How did
ordinary people resist serfdom in 13th and 14th century England?
In thirteenth
and fourteenth century England, economic difficulties and social unrest could
be seen to account for intensifying conditions of serfdom in villages. Although
serfdom existed in England since the early Middle Ages, increasing power of
landlords in the thirteenth century and unfavourable social conditions in the
fourteenth, largely deriving from the economic devastation resulting from the
Black Death, intensified unfree conditions for peasants. However, as will be
explored in this essay, ordinary people strongly resisted serfdom due to the
heavy working conditions it entailed as well as the unenviable social stigma it
carried. Rather than acquiesce to their lords’ demands, peasants resorted to
both legal and illegal action to resist serfdom, meaning, as Whittle contends,
‘we now see ordinary people as political actors in their own right [who] found
many ways of making their interests and ideas known’.[1] This
essay will consider a variety of means by which peasants expressed their
dissatisfaction with serfdom and their resistance to it through what can be
generally classified as ‘passive resistance’ and direct means illegal in
context of medieval England, including violence and flight. Finally, the
Peasants’ Revolt (1381) will be discussed in considering the extreme forms
resistance to serfdom could take in the central Middle Ages. Social and
economic conditions will be considered as central to the nature of, and
resistance to, serfdom.
While many
ordinary people opposed the conditions under which they worked, Dyer suggests
that peasants’ resistance to landlords’ use of coercion should be viewed as
being a ‘silent hussle’ whereby ‘latent coercion and grumbling resistance’
characterised lord-tenant relationships in thirteenth and fourteenth century
England.[2]
Did this mean, therefore, that ordinary people resorted to ‘passive’ forms of
resistance, rather than outright action, when opposing the demands made on them
by their lords? This issue is complicated since in comparison with the
fourteenth century, the thirteenth century saw favourable social conditions
from the perspective of ordinary people, in terms of enjoying security of tenure,
while economic development saw securer living conditions in rural societies.
Why, then, did the thirteenth century see ‘an intensification of pleading and
conceptual analysis of the law against a political background of disturbance
and reform’?[3]
The evidence
suggests that in the thirteenth century ordinary people turned to the legal
system in seeking redresses against the demands of serfdom imposed on them by
their landlords, rather than utilising violent methods as means of resistance.
Harding argued that by the mid-thirteenth century ordinary people became
increasingly encouraged to petition the king in opposing the conditions of
serfdom under which they lived and used the king’s courts to enlist complaints
against their lords.[4]
Yet does this mean that, generally speaking, ordinary people across England
turned to the legal system to resist serfdom? Dyer believes so, arguing that in
the thirteenth century ‘groups of servile tenants and individuals hired lawyers
to fight cases in the royal courts against the lord’s assertion of their unfree
status’.[5]
Dyer’s argument is supported in that ordinary people became aware of the range
of courts available to them in the thirteenth century, while some conveyed
their hostility to serfdom by taking their lords to court to protest their free
conditions and exemptions from serfdom. In 1224 a tenant of the abbot of Battle
took his lord to court to resist his lord’s demands made on him as a serf,
protesting his free condition.[6]
Appeals to the king convey a confident use of the legal system made by ordinary
people in the thirteenth century to resist serfdom, as seen in 1280 when the
peasants of the manor of Michleover were successful enough to obtain a royal
writ freeing them from conditions of serfdom.
