English Society in the Early Middle Ages, 1066-1307

The Pelican History of England #3

by Doris Mary Stenton

This is a description of England during the two-and-a-half centuries since the Norman Conquest. A chronological setting is given to the developments of society during the period, by reference to political events of the time. The relations between the King, the nobles, the Church and the people are described and the author also sketches the stages by which departments of state evolved out of the individual authority of officers of the royal household, and parliament out of the King's control.

Genres: History, Medieval History, Nonfiction, British Literature, European History, Medieval

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

British historian, married to F.M. Stenton. Member of the British Academy.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

A good book to read if you are interested in England after the Norman conquest if only because Stenton takes care to describe the absolute basics, for example that the early Kings and their entourages moved about a lot because it was easier to go to the food than to bring the food to them.

Stenton spent much of her professional life involved in work on the Pipe rolls - the financial documents produced as part of the basic administration the oldest of which dates back to the reign of Henry I at the beginning of the twelfth century, these financial records, written on sheets of vellum were stitched together and rolled up into pipes for storage - and she brings that familiarity to bear on the text.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This concise book is an ideal way to make an instant connection to the life and times of post-conquest England. There are short sections on the establishment and origin of the Norman court and household in England, the subject of barons and knights, the countryside, villages and cities, and churches and religion.

There is a lot of detailed information in this pocket-sized paperback, but it never gets overwhelming and is a great introductory companion to a fuller understanding of the period's creative work by describing everything occurring in the lifestyles of inhabitants of all levels at the time from kings and royalty, magnates and barons, knights, bishops, monks, and both freemen and villeins.

I like it best for how it nonchalantly traces the feudal system's revenue and legal machinery during the period. It also has an interesting sketch of the ecosystem of both monastic and parish-based religious institutions, and how these institutions fueled the earliest English universities.

I think a few important things to note are that the collection does not use the royal lineage as its center of organization and does not get into too much detail regarding specific rebellions or battles. As the title suggests, it is a social history not a military or biographical one. In addition, while it does describe the development of markets and merchant guilds, the picture created is more from the standpoint of how these things affected lifestyles legally, economically, and culturally, rather than establishing, say, scientific or mechanical or industrial causes and effects to commerce.

Finally, the history does not focus on art or specific works of art in too much detail, though in my view it makes it a nice companion for those reading primary works alongside.

The history's strengths are in its portable-yet-informative evidence-based style and its ability to perhaps clue us into some of the very likely social attitudes of various members of the early middle ages.

[JD Waggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, this is a bit dated and a bit dry, but if you want detail on the organization and economical understanding of high medieval English life, you could do worse. Stenton isn't really your person for art (though there is a small section on architecture) or for the cultural side of things, but land distribution? The impact of royalty upheaval on the daily life of regular folk? The ways in which hunting shaped things like Church involvement and aristocratic holdings? Yep, got it all.

My one major complaint is that Stenton spent most of the book in the 12th century, for all the fact that this book covers 1066-1307. The 13th century didn't get much love, which I noticed mainly because I'm trying to write a thing set in the 13th century and that's why I pulled this from the back of my shelves to finally read.

It was a bit weird to have sidenotes/endnotes that weren't terrifically clear in their context, but that's a formatting thing that I imagine was Pelican's choice at the time. I wouldn't recommend this to someone without any medieval historical background (there are a lot of assumptions made about what the reader knows of Continental historical events and the line of English kings, for example), but for those who have read other overviews and are looking to get a little bit finer on details, this is a decent read.

[David Warner · Rating 5 out of 5]

First published in 1951, with four editions by 1965, this volume in the Pelican History of England by Lady Stenton still provides a useful survey of the social history of the nation from 1066 to 1307, marking a highpoint in the series, and while much scholarship since its writing has provided a more sophisticated reading of Anglo-Norman-Angevin-Early Plantagenet society, this valuable book still offers an engaging and well constructed introduction to its subject with chapters that will help anyone new to the period obtain a grounding in its social development. The section on the Forests, a vast geographical extent under royal control with its own law, is particularly useful.
The approach is primarily narrative with original source material clearly annotated for those who wish to explore further, and that is all to the good, as it allows the author to relate from records the lives of the people of England, rich and poor, clerical and lay, lords, freemen, and villains, and country and town dwellers, without the artificial architecture of any socio-economic or political explanatory framework obscuring the lives as lived and examined by Stenton from the reader's view. Instead, she plainly and fairly tells the story of the English people between the Conquest and the death of Edward I in a coherent manner with a narrative structure that requires no excessive reference to political events, knowledge of which can be obtained elsewhere, and by focusing on society, this book, even seventy years after its original publication, still feels ahead of its time and an exemplar of how social history can be written for a popular audience.

[Truehobbit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scholarly account of how English society was organised from the time of the Norman conquest.
"Society" here does not mean "how people lived", instead the focus is on administrative aspects of English life in the Middle Ages, and there was a surprising lot of it - it left me wondering whether other European societies had a similarly large amount of administrative procedures and court cases or whether English society was especially aware of rights and procedures and particularly litigious.
The book is a bit older already, and I don't know enough about the topic to tell whether it is dated in any way. I appreciated that it was the kind of book you'd read for your course at uni rather than something written for entertainment, so it comes with the proper apparatus.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in May 1998.

This book forms part of the excellent, though now rather outdated, Pelican History of England, and it shows both the merits of the series as a whole and the limitations of its approach. Each period possesses its own difficulties for historiographers; in the Middle Ages these are the paucity and one-sided nature of sources, and the alienness of the medieval mindset to modern Western Europeans. The statistical sources so important to the work of historians like Braudel are completely missing; it is thus difficult to check on economic and even on political statements in the sources which do exist. The clerical monopoly on literary endeavour also leads to bias, though I doubt that this is so much a problem as is somethimes thought - the number of clerics was sufficiently large to prevent them all being of one mind on issues such as the character of the king.

Stenton's book is intended for a popular readership, to such an extent that she was not allowed to include footnotes in early editions. This and the limitations of length, and her understanding of the period prevent the above from becoming too great a problem. Her concentration on social history - this is the only book in the series to have the word "Society" in its title - means that she can avoid the snap judgements on prominent figures common in such works and parodied by Sellars and Yeatman in 1066 and All That ("King John was a bad king.") It does mean that the paucity of resources becomes a problem; what can be said, for example, about changes in land ownership when one register was used as an authority on ownership throughout the period (the Domesday Book). The many excellencies in her treatment of the issues, particularly the growth of the state, are complemented by an attempt to understand the people from every walk of life from nobles to peasants. I look forward to re-reading the other books in the series.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

hospital waiting room.