A Social History of England, 1200-1500 skillfully captures the state of research into almost every formative aspect of the life experience of the English in the later Middle Ages. The volume is intended primarily as a resource for specialists, and it represents a "meeting of the minds" in medieval history today, boasting contributions by a group of scholars that is well worth listing in entirety: Richard Britnell, Janet Burton, Bruce M.S. Campbell, Wendy R. Childs, Peter Coss, Eamon Duffy, Valerie I.J. Flint, Robin Frame, P.J.P. Goldberg, Rosemary Horrox, Maryanne Kowaleski, Philippa C. Maddern, Mavis E. Mate, Charles Phythian-Adams, Michael Prestwich, S.H. Rigby, Miri Rubin, Paul Strohm and Simon Walker. Construing "social history" in the broadest terms possible, this volume imparts a comprehensive history of a developing culture during a period of significant transition. Divided thematically rather than chronologically, each essay in the collection summarizes the historiographical debates, highlighting the leading scholars and their pertinent works, and offering an overarching sense of how sometimes disparate discussions can be coupled for a more productive understanding of life in medieval England. To illustrate this point: Miri Rubin's superbly written chapter on "Identity," in keeping with more recent general perceptions, strenuously rejects the concept that individualism was an outgrowth of Renaissance "self-fashioning." She expertly quashes opposition, however, by observing that late medieval England was a vast world of both growing individualism and increasingly formalized communalism. As Rubin notes, both elements are inter-related manifestations: we must acknowledge the "interlocking experiences of personal identity through participation in collective, communal endeavors" (403). What is more, as Rubin's chapter reveals, because each author is a master in his or her field, this book is teeming with anecdotal evidence drawn from the primary sources. In order to formulate her argument, Rubin draws on a broad range of materials, from "ego-documents" such as heraldry, wills and hagiography to language, branding, tonsure, weaponry, sumptuary laws, and local experiences within the parish. The depth and sensitivity of this kind of analysis, collectively, produces a delightful, edifying and stunningly inclusive examination of the late medieval English experience.
Six lengthier chapters form the core of this book: they are devoted to social structure and demography (chapter 1), social hierarchy (chapter 2), town life (chapter 6), agricultural experience (chapter 7), piety (chapter 11) and identity (chapter 15). Interwoven with these substantial works are shorter contributions devoted to war, law and order, social mobility, consumerism, geographical mobility, attitudes towards leisure, magic, monastic lifestyle, the importance of ritual, rites of passage, viewing England in a British and European context, and literacy rates. Because of the division of the book by weight, I will address first the core chapters, and then the more peripheral chapters.
As Miri Rubin's chapter suggests, reconciliation of historiographical debate is very much the tone of the volume. The book opens with S. H. Rigby's attempt to highlight the benefits of Marxist social analysis for modern social theory. Predictably, Rigby leaps rapidly to the conclusion that Marxist analysis that treats medieval orders as classes is inadequate, simply because what mattered most in medieval society was social function, not economic role. Nevertheless, he astutely cautions against the proverbial throwing the baby out with the bathwater, demonstrating how a softening of the Marxist emphasis on polarized social classes and sharp social distinctions produces a vision of a medieval world divided by gradations of wealth, status and power. Using this paradigm, he traces the important shifts in the medieval economy, demographic changes and their combined impact on the social hierarchy.
Peter Coss's highly creative analysis of social hierarchy picks up where Rigby leaves off. Exploring the language and meaning of deference in political, social, spiritual and familial contexts in this "profoundly unequal society," (31) Coss draws on some decidedly unusual sources. For example, Coss traces the mounting significance and pervasiveness of ideas of social inequity by observing artistic renderings of the nativity, in which the growing trend was to depict the shepherds as "gross beings, with thick lips, leering mouths, and matted hair" (34), standing in positions of deference to their social betters (the magi). Moreover, Coss demonstrates that ideas of deference are necessary to understand key episodes in medieval history. Parliamentary reaction to Piers Gaveston had less to do with favoritism or homosexuality than it did with a breach of social respectability by the sudden elevation of a social inferior to the position of earl.
