商品詳細

This account of the changing relationship between lords and peasants in England challenges the many received ideas about the "origins of the manor", the status of Anglo-Saxon peasantry, the 12th-century economy and the origins of villeinage. In covering the period from the end of the Roman Empire and the late 12th century, the author is able to trace, in post-Conquest society, the continuing influence of developments which originated in Anglo-Saxon England. Drawing on much recent work in archaeology and landscape studies, as well as documentary sources, the book describes the fundamental division within the peasantry: between the very dependent tenants and agricultural workers on the "inland" of the estates of ministers, kings and lords, and the more independent peasantry of the "warland". This leads to new views on many fundamental aspects of the history of the development of society in the period.