1. Short, Brian, ‘Images and realities in the English rural community: an introduction’, in Short, Brian (ed.), The English Rural Community: Image and Analysis (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 1–18, quoting p. 14.Google Scholar

2. For the difficulties of achieving a definition, see Macfarlane, Alan, Reconstructing Historical Communities (Cambridge, 1977), ch. 1.Google Scholar On the pervasiveness of medieval notions of community, and the collective action they implied, see Reynolds, Susan, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford, 1984).Google Scholar

3. These are the common themes of the ninety-four definitions offered by Bell, C. and Newby, H., Community Studies: An Introduction to the Sociology of the Local Community (London, 1971), p. 29.Google Scholar

4. Macfarlane, Alan, The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property and Social Transition (Cambridge, 1978).Google Scholar Cf. Snell, Keith, ‘English historical continuity and the culture of capitalism: the work of Alan Macfarlane’, History Workshop Journal 27 (Spring 1989), 154–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a recent restatement of the sceptical case, see Carpenter, Christine, ‘Gentry and community in medieval England’, Journal of British Studies 33 (October 1994), 340–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Collinson, Patrick, De Republica Anglorum: Or, History With the Politics Out Back [Inaugural Lecture Delivered 9 November 1989] (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

6. Slack, Paul, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988)Google Scholar, chs 6–7 is authoritative on the origins and nature of the legislation.

7. See Wrightson, Keith, English Society, 1580–1680 (London, 1982), pp. 222–8Google Scholar, and for a recent analysis of the antecedents of this trend, Kumin, Beat, The Shaping of a Community: The Rise and Reformation of the English Parish, c. 1400–1560 (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 241–55.Google Scholar

8. Slack, Paul, The English Poor Law, 1531–1782 (London, 1990), pp. 18–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar is the most convenient summary.

9. Newman-Brown, W., ‘The receipt of poor relief and family situation: Aldenham, Hertfodshire 1630–90’, in Smith, R.M. (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 405–22, at pp. 419–20.Google Scholar

10. For a detailed contextual study of the politics of the poor rate, see Hindle, Steve, ‘Power, poor relief and social relations in Holland Fen, c. 1600–1800’, Historical Journal (forthcoming, 1997).Google Scholar

11. Cf. Solar, Peter M., ‘Poor relief and English economic development before the industrial revolution’, Economic History Review 48:1 (02 1995), 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The settlement laws are 13 & 14 Charles II, c.12; 1 James II, c.17; 3 William & Mary c.11; and 8 & 9 William III c.30. For the debate on the practical effect of the settlement laws, see Taylor, James Stephen, ‘The impact of pauper settlement, 1691–1834’, Past and Present 73 (11 1976) 42–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Landau, Norma, ‘The laws of settlement and the surveillance of immigration in eighteenthcentury Kent’, Continuity and Change 3:3 (1988), 391–420CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Landau, Norma, ‘The regulation of immigration, economic structures and definitions of the poor in eighteenth-century England’, Historical Journal 33:3 (1990), 541–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, James Stephen, ‘A different kind of Speenhamland: nonresident relief in the industrial revolution’, Journal of British Studies 30 (04 1991), 183–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snell, K.D.M., ‘Pauper settlement and the right to poor relief in England and Wales’, Continuity and Change 6:3 (1991), 375–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snell, K.D.M., ‘Settlement, poor law and the rural historian: new approaches and opportunities’, Rural History 3:2 (1992), 145–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Landau, Norma, ‘Who was subjected to the laws of settlement? Procedure under the settlement laws in eighteenth-century England’, Agricultural History Review 43:2 (1995), 139–59.Google Scholar

12. Styles, Philip, ‘The evolution of the law of settlement’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal 9 (1963)Google Scholar, reprinted in Styles, Philip, Studies in Seventeenth-Century West Midlands History (Kineton, 1978), pp. 175–204, at p. 190.Google Scholar

13. 13 & 14 Charles II, c.12.

