This title will appeal to scholars and students of early modern social and economic history in England.

Exploring the origins of 'middle-class' status in the English provinces during a formative period of social and economic change, this book provides the first comparative study of the nature of social identity in early modern provincial England. It questions definitions of a 'middling' group, united by shared patterns of consumption and display, and examines the bases for such identity in three detailed case studies of the 'middle sort' in East Anglia, Lancashire, and Dorset. Dr. French identifies how the 'middling' described their status, and examines this through their social position in parish life and government, and through their material possessions. Instead of a coherent, unified 'middle sort of people' this book reveals division between self-proclaimed parish rulers (the 'chief inhabitants') and a wider body of modestly prosperous householders, who nevertheless shared social perspectives bounded within their localities. By the eighteenth century, many of these 'chief inhabitants' were trying to break out of their parish pecking orders - not by associating with a wider 'middle class', but by modifying ideas of gentility to suit their circumstances (and pockets). French concludes as a result, that while the presence of a distinct 'middling' stratum is apparent, the social identity of the people remained fragmented - restricted by parochial society on the one hand, and overshadowed by the prospect of gentility on the other. He offers new interpretation and insights into the composition and scale of the society in early modern England.

Featuring detailed analyses of clothing culture in 17th-century provincial Sussex, this original study draws on previously unexploited sources to create an intimate and nuanced portrait of people and their clothes. An introductory chapter uses 17th-century literature to identify and explore contemporary ideas about clothing, the individual and society, as well as the relationship between London and the provinces and the causes and consequences of conspicuous clothing consumption. Subsequent chapters look at the production, distribution and acquisition of clothing in Sussex and the participation of consumers in these processes; the role of London as a centre of fashionable clothing consumption and the experience of wealthier consumers in shopping there; the clothing worn by individual men, women and older children of the 'middle' and 'better' sort and the extent to which they participated in contemporary, London-driven, fashion culture. A final chapter examines the clothing worn by the poor, including vagrants, parish paupers and the 'labouring' poor. With over 40 images Clothing in 17th-Century Provincial England offers a new window onto early modern experiences of clothing.

What was the interrelation between language, power, and socio-economic inequality in England, c. 1550-1750? Early modern England was a hierarchical society that placed considerable emphasis on order; language was bound up with the various structures of authority that made up the polity. Members of the labouring population were expected to accept their place, defer to their superiors, and refrain from 'murmuring' about a host of issues. While some early modern labouring people fulfilled these expectations, others did not; because of their defiance, the latter were more likely to make their way into the historical record, and historians have previously used the evidence that they generated to reconstruct various forms of resistance and negotiation involved in everyday social relations. Hillary Taylor instead considers the limits that class power placed on popular expression, and with what implications. Using a wide variety of sources, Taylor examines how members of the early modern English labouring population could be made to speak in ways that reflected and even seemed to justify their subordinated positions--both in their eyes and those of their social superiors. By reconstructing how class power structured and limited popular expression, this study not only presents a new interpretation of how inequality was normalized over the course of the period, but also sheds new light on the constraints that labouring people overcame when they engaged in individual or collective acts of defiance against their 'betters.' It revives domination and subordination as objects of inquiry and demonstrates the ways in which language--at the levels of ideology and social practice--reflected, reproduced, and naturalized inequality over the course of the early modern period.

