ABSTRACT
Such partisan justice was the downside everywhere of the apparent torpor of the English common law. The upside was new openings for conflict-resolution, as peace-keeping devolved to the localities. The Black Death, all agree, was hugely influential in creating the circumstances in which unruly knights the poachers rather than the gamekeepers of pre-plague society could be converted into law-abiding gentry. Already in general use well before the Black Death, arbitration nevertheless increased greatly in popularity during the later Middle Ages, when especially well suited to the huge number of intra-family disputes raised by irreversible entails and outsize jointures. Egalitarian beliefs were always less prominent among the demands of the rebels than appeals to ancient liberties and hypothetical rights. And the fresh waves of trouble that followed the Black Death, at Shipston as elsewhere, had a great deal more to do with prosperity.
