W. Mark Ormrod & Bart Lambert 
Immigrant England, 1300–1550 

This book provides a vivid and accessible history of first-generation immigrants to England in the later Middle Ages. Accounting for upwards of two percent of the population and coming from all parts of Europe and beyond, immigrants spread out over the kingdom, settling in the countryside as well as in towns, taking work as agricultural labourers, skilled craftspeople and professionals. Often encouraged and welcomed, sometimes vilified and victimised, immigrants were always on the social and political agenda.

Immigrant England is the first book to address a phenomenon and issue of vital concern to English people at the time, to their descendants living in the United Kingdom today and to all those interested in the historical dimensions of immigration policy, attitudes to ethnicity and race and concepts of Englishness and Britishness.

Table of Content

1 Introduction: immigrant England
2 Defining and regulating the immigrant
3 Numbers and distribution
4 Immigrants from the British Isles
5 Immigrants from overseas
6 Supplying the market
7 Wealth, status and gender
8 Old worlds, new immigrants
9 Cultural contact
10 Integration and confrontation
11 Conclusion: nationalism, racism and xenophobia
Bibliography
Index

About the author

S.H. Rigby is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Manchester.