Survival and Discord in Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of Christopher Dyer (review)

This volume of essays successfully fulfils the editors' intention that it be 'a well-earned tribute for an academic career with a tremendous influence on medieval social and economic history' (p. 1). An introduction by the editors honours the 'polymath' Christopher Dyer and introduces the collection's themes.

Grenville Astill's chapter ranges across the medieval countryside. This multidisciplinary review assesses long- and short-term patterns of settlement and exchange, ultimately concluding that 'a long chronology for rural change' still appears to hold, but that this was 'punctured with periods of acceleration and stasis that could vary' by region (p. 28). Continuing a focus on landscape, the late Harold Fox's chapter is one of the most remarkable in the volume. Included in the volume after having been discovered in draft form after the author's death, this is an account of the economics of moorlands and manors in the south-west of England. Richard Britnell's chapter on 'Postans's Fifteenth Century' (p. 49), is a call 'to abandon battles between optimism and pessimism' (p. 66) about the English national economy in that century and serves as a good historiographical review.

Richard Goddard provides a study of the relationships between local courts and the late medieval economy. Particularly interesting are discernible levels of small business debt. Although admittedly 'impressionistic' (p. 79) due to the dearth of source material to support firm quantitative analysis, this chapter seems particularly pertinent to the theme of the volume and certainly advances our appreciation of the role of chains of credit in the late medieval business economy. Robert Swanson's fascinating study of spiritual revenues of three parishes in Derbyshire complements the previous chapter by focusing on another area of neglected study. Swanson develops a picture of the wider role of spiritual revenues within a locality with interesting characters such as 'a cabal among the farmers' illustrative of 'complex relationships between those entitled to collect and those obligated to pay' (p. 103).

Several of the essays engage directly with Dyer's scholarship, and John Langdon's paper on building wages is a case in point. This addresses some of the finer details of wage history, drawing attention to the role of labour-supply as a wage-determinant, to regional factors, and to alternative labourers than those usually considered such as women and children. James Masschaele's study of itinerant royal courts also builds on one of Dyer's more prominent themes: the relationships between urban and rural medieval England. Masschaele's conclusion that itinerant courts were important as 'vehicles for the delivery of jury verdicts' (p. 135), which in turn drew people to town, is one of those historical arguments so simple as to be obvious, once it has been pointed out as clearly as this.

Phillip R. Schofield's study of trespass litigation in the manor court will be of interest to historians of the law. It is a detailed study on the trespass action, concluding that the form of action in the manor courts tended to lag a little behind that in the royal courts. The focus on law continues with Matthew Tompkins's analysis of a three-century lease, held collectively at Great Horwood, where 'sheep ate lords' (p. 163). Chris Briggs provides 'an illustration of Dyer's arguments concerning the power of the peasant elite' (p. 194) in a survey of demesne managers, through looking at presentments of lords' officials. Briggs's finding that resident reeves were less likely to be presented than salaried officials is certainly telling of peasant solidarity. Jean Birrell notes how the election of the reeve proved to be a means of 'raising cash' (p. 199) at the manor of Alrewas, and explores tensions over heriot (death duty) though a study of a custumal surviving in...