The James Ford Lectures : The end of serfdom and the Rise of the West

AFTER THE BLACK DEATH: Society, economy and the law in fourteenth-century England

Speaker: Professor Mark Bailey (University of East Anglia)

How far had English society shed ‘feudal’ institutions—such as serfdom—and replaced them with discernibly ‘modern’ institutions—such as contractual tenures and the European Marriage Pattern—by the end of the fourteenth century?  An assessment of the nature and scale of institutional change offers insights into the role of the Black Death in bringing about the change and the distinctiveness of the English experience.