Poverty, labour and the language of social description in early modern England

Past and Present

Volumn 201, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 51-95

  Shepard, Alexandra ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 57349119135     PISSN: 00312746     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtn004     Document Type: Article

References (201)

1. v.
2. Tim Hitchcock, Peter King and Pamela Sharpe (eds.), Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640-1840 (Basingstoke, 1997).
3. David Cressy, 'Describing the Social Order of Elizabethan and Stuart England', Literature and History, iii (1976).
4. H. C. Conset, The Practice of the Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Courts: To Which Is Added, a Brief Discourse of the Structure and Manner of Forming the Libel or Declaration (London, 1685), 114-15.
5. For a general guide to the business of the church courts, see R. H. Helmholz, The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s (Oxford, 2004). The question of deponents' worth amongst interrogatories was not exclusive to the church courts, but part of civil law procedure more generally. It was also, for example, included in the proceedings of the university courts and the court of chivalry.
6. For a fuller discussion of the accuracy of responses to the question of witnesses' worth, see Alexandra Shepard and Judith Spicksley, 'Worth, Age and Social Status in Early Modern England', forthcoming in Econ. Hist. Rev.
7. This material has been collected with the aid of a research grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (grant reference RES-000-23-1111), and has been collated as a dataset deposited with the UK Data Archive (AHDS History) entitled 'The "Worth" of Witnesses in the English Church Courts, 1550-1728'. The 'ID' numbers detailed in subsequent notes refer to cases in this dataset. Witness statements of worth and related biographical material have been extracted from causes heard by the dioceses of Canterbury, Chester, Chichester, Ely, Salisbury and York, the archdeaconries of Lewes and Richmond, and the Cambridge university courts (which adopted the same procedure as the church courts in relation to a wider range of business . I amdeeply indebted to Judith Spicksley, research associate on this project, for her unstinting assistance in collecting a significant proportion of the material.
8. Keith Wrightson has estimated that as much as half of the English population depended either primarily or solelyon wages by the mid seventeenth century, although other estimates have been more conservative: Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (New Haven, 2000), 197.
9. See also D. C. Coleman, 'Labour in the English Economy of the Seventeenth Century', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., viii (1956);
10. L. A. Clarkson, 'Introduction: Wage-Labour, 1500-1800', in Kenneth D. Brown, The English Labour Movement, 1700-1951 (Dublin, 1982);
11. Craig Muldrew and Stephen King, 'Cash,Wages and the Economy of Makeshifts in England, 1650-1800', in Peter Scholliers and Leonard Schwarz (eds.), Experiencing Wages: Social and Cultural Aspects of Wage Forms in Europe since 1500 (NewYork, 2003). For a summary of trends in prices and wages, see C. G. A. Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England, 1500-1700, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1984), i, 41-2, 49, 217-18.
12. Paul Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988).
13. See, for example, Steve King, 'Poor Relief and English Economic Development Reappraised', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., 1 (1997);
14. L. A. Botelho, Old Age and the English Poor Law, 1500-1700 (Woodbridge, 2004).
15. For an extensive treatment of these issues, see Steve Hindle, On the Parish? The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England, c.1550-1750 (Oxford, 2004).
16. Tom Arkell, 'The Incidence of Poverty in England in the Later Seventeenth Century', Social Hist., xii (1987).
17. Hindle, On the Parish?, 4.
18. See also Jeremy Boulton, '"It Is Extreme Necessity That Makes Me Do This": Some "Survival Strategies" of Pauper Households in London's West End during the Early Eighteenth Century', Internat. Rev. Social Hist., xlv, suppl. 8 (2000);
19. Steven King and Alannah Tomkins (eds.), The Poor in England, 1700-1850: An Economy of Makeshifts (Manchester, 2003).
20. A. Hassell Smith, 'Labourers in Late Sixteenth-Century England: A Case Study from North Norfolk', pts 1-2, Continuity and Change, iv (1989);
21. R. Millward, 'The Emergence of Wage Labor in Early Modern England', Explorations in Econ. Hist., xviii (1981);
22. Donald Woodward, Men at Work: Labourers and Building Craftsmen in the Towns of Northern England, 1450-1750 (Cambridge, 1995);
23. Jeremy Boulton, 'Wage Labour in Seventeenth-Century London', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xlix (1996).
