English Society in the Later Middle Ages: 1348-1500 (Penguin Social History of Britain S.)

by Maurice Keen (Author), Maurice Keen (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1990

  $3.34

  In 1350 the traditional idea of the three estates - priests, knights and labourers - offered an idealized but essentially accurate picture of society. By 1500 a far more complex structure based on landowning wealth, the city commercial elite and bastard feudal relations was firmly in place. In this book, Maurice Keen traces the causes and scope of this great transformation by looking in turn at the development of each estate . He considers the spread of literacy, the terrible devastation wrought by the Black Death (1348-9), the mercantile growth of London alongside the royal court at Westminster, and the new systems of taxation and administration created by the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). These crucial factors influenced popular and clerical religion, country life, and even the households of the aristocracy. Keen draws on a range of evidence and explores many unexpected connections.

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $3.59

  A presentation of the social history of Britain, from 1348-1500, describing medieval society, with its rigid stratifications of nobility and peasant, and the transition to the beginning of the early modern period.