220 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



THE EUEAL CLASSES OF ENGLAND IN THE 

 THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 



BY WILLIAM P. ALLEN, A. M., 

 Professor of Latin and History in the University of Wisconsin. 



At the last annual meeting of the Academy, I had the honor 

 to read a paper upon the rural population of England in the 

 eleventh century, a part of which has been printed in the 

 Transactions of the Academy, I propose, to-day, to follow 

 up the line of inquiry there suggested, and examine the 

 changes in the social relations of the English peasantry dur- 

 ing the two centuries that followed. I take two centuries 

 rather than one, simply for the reason that the materials 

 within my reach for the twelfth century are so meagre as, by 

 themselves, to afford no certain results ; while for the thir- 

 teenth century the materials are relatively abundant and in- 

 structive. On the other hand, I go down no later than the 

 thirteenth century, because at this epoch the social institutions 

 of the Middle Age had reached their complete development, 

 while after this they were subjected to rapid and fundamental 

 changes. In the thirteenth century, the abuses of feudalism 

 had reached their height, and remedies began to be provided. 

 In the thirteenth century jurisprudence began to be studied; 

 and usages that had grown up in the confusion of the preced- 

 ing century, were reduced to a system, formulated, and, so to 

 speak, codified. The thirteenth century was the century of 

 Magna Charta, of the "Establishments" of St. Louis, of the 

 " Customs of Beauvoisis," of the treatises of Bracton and 

 Britton, of the legislation of Edward I., the "English Jus- 

 tinian," In the fourteenth century, on the other hand, the 

 feudal ties were loosened, and the system essentially under- 



i 



