This book portrays the rural and urban economies and the social structure of the West Midlands of England at a peak period of medieval growth, the end of the thirteenth century. The subject matter ranges from lords to peasants, from merchants to artisans, and from bishops to parish priests. It depicts life in the village, in the town and in the forest, and analyses the modes of social control exercised by ruling groups and the resistance of the ruled.

This book contains eight articles, six of which are based on papers contributed to a commemoration conference organised by the Past and Present Society in 1981. Two further articles and an introduction are contributed by other experts. They explore the various dimensions of the rising of 1381: the discontent of peasants and townspeople who became politicised in response to government tax demands; reasons for the attitudes of the subordinated classes to the law, which they perceived as being the instrument of their oppressors; the response of the ruling class and its government to one of the most coherent challenges to feudal order in the Middle Ages. In addition, two contributions on social movements in fourteenth-century France and Italy show that the rising can be regarded as a symptom of the general crisis of European feudal society in the later Middle Ages.