14. Dalton, Michael, The Countrey Justice (London, 1682 edn), p. 161Google Scholar; Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, English Local Government: English Poor Law History, Part 1: The Old Poor Law (London, 1963 edn), p. 325.Google Scholar

15. Cornwall, Julian, ‘Evidence of population mobility in the seventeenth century’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 40 (1967), 143–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spufford, Peter, ‘Population movement in seventeenth century England’, Local Population Studies 4 (Spring 1970), 41–50Google Scholar; Laslett, Peter, Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (Cambridge, 1977), ch. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kussmaul, Ann, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Camridge, 1981), ch. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Souden, David, ‘Movers and stayers in family reconstitution populations’, Local Population Studies 33 (1984), 11–28Google Scholar and the essays collected in Clark, Peter and Souden, David (eds), Migration and Society in Early Modern England (London, 1987).Google ScholarBeier, A.L., ‘The social problems of an Elizabethan country town: Warwick, 1580–90’, in Clark, Peter (ed.), Country Towns in Pre-Industrial England (Leicester, 1981), pp. 45–85Google Scholar, demonstrates a ‘turnover of almost 50% of Warwick's poor in a matter of five years’ (1582–87) at p. 60.

16. Thompson, Edward, Customs in Common (London, 1991), ch. 8Google Scholar; Rollison, David, The Local Origins of Modern Society: Gloucestershire, 1500–1800 (London, 1992), ch. 3Google Scholar; Herrup, Cynthia, The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 178–9, 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snell, Keith, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 75–82Google Scholar; and the works cited in n.ll above.

17. Gough, Richard, The History of Myddle, ed. Hey, D.G. (Harmondsworth, 1981), pp. 251–64.Google Scholar

18. Hunt, William, The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), p. 64.Google Scholar

19. 31 Elizabeth I, c.8. For the context of the legislation, see Slack, , Poverty and Policy, p. 63.Google Scholar The act of repeal is 15 George III, c.32.

20. Hunt, , Puritan Moment, p. 71.Google Scholar See also the brief discussion in Fletcher, A.J., Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England (New Haven, 1986), pp. 202–12.Google Scholar

21. Although there is as yet no systematic study of this practice, Styles, ‘Evolution of the law of settlement’, 180–83 discusses 139 ‘harmless bonds’ for Stratford 1613–1714, 81 (or 58%) of them predating the 1662 Act. For the other examples, see Raine, Helen, ‘Christopher Fawcett against the inmates’ Surrey Archaeological Collections (1969), 79–85, at p. 81Google Scholar (Southwark); Hunt, , Puritan Moment, p. 72Google Scholar (Woodford); Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1631–33, p. 94 (Nantwich); Hindle, ‘Power, poor relief and social relations’ (Frampton); Levine, David and Wrightson, Keith, The Making of an Industrial Society: Whickham, 1560–1765 (Oxford, 1991), p. 346 (Whickham).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Winchester, Angus J.L., ‘Responses to the 1623 famine in two Lancashire manors’, Local Population Studies 36 (1986), 47–8.Google Scholar

23. Boulton, Jeremy, Neighbourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1987), p. 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goose, Nigel, ‘Household size and structure in early Stuart Cambridge’, Social History 5 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Barry, Jonathan (ed.), The Tudor and Stuart Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1530–1688 (London, 1990), pp. 74–120, at pp. 93, 112–13.Google Scholar

24. Raine, , ‘Christopher Fawcett’, p. 80.Google Scholar

25. Ingram, Martin, ‘Communities and courts: law and disorder in early-seventeenth-century Wiltshire’, in Cockburn, J.S. (ed.), Crime in England, 1550–1800 (London, 1977), pp. 110–34, at p. 112Google Scholar; Wrightson, Keith, ‘Two concepts of order: justices, constables and jurymen in seventeenth century England’, in Brewer, John and Styles, John (eds), An Ungovernable People: The English and Their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1980), pp. 21–46, Appendix [pp. 300–3].Google Scholar

26. Bailey, F.A. (ed.), A Selection From the Prescot Court Leet and Other Records, 1447–1600 (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 89, Chester, 1937), pp. 139, 151, 181, 191, 201, 215, 234, 240, 250, 265, 270, 273Google Scholar; Huntington Library San Marino, CA., MS Ellesmere 6162, fols. 34a-36a, at fol. 36a. I am grateful to Adam Fox for a xerox of this document.

