Abstract
On 4 December 1596, the ‘chief inhabitants’ of the Wiltshire parish of Swallowfield gathered to compose resolutions for the good governance of their community.2 Justifying themselves on the grounds that the magistrates were ‘farr off’, they aspired both ‘the better and more queytly’ to live together ‘in good love and amytye to the praise of God’, and to provide ‘for the better serving’ of the state with respect to taxation or ‘any other mater or cause consernynge the churche, the poor or the parrishe’. The resolutions thus reflect the ‘inter-hierarchical position’ that the chief inhabitants enjoyed within the communities of parish and realm.3 On the one hand, their repeated references to ‘the service of her majesty’ imply their subordination to the crown as the highest source of political authority in the land. On the other, their orders reveal a breathtaking combination of arrogance and anxiety about their own local status: ‘that such as be poore and will malepert-lye compare with their betters and sett them at nought shalbe warned to lyve and behave themselves as becomethe them’; and that ‘all shall do their best to suppresse pilferers, backbyters, hedge breakers and myscheevous persons, and all such as be prowde, dissentious and arrogant persons’. The local community, then, was evidently structured by a ‘hierarchy of belonging’.4
For here in the countrey with us, if a man’s stock of a few beasts be his own, and that he lives out of debt, and paies his rent duly and quarterly, we hold him a very rich and sufficient man; one that is able to do the king and countrey good service; we make him a constable, a Sidesman, a Head-borough and at length a Church-Warden; thus we raise him by degrees, we prolong his ambitious hopes, and at last we heape all our honours upon him. Here is the great governor amongst us, and we wonder that all others do not respect him accordingly…
Godfrey Goodman, vicar of Stapleford Abbots (Essex), 16161
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Notes
HEHL MS Ellesmere 6162, fols. 34a–36a, at fol. 34a. Cf. Steve Hindle, ‘Hierarchy and Community in the Elizabethan Parish: The Swallowfield Articles of 1596’, HJ 42 (1999), 835–51.
Wrightson, ‘Two Concepts of Order’; Kent, ‘The English Village Constable’; Kent, The English Village Constable, pp. 1–23, 282–312; and Joan Kent, ‘The Centre and the Localities: State Formation and Parish Government in England, c.1640–1740’, HJ 38 (1995), 363–404.
Cf. Corrigan and Sayer, The Great Arch, p. 5. See Gloucester Public Library Smith of Nibley Papers, volume III (North Nibley Vestry Book), fol. 99; Suffolk RO FB77/E2/3, unfol. (resolutions of 28 March 1608); F.G. Emmison (ed.), Early Essex Town Meetings: Braintree 1619–1636; Finchingfield 1626–34 (Chichester, 1970), p. 109; Cornwall RO DD P39/8/1, unfol.
Wrightson, ‘The Politics of the Parish’, pp. 18–31; Dale Hoak, ‘Introduction’, in Dale Hoak (ed.), Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1–10.
Cf. Glen Gendzel, ‘Political Culture: Genealogy of a Concept’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 28 (1997), 225–50.
Cf. Hindle, ‘Power, Poor Relief & Social Relations’, 94–6. The idea of the ‘parish State’ originates with John Clare, ‘The Parish: A Satire’ (c. 1820–9) in Eric Robinson and David Powell (eds.), The Early Poems of John Clare, 1804–22: Volume II (Oxford, 1989), especially ll.1220–369, at pp. 742–8;
but see Peter King, ‘Edward Thompson’s Contribution to Eighteenth–Century Studies: The Patrician–Plebeian Model Re–Examined’, SH 21 (1996), 215–28; King, ‘Property, Power and the Parish State in Eighteenth–Century England’; and chapter 6 above.
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Reform Act, Volume I: The Parish and the County (1906), pp. 9–41.
Reynolds, Kingdoms & Communities, passim. For ‘social ethics’, see Colin Richmond, ‘The English Gentry and Religion, c.1500’, in Christopher Harper–Bill (ed.), Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 1991), p. 146. See chapter 1 above.
Anthony Fletcher and Diarmaid Macculloch, Tudor Rebellions (4th edn, 1997), p. 117. For Sir John Ferne, and his The Blazon of Gentrie, Comprehending Discourses of Armes and of Gentry (1586 [RSTC 10824]), quoting p. 6, see J.P. Cooper, ‘Ideas of Gentility in Early Modern England’, in Cooper, Land Men and Beliefs: Studies in Early Modern History (1983), pp. 65–72; and Heal and Holmes, The Gentry in England & Wales, pp. 9–10, 29–31, 39, 97. For George Tooke, The Legend of Brita–mart (1635 [RSTC 24116]), quoting sig. c3v, see Peltonen, Classical Humanism & Republicanism, pp. 293–6.
