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Redefining the Peasant Community in Medieval England: The Regional Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Anne Reiber DeWindt
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Historians of the medieval English peasantry have tended to assume that the history of peasants and their culture can best be revealed through the history of the village as a social and economic unit. As a result, the important recent advances in our understanding of peasant culture have been made by historians who, borrowing heavily from the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, have written studies of particular villages or small towns. The mystique of the “village community” has retained a hold on the historian's imagination. Even as the peasant and his family now attract more attention from scholars, studies of family size, household structure, and inheritance and marriage patterns are usually carried out within the context of a particular village or small town, largely because collections of local records naturally coalesce around a parish name. These close examinations of specific vills have been made possible primarily through the exploitation of the village court rolls that survive from the mid-thirteenth century. Ironically, it has been these very village court rolls that, in the end, have forcefully demonstrated that the assumptions identifying peasant history with village history must now be abandoned.

The numerous studies of medieval English villages that have made possible the study of peasant family structure and behavior are now demonstrating that the history of the peasant family and the history of the particular village must part company. Certainly, the study of a single series of village court rolls makes possible the discovery within the village of family groups with characteristic behavior patterns.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , April 1987 , pp. 163 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1987

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References

1 For some of the more recent examples, see Razi, Zvi, Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish: Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen, 1270–1400 (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar; Spufford, Margaret, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar; Howell, Cicely, Land, Family and Inheritance in Transition: Kibworth Harcourt, 1280–1700 (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; Raftis, J. Ambrose, A Small Town in Late Medieval England: Godmanchester, 1278–1400 (Toronto, 1982)Google Scholar. For an interesting synthesis that makes use of many of the above works, see Hanawalt, Barbara A., The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar.

2 As Alan McFarlane has pointed out, “on the one hand we are aware that people were highly mobile and consequently we often obtain only a partial description of any single life cycle. People move past our bathescope window and then disappear into the gloom” (McFarlane, Alan, Harrison, Sarah, and Jardine, Charles, Reconstructing Historical Communities [Cambridge, 1977], p. 206Google Scholar). See also Raftis, J. Ambrose, Tenure and Mobility (Toronto, 1964)Google Scholar; and, for more recent studies, see Field, R. K., “Migration in the Later Middle Ages: The Case of the Hampton Lovett Villeins,” Midland History 8 (1983): 28–48Google Scholar; and McClure, Peter, “Patterns of Migration in the Late Middle Ages: The Evidence of English Place-Name Surnames,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 32 (1979): 167–82Google Scholar. Early modern historians have noticed the significance that rural mobility has to the problems of poverty. For a discussion of the stabilization of the mobility of the poor in the seventeenth century, see Wrightson, Keith and Levine, David, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525–1700 (New York, 1979)Google Scholar. Indeed, the remarkable turnover of surnames appearing in village records from generation to generation is not explained simply in terms of mortality.

3 For examples of two recent regional studies, see Bennett, Michael J., Community, Class and Carecrism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; and Appleby, Andrew B., Famine in Tudor and Stuart England (Liverpool, 1978)Google Scholar. For an interesting recent study that does entail studies of peasant families in two regions of Somerset and Derbyshire, see Blanchard, Ian, “Industrial Employment and the Rural Land Market, 1380–1520,” in Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, ed. Smith, Richard M. (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 227–75Google Scholar. Unfortunately, regional studies of the lower classes require massive cooperative efforts. The mere task of indexing individual and family names appearing in a good series of local court rolls is a daunting prospect, and the possibility of doing such analyses of more than one community and for more than one class of documents within a short period of time is not practical for a single researcher. The effective study of medieval local and regional communities requires its own community of scholars. McFarlane et al. have dramatically demonstrated this point in Reconstructing Historical Communities, which outlines a methodology for the study of two sixteenth-century English parishes.