Other examples
of ‘passive’ resistance support the argument that peaceful methods of
opposition or methods involving a lack of violence were utilised in the
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in resisting serfdom. Several
historians have recognised the prominence of appeals of manumission which
evolved later in the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, as well as the
use of appeals to Domesday Book in order to prove that a particular area was of
“ancient demesne” and so its tenants were free from serfdom. Hilton documented
the use of the Domesday Book in allowing peasants to claim exemptions from villeinage,
which had been occurring in England since the 1270s.[7] Yet
it should be considered whether this method was commonly utilised by ordinary
people across the country as a means of resisting serfdom. Kent, for instance,
did not experience the harsh conditions of serfdom in the central Middle Ages
and so never saw appeals made by its tenants to Domesday Book to resist
serfdom, thus Whittle and Rigby’s claim that ‘the usual way of attempting to
prove [freedom] was to appeal to the Domesday Book’ is doubtful since it
appears to have only been in certain areas where the use of the Domesday Book
was used to obtain freedom from serfdom.[8] Müller’s
evidence for the argument of “ancient demesne” in early-fourteenth century
Wiltshire indicates that this particular method of resistance to serfdom was
remarkable in that resistance of this type occurred frequently in certain areas
rather than being a widespread phenomenon.[9]
By contrast, in
the early and later fourteenth century direct action, which could involve
violence, developed as a concentrated means by ordinary people in resisting
serfdom. A consideration of how social and economic conditions intensified
conditions of serfdom in the fourteenth century will be instructive in
discussing how opposition to serfdom plausibly changed. War, weather, and
disease ‘brought a long period of expansion to a close’ while severe deflation
in the period 1336-42 and widespread plague later in the century led to
increasing tension. Population growth earlier in the century and extra labour intensified
conditions of hardship for ordinary people.[10] Lords
tightened their grip on their tenants, demanding extra labour and increasing
coercive powers over tenants. Due to harder conditions, it does not seem
surprising that many tenants turned to flight as a means of resisting serfdom
in the fourteenth century. In Suffolk in 1361 workers went outside their “vill”
to escape their hostile conditions and to obtain higher wages.[11] As
Schofield argues, the use of flight increased in the later fourteenth century
due to population decline and improved wage-labour opportunities elsewhere.[12]
Furthermore, Dyer’s claim that ‘it was often the small demands, rather than
such major payments as entry fines, which provoked peasant agitations’ is
challenged in that on the contrary, violent confrontations seem to have been
utilised when demands were viewed as being especially heavy.[13] The
abbot of Halesowen’s exploitation of the financial side of his seigneurial
rights over his tenants in the later fourteenth century led to ‘an orgy of
plundering of the abbey property’ by peasants while the abbey’s servants and
officials were assaulted and abused.[14]
Yet forms of
direct action which did not involve violence also escalated in the fourteenth
century. Poor performance of labour services, withholding money and rent,
non-attendance at court and failure to act as suitors were widespread methods
involved in resisting serfdom across England. Indeed, it seems questionable to
conclude that violent methods of opposition completely replaced ‘passive’
resistance in the fourteenth century. As Schofield recognises, ‘passive’
resistance continued as a common method of opposing serfdom in this later
period. Yet in considering the nature of the Peasants’ Revolt, the more direct
nature of resistance in making off with charters and goods in Harmondsworth,
for instance, and invoking threats implies that resistance to serfdom evolved
into utilising more direct methods and, occasionally, violence.[15]
The Peasants’
Revolt shows the most extreme form of resistance to serfdom which could be
taken in fourteenth century England. While a revolt of this magnitude can in no
way be seen as typical, it does indicate the increasing resentment towards
serfdom pervading rural society. The actual nature of these violent acts shows
the intensifying desire for freedom from serfdom. The repeated burning of
manorial court records occurred, for instance in Essex, while the release from
gaol of Robert Belling, a serf, symbolically indicates the rebels’ intent to
abolish serfdom and attain widespread freedom.[16] ‘The
experience of at least a century and a half of local struggles’ between tenants
and lords played a pivotal role in causing the revolt.[17] Yet
did the rebellion influence the weakening, or decline, of serfdom? Whittle’s
suggestion that it did in that it helped to ensure that serfdom disappeared in
the fifteenth century is debateable, since in the sixteenth century serfdom continued,
for instance in Norfolk.[18]
However it cannot be denied that the revolt severely undermined landlords’
authority. While revolt was not often used to resist serfdom in this period,
the Peasants’ Revolt indicates increasingly violent resistance among the
peasantry to serfdom and a determination to obtain freedom. The involvement of
four counties in this revolt and the burning of manorial rolls in all four suggest
that serfdom was both widespread and opposed, although the nature of serfdom
ultimately differed depending on location.