24. Joyce Oldham Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, 1978), ch. 6;
25. Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England, ch. 2.
26. See also A. W. Coats, 'Changing Attitudes to Labour in the MidEighteenth Century', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xi (1958).
27. For key contributions to the historiographical debate over the extent to which the Leveller proposals for electoral reform were socially inclusive, see C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford, 1962);
28. Keith Thomas, 'The Levellers and the Franchise', in G. E. Aylmer (ed.), The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement, 1646-1660 (London, 1972);
29. Iain Hampsher-Monk, 'The Political Theory of the Levellers: Putney, Property and Professor Macpherson', Political Studies, xxiv (1976)
30. Quentin Skinner, 'Rethinking Political Liberty', History Workshop Jl no. 61 (2006).
31. See also Rachel Foxley, 'John Lilburne and the Citizenship of "Free-Born Englishmen"', Hist. Jl, xlvii (2004).
32. See, especially, Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c.1550-1700 (Cambridge, 2000);
33. Paul Griffiths, Adam Fox and Steve Hindle (eds.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1996).
34. Keith Wrightson, 'Estates, Degrees and Sorts: Changing Perceptions of Society in Tudor and Stuart England', in Penelope J. Corfield (ed.), Language, History and Class (Oxford, 1991);
35. Keith Wrightson, '"Sorts of People" in Tudor and Stuart England', in Jonathan Barry and Christopher Brooks (eds.), The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550-1800 (Basingstoke, 1994);
36. Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c.1550-1640 (Basingstoke, 2000);
37. Steve Hindle, 'A Sense of Place? Becoming and Belonging in the Rural Parish, 1550-1650', in Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (eds.), Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric (Manchester, 2000);
38. H. R. French, 'Social Status, Localism and the "Middle Sort of People" in England, 1620-1750', Past and Present, no. 166 (Feb. 2000);
39. H. R. French, The Middle Sort of People in Provincial England, 1600-1750 (Oxford, 2007).
40. Tim Harris (ed.), The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500-1850 (Basingstoke, 2001);
41. Michael J. Braddick and John Walter (eds.), Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 2001);
42. Christopher Marsh, 'Order and Place in England, 1580-1640: The View from the Pew', Jl Brit. Studies, xliv (2005);
43. Andy Wood, 'Fear, Hatred and the Hidden Injuries of Class in Early Modern England', Jl Social Hist., xxxix (2006).
44. v [ID London 1506];
45. r-v [ID Salisbury 217].
46. CCA, DCb/PRC 39/46, fo. 94 [ID Canterbury 4360].
47. W&SRO, D1/42/60, fos. 115, 118 [IDs Salisbury 609, 607].
48. Cheshire Record Office, Chester, EDC 5(1638)/61 [ID Chester 728].
49. CCA, DCb/PRC 39/29, fo. 212 [ID Canterbury 2650]. See also ID Canterbury 2490 in the same case: 'she hath the benevolence of divers gents of the parishe of Halden articulate at good times of the yere as other poore woomen have'.
50. For contemporary anxieties about vagrants, see A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560-1640 (London, 1985);
51. William C. Carroll, Fat King, Lean Beggar: Representations of Poverty in the Age of Shakespeare (Ithaca, 1996);
52. Paul Griffiths, 'Overlapping Circles: Imagining Criminal Communities in London, 1545-1645', in Shepard and Withington (eds.), Communities in Early Modern England.
53. See also Paul A. Slack, 'Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1598-1664', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xxvii (1974).
54. v [ID London 58]; 9065A/7 (unpaginated), 27 Sept. 1637.
55. v [ID Canterbury 57].
56. v, 15.
57. r-v.
58. CCA, DCb/PRC 39/48, fo. 240 [ID Canterbury 4616]. Approximately one in ten wives appearing in Canterbury responded in these terms. The only other jurisdiction surveyed here in which such statements featured was the Cambridge university courts.
59. CCA, DCb/PRC 39/48, fo. 19 [ID Canterbury 4514].
60. v [ID Cambridge 143]; CUL, CUA, Inventory of Helen Browne, 1616/17.
61. v [ID Canterbury 3879].
