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SUMMARY:Revisiting Vinogradoff’s interpretation of Bracton: why was a se
 rvus not a slave? - Judith Spicksley (University of York)
DTSTART:20170510T160000Z
DTEND:20170510T170000Z
UID:TALK72472@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:31344
DESCRIPTION:Historians interested in mapping the decline of slavery in Eng
 land have suggested that the institution had disappeared by the twelfth ce
 ntury. It is possible to detect the beginnings of a decline in the late An
 glo-Saxon period\, but most academics are agreed that the number of the en
 slaved fell after the Conquest in 1066\, when slavery as a system of labou
 r extraction through personal servitude gave way to serfdom\, a system of 
 servile labour organised around landholding in which individuals were boun
 d by virtue of their tenure rather than their status. This alternative for
 m of unfreedom expanded during the twelfth century under the pressure of p
 opulation growth and land shortage but then declined as a result of the Bl
 ack Death\, which undermined the tenurial restrictions that bound peasants
  to the land\; serfdom as a form of unfreedom withered away. As a result t
 he vocabulary of slavery is absent from the history of late medieval Engla
 nd\, where the unfree are usually described as serfs or villeins\, followi
 ng Paul Vinogradoff’s interpretation of the legal treatise known as Brac
 ton. This paper draws on a range of published primary materials including 
 the legal treatises of the late medieval and early modern periods\, publis
 hed records of the royal and manorial courts\, and medieval and early mode
 rn labour statutes. It suggests that the emergence of villeinage and the p
 owerful notion of what Orlando Patterson defined as ‘intrusive’ enslav
 ement have problematized what it meant to be unfree in the late Middle Age
 s. The number of those enslaved did decline as a result of economic and in
 stitutional change\, but slavery as a legal status remained visible in law
  and practice well into the early modern period.
LOCATION:Walters Room\, Selwyn College
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