Urban/rural Flashcards
Sources
Donne, epistle to Wotton.
Sidney, Basilius in Old Arcadia “brake up his court and retired… into a certain forest nearby.”
Jonson - The Alchemist (1610)- coz’nage.
Gough - Myddle, Shropshire parish, diary 1640’s.
Lady Margaret Hoby (d.1633), East Riding, m 3 times, once to Robert Sidney
Pepys’ Diary (1660) (Great Fire 1666, Bawdy House Riots 1668 - attack of Damaris Page’s house.)
Fiscal stats - Elizabeth I
Wiliams - money was available, but locals selectively forthcoming: Northamptonshire: £1056 to Coat and Conduct and £250 to defence fund at Elizabeth’s request in 1558. Collinson: Preferment to spend locally: eg. Terrington, Norfolk, raising £500 to repair flood barriers.
Distribution of EI taxes
Wiliams - uneven - Norfolk charged £1000 in 1589 and Wales £360
Changes in government under Tudors
Wiliams - late c16 “England was more intensively governed than before”
Tittler and Jones - “political centralisation, administrative uniformity, and cultural imperialism”; “Social process of incorporating gentry elites into the government of the shires and middling man into the governing of the parishes”. Tudors created an “aristocratic office-holding elite” of “self-government at the King’s command”; “the whole system depended upon an ethos of participation”
Elton - creation of “points of contact”
Lord Lieutenants
Reintroduced 1585, had 6 deputies, responsible for training and maintaining/recruiting local militias (in absence of aristocratic mercenaries) - Tittler - an office “designed to improve defence and security”. Successful ones “mediated between the country and the court” eg. Northamptonshire one negotiated the quota of soldiers from £5-3000. Effectiveness of the system - LL levied 105,600 men between 1585 and 1603.
Elizabeth unusually left 13 spaces unfilled between 1590 and 1603.
Scotland and government
Williams - very little system for military control; by 1625 had JP’s in 1/4 shires.
Ireland and the Tudors
Tittler and Jones - “an autocratic gaelic system gave place to a new system of colonial exploitation”. High control = militant and therefore more expensive - 1534 rebellion = £40,000
Justices of the Peace
Dealt with medium crimes and punishments.
Tittler - had to earn £20 p.a. landed income (except in Wales)
Judges of Assize
Courts of Assize held every 6 months in localities by touring judges. Gowing - church courts for moral offences.
Tittler - “intermediaries” betw. central gov. and country; “channel of communication”, courts “a form of political theatre”; role was so effective that by 1603 309 statutes dictated their functions (“over-burdened”)
London - population
Gowing - population tripled between 1580 and 1640. (by migration)
London - marriage
Gowing - Southwark: 83% marriages were between local parishioners
Localism in London/countryside
Gowing - 41% of Londoners lived in the same parish for 10+ years vs. 50% in the country. 14% born in the parish they lived in vs. 45% elsewhere. In 1600 2/3 of London’s men were citizens.
London - parishes/neighbourhoods
Gowing - parishes less important because of overlaps etc.; neighbourhoods “formed the basis of many social bonds”
Wrightson - neighbourhood = “horizontal” bonds of “mutual recognition of obligations”
Enclosure
Walter - in Oxfordshire = only 3 townships by 1730; in the VALE of Oxford 21% by 1640. 15% in the North by 1640 and 13% in rural areas.
Wrightson: the “prelude” to introduction of convertible husbandry. Varied in form from reorganising strips to enclosing commons.
Population growth
from 3 mil in 1500 for England and Wales, to 4 mil in 1600, to 5.5 mil in 1700.
Wrightson - Staffordshire population doubled 1563-1660 whereas Cumbria = 9% decrease 1603-41.
Increase of Epworth Manor by 100 new cottages.
York and Exeter increased by 50% between early c16 and late c17.
Key legislation
1534 Act of Supremacy = collapse of local support networks and parochial care.
1689 - Bill of Rights confirmed by Pmnt
Quarter sessions
Held 4 x yrly, brought the leaders of the shires together to judge severe crimes
Modes of Tudor Government
JP’s
Lords Lieutenant
Council of the North (“exercise of delegated authority” (TITTLER); consolidating regional councils for closer oversight)
Overseers of the Poor
Informal modes of Tudor Government
Kinship and patronage ties (more important in Ireland, Scotland and Wales where regional structures were weaker)
Key families = Campbells of highlands and O’Neills of Ulster.
Court structures
Patronage and court politics intense between 1590-1600.
Inner sanctum = Privy Chamber (Bed Chamber from JI) - inner circle of confidants, less “British” under CI, non-political under EI and CII
Agents of cultural standardisation
Communications, gentry/peers education, print press, travel and connections between cities and villages by trade.
Conceptions of the state
EI - ‘Ditchley portrait” E on a map - territorial
CI - on a horse - the body politic.
Hobbes’ Leviathan - monstrous
Presence of state in parishes
Texts - register of baptism, marriage, and death. Books of Orders.
Collection of taxes and administrative personell (Overseers (est. 1597), constables)
Tittler/Jones - gov. structures “presupposed the existence of a substantial pool of wealthy gentry to serve the leading offices”
Resistance to centralisation
rebellions vs. covert resistance - foot-dragging, insubordination/irreverence, resisting taxation, gossip.
Could escape the state in busy cities or difficult terrains (cumbria)
