Between 1200 and 1520 medieval English society went through a series of upheavals: this was an age of war, pestilence and rebellion. This book explores the realities of life of the people who lived through those stirring times. It looks in turn at aristocrats, peasants, townsmen, wage-earners and paupers, and examines how they obtained their incomes and how they spent them. This revised edition (1998) includes a substantial new concluding chapter and an updated bibliography.

"To construct so well balanced and lucidly written a textbook on so large and neglected a theme can have been no easy matter, and Dyer is to be congratulated on producing what now serves as the ideal introduction to late medieval English society." R. B. Dobson, Studies in the Age of Chaucer

"...an admirable synthesis of the best work done in both social and economic history over the past generation." Canadian Journal of History

"Christopher Dyer has written a cogent textbook that provides an excellent survey of standards of living in the later middle ages." James M. Rosenheim, Albion