An outstanding collection, bringing together some of the leading historians of this period with some of the field's rising stars, which examines key issues in popular politics, the negotiation of power, strategies of legitimation, and the languages of politics. One of the most notable currents in social, cultural and political historiography is the interrogation of the categories of 'elite' and 'popular' politics and their relationship to each other, as well as the exploration of why andhow different sorts of people engaged with politics and behaved politically. While such issues are timeless, they hold a special importance for a society experiencing rapid political and social change, like early modern England.No one has done more to define these agendas for early modern historians than John Walter. His work has been hugely influential, and at its heart has been the analysis of the political agency of ordinary people. The essays in thisvolume engage with the central issues of Walter's work, ranging across the politics of poverty, dearth and household, popular political consciousness and practice more broadly, and religion and politics during the English revolution. This outstanding collection, bringing together some of the leading historians of this period with some of the field's rising stars, will appeal to anyone interested in the social, cultural and political history of early modern England or issues of popular political consciousness and behaviour more generally. MICHAEL J. BRADDICK is professor of history at the University of Sheffield. PHIL WITHINGTON is professor of history at the Universityof Sheffield. CONTRIBUTORS: Michael J. Braddick, J. C. Davis, Amanda Flather, Steve Hindle, Mark Knights, John Morrill, Alexandra Shepard, Paul Slack, Richard M. Smith, Clodagh Tait, Keith Thomas, Phil Withington, Andy Wood, Keith Wrightson.

The Single Homemaker and Material Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century represents a new synthesis of gender history and material culture studies. It seeks to analyse the lives and cultural expression of single men and women from 1650 to 1850 within the main focus of domestic activity, the home. Whilst there is much scholarly interest in singleness and a raft of literature on the construction and apprehension of the home, no other book has sought to bring these discrete studies together. Similarly, scholarly work has been limited in evaluating gendered consumption practices during the long eighteenth century because of an emphasis on the homes of families. Analysing the practices of single people emphasises the differences, but also amplifies the similarities, in their strategies of domestic life.

The pub is a prominent social institution integral to British identity. From Taverns of Gastropubs: Food, Drink, and Sociality in England charts the historical development of the English public house from the Restoration period to the twenty-first century, culminating in the contemporary gastropub. It explores issues of class, gender, and national identification to understand the social identity of patrons and how publicans conceive of their establishments' organizational identity. In the context of large-scale pub closures since the 1990s the gastropub is viewed as both a reaction to the traditional drinking pub and as a promising alternative. From Taverns to Gastropubs uses historical diaries, industry reports, and a wealth of in-depth interviews in order to understand the rise of the gastropub and how food, drink, and sociality has changed through time.

Providing a new narrative of how local authority and social structures adapted in response to the decline of lordship and the process of state formation, Spike Gibbs uses manorial officeholding – where officials were chosen from among tenants to help run the lord's manorial estate – as a prism through which to examine political and social change in the late medieval and early modern English village. Drawing on micro-studies of previously untapped archival records, the book spans the medieval/early modern divide to examine changes between 1300 and 1650. In doing so, Gibbs demonstrates the vitality of manorial structures across the medieval and early modern era, the active and willing participation of tenants in these frameworks, and the way this created inequalities within communities. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Accounting for Oneself is a major new study of the social order in early modern England, as viewed and articulated from the bottom up. Engaging with how people from across the social spectrum placed themselves within the social order, it pieces together the language of self-description deployed by over 13,500 witnesses in English courts when answering questions designed to assess their creditworthiness. Spanning the period between 1550 and 1728, and with a broad geographical coverage, this study explores how men and women accounted for their 'worth' and described what they did for a living at differing points in the life-cycle. A corrective to top-down, male-centric accounts of the social order penned by elite observers, the perspective from below testifies to an intricate hierarchy based on sophisticated forms of social reckoning that were articulated throughout the social scale. A culture of appraisal was central to the competitive processes whereby people judged their own and others' social positions. For the majority it was not land that was the yardstick of status but moveable property-the goods and chattels in people's possession ranging from livestock to linens, tools to trading goods, tables to tubs, clothes to cushions. Such items were repositories of wealth and the security for the credit on which the bulk of early modern exchange depended. Accounting for Oneself also sheds new light on women's relationship to property, on gendered divisions of labour, and on early modern understandings of work which were linked as much to having as to getting a living. The view from below was not unchanging, but bears witness to the profound impact of widening social inequality that opened up a chasm between the middle ranks and the labouring poor between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. As a result, not only was the social hierarchy distorted beyond recognition, from the later-seventeenth century there was also a gradual yet fundamental reworking of the criteria informing the calculus of esteem.