from Part III - Reputation and Witness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2019
Notions of a person’s ‘worth’ were socially created, This chapter looks for the notions of worth involved in the multifarious everyday transactions between people. As so much depended on others, peasant farmers could not afford to trust anyone who was not of good reputation. Fair dealing and the common good were important in the moral economy of working life not because transactions between neighbours were altruistic, nor even necessarily friendly, but because they were essential. Tenth century laws regulating the hundred built on a moral economy which valued good reputation and personal knowledge and in which co-operation mattered. Courts came to collective decisions, sworn oaths established truth and standing surety for another person meant that personal knowledge of the accused was essential. The witness of neighbours was vital when it came to questions of land: boundary clauses from the ninth and tenth century were based on detailed knowledge which only local people could provide. Peasant farmers became more formally part of the financial system when heregeld began to be levied.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.