Social Relations and Ideas Essays in Honour of R. H. Hilton

This volume of essays in honour of Professor R. H. Hilton is presented by some of his numerous friends and pupils. It attempts to reflect his wide-ranging interests while highlighting certain themes and preserving some distinct degree of unity. The essays illustrate his abiding concern with the social structure, the rural economy and the mentalité of the Middle Ages. They also indicate that his interests have have always been pursued with the use of the widest possible range of sources so that archaeological and literary evidence are employed, as in his own work, alongside the sources more usually familiar to social historians. This book will be of permanent interest to all historians and particularly those specialising in social and economic history.

Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction Edward Miller; 1. The origins of the manor in England with a postscript T. H. Aston; 2. The extent and profitability of Demesne agriculture in England in the later eleventh century Sally P. J. Harvey; 3. Feudalism and its decline: a semantic exercise M. M. Postan; 4. The matron and the mis-married woman: perceptions of marriage in northern France circa 1100 Georges Duby; 5. Literature and social terminology: the Vavasour in England P. R. Cross; 6. The struggles between the Abbots of Halesowen and their tenants in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Zvi Razi; 7. Poverty in Piers Plowman Geoffrey Shepherd; 8. English diet in the later Middle Ages Christopher Dyer; 9. Economic change in later medieval England: an archaeological review G. G. Astill; 10. Serfdom in later medieval and early modern Germany Heide Wunder; 11. Time, space and use in Early Russia R. E. F. Smith; 12. Plough and pen: agricultural writers in the seventeenth century Joan Thirsk; Bibliography of R. H. Hilton's works to January 1982 Jean Birrell; Index.

This volume of essays in honour of Professor R. H. Hilton is presented by some of his numerous friends and pupils. It attempts to reflect his wide-ranging interests while highlighting certain themes and preserving some distinct degree of unity.