a boy of fourteen years. The first
years of his reign were also relatively unimportant. By the time he
reached his majority, however, other events were imminent which for
the next century or more gave a new direction to the principal
interests and energies of England. A description of these events will
be given in a later chapter.

For the greater part of the long period which has now been sketched in
outline it is almost solely the political and ecclesiastical events
and certain personal experiences which have left their records in
history. We can obtain but vague outlines of the actual life of the
people. An important Anglo-Saxon document describes the organization
of a great landed estate, and from Domesday Book and other early
Norman records may be drawn certain inferences as to the degree of
freedom of the masses of the people and certain facts as to
agriculture and trade. From the increasing body of public records in
the twelfth century can be gathered detached pieces of information as
to actual social and economic conditions, but the knowledge that can
be obtained is even yet slight and uncertain. With the thirteenth
century, however, all this is changed. During the latter part of the
period just described, that is to say the reigns of Henry III and the
three Edwards, we have almost as full knowledge of economic as of
political conditions, of the life of the mass of the people as of that
of courtiers and ecclesiastics. From a time for which 1250 may be
taken as an approximate date, written documents began to be so
numerous, so varied, and so full of information as to the affairs of
private life, that it becomes possible to obtain a comparatively full
and clear knowledge of the methods of agriculture, handicraft, and
commerce, of the classes of society, the prevailing customs and ideas,
and in general of the mode of life and social organization of the mass
of the people, this being the principal subject of economic and social
history. The next three chapters will therefore be devoted
respectively to a description of rural life, of town life, and of
trading relations, as they were during the century from 1250 to 1350,
while the succeeding chapters will trace the main lines of economic
and social change during succeeding periods down to the present time.

CHAPTER II

RURAL LIFE AND ORGANIZATION

*8. The Mediaeval Village.*--In the Middle Ages in the greater part of
England all country life was village l