As a medieval county palatine, Durham in northeast England was a privileged region in which the bishop of Durham exercised extensive authority through structures analogous to those of the royal government. As landlords, the bishop and the Benedictine priory of Durham dominated the county through their separate estates, both of which were very large and comprised lands in many villages. The abundant records of those estates have given rise to a number of important studies. The books reviewed here continue this tradition, in this case by exploring aspects of the actions and mentalities of Durham's peasants. Each book notes Durham's distinctive character and institutions, but neither considers the region in isolation. Efforts are made in both studies to comment on debates usually dominated by material from manors and estates lying much further south.

Ben Dodds's objective is to chart and interpret levels of grain production over time. Before now, virtually all investigations of agricultural production have been confined to landlords’ demesne farms. Dodds's work is pioneering because he uses a neglected source that records the output of a wider range of cultivators, most of whom it is appropriate to describe as peasants. That source consists of accounts of the tithe, or the tax of one-tenth of production taken by the church. The Durham monks enjoyed the rights to tithe in numerous parishes. These tithes were predominantly those levied on the major field crops: wheat, barley, oats, peas, and beans.

Many tithe accounts detail the grain received by the tithe owner. However, the majority of the Durham tithe records used by Dodds are not in that category. Instead, they record the cash sums for which the monks sold the tithe to tithe buyers prior to the harvest (these buyers are investigated in chap. 7 of the book). To produce estimates of the quantities of grain actually received, Dodds had to deflate the cash sums by grain prices. Inevitably, unknowns complicate this process. The assumptions made, and their implications, are painstakingly explained to the reader. Even so, the resulting graphs of estimated total grain output are far enough removed from the figures in the documents to make one cautious about treating the estimates as anything more than indicators of broad trends. One feels more confident about those sections of the book that examine the grain (as opposed to cash) tithe accounts that survive for a few parishes. Also, the data are relatively patchy for the period before the Black Death of 1348–49.

An introductory chapter describes European historians’ use of tithe material and reasons for its neglect among medievalists working on England. Chapter 2 introduces Durham Priory's tithe income and the problems of exploiting the tithe documents. But the book is not confined to arable production or to peasants. The following three chapters form, in effect, an account of the regional economy of Durham set against the background of the index of estimated grain output over the period 1270–1536. Livestock farming, nonagricultural activities such as coal mining, and towns and trade are all considered. The tithe data suggest arable output reached its high point in 1311. There then followed a collapse in the 1310s and 1320s and limited recovery in the 1330s and 1340s, features largely attributed to the effects of climatic disaster and warfare. Given the population losses in the Black Death, the grain output levels achieved in a period of growth between the 1350s and mid-1360s appear surprisingly high. This trend is explained as a response to rising per capita grain consumption. Then, after a period of sharp fluctuations in the 1370s and 1380s, the trend in aggregate output was stagnant or declining for most of the rest of the medieval period, with only a few short periods of upward movement. This stabilization of arable production at a relatively low level almost certainly reflects the ongoing lack of demographic growth. A valuable section compares Durham's late fifteenth-century stagnation with the contemporary upturn in output documented for other parts of Europe.

The boldest and most stimulating chapter, however, is chapter 6. Here, Dodds challenges the idea that peasant production strategies were inflexible or characterized by a lack of interest in market opportunity. An examination is made of the relationship between the price of a particular grain and the proportion represented by that grain in the total tithe taken. This can be done for just a few parishes, because grain tithe data are required. Dodds observes price responsiveness, that is, signs that tithe growers boosted output of particular crops in order to take advantage of increases in their price. The correlation between share of output and price is clearest for the latter decades of the fifteenth century. The chapter then embarks on a broader discussion of these findings, reflecting on the ways in which peasants enjoying surpluses of different sizes may have managed their resources in response to the complex demands and opportunities they faced. These pages will doubtless form the stimulus for future work. Much of this will be done on other surviving grain tithe accounts, some of which have already been described by Dodds himself in an article published since this volume appeared.

