It has been generally acknowledged that the Durham Halmote Rolls give a typical average picture of peasant life under the three Edwards; Halesowen, Ramsey and Gloucester give similar evidence; and there is nothing of importance on any of these manors that cannot be illustrated from other medieval sources. Let us now glance at the peasant's lot in earlier times, when he had sometimes been worse off, thence let us pass to consider him in generations later than these Durham records, when he was certainly somewhat happier.

The evidence for the earlier times will be found to bear out the judgement of Dean Church, who was certainly no intemperate critic of the past. In one of his essays on St Anselm he wrote: “Feudalism, in spite of its generous maxims…soon stiffened into a hard system of customary law, interpreted and administered by those who had the stoutest arm and the fewest scruples.…Our poetical notions of a gay and gentle chivalry fade away cruelly, we had almost said ludicrously, before the frightful realities of European life as drawn by the Middle Age historians”. And the brute force of the Dark Ages proper must have weighed more heavily upon the peasant than upon any other. That is the one constant factor in medieval civil wars; both parties fought over the peasant's fields, forced the peasant into their ranks, and blackmailed the peasant when they had gotten the upper hand.