4 DeWindt, E. B., Land and People in Holywell-cum-Needingworth (Toronto, 1972)Google Scholar; DeWindt, A. R., “Society and Change in a Fourteenth Century English Village: King's Ripton, 1275–1400” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1972)Google Scholar; Moore, Ellen Wedemeyer, The Fairs of Medieval England: An Introductory Study (Toronto, 1985)Google Scholar; Hogan, M. Patricia, “Wistow: A Social and Economic Reconstitution in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1971)Google Scholar; Britton, Edward, The Community of the Vill (Toronto, 1977)Google Scholar, a study of Broughton; Raftis, J. Ambrose, Warboys (Toronto, 1974)Google Scholar, and A Small Town in Late Medieval England; Bennett, Judith MacKenzie, “Gender, Family and Community: A Comparative Study of the English Peasantry, 1287–1349” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1981)Google Scholar, a study of Houghton as well as Brigstock in Northamptonshire and Iver in Buckinghamshire.

5 Raftis, J. A. and Hogan, M. P., Early Huntingdonshire Lay Subsidy Rolls (Toronto, 1976)Google Scholar; DeWindt, A. R. and DeWindt, E. B., Royal Justice and the Medieval English Countryside (Toronto, 1981)Google Scholar.

6 The sources used in this study include a series of court rolls from the small town of Ramsey as well as supplementary Ramsey documents, including over 200 Ramsey charters, subsidy rolls from 1290, 1295, 1327, and 1332, and royal records such as Itinerant Justice or Common Pleas cases and Inquests ad Quod Damnum. Data on Ramsey surnames that appear in other regional villages have been found in the Data Bank in Toronto; some of this information is available in published form and was cited above. The court rolls from Ramsey are British Library (BL), Additional (Add.) Roll 39594 (1268, eighty-two entries); BL, Add. Roll 39595 (1280, 110 entries); Public Record Office (PRO), Justices Itinerant (JI) 1/351b (1287, banlieu court, 129 entries); BL, Add. Roll 39596 (1289, 114 entries); BL, Add. Roll 39597 (1294, 116 entries); BL, Add. Roll 39598 (1295, 143 entries); BL, Add. Roll 39562 (1297, twenty-four entries); BL, Add. Roll 39562d (1297, thirty-three entries); BL, Add. Roll 39599 (1304, 107 entries); BL, Add. Roll 39699 (1305, banlieu court, twenty-six entries); BL, Add. Roll 34361 (1306, 100 entries); BL, Add. Roll 39699 (1306, banlieu court, fifteen entries); BL, Add. Roll 34359 (1307, eighty-seven entries); BL, Add. Roll 39702 (1307, banlieu court, five entries); PRO, SC 2/179/14 (1308, twenty-one entries); BL, Add. Roll 34770 (1309, eighty-seven entries); BL, Add. Roll 34342 (1309, fifty-nine entries); BL, Add. Roll 34362 (1311, eighty-four entries); PRO, SC 2/179/16 (1312, 103 entries); BL, Add. Roll 34768 (1312, 115 entries); PRO, SC 2/179/18 (1316, 102 entries); BL, Add. Roll 34345 (1317, 106 entries); PRO, SC 2/179/19 1320, forty-two entries); BL, Add. Roll 39600A ([1320?,] sixty-eight entries); BL, Add. Roll 39600B (1321, seventy-one entries); PRO, SC 2/179/22 (1325, seventy-two entries); PRO, SC 2/179/22 (1326, 149 entries); PRO, SC 2/179/24 (1326, fifteen entries); BL, Add. Roll 39601 (1327, fifty-six entries); BL, Add. Roll 39602 (1329, seventy-nine entries); BL, Add. Roll 34363 (1333, eighty entries); BL, Add. Roll 39603 (1335, 139 entries); BL, Add. Roll 39604 (1335, 122 entries); BL, Add. Roll 34364 (1337, ninety-nine entries); BL, Add. Roll 34365 (1339, 129 entries); BL, Add. Roll 39702 (pleas regarding oppressions etc. by ministers of lord king and by others, 1341, eleven entries); BL, Add. Roll 39702 (1341, two entries); BL, Add. Roll 39702 (1341, one entry); and BL, Add. Roll 39702 (1341, nine entries). This material and other sources are now being analyzed for a forthcoming study of the town of Ramsey from 1250 to 1600.