Richard Britnell's and Bruce M.S. Campbell's chapters complement each other beautifully. Britnell's chapter explores the fundamentals of life in a medieval town, from waste disposal to markets, roads, shops, and the number of parishes in towns. He explains that the fate of a town was inextricably linked with the political and economic decisions made by its social elite, which he highlights with a table ranking the top twenty urban centers in England in 1524 and their (rather different) ranking in 1334. Britnell spices up some of this (admittedly) dry material with brief forays into the development of a commercial mentality and the coming of the friars. Campbell's chapter documents the other side of the story: agricultural life, although he is quick to underline the extent to which urban and rural experiences were intertwined in the medieval world. Readers will find Campbell's chapter particularly illuminating as he manages to answer all those questions to which no one ever seems to know the answers concerning real (as opposed to theoretical) distinctions between the free and the unfree, the transition from customary to copyhold tenure and the growth in rights and status of the peasantry over the course of the period.
Finally, Eamon Duffy's chapter on religious belief is, in essence, an indispensable precis of the first half of his 1992 book, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400- 1580, to which he incorporates a brief survey of research on Lollardy, one of the most prolific fields of research in English history today. He does so with a mission, however. He seeks to demonstrate how Lollardy fit in well with more orthodox manifestations of faith. In doing so, Duffy takes to task some of the overblown conclusions drawn by recent scholars of Lollardy, noting: "the importance of Lollardy in determining the agenda of fifteenth-century English Christianity has been grossly exaggerated by historians and literary critics alike." (329)
The shorter contributions are of equally high quality, although three stand out from the rest. Wendy R. Childs's chapter entitled "Moving around" puts to rest all inane conjecture about the geographical immobility of medieval Englishmen at all levels of society. Robin Frame's "The wider world" traces the development of "Englishness" in a world where the geographical boundaries of England were never very firm, and Celtic and French relationships presented serious complications to an English sense of self. Finally, Maryanne Kowaleski's discussion of the consumer revolution, which she pushes back to the fourteenth century, is a highly enjoyable exploration of fashion, food and architecture.
It is no easy task to coordinate such an ambitious venture. Conflicting perspectives are simply impossible to avoid. For example, Britnell and Kowaleski supply quite different perspectives on the percentage of England's population living in urban environments (Britnell very cautiously asserts somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent; Kowaleski confidently declares 20 per cent). Horrox and Ormrod should be applauded for their refusal to "tidy" these discrepancies. Such a uniformity of perspective always smacks of dictatorial editorship that is impractical when dealing with a period plagued with such spotty sources. Horrox and Ormrod must be commended also for holding fast to a thematic approach. By refusing to single out key moments for discussion, the book actually presents a much more well- rounded discussion of the period. For instance, a chapter focused solely on the Black Death in all likelihood would overlook changes it had on leisure or developing notions of privacy; but because each author in this collection had to grapple with the event, the reader gets a much fuller sense of the overall magnitude of the plague and its social impact.
The chief flaw of this book is its lack of organization. The articles are not grouped according to central themes, subdividing the book into parts; rather, they materialize one after another with no obvious rationale to their ordering. For example, one might be inclined to think that P.J.P. Goldberg's narrative of social experience from birth to death might be an obvious choice for the first chapter. Why is it the sixteenth chapter? This oversight assures the unsuitability of this text for use in undergraduate classes; however, with the depth and complexity of the material, despite the publisher's initial comment that this volume promises to be an indispensable "introduction for students," there is little expectation that it will be. For English medieval scholars, however, this fine book promises to become a well-worn addition to the office library, fitting in nicely between Latham's Revised Medieval Latin Word-List and Cheney and Jones's A Handbook of Dates.