62. v [ID Canterbury 1202].
63. v.
64. Sarah Lloyd, '"Agents in their Own Concerns"? Charity and the Economy of Makeshifts in Eighteenth-Century Britain', in King and Tomkins (eds.), Poor in England.
65. See also Lynn MacKay, 'Why They Stole: Women in the Old Bailey, 1779-1789', Jl Social Hist., xxxii (1999).
66. For the extent of the market in secondhand clothes, see Beverly Lemire, 'Consumerism in Preindustrial and Early Industrial England: The Trade in Secondhand Clothes', Jl Brit. Studies, xxvii (1988);
67. Beverly Lemire, The Business of Everyday Life: Gender, Practice and Social Politics in England, c. 1600-1900 (Manchester, 2005), ch. 4.
68. Borthwick Inst., HC.CP.1589/2, Office c. John Frieston and Margery Sheppard [ID York 19].
69. Borthwick Inst., CP.H.5746, Dorothy Peckett c. Edward Peckett [ID York 1380].
70. v [ID Canterbury 737].
71. v [ID Salisbury 743]; WSRO, Ep II/5/6, fo. 263 [ID Chichester 267].
72. Borthwick Inst., CP.H.2718, Thomas Burton c. Thomas Fletcher [ID York 1527].
73. v [ID Canterbury 3469].
74. v [ID Canterbury 3391].
75. WSRO, Ep II/5/13, fo. 48 [ID Chichester 670].
76. Over three-quarters of labourers who provided details of their maintenance confirmed that they lived by their labour.
77. These differences are also partly shaped by the frequency with which information about witnesses' maintenance was solicited: In York, this occurred in only 3.3 per cent of all cases in which witnesses were also asked about their worth, whereas in Chichester and Lewes 35.1 per cent of witnesses who gave statements of worth were asked how they maintained themselves. Proportions in the other jurisdictions surveyed here ranged from 4.4 per cent in Canterbury, to 18.4 per cent in Cambridge and Ely, 21.4 per cent in Salisbury, 24.8 per cent in Chester and Richmond, and 35.3 per cent in London. For pioneering work using such statements as evidence of married women's work, see Peter Earle, 'The Female Labour Market in London in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xlii (1989).
78. Joan Thirsk, 'The Farming Regions of England', in Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, iv, 1500-1640 (Cambridge, 1967).
79. See also Joan Thirsk, 'Agriculture in Kent, 1540-1640', in Michael Zell (ed.), Early Modern Kent, 1540-1640 (Woodbridge, 2000).
80. v.
81. v-45.
82. v, 77 [ID London 1372].
83. For the extension of credit and forgiving debts as acts of charity, see Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1998), chs. 7, 9.
84. WSRO, Ep II/5/1, fo. 1; Borthwick Inst., CP.G.984, Johnson c. Dawson
85. Borthwick Inst., CP.G.1512, Margaret Withes c. Thomas Tart and Elizabeth Lemyng.
86. For Wilson's self-evaluation, see CP.G.1526, Elizabeth Lemyng c. Thomas Tayrte [ID York 264].
87. v [ID Canterbury 2212]; CUL, CUA, Comm. Ct.II.1, fo. 13.
88. Borthwick Inst., CP.H.1978, Office c. Churchwardens of St Martin, Micklegate, York [ID York 1103].
89. WSRO, Ep II/5/6, fo. 200 [ID Chichester 228]. See also IDs Chichester 146, 180, 231, 245.
90. v, 69 [ID Canterbury 3581].
91. Borthwick Inst., CP.G.1753, Janet Hall c. Francis Cole. No statement of worth survives from either Jerrot or his wife.
92. v, 178, 180 [ID Canterbury 2172].
93. Borthwick Inst., CP.H.2000, Jane Pawson c. Ralph Cooke [ID York 1122]. The witnesses concerned claimed to be worth the substantially higher sums of £20, £40, and 20 marks respectively [IDs York 1119, 1120, 1121].
94. Derek Hirst, The Representative of the People? Voters and Voting in England under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1975), 31.
