Custom and the social organisation of writing in early modern England

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Volumn 9, Issue , 1999, Pages 257-269

  Wood, Andy ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 34248591798     PISSN: 00804401     EISSN: 14740648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3679403     Document Type: Review

References (57)

1. The most nuanced accounts of the modernising force of literacy are to be found in K. Thomas, 'The meaning of literacy in early modern England', in G. Baumann (ed. ), The Written Word: Literacy in Transition (Oxford, 1986), 97-131;
2. and in K. E. Wrightson, English Society, 1580-1680 (London, 1982), ch. 7.
3. For enduring influences, see, especially, W. J. Ong, 'Writing is a technology that restructures thought', in Baumann (ed. ), Written Word, 23-50;
4. J. Goody and I. Watt, 'The consequences of literacy', in J. Goody (ed. ), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), 27-68.
5. For a study which sites die domination of literacy alongside the growth of industrial modernity, see D. Vincent, 'The decline of the oral tradition in popular culture', in R. D. Storch (ed. ), Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth Century England (London, 1982), 20-47.
6. For an important critique of this view, see P. Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848-1914 (Cambridge, 1991), chs 8, 11-12.
7. D. Rollison, The Local Origins of Modern Society: Gloucestershire, 1500-1800 (London, 1992), 12-15, 67-83;
8. M. Johnson, An Archaeology of Capitalism (Oxford, 1996), ch. 5.
9. See, especially, A. Fox, 'Custom, memory and the authority of writing', in P. Griffiths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (eds), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1996), 89-116.
10. I managed to persuade myself of this connection too: see A. Wood, 'Social conflict and change in the mining communities of north-west Derbyshire, c. 1600-1700', International Review of Social History, 38, 1 (1993), 41-2, in which I drew far too easy a division between a literate (elite) interest and a popular (oral) culture. The subject is, of course, contradictory.
11. Edward Thompson could see the importance of written documentation in sustaining custom: Customs in Common (London, 1991), 153, 159.
12. Yet, elsewhere, he continued to present 'customary consciousness' as synonymous with 'oral tradition': Customs in Common, 179.
13. BL, Landsdowne MS. 231, fo. 140. For the uncritical use of Aubrey in other contexts, see, especially, D. E. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603-1660 (Oxford, 1987), esp. ch. 4.
14. For the historiographical deconstruction of popular culture, see, most recently, T. Harris (ed. ), Popular Culture in England, 1500-1850 (Basingstoke, 1995).
15. J. Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge, 1986), 133.
16. The classic study is M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066-1307 (1979; 2nd edn, 1993).
17. But, see also, Z. Razi and R. Smith (eds), Medieval Society and the Manor Court (Oxford, 1996).
18. Rollison, Local Origins, 71, 73.
19. The best contemporary introduction to the subject is C. Calthorpe, The Relation between the Lord of a Mannor and the Coppyholder his Tenant (London, 1635).
20. For a useful discussion, see A. Kiralfy, 'Custom in medieval English law', Journal of Legal History, 9, 1 (1988), 26-39.
21. For the politics of custom, see A. Wood, 'The place of custom in plebeian political culture: England, 1550-1800', Social History, 22, 1, (1997), 46-60;
22. K. E. Wrightson, 'The politics of the parish in early modern England', in Griffiths, Fox and Hindle (eds), Experience of Authority, 22-5.
23. PRO, DL4/29/54, deposition of Baldwyn Easdall.
24. See, for instance, PRO, DL4/14/36, deposition of Robert Marsham.
25. J. Fentress and C. Whickham, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992), 9-10.
26. See, for instance, PRO, E134/11ChasI/Mich45; PRO, DL4/105/1661/22; P. Griffiths, 'Secrecy and authority in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century London', Historical Journal, 40, 4 (1997), 940-1.
27. PRO, STAC5/S70/24.
28. PRO, DL4/26/37, deposition of Edmund Burden.