7 The size of the region covered in this study corresponds with that of regions covered in other local studies. Notice comparable distances covered by immigrants, by domestic servants, and by women who marry beyond their home vill (see nn. 65, 70 below).

8 See Judith M. Bennett's discussion of difficulties in identifying kin groups from court roll surnames in “Spouses, Siblings and Surnames: Reconstructing Families from Medieval Village Court Rolls,” Journal of British Studies 23, no. 1 (1983): 26–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Notice the provenance of outsiders cited in court rolls of Broughton and Warboys (Britton, pp. 180–81; and Raftis, , Warboys, pp. 133–35Google Scholar).

10 Illingworth, W. and Caley, J., eds., Rotuli Hundredorum tempore Henrici III et Edward I, Record Commission (London, 1818), 2:600, 602Google Scholar. William must have held customary land in Broughton as well because he was fined in the court rolls in 1288 and 1294 for failure to provide work services. In the Warboys court rolls, William de London appears between 1290 and 1294 as juror and pledge.

11 Warboys 1290–1305; Broughton in 1299.

12 “Et dicunt quod Radulphus filius Willelmi de London occidit Henricum filium Albini et Cristina soror defuncti juste levavit hutesium super dictum Radulphum. Que quidem Radulphus cepit fugam tamquam felonus. Idem si venerit capiatur et arestetur, et ix[illegible] de bonis et catallis dicti Radulphi” (BL, Add. Roll 39754). Thus Ralph fled and must have been acquitted of murder, if it ever came to trial. A search of surviving jail delivery rolls between 1286 and 1304 (PRO, JI 3/84–106) failed to reveal such a case, and a Ralph son of William de London was fined in Broughton court in 1299 for failure to provide work services.

13 Robert Byker de Ramsey, Benedict Wraw de Ramsey, John Norman de Ramsey, Wm. Crane de Ramsey, John le Couherde de Ramsey, Thomas Petevyn de Ramsey, and Robert de Hale de Ramsey (PRO, JI 1/354).

14 BL, Add. Charter (Ch.) 34117.

15 PRO, JI 1/1477.

16 DeWindt, E. B., The Liber Gersumarum of Ramsey Abbey (Toronto, 1976), p. 154Google Scholar.

17 BL, Add. Ch. 33736.

18 PRO, E 40/B2986.

19 PRO, E 40/A1247 (dated 1304) mentions “terra Richardi Bereng’” in Hepmongrove near Ramsey.

20 BL, Add. Ch. 33821. Britton (n. 4 above), p. 205; Hogan (n. 4 above), p. 70.

21 Illingworth and Caley, eds. (n. 10 above), p. 600.

22 For example, Simon Assbeche was fined six pence in a Ramsey court between 1335 and 1339 for “receiving beasts of John Hiche of Abbot's Ripton and pasturing them in the marsh of Ramsey, thus overstocking the pasture” (BL, Add. Roll 39604). John Hiche appears in the Abbot's Ripton court rolls as customary tenant and subsidy payer between 1306 and 1343. On community rights, see DeWindt and DeWindt (n. 5 above), pp. 94–95; and Darby, H. C., The Changing Fenland (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 10–13Google Scholar.

23 The Gernoun surname is a localized name in Huntingdonshire and therefore reliable as an indication of kin linkage. It appears in the lay subsidy lists from Huntingdon-shire County only in Upwood, Wistow, and Broughton, all contiguous with Ramsey.

