title: Life on the English Manor: A Study of Peasant Conditions 1150-1400 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)
author:  H. S. Bennett 
description: 'Its scholarship, which is actually exhaustively patient, interferes not one whit with its open, positively exciting readability ... No student of literature, no lover of medieval past should be without its modest assistance. In itself it has the quiet charm of unpretentious knowledge; as a bridge to an age not easily approached, it is of profound usefulness.' The Saturday Review<br /><br />'A picture of the peasant's physical and mental environment which is well balanced, full of significant detail, and free from disquieting exaggeration of light and shade ... A work of much learning, well arranged and clearly written, but its distinction lies in its humanity.' Sir Frank Stenton, The Spectator<br /><br />'This is not just another book on English life in the Middle Ages and the ways of our forefathers ... It is written with such clarity and grace and it reconstructs so vividly and yet with such scholarly attention to the evidence the fortunes of the poor six or seven centuries ago that it should attract the attention of a far wider audience.' New York Herald Tribune
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  Chapter One
  
  They came at sunset. There were perhaps two hundred of them, the evening sun
  setting alight
  
  the round helmets and breastplates, turning the tips of steel pikes and
  halberds into flowing candles.
  
  Perhaps a third were on horseback, the remainder on foot—a silent, orderly
  brigade tramping across the overgrown lawns, neglected driveway, and paths
  that led to the house.
  
  She stood waiting in the open front door on this warm summer evening of 1648.
  The house at
  
  her back was a Jacobean mansion of soft, sea-weathered stone, the classical
  cornices and pilasters bespeaking an age before civil war, when an English
  gentleman could afford to indulge his taste for the gentle arts of
  architecture and landscaping, and build for posterity the manor house that
  declared his wealth and endeavor.
  
  The brigade drew closer, and it became clear that one man rode slightly ahead
  of the front ranks.
  
  Her practiced eye approved both his horse—a magnificent black charger standing
  