29. PRO, E134/3JasI/Mich30, deposition of John Coatman.
30. For a colourful example of the deliberate loss of collective memory, see PRO, DL4/55/47.
31. PRO, E134/25Eliz/Trin1, deposition of Robert Page.
32. Fox, 'Custom, memory'; A. Wood, 'Custom, identity and resistance: English free miners and their law, c. 1550-1800', in Griffiths, Fox and Hindle (eds), Experience of Authority, 268-73.
33. For example, when Edward Phipers of Haddenham found 'a writinge in the Bottome of his Chest', concerning the tithes of Haddenham, he exchanged it with the Earl of Suffolk for the remittance of his debts and two stone of wool to make a gown for his wife: PRO, E134/9JasI/Trin2, deposition of Elizabeth Cordell. Keith Thomas has pointed to the growing importance of historical records to landowners: K. Thomas, The Perception of the Past in Early Modern England (London, 1983), 2.
34. For representative examples, see PRO, DL4/38/17, 60/7.
35. For a remarkable case study, see A. Bagot, 'Mr Gilpin and manorial customs', Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, n. s. , 62 (1962), 224-45.
36. For depositions given by such antiquarian stewards examples, see PRO, DL4/56/12, 117/8.
37. See also J. H. Bettey, 'Manorial stewards and the conduct of manorial affairs', Dorset Natural History and Archaeology Society, 115 (1993), 15-19.
38. See especially C. W. Brooks, Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: the 'Lower Branch' of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986).
39. For the Peak, see PRO, DL44/1121; PRO, DL4/91/16. For Gillingham Forest, see PRO, E134/3ChasI/East17. For me fens, see K. Lindley, Fenland Riots and the English Revolution (London, 1982), 31.
40. On the fens, see, for instance, W. Cunningham, 'Common rights at Cottenham and Stretham in Cambridgeshire', Camden Miscellany, n. s. , 12 (1910), 173-289;
41. on Gillingham, see John Rylands Library, Nicholas MS. , 65 [Customary book of Gillingham Forest]; on the Peak, see A. Wood, The Politics of Social Conflict: the Peak Country, 1520-1770 (Cambridge, 1999). ch. 6.
42. On popular ideas about the law, see J. A. Sharpe, 'The people and the law', in B. Reay (ed. ), Popular Culture in Seventeenth Century England (London, 1985), 244-70
43. and, more recently, idem, 'The law, law enforcement, state formation and national integration in late medieval and early modern England', in X. Rousseaux and R. Levy (eds), Le Ṕenal dans tous ses états: justice, états et sociétés en Europe (XIIe-XXe sièles) (Brussels, 1997), 65-80.
44. I hope to write about the changing relationship between gender and custom elsewhere.
45. Quoting E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: the Origins of the Black Act (London, 1975), 262.
46. Sheffield Archives, MD3401/1; B. Bunker, All Their Yesterdays: the Story of an Ancient Derbyshire Village on the South-Eastern Foothills of the Pennines (Sheffield, 1973), 78-80.
47. On the Manners' role in disputes over custom in the Peak, see Wood, Politics of Social Conflict, chs 7-11. The creation of the customary was important enough to lodge in the mind of Arthur Mower, who led the tenants' negotiations. Many years later, the production of the customary was one of the events which he singled out as noteworthy enough to enter into his brief autobiography.
48. See BL, Add MS. 6671, fo. 163; Bunker, All Their Yesterdays, 85-6.
49. PRO, DL4/17/27.
50. PRO, DL4/5/12.
51. PRO, DL4/20/24, deposition of Thomas Amborough.
52. For an example, see PRO, DL4/30/28, deposition of Thomas Gunthorpe.
53. PRO, DL4/37/51, deposition of John Martin.
54. C. Holmes, 'Drainers and fenmen: The problem of popular political consciousness in the seventeenth century', in A. Fletcher and J. Stevenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), 191-2.
55. For the 'Book of Dennis', see, especially, C. E. Hart, The Free Miners of the Forest of Dean and the Hundred of St. Briavels (Gloucester, 1953).
56. For a revealing case study of the long preservation of legal records by tenants, see J. L. Drury, 'Sir Arthur Hesilrige and the Weardale chest', Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, n. s. , 5 (1980), 125-37.
57. G. M. Sider, Culture and Class in Anthropology and History: a Newfoundland Illustration (Cambridge, 1986), 93.