This book is part of the ‘Regions and Regionalism in History’ series produced by the North-East England History Institute, which was an AHRC Research Centre between 2000 and 2005. The publication series is the most enduring legacy of the Centre and continuing activity of the Institute. The contributors to this volume have conducted their research as members of NEEHI, which since its founding in 1995 has been a productive framework for bringing together the work of regional historians in the five universities of northeast England: Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside. We are also grateful to the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Durham for providing a financial contribution towards the costs of the book's production. The majority of the contributors to this volume completed doctoral projects on aspects of north-east England's early modern history. Our aim in creating this collection of essays is to bring the research conducted for these related PhD theses together and to contribute to the published historical literature on the region; one member of the group of research students at Durham University who has been unable to contribute because of her career in commercial research is Judith Welford, whose ESRC-funded PhD on the production and consumption of consumer goods in North-East England, c.1680–1780 deserves to be highlighted here and is referenced through the volume.

All the contributors would like to thank those who read and offered constructive advice on their chapters. We would all like to thank Pat Hudson for chairing the conference at Durham in 2012 at which many of the findings in this book were first presented and Keith Wrightson for his Foreword. A great supporter of the project, and early modern history in the north-east of England in general, was the late Chris Brooks. This volume is dedicated to the memory of Chris, who supervised or otherwise encouraged many of the contributors to this volume during his time as professor of history at Durham University.

Our ultimate aim, beyond the important task of researching the history of north-east England, is to highlight the ways in which the study of one particular region can illuminate wider debates in economic and cultural history and contribute to a new depth of understanding about the relationship between economic processes and cultural formations.