Christopher Dyer examines the transition in the economy and society of England between 1250 and 1550. Using new sources of evidence, he demonstrates that important structural changes after 1350 built on the commercial growth of the thirteenth century. He shows that development of individual property, response to new consumption patterns, and use of credit and investment, came from the peasantry rather than the aristocracy. An Age of Transition?, a significant new work by a top medievalist, reveals how England was set on course to become the 'first industrial nation'.

Between 1200 and 1520 medieval English society went through a series of upheavals--wars, pestilence, and rebellion. This book looks at aristocrats, peasants, townsmen, wage-earners, and paupers, and examines how they obtained and spent their incomes. Did the aristocracy practice conspicuous consumption? Did the peasants really starve? The book focuses on the varying fortunes of different social groups in the inflation of the thirteenth century, the crises of the fourteenth, and the apparent depression of the fifteenth. Dr. Dyer explains the changes in terms of the dynamics of a social and...

Around 1500 England's society and economy had reached a turning point. After a long period of slow change and even stagnation, an age of innovation and initiative was in motion, with enclosure, voyages of discovery, and new technologies. It was an age of fierce controversy, in which the government was fearful of beggars and wary of rebellions. The 'commonwealth' writers such as Thomas More were sharply critical of the greed of profit hungry landlords who dispossessed the poor. This book is about a wool merchant and large scale farmer who epitomises in many ways the spirit of the period....