What was the social structure of England in the period 1200 to 1500? What were the basic forms of social inequality? To what extent did such divisions generate social conflict? How significantly did English society change during these three centuries and what were the causes of social change? Is it useful to see medieval social structure in terms of the theories and concepts produced within the medieval period itself?

What does modern English social theory have to offer the historian seeking to understand English society in the later middle ages? These are the questions which this book seeks to answer.

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Dr Rigby's investigation of medieval English society is located within a broader discussion of the nature of social stratification and draws on a variety of sociological approaches to clarify the nature of the forms of social inequality to be found in medieval England. Beginning with an analysis of the class structure of medieval England, Part I of this book asks to what extent class conflict was inherent within class relations and discusses the contrasting outcomes of such conflict in town and country.

Part II of the book examines how class divisions interacted with other forms of social inequality, such as those based on orders (noble and clerical status), those between men and women, and those arising from membership of a status-group (the Jews).

The book should be extremely useful to those undergraduates beginning their studies of medieval England whilst, in offering a new interpretative framework within which to examine social structure, also interesting those historians who are more familiar with this period.