95. Some courts specified the higher sum of £5. Carson I. A. Ritchie, The Ecclesiastical Courts of York (Arbroath, 1956), 74-5;
96. Ralph Houlbrooke, Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation, 1520-1570 (Oxford, 1979), 51.
97. For the remission of fees in practice, see Ronald A. Marchant, The Church under the Law: Justice, Administration and Discipline in the Diocese of York, 1560-1640 (Cambridge, 1969), 229-31, 234.
98. Jacqueline Bower, 'Introduction to Probate Accounts', in Peter Spufford (ed.), Index to the Probate Accounts of England and Wales, 2 vols. (London, 1999), i, p. 1vi.
99. Craig Muldrew, 'Rural Credit, Market Areas and Legal Institutions in the Countryside in England, 1550-1700', in Christopher W. Brooks and Michael Lobban (eds.), Communities and Courts in Britain, 1150-1900 (London, 1997).
100. Roger Schofield, Taxation under the Early Tudors, 1485-1547 (Oxford, 2004), ch. 5;
101. M. J. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation in Seventeenth-Century England: Local Administration and Response (Woodbridge, 1994), ch. 2.
102. Alan Everitt, 'Farm Labourers', in Thirsk (ed.), Agrarian History of England and Wales, iv, 421.
103. Ian Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645-1653 (Oxford, 1992), 31
104. Arkell, 'Incidence of Poverty in England', 33.
105. Henry Swinburne, A Treatise of Testaments and Last Wills: Fit to Be Understood by All Men, that They May Know, Whether, Wherof, and How, to Make Them. Compiled out of the Laws Ecclesiasticall, Civill and Canon, as also out of the Common Laws, Customes and Statutes of This Realm, 4th edn (London, 1677), 354;
106. [Francis Clerke], Praxis Francisci Clarke: Tam jus dicentibus quam alijs omnibus qui in foro ecclesiastico versantur apprime utilis (Dublin, 1666), 257.
107. Guildhall Lib., 9065A/7 (unpaginated), 27 Sept. 1637.
108. v [ID Canterbury 3349].
109. See, for example, Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J. H. Plumb (eds.), The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1982);
110. Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660-1760 (London, 1988);
111. John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1993);
112. Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford (eds.), Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe, 1650-1850 (Manchester, 1999).
113. For recent exceptions, see Mark Overton et al., Production and Consumption in English Households, 1600-1750 (London, 2004);
114. French, Middle Sort of People in Provincial England, ch. 3.
115. Cf. Peter King, 'Pauper Inventories and the Material Lives of the Poor in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries', in Hitchcock, King and Sharpe (eds.), Chronicling Poverty.
116. This table excludes material collected from the diocese of Ely, the bishop of London's Consistory Court, the archdeaconry of Richmond, and various peculiars within the diocese of Chichester on the grounds that either collection bias or the patchy survival of depositions has skewed the distribution of witness statements extracted from these jurisdictions.
117. The variation between these figures primarily represents differences in the volume of business and only secondarily the incidence of the 'worth' question, with the exception of the diocese of Chester, where the interrogatory enquiring about witnesses' worth was less frequently administered.
118. 4 per cent of witnesses appearing in York gave a monetary estimate of their goods, compared with the overall average of 61.7 per cent for the entire sample.
119. As a proportion of all witnesses providing worth statements, married women comprised between 4.8 per cent in York and 23.3 per cent in the London Commissary's Court. The overall percentages of women in the sample range from 10 per cent in York to 40.1 per cent in the London Commissary's Court.
120. CUL, CUA, Comm.Ct.II.6, fo. 97 [ID Cambridge 106]; Cheshire Record Office, EDC 5(1613)/22 [ID Chester 289].
121. WSRO, Ep II/5/4, fo. 17 [ID Chichester 85].
122. CCA, DCb/PRC 39/14, fo. 113 [ID Canterbury 2358].
123. CCA, DCb/J/X.11.12, fo. 105 [ID Canterbury 1190].
124. CCA, DCb/PRC 39/6, fo. 64 [ID Canterbury 2222]; Lancashire Record Office, Preston, DRCH 20, on the will of William Lancaster [ID Chester 882].
125. v [ID London 218].
