Rogationtide Perambulation as Performative Law

This article draws on performance theory to examine perambulation practices in late medieval and early modern England. Rogation was originally a devotional celebration that also entailed a ritual walking of parish boundaries to define communities as legal and administrative units. Perambulators sometimes seized upon the occasion to draw attention to a culture of obligation that had been neglected. This essay looks at two such moments—the 1381 Revolt of St. Albans, when the commons rose against the abbot in the form of a perambulation, and a 1520–21 property dispute at South Kyme, Lincolnshire at Ashby Heath. In these instances, perambulators used the occasion of the public recognition of property boundaries as an opportunity to stage a complaint in an act of “performative law.” The complainants asserted their rights and liberties by means of a theatrical form that invited participants and spectators to assent in specific legal claims to the land in dispute.