Using the evidence of manorial court records, this paper examines in detail the developments in the relationship between the Bishop of Ely and his peasants at the manor of Brandon leading up to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Increasing levels of discontent among the peasantry can be observed across the period. This is expressed in rising reported numbers of various cases in the court rolls, such as non-compliance with the court, labour refusals, trespasses and cases of foot-dragging. This rising level of conflict, some open, some more hidden, can be seen as evidence both for increasing seigniorial concern to assert various jurisdictional rights, and the peasants’ increasing willingness to test the boundaries of seigniorial dominion, leading eventually to their participation in the Rising in East Anglia.

This paper examines the relief of travellers in Warwickshire, England. By using an unusually rich set of Constables’ Accounts for the parish of Grandborough, it interrogates the relationship between charity, local justice, and both official and popular perceptions of migration. It argues that the large number of migrants who passed through rural parishes were categorised by the local constable according to cultural and discretionary criteria. This ‘typology’ of travellers determined the nature and extent of the relief they might receive and the actions that might be taken against them. Socially threatening migrants, such as poor pregnant women, the sick, and vagrants, also found themselves affected by this same ‘proscriptive calculation’, often to their detriment.

This article explores how estates in the Scottish Highlands were managed after the clearances. The land system had been radically redrawn, creating consequences that those who inherited the post-clearance world endeavoured to manage. At the centre of the post-clearance Highlands were the estate managers, or factors, who were effectively responsible for the economic and social conditions on their employers’ estates. They controlled the levers of Highland life and faced the realities of the post-clearance order. Prominent among this group was Evander McIver. This article examines McIver's career up to 1873, framed by a discussion of the ‘Highland Question’ of how estates reacted to the continuing poverty and occasional destitution of their small tenants, or crofters. McIver held adamant views on this question, and the origins and expression of these views through his career are delineated in this article.

In February 1897, villagers in the small Kentish town of Eynsford celebrated their first Arbor Day by planting a row of trees in acrostic form to spell out the proverb MY SON, BE WISE. By 1910 Arbor Day had featured in the discussions of a Parliamentary Select Committee and the House of Commons, and was enjoying national press coverage as the event spread under the auspices of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Garden City Movement. Proponents positioned the ceremony as a prism through which to address the pressing social and economic concerns of rural depopulation, unemployment and deforestation, and by promoting the event as part of the educational experience of children, offered it up as a contribution towards the amelioration of these ills. Although the establishment of the Forestry Commission in 1919 ushered in the increasingly inflexible belief that the state rather than individuals was the only competent custodian of English woodland, Arbor Day can tell us much about how humankind's affective response to nature was conditioned, shored up and survived this increasingly scientific approach from the late nineteenth century.

This paper assesses the relationship between state and society in interwar rural England, focusing on the hitherto neglected role of the Rural Community Councils. The rise of statutory social provision in the early twentieth century created new challenges and opportunities for voluntarism, and the rural community movement was in part a response to this. The paper examines the early development of the movement, arguing that a crucial role was played by a close-knit group of academics and local government officials. While largely eschewing party politics, they shared a commitment to citizenship, democracy and the promotion of rural culture. Many of them had been close associates of Sir Horace Plunkett. The Rural Community Councils engaged in a wide range of activities, including advisory work, adult education, local history, village hall provision, support for rural industries and an ambivalent engagement with parish councils. The paper concludes with an assessment of the achievements of the rural community movement, arguing that it was constrained by its financial dependence on voluntary contributions.