Land and Family

About the book

Medieval peasant families are closely identified with the land to which they had a hereditary right, especially in periods of land scarcity. By contrast, historians in recent decades have become increasingly interested in the growing facility with which even servile tenants could exchange land, especially from the thirteenth century onwards.

This book concerns the tension between these contrasting trends in the study of village life, showing how they were affected by changes over time and place.

More about the book

Unlike earlier studies of the peasant land market, which have mostly concentrated on individual manors, this study employs the vast amount of evidence available from the Winchester bishopric estates between 1263 and 1415.
It uses computerised technology to analyse 66,000 transactions across over 50 different manors ranging from Somerset to Surrey, and from Oxfordshire to Hampshire, providing unparalleled opportunities for comparing local and regional differences of experience.

View the table of contents

	List of figures	ix
	List of tables	x
	Abbreviations	xii
	General Editor's preface	xiii
	Preface	xv
1	The peasant land market and the Winchester pipe rolls P.D.A. Harvey	1
2	The bishop's estate	11
	The bishop of Winchester's estate	12
	The pipe rolls	13
	Other estate records	17
	Principal sources of supply	18
	Population	25
	Location and commerce	27
	The regional distribution of fines	28
	Conclusion	35
3	Units of property	37
	Virgated tenements	38
	Unvirgated lands	48
	Cottages, cotlands, messuages and houses	51
	Property outside agriculture	54
	Conclusion	55
4	Tenures	57
	Changes affecting customary tenure	58
	Changes affecting non-customary tenure	64
	Tenures and the written word	68
	Conclusion	70
5	Entry fines	71
	The changing number of transfers	71
	The changing level of average entry fines, 1263–1349	74
	The changing level of average entry fines, 1350–1415	77
	Conclusion	82
6	Families and their land	84
	Families and outsiders	84
	Intermanorial and interregional variation	90
	New tensions, new devices	97
	Conclusion	101
7	Transfers within families	103
	Custom and inheritance: (a) widows	104
	Custom and inheritance: (b) sons	108
	The impact of epidemics	110
	Ways of modifying custom	112
	Intrafamilial transfers inter vivos	113
	Marriage	115
	Conclusion	116
8	Buyers and sellers	118
	Transactions between families inter vivos	119
	Buyers and sellers	120
	Reasons for selling	123
	Extrafamilial transfers post mortem	126
	Leases	128
	Conclusion	131
9	Accumulation	132
	Before the Black Death	132
	After the Black Death	136
	Large accumulations	142
	The polarisation of land tenure	148
	Conclusions	150
10	Conclusions	152
	The estate as a whole	152
	Regional differences	154
	Intermanorial differences	155
	Appendix	159
	Bibliography	161
	Index	169

About the Author/s:

John Mullan

John Mullan is a researcher and lecturer in Medieval History at Cardiff University.
In 2000 he was appointed research associate on a Leverhulme-Trust-funded project researching the transfer of customary land on the estates of the Bishopric of Winchester, between 1350 and 1415.

Richard Britnell

Richard Britnell taught in the University of Durham from 1966 until 2003.
He was a specialist in the economic and social history of the medieval period and was the author of several monographs and textbooks.
He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005.

ISBN: 978-1-902806-95-2 Format: Paperback, 192pp Published: Sep 2010

Land and Family

Trends and local variations in the peasant land market on the Winchester bishopric estates, 1263–1415

About the book

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John Mullan

Richard Britnell

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