That the village may have been a vital community and the villager a
significant participant in medieval society are historical possibilities
that only recently have begun to receive attention from scholars. Numerous
specialized village studies, as well as analyses by historians of culture,
have done much to redress our ignorance of the history of the small-scale
cultivators who made up the great mass of Europe's population, and who
supported - and informed - its rich and complex cultural development in the
Middle Ages. This study draws upon this important body of work and attempts
to initiate a new line of methodological questions, using the minutes of the
local courts that regularly met in two English villages over the years 1280-
1460, a period of dramatic changes and ever-shifting challenges.