This essay has
suggested that resistance to serfdom in thirteenth and fourteenth century
England did not simply involve violence and rebellion against landlords, but
depended significantly on the nature of the demands imposed on ordinary people
by their lords, social and economic conditions, and geographical location.
‘Passive’ resistance emerges as a common form of resistance to serfdom,
particularly earlier on in this period, including appeals to the legal system
and appeals to the Domesday Book, although in some areas more direct action was
utilised. Opposition to serfdom appears to have been widespread but was more
intense in areas such as East Anglia, whereas areas such as Kent enjoyed
comparatively free conditions for ordinary people. Yet the increasing use of
direct action by ordinary people in the late fourteenth century reveals intent
to abolish serfdom. While individual success was not widespread, by the
fifteenth century greater confidence among peasants and favourable social
conditions meant that the nature of serfdom was weakened, if not fully
eradicated, in rural societies. The underlying means of resistance to serfdom,
according to contemporary evidence, was passive in most societies; although
scholars should recognise that, even this form of resistance, could involve
fierce opposition in the forms of desertion or appeals to the monarch. When
unfavourable social and economic conditions intensified, it cannot but be
doubted that more violent action was readily utilised, culminating in the
outbreak of revolt in 1381. This essay hopefully provides some impetus to
social historians to reconsider the nature of serfdom in the late medieval
period, and how ordinary people sought to resist an institution many of them
clearly found to be intolerable.
[1] J.
Whittle and S. H. Rigby, ‘England: Popular Politics and Social Conflict’, in
S.H. Rigby (eds.) A Companion to Britain
in the Later Middle Ages (Blackwell, 2008), p. 83.
[2] C. Dyer,
‘The Ineffectiveness of Lordship in England, 1200-1400’, Past & Present, Vol. 195, Issue suppl. 2, 2007
[3] P.
Hyams, Kings, Lords and Peasants in
Medieval England: The Common Law of Villeinage in the Twelfth and Thirteenth
Centuries (Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 266.
[4] A.
Harding, England in the thirteenth
century (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
[5] C. Dyer,
Standards of Living in the later Middle
Ages: Social change in England c1200-1520 (Cambridge University Press,
1989), p. 137.
[6] S. H.
Rigby, ‘Agrarian Class Structure and the Forces for Change II’ in English Society in the Later Middle Ages
(Macmillan, 1995)
[7] R. H.
Hilton, ‘Peasant Movements in England Before 1381’, The Economic History Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1949
[8] J.
Whittle and S. H. Rigby, ‘England: Popular Politics and Social Conflict’, in
S.H. Rigby (eds.) A Companion to Britain
in the Later Middle Ages (Blackwell, 2008), p. 76.
[9] M.
Müller, ‘The Aims and Organisation of a Peasant Revolt in Early
Fourteenth-Century Wiltshire,’ Rural
History, Vol. 14, Issue 01, April 2003
[10] S. L.
Waugh, England in the reign of Edward III
(Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 21-22
[11] E. B.
Fryde and N. Fryde, The agrarian history
of England and Wales: Vol.3: 1348-1500 (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
[12] P.
Schofield, Peasants and Community in
Medieval England 1200-1500 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
[13] C.
Dyer, ‘The Ineffectiveness of Lordship in England, 1200-1400’, Past & Present, Vol. 195, Issue
suppl. 2, 2007
[14] Z. Razi,
‘Family, Land and the Village Community’ in T. H. Aston (eds.) Landlords, Peasants and Politics in Medieval
England (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 392.
[15] R.H.
Hilton, ‘Peasant Movements in England Before 1381’, The Economic History Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1949
[16] N.
Brooks, ‘The organization and achievements of the peasants of Kent and Essex in
1381’, in R.I. Moore and H.
Mayr-Harting, Studies in medieval
history: presented to R.H.C Davis (London, 1985), p. 256.
[17] R. H.
Hilton and H. Fagan, The English Rising
of 1381 (London, 1950), p.32.
[18] J.
Whittle, ‘Peasant Politics and Class Consciousness: The Norfolk Rebellions of
1381 and 1549 Compared’, Past &
Present, Vol. 195, Issue suppl. 2, 2007
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