126. v [ID Chichester 2202]. For the prevalence of widows amongst recipients of poor relief, see Tim Wales, 'Poverty, Poor Relief and the Life-Cycle: Some Evidence from Seventeenth-Century Norfolk', in Richard M. Smith (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle (Cambridge, 1984);
127. Richard Smith,'Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare: Reflections from Demographic and Family History', in Martin Daunton (ed.), Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare in the English Past (London, 1996);
128. Pamela Sharpe, 'Survival Strategies and Stories: Poor Widows and Widowers in Early Industrial England', in Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner (eds.), Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Harlow, 1999).
129. v [ID Salisbury 1284].
130. The mean age for men was 44.3.
131. v [ID Canterbury 1560]; Borthwick Inst., CP.H.2445, Anne Mitchell c. Mary Mazode [ID York 1362].
132. v [ID Canterbury 1299]; LMA, DL/C/242, fo. 248 [ID London 1400]; W&SRO, D1/42/12, fo. 77 [ID Salisbury 777].
133. v.
134. CCA, DCb/PRC 39/7, fo. 13 [ID Canterbury 2244].
135. BorthwickInst., CP.II.1734, Grace Butterfeild c. Sybil Hargreaves [ID York 2028].
136. Jane Whittle, 'Servants in Rural England, c. 1450-1650: Hired Work as a Means of Accumulating Wealth and Skills before Marriage', in Maria Ågren and Amy Louise Erickson (eds.), The Marital Economy in Scandinavia and Britain, 1400-1900 (Aldershot, 2005).
137. Borthwick Inst., CP.H.2196, Marmaduke Dolman c. Peter Gunby [ID York 1252]; W&SRO, D1/42/67 (unpaginated), 27 Aug. 1712 [ID Salisbury 1419].
138. Margaret Pelling, 'Old Age, Poverty, and Disability in Early Modern Norwich: Work Remarriage, and Other Expedients', in Margaret Pelling and Richard M. Smith (eds.), Life, Death and the Elderly: Historical Perspectives (London, 1991);
139. Claire S. Schen, 'Strategies of Poor Aged Women and Widows in Sixteenth-Century London', in Lynn Botelho and Pat Thane (eds.), Women and Ageing in British Society since 1500 (Harlow, 2001);
140. Lynn Botelho, 'Aged and Impotent: Parish Relief of the Aged Poor in Early Modern Suffolk', in Daunton (ed.), Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare in the English Past; Botelho, Old Age and the English Poor Law;
141. Susannah R. Ottaway, The Decline of Life: Old Age in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 2004).
142. WSRO, Ep III/5/2, fo. 24 [ID Chichester 1113].
143. v [ID London 913]; W&SRO, D1/42/60, fo. 119 [ID Salisbury 606].
144. v [ID Cambridge 271].
145. See also Thomas Sokoll, 'Old Age in Poverty: The Record of Essex Pauper Letters, 1780-1834', in Hitchcock, King and Sharpe (eds.), Chronicling Poverty;
146. Botelho, Old Age and the English Poor Law, ch. 3.
147. v-122 [ID Canterbury 4377].
148. W&SRO, D1/42/12, fo. 44 [ID Salisbury 768].
149. See, for example, William Vaughan, Directions for Health, both Naturall and Artificiall: Approued and Derived from the Best Physitians, as well Moderne as Auncient. Teaching How Euery Man Should Keepe his Body and Minde in Health; and Sicke, How Hee May Safely Restore It Himselfe, 5th edn (London, 1617, STC 24616), 215;
150. James Hart, Klinike: Or, The Diet of the Diseased (London, 1633, STC 12888), 12.
151. Borthwick Inst., CP.G.984, Johnson c. Dawson [ID York 79].
152. v [ID Chichester 558].
153. v. Griffin described himself as a surgeon and declared himself 'not worth much': Fo. 101 [ID London 141].
154. The witness in question valued his worth at £3: LMA, DL/C/213, fos. 23, 41 [ID London 1119].
155. Borthwick Inst., HC.CP.1566/1, Edward Moore c. Sir Robert Slaven.
156. Guildhall Lib., 9065A/5 (unpaginated), 14 Feb. 1623 [ID London 596]. For contemporary anxieties about plebeian drinking culture, see Keith Wrightson, 'Alehouses, Order and Reformation in Rural England, 1590-1660', in Eileen Yeo and Stephen Yeo (eds.), Popular Culture and Class Conflict, 1590-1914: Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure (Brighton, 1981);
157. Peter Clark, 'The Alehouse and the Alternative Society', in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (eds.), Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth-Century History Presented to Christopher Hill (Oxford, 1978).
