Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation

Coulton was a talented populariser of medieval history. In this 1919 work he provides a comprehensive social history of Britain from 1066 to the sixteenth century. By using a wide range of historical, legal and literary sources, he gives examples of all aspects of the lives of ordinary people.

First published in 1918, and re-issued with forty pages of illustrations in 1919, Social Life in Britain marked a turning point in Coulton's writings. Although a rigorous academic who stressed the importance of using primary sources, Coulton was skilled at making medieval history accessible to a wider audience, by dealing with ordinary lives. He played an important role in encouraging interest in the study of social and economic, rather than political and military, history of the Middle Ages among younger scholars. In the present work, he used his extraordinarily wide reading of historical and literary sources to cover all aspects of ordinary life in medieval Britain. These include birth and childhood, education, town life, food and drink, the Church and medical methods. He also deals with aspects of women's lives, travelling, and bizarre superstitions which were widely held. A fascinating book to dip into, with a wealth of material.