Distributism and Medieval English Peasant Life: Testing the Historical Vision of Hilaire Belloc (thesis)

Abstract

This thesis seeks to test Hilaire Belloc's vision of the economic history of medieval England, particularly two of his claims. First, the servile state was abolished and the distributist state nearly fully completed by the fifteenth century. Second, this process was accomplished through a gradual and natural process, rather than by revolution or any single historical event. Further, this thesis will seek to uncover the causes of the growth of the distributive system, which will shed light both on the nature of the process and the economics of distributism. Belloc's claims will be compared to the records of manorial courts in medieval England. These courts, overseen by elected officials from the villages, judged legal conflicts between lords and peasants as well as between two or more peasants and recorded relevant information like the number of tenants or the legal status of peasants. [From the Introduction]