The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval EnglandBarbara A. Hanawalt's richly detailed account offers an intimate view of everyday life in Medieval England that seems at once surprisingly familiar and yet at odds with what many experts have told us. She argues that the biological needs served by the family do not change and that the ways fourteenth- and fifteenth-century peasants coped with such problems as providing for the newborn and the aged, controlling premarital sex, and alleviating the harshness of their material environment in many ways correspond with our twentieth-century solutions. Using a remarkable array of sources, including over 3,000 coroners' inquests into accidental deaths, Hanawalt emphasizes the continuity of the nuclear family from the middle ages into the modern period by exploring the reasons that families served as the basic unit of society and the economy. Providing such fascinating details as a citation of an incantation against rats, evidence of the hierarchy of bread consumption, and descriptions of the games people played, her study illustrates the flexibility of the family and its capacity to adapt to radical changes in society. She notes that even the terrible population reduction that resulted from the Black Death did not substantially alter the basic nature of the family. |
Contents
Field and Village Plans | 19 |
Toft and Croft | 31 |
Standards of Living | 45 |
Blood Ties and Family Wealth | 65 |
Inheritance | 67 |
Kinship Bonds | 79 |
Household Size and Structure | 90 |
Household Economy | 105 |
Growing Up and Getting Married | 188 |
The Partnership Marriage | 205 |
Widowhood | 220 |
Old Age and Death | 227 |
Surrogate Family | 243 |
Surrogate Parents and Children | 245 |
Neighbors and Brotherhoods | 257 |
Epilogue | 268 |
Other editions - View all
The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England Barbara A. Hanawalt No preview available - 1986 |
Common terms and phrases
acres adult animals appear Archaeological Society Record arrangements Bedfordshire Coroners Bedfordshire Historical Record Black Death bread Breton Lays brother Cambridge Chalgrave Chalgrave Manor Chertsey Abbey child church clothing contract cottage daughter died E. A. Wrigley E. P. Thompson Economic History Review English peasant English Peasantry English Villagers family land father fell fields fifteenth century gild godparents Halesowen harvest Historical Record Society History Review 2nd homicide household husband indicate inheritance inquests Jack Goody John kinship labor late living London lord Manor of Wakefield Margery Kempe marriage married Medieval England Medieval English medieval peasant merchet Middle Ages modern mother neighbors Oxford parents Parish partible inheritance peasant families percent plow poll tax population Raftis Razi Robert Mannyng role Rural servants sexual social Society Record Series Studies thirteenth century Thomas trans villein wages Wakefield wealth Wharram Percy widows wife William woman women Yorkshire Archaeological Society young