Freedom and Marriage in Medieval England

Abstract

M Yr EDIEVAL peasant liberty always seems to have recently died. For England a number of occasions between the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and the thirteenth century have been variously suggested as dates at which a primitive, Rousseau-esque, Germanic peasant freedom was destroyed by seigneurial oppression. Stenton saw such a subjugation as the main theme of the whole of Old English society.2 Others have attributed it to the imposition of the Norman Yoke. More recently Prof. Hilton has propounded a dramatic depression of the peasantry at the ends of the twelfth century.3 Fundamentally, these dates all rest on the assumption that what is newly recorded is new, and that what is new is worse. Such assumptions are able to dictate a pattern for six hundred years of history because during this time the direction of movement has to be deduced from unrelated, static evidence, coming almost entirely from the end of the period. Proof of the initial state of bliss is lacking, as Stenton himself allowed. Once belief in it is suspended, and it is accepted that exactions may change in form and emphasis, and oppressions become more manifest as familiar terms appear and records multiply, then it is possible to discern signs that the peasant's lot in fact improved. There is only one identifiable group of peasants and only one identifiable custom. Taken together they offer means of testing the whole thesis of subjugation. For the liberty to take a spouse and have a family is so elementary as to provide a reliable index not only of a peasant's freedom but also of his status as a human being, and of the nature of the society he inhabits.