Legal Behavior of the Medieval English Peasantry

FAIN: FT-11432-73

John S. Beckerman
Yale University (New Haven, CT 06510-1703)

To research the proposition that the breakdown of the manorial system of legal protection for the peasant population of England was accompanied by a significant deterioration in the quality of civil protection and a corresponding increase in the use of extra-legal remedies, of self help. If this theory can be verified, it would go far toward explaining the common impression of the middle ages in England (1350-1500j) as times of considerable popular unrest.