The Charters of Stanton, Suffolk, c.1215-1678

The village of Stanton, some nine miles north-east of Bury St Edmunds, is in many ways a typical Suffolk village. What is not so typical is the survival of a considerable and largely coherent collection of charters and similar texts, which together provide a rich and detailed picture of aspects of life in this village from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Most of the documents were written for, or involved, local peasants and farmers, and illustrate their own dealings with each other, with their lords (most importantly the nearby abbey of Bury), together with the involvement of prominent outsiders in the life of the village. The charters are therefore documents of great interest for the social and economic history of Suffolk, and of East Anglia more broadly, for the insights they provide into the lives of peasants and village people, into farming and other kinds of economic activity, into the operation of lordship and into the village's connection with the broader world. They present a microcosm of medieval and early modern Suffolk life, and typify kinds of activity that would have involved individuals across the county and beyond. This volume, a rich resource for historians, provides an edited collection, accompanied by introduction, notes and apparatus.