Agricultural History Review, Volume 58 Part 2 (2010), p. 277

This is the third volume of a trilogy of collections of essays in which Professor Campbell gathers together many of his significant contributions to our understanding of medieval England. The earlier volumes looked specifically at agricultural innovation and at fields and farming systems, but the present volume is no less firmly rooted in agricultural history. In the author’s own words, it is concerned with ‘the numbers, types, and conditions of people in late-medieval England and the relationships of those people with both each other and the land’. It contains only eight essays, some of them much longer than normal article length; among them is Campbell’s 70-page seminal analysis, from 2005, of the early fourteenth-century agrarian problem.

Within this broad field, the essays cover an impressive range of topics. Given the extent and depth of Campbell’s knowledge of medieval Norfolk, the detailed studies of population and the land market at Coltishall and of the complex manorial structure at Hevingham come as no surprise, and Norfolk evidence is brought to bear in other contexts too. But another article discusses, no less knowledgeably, the Winchester pipe rolls and there is a particularly thought-provoking study of the contrast between north and south in medieval England. The three other essays are more in the nature of general surveys, but always firmly based on the evidence of specific documents and places.

In the introduction, Campbell refers to earlier economic historians whose work was ‘unencumbered by an excess of detailed empirical information’. No one could say this of his own work – which is not to say that it is overweighted with evidence, all trees and no wood. On the contrary, the evidence is brought to bear on general issues with impressive effect. One of Campbell’s strengths is his use of numerical analysis; another is his undaunted capacity for sheer slogging. We see both in his account of 4090 Inquisitions Post Mortem and in the new and interesting light they throw on lords’ revenues: the relative importance of tenants’ rents and their services, free and customary, in the first half of the fourteenth century and the way this varied from one part of the country to another. Where evidence is defective – as in the gaps in the series of manorial court rolls at Coltishall – computer-based statistical methods are used to get round the difficulty. Campbell is well aware of current technology and much of the work in the book demonstrates how the computer has opened up a whole new approach to the relevant records. There is still a place for the detailed case study, but we are now for the first time in a position to test it against a much broader body of evidence, the total picture, to discover what is typical, what is unusual in a particular area or region.

Campbell no less properly points the way forward to work that needs doing, areas where we have more to learn. One is a corollary to his comparison of north and south in medieval England: ‘Research into social and economic relationships and developments in the remoter, less congested, less urbanized, and more pastoral northern and western parts of the realm (and beyond in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland) has lagged far behind’ – though the pioneer work of Dr Angus Winchester and others is beginning to set this right. Another is the need for more work on free tenants, still an under-researched area despite all that has been done since F.M.Powicke first drew attention to them in 1938.

Most readers of the trilogy of essays will already be familiar with some or much of the contents. But it is invaluable to have them brought together in this way. They are coherent, interesting and easy to read. And they remind us how much we owe Campbell for our expanding and deepening knowledge of the English medieval countryside. They are an important contribution to this knowledge.