That medieval England is often the subject of social history is no surprise. The literature of England, its people, its monarchs, its wars, and its political intrigues make for lively reading. This is as true for the Middle Ages as it is for the modern era. What distinguishes P. J. P. Goldberg's book is its vivid introduction to the hierarchies of status, age, and gender that occupied so notable a place in the public and private lives of peasants and lords; masters and servants; priests and parishioners; and artisans, warriors, and rulers. All variously shared the desire to inhabit an ordered society. Consequently, a sense of hierarchy was integral to the many ways that medieval people thought about order itself. Even so, theirs was not a static, immobile society. Rather it was a world that recognized and responded to the need for adaptability and flexibility, particularly in regions chronically disordered by epidemic disease, crop failures, and warfare. At issue for many was the problem of how to reconcile the coincidence of forces that opposed change and those that favored it.

Mindful of the parallel perspectives of continuity and change, Goldberg surveys medieval England over the course of three centuries, from 1250 to 1550. The time period is aptly chosen, beginning as it does with the later years of the reign of Henry III (a monarch with a clear sense of his own authority) and concluding with the Henrician Reformation of the mid-sixteenth century. The telling moments and major trends of the years between 1250 and 1550 lend emphasis to the four interrelated lines of inquiry that inform Goldberg's analysis. First, he draws attention to the structures of medieval society, to family and household, to the administrative units of manor and borough, and to questions of religious faith and its embodiment in the institutions of church, parish, and guild. Part 2 of Medieval England brings into focus the story of medieval people as they confronted the challenges posed by the “agrarian crisis” of the early 1300s and epidemic disease in the latter half of the century. Equally troubling was the lingering tension caused by the uneven distribution of resources and power in town and country.

A detailed discussion of the dynamics of a preindustrial economy is at the core of the third part of Goldberg's survey. Here, as in earlier chapters, he brings new research to bear on old questions and rethinks traditional interpretations in light of new information. His is a calculus of inquiry designed to enliven debate, making it the vehicle for a broader understanding of the nature of the medieval economy. He asks, for instance, whether continued population growth for three centuries inevitably led, by the late 1200s, to overpopulation and to a catastrophic crisis, that is, a “Malthusian crisis” of population in the early 1300s. Equally provocative queries are raised not only about the economic consequences associated with very high mortality at the time of the Black Death but about the radical nature of subsequent labor legislation, the heightened resistance to taxation, and the popular perception of a political arena wherein the use and abuse of power exacerbated instances of revolt. It was, after all, in villages and small market towns that mismanaged government policies and official corruption found harsh critics among ordinary people weary of “maladministration” and angered by injustice. As many came to see, public policy and law helped to frame the “search for order.” Both contributed to the dynamics of later medieval culture—the subject of Medieval England's closing section.

By extending his survey of England to include the reign of Henry VIII, Goldberg purposefully transcends the polemic of nineteenth-century historians concerned to idealize the Middle Ages. As he recounts changes over time, Goldberg neither romanticizes nor oversimplifies the medieval world. Nor does he overcomplicate the sixteenth century, making it a time of innovation and progress in marked contrast to the century that went before. The grim statistics of plague, social unrest, and religious discontent notwithstanding, the late medieval world was hardly without a dynamic of its own. A number of saint cults flourished and attracted increasing numbers of devotees, belying the notion that late medieval Catholicism remained essentially static and implicitly sterile. The popularity of the Seven Works of Mercy, as a paradigm for Christian living, enhanced the creation of charitable institutions. Even so, it is impossible to say whether habits of devotion involved people of all sorts and conditions. But it was certainly the case that deeply rooted beliefs and traditions were not dramatically altered in the generation that witnessed the Henrician Reformation. Nor was the desire for education correspondingly weaker before the Reformation than after. As for cultural production, there was a self-conscious projection of a distinctly urban culture. Drama and ceremonial became civic advertisement. Evolving over time, the Corpus Christi play cycles involved a range of participants; women very well may have played female parts, although by the end of the 1500s men filled these roles. There was, too, a secular tradition that was evident when dramatic productions were staged, not in the streets, but in the great halls of lords. Appreciated by many, the historical play King John represented an evolutionary link between the drama of the late Middle Ages and the Shakespearean stage.

The discussion of drama and literature, along with questions of family life, makes Medieval England all the more engaging. It is, in the end, a book that is both comprehensive and provocative, deftly exploring not only institutional constraints but the choices made by ordinary people as they confronted change.