Life on the English Manor: A Study of Peasant Conditions 1150-1400

Description

This book gives a picture of the daily and yearly round of the English peasant in the Middle Ages. H. S. Bennett explains the feudal system which linked the poor man to the soil and to the service of his lord and the church in a pattern of customary dues and rights, payments, labours and small privileges. The author gives lively details of the pattern of medieval country life: the influence of the seasons and the state of contemporary knowledge on the work of the fields; the place of religion in everyday life; the workings of feudal justice; popular attitudes to the social structure; the business of getting a living. Since all the inhabitants of England outside the few large towns were essentially countrymen, this is an introduction to life in medieval England as a whole.

'Its scholarship, which is actually exhaustively patient, interferes not one whit with its open, positively exciting readability ... No student of literature, no lover of medieval past should be without its modest assistance. In itself it has the quiet charm of unpretentious knowledge; as a bridge to an age not easily approached, it is of profound usefulness.' The Saturday Review 'A picture of the peasant's physical and mental environment which is well balanced, full of significant detail, and free from disquieting exaggeration of light and shade ... A work of much learning, well arranged and clearly written, but its distinction lies in its humanity.' Sir Frank Stenton, The Spectator 'This is not just another book on English life in the Middle Ages and the ways of our forefathers ... It is written with such clarity and grace and it reconstructs so vividly and yet with such scholarly attention to the evidence the fortunes of the poor six or seven centuries ago that it should attract the attention of a far wider audience.' New York Herald Tribune