Book Chapter

Material inequalities in England, c. 1290 - c. 1340

  • Chris Briggs

England c. 1300 was clearly an unequal society, yet assessing its distribution of wealth and income and levels of poverty with precision is not straightforward. Households earned their living by combining different sources of income that are hard to identify, especially for the mass of smallholders and landless. This article reviews recent attempts to estimate inequality in this period. It argues that such exercises provide a helpful general guide to the distribution of wealth and income, but at the micro-level it can be misleading to focus on either land or movable goods in isolation. The article provides some new evidence drawn from the royal archive and manorial sources concerning the material circumstances of individuals and households. These fragments help to qualify some of the pessimism concerning the share of households living at or below the poverty line at the end of the thirteenth century.

  • Keywords:
  • Middle Ages,
  • c. 1290 - c. 1340,
  • England,
  • households,
  • material inequality,
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Chris Briggs

University of Cambridge, United Kingdom - ORCID: 0009-0003-3640-7750

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  • Publication Year: 2025
  • Pages: 43-69
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2025 Author(s)

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  • Publication Year: 2025
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Material inequalities in England, c. 1290 - c. 1340

Authors

Chris Briggs

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0705-8.04

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2025

Copyright Information

© 2025 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Socio-Economic Inequalities during the Conjuncture of the Fourteenth Century

Book Subtitle

Sources and Methods, Dynamics and Representations (Italy and Europe, c. 1270 - c. 1350)

Editors

Davide Cristoferi

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

458

Publication Year

2025

Copyright Information

© 2025 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0705-8

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0699-0

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0705-8

eISBN (xml)

979-12-215-0707-2

Series Title

Reti Medievali E-Book

Series ISSN

2704-6362

Series E-ISSN

2704-6079

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