Medieval Society and the Manor Court [Hardcover]

The records of manorial courts have been used increasingly as the principal source for the reconstruction of rural and small town society in Medieval England. They offer a unique source with which to investigate peasant demography, family patterns, the village community and economy, the characteristics and instruments of customary law and the ways in which that law was perceived and exploited by landlords and tenants.

[T]his is a useful book, with some truly exceptional and important essays, addressing some current uses of local court rolls in attempts to examine and understand the medieval English village world....[The essays] cannot be ignored by anyone interested in the field. --The American Journal of LegalHistory

The appearance of a volume dedicated to demonstrating the use of court roll evidence for a variety of inquiries into medieval agrarian history is a welcome event for historians of late-medieval rural England...The volume presents a varied picture of the application of court roll data, either alone or in conjunction with other record sources. There are essays on manorial law, deathbed transfers and bequests, court roll studies in 'frontier societies' (Marcher lordships), social protest, loud-tenant relations, demography, the land market, and urbanization. --Speculum