Rodney Hilton

Rodney Hilton, 1989

Rodney Howard Hilton (17 November 1916 – 7 June 2002) was an English Marxist historian of the late medieval period and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. He was born in Manchester and studied at Balliol College Oxford University and was a member of the Communist Party Historians Group before leaving the party in 1956 with many others. He had a 36-year teaching career at the University of Birmingham.^[1] His papers are held at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

Works

His works include:

• The Economic Development of some Leicestershire Estates in the 14th & 15th Centuries (1947)
• Communism and Liberty (1950)
• The English Rising of 1381 (1950) (with H. Fagan)
• A Medieval Society: the West Midlands at the end of the thirteenth century (1966)
• The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England (1969)
• Bond Men Made Free: medieval peasant movements and the English rising of 1381 (1973)
• The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (1975)
• Peasants, Knights, and Heretics: studies in medieval English social history (editor) (1976)
• The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (1976)
• Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism (1983)
• The Change beyond the Change: a dream of John Ball (1990)
• English and French Towns in Feudal Society: a comparative study (1992)
• Power and Jurisdiction in Medieval England (1992)

Festschrift

• Social Relations and Ideas: essays in honour of R. H. Hilton (edited by T. H. Aston) (1983)

References

1. Byers, Terence J. (2006), "Rodney Hilton (1916–2002): In Memoriam". Journal of Agrarian Change, 6: 1–16. doi:10.1111/j.1471-0366.2006.00113.x

External links

• A voice for the exploited Obituary by Brian Manning
• Obituary by Christopher Dyer