Credit and Village Society in Fourteenth-Century England - (British Academy Monographs) by Chris Briggs (Hardcover)

About the Book

Credit transactions were a common and important feature of peasant society in the middle ages. This study of rural credit in medieval England uses the evidence of inter-peasant debt litigation to investigate the lenders and borrowers, the uses to which credit was put, and the effects of credit on social relationships.

Book Synopsis

Exploring the role of credit is vital to understanding any economy. In the past two decades historians of many European regions have become increasingly aware that medieval credit, far from being the preserve of merchants, bankers, or monarchs, was actually of basic importance to the ordinary villagers who made up most of the population.

This is the first study devoted to credit in rural England in the middle ages. Focusing in particular on seven well-documented villages, it examines in detail some of the many thousands of village credit transactions of this period, identifies the people who performed them, and explores the social relationships brought about by involvement in credit. The evidence comes primarily from inter-peasant debt litigation recorded in the proceedings of manor courts, which were the private legal jurisdictions of landlords.

A comparative study which discusses the English evidence alongside findings from other parts of medieval and early modern Europe, it argues that the prevailing view of medieval English credit as a marker of poverty and crisis is inadequate. In fact, the credit networks of the English countryside were surprisingly resilient in the face of the fourteenth-century crises associated with plague, famine, and economic depression.

This volume will be essential reading for specialists on medieval Britain and will also engage a more general readership interested in conditions and structures in pre-industrial and developing societies.

Review Quotes

...studious and convincing work...a welter of evidence...he has uncovered [...] the first visible signs of a process with deep roots...-- "Alex Burghart, Times Literary Supplement"

an important study ... an optimistic view of the medieval English countryside, which provides an effective counterblast to those who regard the peasantry as expolited, impoverished, and unsophisticated.-- "Mark Page, Southern History"

[An] important and stimulating study.-- "Miriam Muller, Reviews in History"

Briggs must be congratulated for this carefully argued and painstakingly researched monograph, His deft and throrough questioning of his source material reveals in full the problematic nature of his data and, as a result, the tentative nature of his conclusions, but it also reminds us how wonderfully imaginative medieval historians can be.-- "Judith Spicksley, Rural History"

For the first time we have the publication of a monograph examining the organisation and supply of rural credit in later medieval England, and one all the richer for interpreting the evidence within the context of European historiography ... this book achieves what it was intended to do, and sets the whole subject of peasant indebtedness in England on a new footing.-- "Richard Britnell, English Historical Review"