24 PRO, JI 1309, and JI 1311.

25 PRO, Common Pleas (CP) 40/53 (1284).

26 See the Ramsey court rolls for 1304, 1307, and 1341 (n. 6 above); and PRO, C 143/50/8 (inquest ad quod damnum, 1303–4).

27 Hart, W. H. and Lyons, P. A., eds., Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, Rolls Series 79 (Millwood, N.Y., 1965), 3:238Google Scholar. Fifteenth-century accounts from Ramsey illustrate more dramatically the regular expenditure by the abbey on wage labor in that town.

28 Ault, W. O., ed., Court Rolls of the Abbey of Ramsey and of the Honor of Clare (New Haven, Conn., 1928), pp. xxxiii ff.Google Scholar

29 The name De Biker does not appear at all in the Huntingdonshire subsidies, and only Robert and his wife bear that name in any of the other Huntingdonshire records examined here.

30 PRO, CP 40/273/51v.

31 PRO, CP 40/280.

32 PRO, E 40/A15088, A15084.

33 Hart and Lyons, eds., 3:75.

34 See the Ramsey court roll for 1305 (n. 6 above).

35 BL, Add. Roll 34517 (dated 1332).

36 See the Ramsey banlieu court case for 1287 in n. 6 above. William son of Elias appears in 1279 as a King's Ripton tenant of one messuage and one acre (BL, Add. Roll 55224).

37 PRO, JI 1/1431 (dated between 1341 and 1351).

38 Hart and Lyons, eds., 2:295.

39 DeWindt and DeWindt (n. 5 above), pp. 474–75.

40 BL, Add. Roll 34335 (Warboys court roll for 1292).

41 BL, Add. Roll 34774 (Warboys court roll for 1305).

42 BL, Add. Roll 34362 (Ramsey court roll for 1311); BL, Add. Roll 34335 (Warboys court roll for 1292).

43 Chaceden was assessed at over six pounds, including “chattels” in the 1290 Ramsey lay subsidy (see Hogan [n. 4 above], p. 56).

44 The butchers whose surnames are associated with the town offices are Brouse, Bekky, Clere, and Powell. Surnames of butchers appearing often in association with trade or property in Ramsey are Butcher, Collop, Gibson, Kippon, Mountabon, and Hunt. Only two to four instances of the butchers' surnames Balle, Child, and Gylur appear in surviving records. Killat and Parkin appear only as forestallers of pigs and thus were probably associated with the butcher trade.

45 The name Lytonemore is unique with Alan in the Huntingdonshire lay subsidy rolls.

46 Eight individuals, with twenty-five entries, bear the name Cator in the surviving Ramsey records. The surname Catur, or Mercator, appears in the index of the Huntingdonshire lay subsidy rolls only in the Ramsey area (Ramsey and Upwood), the Godmanchester area (Godmanchester, Huntingdon, and Stanton), and Great Staughton (Dillington).

47 See the index to the Huntingdonshire lay subsidy rolls in Hogan. The name Tanner appears only in connection with Eynesbury, Wintringham, Little Paxton, and St. Ives. The name Barker, which may be associated with the tanning trade, is a little more widely distributed. According to one study of rural and urban trades, the presence of notable numbers of bakers and tanners indicates an urban rather than rural model. Ramsey records reveal the active presence of both trades. (See Patten, John, “Village and Town: An Occupational Study,” Agricultural History Review 20 [1972]: 1–16.Google Scholar)

48 BL, Cotton Ch. XIII25, m.2d.

49 BL, Add. Ch. 33777. Marriages beyond one's home vill may well have been commonplace for many women in the Middle Ages, corresponding to patterns discovered in early modern parish registers. Between 50 and 66 percent of thirteenth-century marriages at Weston in Lincolnshire and of early fourteenth-century marriages on the abbey of Crowland's estates took women outside their home vill. (See Smith, R., “Hypothèses sur la nuptialité en Angleterre aux XIIIe–XIVe siècles,” Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilizations 38 [1983]: 127–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.)