P. L. Larson's book concerns the power relations negotiated within rural communities during the upheavals of the half century following the Black Death. Using the records of the halmotes (village courts) of the bishopric and priory estates, Larson explores in great detail the shifting struggles that took place between lords and peasants and among the peasants themselves. Besides reviewing the key problems facing any investigation of peasants and their social superiors, the two opening chapters describe the halmotes and explore strategies for reading their incomplete and one-sided records. A particularly interesting discussion here suggests that although the Durham lords faced falling financial returns from their halmotes, their reasons for holding these courts were not purely financial but were also bound up with the obligations of good lordship. Chapters 3 and 4 introduce the distinctive administrative structures of the Durham estates and set the scene for subsequent chapters through a brief description of the Black Death itself. Chapters 5–7 examine the “feudal reaction” of the 1350s and its aftermath, in which Bishop Thomas Hatfield sought in various ways to exert his will over his tenants in a bid to reverse the effects of the population contraction upon seignorial economy and authority. Chapter 7 also offers a description of the rather different seignorial responses to the new conditions evident on the priory estate, albeit one that is restricted to the period after the start of the priory halmote rolls in 1364. Chapter 8 is primarily concerned with explaining the remarkable level of intravillage violence experienced by the priory villages in the late 1360s and 1370s. Finally, chapter 9 summarizes the situation on the two estates at the end of the century. By this time, most of the major lord-tenant struggles were over and a more stable and lasting set of social relations was in place.

Larson reveals a complex pattern of individual and collective action in which a range of strategies were pursued. A major theme concerns the differences between the two estates. Larson sees the bishopric villages as constituting stronger communities in 1400 than those of the priory estate, in which continuing social discord is more evident. What was the reason for these differences? Larson's answer is that they were largely due to contrasting seignorial policies. Following the “feudal reaction,” the bishop's attitude to his tenants was more consistent and “hands-off,” whereas (as Larson puts it) the priory's officials' “alternated between conservative and demanding and innovative and lax” (210). However, as Dodds notes in his study, it may also be that the differences in community cohesion were connected to contrasts in the landscape and economy prevailing across the villages of each estate. A striking number of the bishopric villages lay on the poorer soils of the upland zone of western Durham, whereas most of the priory villages were situated on the more fertile lowland areas to the east.

In using different sources in discussing the same period and places, the two books offer complimentary perspectives on particular episodes. A significant finding of Dodds's study is the rise in aggregate grain output from the 1350s to the mid-1360s, interpreted as a reaction to rising demand and prices. Larson's discussion of the halmote records provides clues about how producers met this demand. This period marks the rise of what Larson views as a marked individualism in agriculture on the priory estate, as innovations such as the leasing of customary land allowed the emergence of an elite of wealthy and powerful peasants orientated toward production for the market. It is the activities of individuals such as these that lie behind Dodds's statistics on output.

In many ways, these books exemplify contrasting approaches to the Durham peasants and to the history of rural society in general. Dodds makes extensive use of quantitative methods and strives to establish the broad parameters of economic and demographic change as the context for the actions of peasants. By contrast, Larson prefers social theory and makes relatively little reference to important themes in the period's economic history, most notably shifts in agricultural prices. Yet at the same time, both works share important similarities. Only Larson's sources allow him to name and discuss particular peasants and their careers, since the nature of the materials underlying Dodds's study leaves the producers themselves largely anonymous. However, both authors focus throughout on the individual and on his or her capacity to shape events. Both books emphasize the extent to which the effects of particular external conditions varied across space and time, depending on what collective or independent decisions peasants chose to make. Those decisions, the two books stress, were neither predictable nor governed by unchanging custom. Although not entirely new, there has been a marked growth recently in this tendency to place individual agency at the center of discussions of trends and outcomes in England's agrarian economy and society. These books represent an important contribution to the development of that historical approach and attitude.