Peasants, Knights and Heretics: Studies in Medieval English Social History

The essays in this book, originally published in "Past and Present" over a period of fifteen years, are here collected together for the first time. Professor Hilton, the editor, has chosen them from a much larger pool of articles on medieval subjects in order to illustrate important themes in the history of later medieval England (from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries).
The essays essentially fall into three groups: economic history, with a debate on the open-field system, an examination of the inflation of 1180-1220, and a study of the great famine of 1315-22; social history, with articles on the knights, peasant freedom, and on peasant pressures on landlords in the fifteenth century; and the history of ideas, with a debate on the Robin Hood ballads, and a study, now classical, on Lollard heresy as social and political subversion. Such a division, however, should not obscure the interconnection of these themes: social problems are intimately affected by economic developments, and ideas and feelings, expressed in ballads, theological manifestoes and heretical programmes can only make sense in their contemporary socio-political context.
These essays consist both of short and deliberately provocative presentation of a thesis for debate, as in the pieces on the open-field system and the Robin Hood ballads, and of longer research articles on major themes. As a whole they illustrate the range and depth of recent writing on medieval English history, and it is hoped that publication in the present form will appeal to a wide variety of non-specialist readers, in addition to professional historians already familiar with the original articles.