50 BL, Add. Ch. 34209.

51 “Grant by Matilda, daughter and heir of John de Erhith of St. Ives, widow, to Ralph, son of Benedict le Chamberleyn, of all her lands, etc., in St. Ives, Slepe, Huntingdon, Halliwell, Niddingworth, Wodehirst, Bluntesham, and Herhyth, which she inherited from her father; with reversion to herself if he die childless …. Endorsed: Predicta Matilda prius fuit sponsa …. Heire, et Heire obiit, et postea fecit istam cartam, et postea sponsa dicto Radulfo et postea, etc.” (1349) (A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds in the Public Record Office [London, 1890–1902], 2:137, entry A1207Google Scholar).

52 BL, Add. Ch. 33882.

53 For a summary of properties in Warboys and the St. Ives area held by Ivo of Hurst, and for Ivo's service on inquests and hundred juries, see DeWindt and DeWindt (n. 5 above), p. 610. In 1299 Ivo of Hurst “caused damage in the [Warboys] marsh by cutting reeds and digging turf to be carried to his home at Hurst” (Raftis, , Warboys [n. 4 above], p. 169Google Scholar). For the witnessing of John Unfrey's charter, see BL, Add. Ch. 34176. In 1311 John Unfrey “of Warboys” witnessed a grant from Roger Norreys “of Woodhurst” to Benedict Chamberlain “of Ramsey”; the transaction was an exchange of land in Woodhurst and St. Ives for property in Wistow (BL, Add. Ch. 34209).

54 A 1339/40 St. Ives gersuma roll describes Beatrix wife of Robert “atte Briggefotte” of Ramsey as the daughter of William of Swavesey of St. Ives and cotenant at St. Ives with her husband (PRO, SC 2/178/95).

55 PRO, JI 1/356.

56 For a list of vills and the numbers of constables and watchmen required of each vill, see Moore (n. 4 above), p. 161n. For an outline of individuals from rural vills in Huntingdonshire who appear in Fair court at St. Ives, including four individuals from Ramsey, see Moore, p. 89. Note also that Philip Pollard, virgater, juror, pledge, and vintner in Ramsey between 1287 and 1304, was bailiff of the St. Ives Fair in 1287 and 1288 (Moore, p. 179).

57 “Quidam Johannes le Carpenter de Woldhyrst interfectus fuit cum quadam sagitta eidem sagittata per quemdam Ricardum Laverok de Wystowe …. inter boscum de Byry et Wystowelowe, pro cuius morte dictus Ricardus retraxit se et adhuc retrahit. Nee habetur aliquis suspectus de morte ipsius Johannis nisi tantum predictus Ricardus, qui ipsum sagittavit, set quia quidam Philippus le Turner et Katerina, uxor eius, soror predicti Johannis, et Robertus le Cupere, frater eiusdem Johannis, fuerunt in societate quando dicta felonia facta fuit, arrestati fuerunt et positi per manucaptores” (DeWindt and DeWindt, p. 479). The Ramsey-St. Ives link seems to have been particularly strong, probably for two reasons. The monastery had a priory in St. Ives, ensuring regular contact between the two clerical communities that is surely evinced by the regular travels of both clerics and their lay associates and servants. Also, the St. Ives Fair attracted people from the entire county; it remained prosperous through the early fourteenth century (see Moore).

58 In a charter dated 1301 (PRO, E 40/B2985), Joan Tuseynt is described as the daughter of Nicholas le Acatur and the wife of John Tuseynt. In a later charter dated 1314, Joan Tuseynt is described as the wife of William Breakspear of Stukeley: “Demise by William of Brekespere of Stivecle and Joan his wife, to William Peytevin of Ramesey and Alice his wife, of the third part of a messuage in Ramesey, formerly the property of John Tusseynz the first husband of the said Joan” (A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds in the Public Record Office, 2:356)Google Scholar.

