It might be a peculiarly North American failing to yearn for an expansive view of the past, a view that the peculiar (from the perspective of economic history) data of marriage seasons allow. I would not have known that the economic orientations of regions in the past could be mapped so readily had I not, on a summer's day in 1979 in Cambridge, been curious about whether the changing incidence of service in husbandry in pastoral western England was reflected in changes in the strength of the springtime marriages of former farm servants there. It was not: in the sixteenth century, autumn was the dominant marriage season nearly everywhere, in the west as well as the east. This book investigates why that was so, and why regions came to differ in their marriage seasonality in the later seventeenth century.

I am indebted to so many for their help in pursuing the solution, and hope these thoughts of gratitude will be accepted by all who know the aid they gave. The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure gave me A. N. Other's room in which to work, the marriage data from 404 parishes, and computing time to investigate them. I thank, especially, Roger Schofield, Tony Wrigley, Jim Oeppen, Ros Davies, Kevin Schurer, and Jeremy Boulton, for all the time of their own they gave to this then novice computer, for their good advice, and for good times.