This course will survey village life in England during the Middle Ages, concentrating on the 13th and 14th centuries, when 90-95% of England’s population lived such villages. Unfortunately, a popular image has arisen that medieval serfs were dirty, malnourished, oppressed by landowners and wit out any rights. Learn why each one of these generalizations is false: the peasants washed frequently, successfully produced enough food and sufficient excess to market, largely governed themselves through the practice of equity, and maintained and extended their significant rights (as, for example, “windfall” allowed them to collect broken branches from the lord’s hunting forest). While not romanticizing village life, the course will lead us in an appreciation of this most critical level of medieval society.