Margaret Spufford has written as detailed an account of the lives and activities of the chapmen as there is likely to be, given the widely-spread and fragmented evidence. She shows where and when they were active, and in particular their rise in the 17th century, their ranks and their typical careers, the variety of the cloths and other wares they carried, and the attitude of authority towards them.

"Margaret Spufford has written as detailed an account of the lives and activities of the chapmen as there is likely to be, given the widely-spread and fragmented evidence. She shows where and when they were active, and in particular their rise in the 17th century, their ranks and their typical careers, the variety of the cloths and other wares they carried, and the attitude of authority towards them."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

There has been dispute amongst social historians about whether only the more prosperous in village society were involved in religious practice. A group of historians working under Dr. Spufford's direction have produced a factual solution to this dispute by examining the taxation records of large groups of dissenters and churchwardens, and have established that both late Lollard and post-Restoration dissenting belief crossed the whole taxable spectrum. We can no longer speak of religion as being the prerogative of either 'weavers and threshers' or, on the other hand, of village elites. The group also examined the idea that dissent descended in families, and concluded that this was not only true but that such families were the least mobile population group so far examined in early modern England - probably because they were closely knit and tolerated in their communities. The cause of the apparent correlation of 'dissenting areas' and areas of early by-employment was also questioned. The group concludes that travelling merchants and carriers on the road network carried with them radical ideas and dissenting print, the content of which is examined, as well as goods. In her own substantial chapter Dr. Spufford draws together the pieces of the huge mosaic constructed by her team of contributors, adds radical ideas of her own, and disagrees with much of the prevailing wisdom on the function of religion in the late seventeenth century. Professor Patrick Collinson has contributed a critical conclusion to the volume. This is a book which breaks new ground, and which offers much original material for ecclesiastical, cultural, demographic, and economic historians of the period.

This book examines the English rural community, past and present, in its variety and dynamism. The distinguished team of contributors brings a variety of disciplinary perspectives to bear upon the central issues of movement and migration; the farm family and rural labour force; the development of contrasting rural communities; the portrayal of rural labour in both 'high' and popular culture; the changing nature of religious practice in the English countryside; the rural/urban fringe, and the spread of notions of a rural English arcadia within a predominantly urban society. Fully illustrated with accompanying maps, paintings and photographs, The English Rural Community provides an important and innovative overview of a subject where history, myth and debate are inseparably entwined. A full bibliography will assist a broad range of general readers and students of social history, historical geography and development studies approaching the subject for the first time, and the whole should establish itself as the central analytical account in an area where image and reality are notoriously hard to unravel.

Houses are more than a shelter from the elements: they also offer an unparalleled insight into the beliefs, ideas and experiences of the people who built and lived in them. In this engaging book, Matthew Johnson looks at the traditional houses that still exist throughout the English countryside and examines the lives of the ordinary people who once occupied them. His wide-ranging narrative takes in the medieval hall and the community it framed; the rebuilding and 'improvement'of houses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and the rise of the Georgian Order in both architecture and eighteenth century culture. This passionate book is animated by the conviction that old houses are much more than just pretty tableaux of an idyllic, unchanging rural England. Vernacular houses are compared to their larger, 'polite' counterparts, and English houses are placed in the wider context of the British Isles and the Atlantic world beyond. The result is a dynamic, compelling account of the development of houses in the English countryside and through this, a portrait of changing patterns of social life from medieval to modern times. Richly illustrated throughout with photographs and drawings, this book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the significance of our built heritage and the historic landscape.

Bill Crawford had played a key role in the development of Irish economic, social and regional history for over forty years. The essays in this book are testimony to his many spheres of influence - as teacher, archivist, curator, researcher and writer - and focus on the themes in which Bill himself has been most interested: the relations between town and countryside, the linen industry and trade, land and population. His innovative use of historical sources, extensive scholarship, many publications and the enthusiasm for research which he imparts to so many people are acknowledged in this wide-ranging volume.

With this book, Allan Kulikoff offers a sweeping new interpretation of the origins and development of the small farm economy in Britain's mainland American colonies. Examining the lives of farmers and their families, he tells the story of immigration to the colonies, traces patterns of settlement, analyzes the growth of markets, and assesses the impact of the Revolution on small farm society. Beginning with the dispossession of the peasantry in early modern England, Kulikoff follows the immigrants across the Atlantic to explore how they reacted to a hostile new environment and its Indian inhabitants. He discusses how colonists secured land, built farms, and bequeathed those farms to their children. Emphasizing commodity markets in early America, Kulikoff shows that without British demand for the colonists' crops, settlement could not have begun at all. Most important, he explores the destruction caused during the American Revolution, showing how the war thrust farmers into subsistence production and how they only gradually regained their prewar prosperity.