when gentry members may have gone beyond the role of providing resources for musical provision and crossed over to become performers of musical works themselves. Music in fifteenth-century England appears to have been essentially a contingent aspect of daily life for the majority of members of the gentry, and much of its 'meaning' is dependent upon being fleshed out by context. The music education of Thomas Marchall may reflect older patterns of household service or it may tie in with an educational trend identified separately by both Nicholas Orme and Moran Cruz. The routes to music education for the gentry at least in fifteenth-century England appear, however, rather more traditional.
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The part considers the ways in which the historical study of the medieval English peasantry has, after its first stirrings, tended to be confined within three broad themes. These main themes have become associated with a more all-encompassing discussion of change in the medieval economy. So, historians have tended to see the economy as driven by one of or a combination of the following 'supermodels': population movement and its determining factors, the demands and constraints of the seigneurial economy and of resistance to the same, and the development of commerce and the market. The part suggests that a population-driven model, associated especially with the writing of M.M. Postan, was highly influential in the third quarter of the twentieth century but lost significant ground to a more 'commercial model' during the 1980s.
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The part identifies features of the relevant historiography that often relate to or respond to the major shifts in our understanding of the medieval peasantry. Some of these developments reflect an intensification or a deepening of research in relation to more general theories regarding the functioning of medieval rural society and economy. Much of the discussion of medieval peasant culture has emerged in relation to discussion of peasant agency, be that in terms of politics and the political engagement of the peasantry, in or beyond the manor, or in commercial exchanges involving peasants, as producers and consumers. Historical investigation of themes relevant to our understanding of the medieval peasantry has been conducted by historians working, for the greater part, in other areas and often responding to other agendas.
Royal jurisdiction through the common law increased exponentially during the period 1215-1381. Participation in the royal courts was therefore an important way in which people became increasingly familiar with the processes of law. A mixture of royal policy, experience of litigation and feedback from lawyers and litigants shaped the development of the royal courts. The effects of changes are assessed by four criteria: availability, actionability, accountability and accessibility. The chapter first considers the availability of royal justice and provides the reader with a snapshot of the judicial system. Accountability was an important feature of the Crown's policy towards the administration of justice and one that had political and financial implications as well as purely legal ones. The Crown's role in the prosecution of individuals was not restricted to the identification of offenders through the use of local juries.
This chapter explores an element of the historiography of the medieval English peasantry, culture. There are two important strands in the historiography of the medieval peasantry which, in terms of their core assumptions, have supposed the presence of a peasant culture at least capable of being posited and, in part at least, examined. The first of these is the examination of peasant engagement with the market, especially in terms of peasants as consumers, and the second is that aimed at exploring peasant agency, especially as regards politics, be that at the level of the manor and estate or on a national scale. The chapter considers each of these in turn before turning to some other, related, features of peasant culture, including relatively new initiatives, typically issuing from beyond studies directed at the medieval peasantry per se, and examines aspects of culture related to and encompassing the medieval peasantry.
The study of the medieval English peasantry began in the nineteenth century as an adjunct to the study of other themes. Medievalists have tended to assume that modern working definitions of peasant, as proposed by Thorner et al., are sufficiently accommodating as to make room for a medieval English peasantry and conceive of a peasant society operating in medieval England. The book describes the ways in which historians have discussed change within the village community, notably in the pre- and post-Black Death village communities. It examines the ways in which debates or particular avenues of research have emerged from three main strands of research: population movement and its determining; the demands and constraints of the seigneurial economy and of resistance to the same; and the development of commerce and the market. The book analyzes the peasant family and household in demographic terms and by looking at household formation, age at marriage and the size and structure of the peasant household, as well as the evolution of the peasant household in the high and late middle ages. It suggests that the study of the medieval peasantry is not a plaything of historical fashion, subject only to the whims and musings of historians the views of whom are rooted only in the present; it reflects a nuancing and refining of questions that will lead to a fuller understanding of a topic and period of great and enduring interest.
The role of peasants as participants in markets and as distinctive players in the medieval English economy has been emphasised by a number of historians. Marxist historians writing either side of the Second World War argued for a peasant economy that was, in its development, principally influenced by lordship and which was certainly not determined in the greater part by the market or commerce. The chapter sets out the ways in which the market has often tended to be set aside in discussion of the medieval peasant. It examines the adoption of new approaches to the study of the medieval English economy. Central features of this approach are: an awareness of the potentially significant impact of peasant economic endeavour on medieval gross domestic product and a reconsideration of the role of commerce, including rural trade and peasant economic activity, in effecting and indeed driving change in the medieval English economy.