59 The names Breakspear and Tuseynt were rare in Huntingdonshire. Breakspear appears not at all in the Huntingdonshire subsidy lists or in any other of the Data Bank court rolls for Huntingdonshire. The name Tuseynt appears only in the Ramsey subsidy list.

60 PRO, E40/A1314.

61 PRO, JI 3/113.

62 BL, Add. Ch. 33754 (dated 1311).

63 Wm. of Swavesey appears as taster, juror, pledge, and tenant in St. Ives court rolls between 1292 and 1325 (see Moore, p. 344).

64 “Grant by John Tusseinz of Rameseye and Joan his wife, daughter of Nicholas le Acatur of the same, to Robert, son of the late William de Tannesouere of Peterborough, called ‘de infirmaria in Rameseye’ of a third part of his messuage in Rameseye in ‘le Briggestrate.’” (A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds in the Public Record Office, p. 355)Google Scholar.

65 By way of comparison, the rural vill of Broughton, Huntingdonshire, had a rather smaller catchment area, with a significant percentage (76 percent) of its outsiders coming from vills within a six-mile radius (Britton [n. 4 above], pp. 180–81). Godmanchester's catchment region appears to have been primarily within a radius of about ten miles (see the map in Raftis, , A Small Town in Late Medieval England [n. 1 above], p. 80Google Scholar). McClure ([n. 2 above], p. 176) points out that rural patterns of immigration, including those of market towns, were usually intensely local in nature. Even 61 percent of Leicester's immigrants came from less than fifteen miles away. In seventeenth-century Terling wills, similar patterns emerge: “Of these kin [mentioned in wills and living outside the village], 24 percent lived under five miles from Terling, and 68 percent under ten miles from the village. Nevertheless, this leaves 32 percent living more than ten miles and 24 percent more than fifteen miles from their kin in Terling. Recognized kin bound to Terling testators by strong ties of sentiment or obligation were scattered over a considerable area” (Wrightson, Keith, “Kinship in an English Village: Terling, Essex, 1500–1700,” in Smith, , ed. [n. 3 above], p. 326Google Scholar).

66 The surname Hobbe(s) is listed only twice in the index to the published lay subsidy rolls for Huntingdonshire (see Hogan [n. 4 above], p. 281), so it was not a common name in the region.

67 The surname Foliot is not listed in the index to the published lay subsidy rolls for Huntingdonshire.

68 Hart and Lyons, eds. (n. 27 above), 1:286, 333, 355.

69 The Gernoun surname was not common in Huntingdonshire. It appears in the Huntingdonshire lay subsidy rolls only for Upwood, Wistow, and Broughton.

70 Note the Bridgefoot property in Eynesbury cited above (see fig. 2 and App. E). See also Richard Smith's study (n. 49 above) of the distance young people traveled to take jobs as servants and the corresponding distance women traveled to marry. Smith notes that serfs of the prior of Spalding married within a fifteen-mile distance from home. Furthermore, the distances traveled by two-thirds of farm domestic workers in that same region were less than sixteen kilometers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (see Kussmaul, A. S., “The Ambiguous Mobility of Farm Servants,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 34 [1981]: 222–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

71 It is significant that 18 percent of all the surnames found in Ramsey sources also appear in the Warboys court rolls. Sixteen percent appear in Upwood rolls, 17 percent in Broughton rolls, 10 percent in Holywell rolls, and 17 percent in Godmanchester rolls.

72 This phenomenon is most clearly seen in Godmanchester's granting of “the liberty” to newcomers willing to swear an oath and pay a fine (Raftis, , A Small Town in Late Medieval England [n. 1 above], pp. 76–92)Google Scholar.

