England's Second Domesday and the Expulsion of the English Peasantry

England's Second Domesday and the Expulsion of the English Peasantry offers an innovative account of the forced evictions of English peasants during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The book conclusively shows that these world-shattering events were more than just a ‘Tudor myth’. While most historians agree that the English peasantry disappeared much later through fairer means such as industrialization and trade, Spencer Dimmock argues that capitalism carved fundamental and irreversible breaches into the English countryside between 1400 and 1620. Through a close examination of the royal commission of 1517 – ‘England's Second Domesday’ – the book shows that the transition to capitalism preceded the British industrial revolution, and that it relied on the widespread illegal clearances of rural people and their culture by the English ruling class.