F.G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Home, Work and the Land (Chelmsford, 1976), p. 198.
Walter J. King, ‘Leet Jurors and the Search for Law and Order in Seventeenth–Century England: “Galling Prosecution” or Reasonable Justice’, Histoire Sociale/Social History 13 (1980), 305–23;
Walter J. King, ‘Untapped Sources for Social Historians: Court Leet Records’, Journal of Social History 14 (1982), 699–705;
and Walter J. King ‘Early Stuart Courts Leet: Still Needful and Useful’, Histoire Sociale/Social History 23 (1990), 271–99.
For other studies emphasising the thriving manorial courts of Elizabethan England, see Matthew Griffiths, ‘Kirtlington Manor Court, 1500–1650’, Oxoniensia 45 (1980), 260–83; McIntosh, ‘Social Change & Tudor Manorial Leets’; and Harrison, ‘Manor Courts’.
Christopher Dyer, ‘The English Medieval Village Community and its Decline’, JBS 33 (1994), 413–14; Harrison, ‘Manor Courts’, p. 45 n.9. For the ascending/descending distinction, see Walter Ullmann, A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1965), pp. 12–13.
John Norden, The Surveyor’s Dialogue (1618 [RSTC 1864]), p. 27; The Early Poems of John Clare, Vol. II, pp. 742–8.
Peter Marshall, The Catholic Priesthood and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994), p. 205;
F.A. Bailey, ‘The Churchwardens’ Accounts of Prescot, 1523–1607’, THSLC 92 (1940), 176–9;
M. Barmby (ed.), Churchwardens Accounts of Pittington and Other Parishes in the Diocese of Durham from 1580–1700 (Surtees Society 84, 1888), pp. 12–13, 26; J.E. Farmiloe and
R. Nixseaman (eds), Elizabethan Churchwardens Accounts (Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 23, 1953), pp. xi, 31.
Kumin, The Shaping of a Community, p. 222; F.R. Mercer (ed.), Churchwardens Accounts at Betrysden 1515–73 (Kent Records, II: Ashford, 1928), p. 131;
J.S. Craig, ‘Co–operation and Initiatives: Elizabethan Churchwardens and the Parish Accounts of Mildenhall’, SH 18 (1993), 370–8.
EYAS PE 144/23, unfol.; Hindle, ‘Power, Poor Relief & Social Relations’, 78. Cf. A.W. Ashby, ‘One Hundred Years of Poor Law Administration in a Warwickshire Village’, Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History III (1912), 43. The complexities of the meanings of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘parishioners’ in this context are explored in Webb and Webb, The Parish & the County, pp. 173–5.
Eric Carlson, ‘The Origins, Function and Status of Churchwardens, with Particular Reference to the Diocese of Ely’, in Margaret Spufford (ed.), The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520–1725 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 183–4, 185–6.
HEHL MS EL 6162, fol. 36a; Emmison (ed.), Early Essex Town Meetings, passim; Craig, ‘Co-operation & Initiatives’, 377. Cf. Paul Griffiths, ‘Secrecy and Authority in Late Sixteenth-and Early-Seventeenth Century London’, HJ 40 (1997), 925–51.
Gwyneth Nair, Highley: The Development of a Community, 1550–1880 (Oxford, 1988), p. 129;
Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 50, 56–7; BL MS Additional 6223, fols. 11v–12v; and chapter 7 above.
Nick Alldridge, ‘Loyalty and Identity in Chester Parishes, 1540–1640’, in S.J. Wright (ed.), Parish, Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion, 1350–1750 (1988), pp. 108–9.
Eamon Duffy, ‘Morebath, 1520–1570: A Rural Parish in the Reformation’, in J. Devlin and R. Fawning (eds), Religion and Rebellion (Dublin, 1997), pp. 36–7.
Hertfordshire RO D/P 65/3/3, pp. 326–38. For a manorial charge at Sandridge (Herts.) in 1526, see I.S. Leadham (ed.), Select Cases Before the King’s Council in the Star Chamber Commonly Called the Court of Star Chamber A.D. 1509–1544 (Selden Society 25, 1910), p. 187. The Henrician government intended that a charge stressing the values of duty and obedience should be read not only four times annually from the pulpit but also by stewards in manorial courts. See Brooks, ‘The Place of Magna Carta’, pp. 209–10.