158. CCA, DCb/PRC 39/22, fo. 135; DCb/J/X.11.16, fo. 79.
159. LMA, DL/C/211/1, fos. 253, 255.
160. Alexandra Shepard, 'Honesty, Worth and Gender in Early Modern England, 1560-1640', in Henry French and Jonathan Barry (eds.), Identity and Agency in England, 1500-1800 (Basingstoke, 2004).
161. v. Tanner's estimate of his worth appears in Ep II/5/11, fo. 127 [ID Chichester 543].
162. v [ID Canterbury 644].
163. v, 50 [IDs Canterbury 917, 918].
164. v. Thomas Kempe, the labourer in question, estimated his worth at 10s.: Fo. 175 [ID Canterbury 2875].
165. v. Several witnesses referred to wages owing by their employers. See also Muldrew and King, 'Cash, Wages and the Economy of Makeshifts in England'.
166. CCA, DCb/PRC 39/35, fo. 38 [ID Canterbury 57].
167. v.
168. Andy Wood, 'Subordination, Solidarity and the Limits of Popular Agency in a Yorkshire Valley, c. 1596-1615', Past and Present, no. 193 (Nov. 2006).
169. v. The witness in question stated that she was worth nothing because she was married: Fo. 63 [ID Canterbury 4488].
170. v-103.
171. v [ID Chichester 48]; CUL, CUA, V.C.Ct.II.22, fo. 172 [ID Cambridge 324].
172. v [IDs Canterbury 859, 868]; DCb/J/X.11.13, fo. 287 [ID Canterbury 1335].
173. LMA, DL/C/213, p. 575 [ID London 1186].
174. WSRO, Ep II/5/2, fo. 60 [ID Chichester 49].
175. v [ID Canterbury 3460].
176. Andy Wood, '"Poore Men Woll Speke One Daye": Plebeian Languages of Deference and Defiance in England, c. 1520-1640', in Harris (ed.), Politics of the Excluded;
177. Garthine Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2003), ch. 6.
178. v [ID Chichester 230]; CCA, DCb/PRC 39/26, fo. 117 [ID Canterbury 1998].
179. v [ID Salisbury 1530].
180. CCA, DCb/PRC 39/39, fo. 252 [ID Canterbury 3696].
181. v [ID Salisbury 801].
182. W&SRO, D1/41/4/29[47] (unpaginated), 4 Apr. 1587 [ID Salisbury 919].
183. v-267.
184. v [ID Canterbury 175].
185. See Shepard, 'Honesty, Worth and Gender in Early Modern England'.
186. v [IDs Salisbury 1302, 1303].
187. CCA, DCb/J/X.11.16, fo. 88.
188. v [ID Canterbury 4169].
189. CCA, DCb/PRC 39/39, fo. 68.
190. For a detailed case study, see Bernard Capp, 'Life, Love and Litigation: Sileby in the 1630s', Past and Present, no. 182 (Feb. 2004).
191. See also Wood, 'Subordination, Solidarity and the Limits of Popular Agency in a Yorkshire Valley'.
192. For accounts of various aspects of the business of the church courts in early modern England, see Marchant, Church under the Law;
193. Houlbrooke, Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation;
194. Martin Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570-1640 (Cambridge, 1987);
195. Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996);
196. Donald A. Spaeth, The Church in an Age of Danger: Parsons and Parishioners, 1660-1740 (Cambridge, 2000);
197. Tom Arkell, Nesta Evans and Nigel Goose, When Death Do Us Part: Understanding and Interpreting the Probate Records of Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000).
198. Keith Wrightson, 'The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England', in Griffiths, Fox and Hindle (eds.), Experience of Authority in Early Modern England; Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England ch. 4.
199. Skinner, 'Rethinking Political Liberty'.
200. Wood, 'Subordination, Solidarity and the Limits of Popular Agency in a Yorkshire Valley'.
201. See also Wood, 'Fear, Hatred and the Hidden Injuries of Class in Early Modern England'.