Table Of ContentPALGRAVE STUDIES IN
THE HISTORY
OF CHILDHOOD
CHILDHOOD, ORPHANS AND
UNDERAGE HEIRS IN MEDIEVAL
RURAL ENGLAND
Growing up in the Village
MIRIAM MÜLLER
Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood
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Miriam Müller
Childhood, Orphans
and Underage Heirs
in Medieval Rural
England
Growing up in the Village
Miriam Müller
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, UK
Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood
ISBN 978-3-030-03601-0 ISBN 978-3-030-03602-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03602-7
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Cover image: Child up a tree picking fruit, Luttrell Psalter BL70964 Add 42130
f.196v. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images
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A
cknowledgements
I am immensely grateful to friends and colleagues who kindly read
and commented on earlier drafts of the chapters in this book. Without
their support, encouragement and critical eye, this book would have
turned out undoubtedly much poorer. Particular thanks have to go to
Prof. Chris Dyer, Prof. Chris Wickham and Prof. Naomi Standen. I am
also very grateful for the comments made and questions asked by var-
ious audiences to whom I presented papers based on this research at
the Medieval Congress of Leeds, at seminars at the University of Kent
and the University of Birmingham, the Childhood Conference at the
University of Edinburgh, and the Seen but Not Heard Childhood Studies
Conference at the University of Sussex. I also wish to thank numerous
friends and colleagues who suffered me going on and on about medie-
val village children, and offered their thoughts, ideas and criticisms. In
particular, I would like to thank Aysu Dinçer, Richard Goddard, Mike
Evans, Jean Birrell and Cordelia Beattie. This book could also never
have been written without many hours in two archives in particular; the
Wolfson Centre for Archival Research in the Library of Birmingham and
the Archive in The Hive in Worcester, and I am very grateful for the help
and assistance of the staff there. I would also like to thank the Marc Fitch
Fund for their generous grant which facilitated the use of images. Finally,
I am thankful to my students at the University of Birmingham, who
asked me about the fate of village orphans a few years ago, which set me
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
off on this rather unexpected journey into researching village children. I
hope this offering goes some way to answering at least a few of your bril-
liant questions, and please keep asking them!
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
1 Village Children 1
2 The Child 7
3 Sources: via Orphans and Underaged Heirs to Village
Children 13
Bibliography 28
2 Vulnerable Members of the Community 33
1 Communities and Lordship 33
2 Growing Autonomy 45
3 The Age of Majority 58
Bibliography 73
3 Inheritance, Rights and Goods 79
1 Heirs, Rights and Communities 79
2 Chattels, Buildings and Material Culture 86
3 Heriots and Livestock 98
4 The Tenement 104
Bibliography 114
vii
viii CONTENTS
4 Looking After Underaged Heirs 119
1 The Children 119
2 The Peasant Guardians 130
3 The Roles of Lords; Guardians and Profiteers 140
Bibliography 153
5 Plotting Out a Living 157
1 Kinship Networks and Match Makers 157
2 Learning to Make a Living: Education at Home,
Independence and Service 166
3 Attending Grammar School 174
4 Problems and Conflict 182
Bibliography 194
6 Conclusion 197
Bibliography 204
Glossary 207
Index 211
l f
ist of igures
Chapter 2
Diagram 1 Relationships between tenant, lord, land and communities 58
Chapter 4
Chart 1 Sex ratio of heirs at the manors 1270–1400 123
Chart 2 Proportion of male and female heirs in per cent 124
Chart 3 Recorded number of underaged heirs at the manors
of Winslow, Norton, Halesowen and Walsham le
Willows 1290–1400. Note that records for Winslow
only commence in 1322, and for Walsham in 1308.
No underaged heir is recorded for the remainder
of the fourteenth century at either manor post 1385 129
Chart 4 Guardians recorded at Winslow, Halesowen, Walsham
le Willows and Norton from 1290 to 1400 in per cent 132
Chart 5 Incidents of ‘Other’ and ‘Unknown’ guardians
at the manors of Walsham le Willows, Winslow
and Halesowen 134
Chapter 5
Fig. 1 Royal 2AXXII f.220v. ‘The Westminster Psalter’,
Westminster or St. Albans, England mid-thirteenth
century. St. Christopher carrying Christ child in a sling
(© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/
Bridgeman Images) 168
ix