See Marjorie McIntosh, ‘Finding Language for Misconduct: Jurors in Fifteenth-Century Local Courts’, in Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace (eds), Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth Century England (Minneapolis, 1996), pp. 103, 119 n.67.
Ian Breward, ‘The Direction of Conscience’, in Ian Breward (ed.), The Work of William Perkins (Abingdon, 1970), p. 75. The following analysis owes much not only to Breward, but also to Collinson, ‘Christian Socialism in Elizabethan Suffolk’; Patrick Collinson, ‘Puritanism and the Poor’, in Sarah Rees Jones and Rosemary Horrox (eds), Utopias, Ideals and Institutions, 1200–1630 (Cambridge, forthcoming); and McRae, God Speed the Plough, pp. 58–79. Cf. the more selective reading of puritan attitudes to the distribution of wealth in Hill, ‘William Perkins and the Poor’.
Cornwall RO DD P39/8/1, unfol. (resolutions of 10 June 1598, 20 October 1650); GPL MS 16526, fol. 99; Suffolk RO FB77/E2/3 (ordinances of 28 March 1608, 17 April 1625); Rushton, ‘The Poor Law, the Parish & the Community’, 140; North Yorkshire RO PR/BED 2/1, unfol. (resolution of 1 July 1642); Hindle, ‘Power, Poor Relief & Social Relations’, 89–90; EYAS PE 19/12, unfol; EYAS PE 144/23, unfol. (resolution of 18 February 1700); Peter Clark, ‘Migration in England During the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, reprinted in Peter Clark and David Souden (eds), Migration and Society in Early Modern England (1987), p. 235.
Lawrence Stone, ‘The Residential Development of the West End of London in the Seventeenth Century’, in Barbara Malament (ed.), After the Reformation: Essays in Honour of J.H. Hexter (Manchester, 1980), pp. 175–6; Heal, ‘The Crown, The Gentry & London’; Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England, pp. 141–91.
Elton, The Tudor Constitution, p. 248; Hirst, The Representative of the People?, p. 104; Richard Cust, ‘Politics and the Electorate in the 1620s’, in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds), Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603–1642 (1989), pp. 144–51; Wrightson, English Society, pp. 222–8; Morrill & Walter, ‘Order & Disorder in the English Revolution’, pp. 150–3.
These episodes can only be briefly alluded to here. For Mildenhall, see Christopher Dyer, ‘The Rising of 1381 in Suffolk: Its Origins and Participants’, reprinted in Dyer, Everyday Life in Mediaeval England (1994), pp. 225–8;
and Christopher Dyer, ‘Memories of Freedom: Attitudes towards Serfdom in England, 1200–1350’, in Michael Bush (ed.), Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage (1996), pp. 289–90, 294.
For Sherborne and Cranbrook, see I.M.W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford, 1991), p. 126, and pp. 30, 95, 137, 162, 165, 174 respectively.
For the Braintree region (Bocking at least and probably Braintree itself), see W.H. Liddell and R.G.E. Wood, Essex and the Peasants’ Revolt: A Selection of Evidence From Contemporary Chronicles, Courtrolls and Other Sources (Chelmsford, 1981), passim
and L.R. Poos, A Rural Society after the Black Death: Essex, 1350–1525 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 235–6, 247, 259, 267. For (Sheepbridge in) Swallowfield, see Dyer, ‘Memories of Freedom’, pp. 282, 290. I am grateful to Chris Dyer for these references.
C.S.L. Davies, ‘Peasant Revolt in England and France: A Comparison’, AgHR 21 (1973), 129; Manning, Village Revolts, p. 315; Hindle, ‘Persuasion & Protest’, 72–3.
Cf. Dror Wahrman, ‘National Society, Communal Culture: An Argument about the Recent Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Britain’, SH 17 (1992), 44–5.
Harrison, ‘Manor Courts’, p. 50; Diarmaid MacCulloch, Building a Godly Realm: The Establishment of English Protestantism, 1558–1603 (1992), pp. 9–10; MacCulloch, Suffolk & the Tudors, 182–5;
Jennifer Woodward, The Theatre of Death: The Ritual Management of Royal Funerals in Renaissance England, 1570–1625 (Woodbridge, 1997), p. 40.
Cf. Peter Blickle, ‘The Common People and the Process of State Formation: Some Conclusions’, in Peter Blickle (ed.), Resistance, Representation and Community (Oxford, 1997). pp. 325–38.
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Hindle, S. (2002). The Governance of the Parish. In: The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, 1550–1640. Early Modern History: Society and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288461_8
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