73 Regarding good behavior, consider the following examples from the Warboys court roll of 1316 (cited in Raftis, , Tenure and Mobility [n. 2 above], p. 136Google Scholar): “And they say that Richard Neel and Agnes his wife are useless, evildoers, and not worthy to live in the vill. And at this William the reeve came and pledges for them that they should henceforth behave themselves. And the fine is condoned since they are poor. And they say that Margaret Fyne received a certain Thomas Gabyon against the assize, nor is he worthy to live in the vill. Therefore (she is in mercy to) threepence, with William Fyne as pledge. And the vill is forbidden to the above Thomas Gabyon.” Regarding charters, 108 of the 272 Ramsey charters between 1200 and 1350 involve a grantor or grantee from outside Ramsey.

74 There is an interesting discussion by Eleanor Searle of the relative weight of custom as a constraining element in peasant decision making (“Rejoinder,” Past and Present, no. 99 [1983], pp. 148–60Google Scholar). It is interesting too that modern historians studying family strategies are now focusing on “diversity of actions and reactions rather than on any single set of effects … brought about by industrialisation and mass migration” (Anderson, Michael, Approaches to the History of the Western Family, 1500–1914 [Bristol, 1980], p. 78)Google Scholar.

75 Houlbrook, Ralph A., in his recent study The English Family, 1450–1700 ([London, 1984], p. 18)Google Scholar, suggests that the nuclear family in England dates back to at least 1300 (see Hanawalt [n. 1 above]).

76 For similar observations, see Britton's study of Broughton (n. 4 above) and Razi's study of Halesowen (n. 1 above). Ramsey data from the subsidy lists point in the same direction. David Herlihy suggests a parallel with the situation in late medieval Tuscany: “The rich families seem to have been the true centers of production within the village [Broughton], and this implies that they recruited workers from the less resourceful homes. The peasants of Broughton do not look very different from the Tuscan peasants of a later period” (Medieval Households [Cambridge, Mass., 1985], p. 141)Google ScholarPubMed.

77 In contrast, Ian Blanchard finds evidence of extended families in agricultural settlements of Derbyshire prior to the Black Death: “Thus emerged the internally interdependent, mutually cohesive and hierarchically ordered family household which characterized the agrarian sector of the village community in the early fourteenth century, with up to three generations of closely related kin living together at the family hearth under patriarchal direction and authority” ([n. 3 above], p. 258).

78 As Raftis has pointed out, “Those court roll data that have remained our main source of information are for the most part indices of individual behavior” (Warboys [n. 4 above], p. 241)Google Scholar. Indeed, individual peasants, not families or clans, are fined in local courts.

79 DeWindt and DeWindt (n. 5 above), cases 756, 758–60, 768. For example, “ Et dicunt quod Margareta Nothing receptavit Willelmum Knyt extraneum et extra assizam cum uxore et pueris suis” (p. 474).

80 Tilly, Louise, “Demographic History Faces the Family: Europe since 1500,” Family History 3 (1985): 55Google Scholar.

81 For a description of Huntingdonshire fen resources, see Darby (n. 22 above), pp. 10 ff. The frequent references to servants in early fourteenth-century court rolls indicate another source of employment for young people of the region. See also Blanchard's study (n. 3 above) of Derbyshire families who accumulated capital from wages associated with mining, cloth, and quarrying industries.

82 As Smith has pointed out, “There is no denying that the presence of markets in both land and labour increased the decision-making options of holders of land in England as to the ways they might dispose of and manage their property resources.” This enables him to write, “We could continue to add to our pile of elements that intrude between any simple conceptualization of the family-land bond” (Smith, Richard M., “Some Issues concerning Families and Their Property in Rural England, 1250–1800,” in Smith, , ed. [n. 3 above], p. 86Google Scholar).

83 PRO, JI 1309.

84 PRO, JI 1311.

85 PRO, CP 40/53.

86 PRO, JI 1311.

87 Ramsey register, Norwich Public Library.

88 Hart and Lyons, eds. (n. 27 above), 1:42.