27. Kent, Joan, The English Village Constable: A Social and Administrative Study, 1580–1642 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 37–8, 147.Google Scholar

28. Except where noted, the following discussion is based on Munby, Lionel, Hertfordshire Population Statistics, 1563–1801 (Hertford, 1963)Google Scholar; Thirsk, Joan, ‘The farming regions of England’, in Thirsk, Joan (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Volume IV: 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 1–112, at pp. 50–2Google Scholar; Newman-Brown, ‘Poor relief and family situation’ Lawson, P.G., ‘Property crime and hard times in England, 1559–1624’, Law and History Review 4 (1986), 95–127, at 120–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Glennie, Paul, ‘Continuity and change in Hertfordshire agriculture, 1550–1700: I-patterns of agricultural production’, Agricultural History Review 36:1 (1988), 55–75, esp. pp. 59–60Google Scholar; Glennie, Paul, ‘Continuity and change in Hertfordshire agriculture, 1550–1700: II-trends in crop yields and their determinants’, Agricultural History Review 36:2 (1988), 145–61Google Scholar; Glennie, Paul, ‘In search of agrarian capitalism: manorial land markets and the acquisition of land in the Lea valley, c. 1450–1560’, Continuity and Change 3:1 (1988), 11–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Glennie, Paul, ‘Life and death in Elizabethan Cheshunt’, in Jones-Baker, Doris (ed.), Hertfordshire in History: Papers Presented to Lionel Munby (Hertford, 1991), pp. 65–91Google Scholar; and Newall, Fiona, ‘Social mobility in the population of Aldenham, Hertfordshire, 1600–1800’, in , Jones-Baker (ed.), Hertfordshire in History, pp. 109–26.Google Scholar

29. Wrigley, E.A. and Schofield, R.S., The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 531–2Google Scholar suggest that in England population grew by 36.3% in the same period.

30. Lawson, Peter G., ‘Crime and the Administration of Criminal Justice in Hertfordshire, c. 1580–1625’ (Unpublished Oxford University D.Phil Thesis, 1982), p. 181.Google Scholar

31. Hertfordshire County Records, Volume V: Calendar to the Sessions Books and Sessions Minute Books, 1619–1657, ed. le Hardy, William (Hertford, 1928), pp. 47–8, 398Google Scholar; Calendar of Assize Records: Hertfordshire Indictments, James I, ed. Cockburn, J.S. (London, 1975), p. 275.Google Scholar

32. Munby, Lionel (ed.), History of King's Langley (London, 1963), pp. 48–49, 52.Google Scholar

33. Urwick, William, Non-conformity in Hertfordshire (London, 1884), p. 792.Google Scholar

34. Tregelles, J. A., A History of Hoddesdon in the County of Hertfordshire (Hertford, 1908), pp. 334–6, 354–61.Google Scholar

35. Tregelles, , Hoddesdon, p. 358.Google Scholar The farmers attempted to demonstrate the greed of the wealthier inhabitants by listing by name 58 ‘inmates’, 18 ‘newe erected Tenementes’, 29 ‘vyctuallers’, 29 persons ‘worth 100 li at the lest’ and 15 ‘men of trade well able to lyve by the stock and the trade’.

36. Rickman, Lydia L., ‘Brief studies in the manorial and economic history of Much Hadham’, East Hertfordshire Archaeological Society Transactions 9:4 (1928–1933), 288–312, quoting pp. 290–91.Google Scholar

37. Newall, , ‘Social mobility’, pp. 115, 122.Google Scholar

38. The following account is based on VCH Hertfordshire IV, pp. 85–88.

39. Population estimates derived by multiplying the number of taxpayers in the 1524–5 lay subsidy by Laslett's conventional factor of 4.75 and the number of households in the hearth tax of 1663 by Arkell's suggested factor of 4.3. [P]ublic [R]ecord [OJffice E179/120/120 (Edwinstree Hundred Assessment Subsidy, 16 Henry VIII); E179/248/23 (Hearth Tax, Lady Day 1663). For the multipliers, see Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population History, pp. 567–8Google Scholar; Arkell, Tom, ‘Multiplying factors for estimating population totals from the hearth tax’, Local Population Studies 28 (1982), 51–7, at p. 57.Google Scholar For the lost village of Throcking, see Beresford, Maurice, The Lost Villages of England (London, 1954) p. 356.Google Scholar

40. [H]ertfordshire [RJecord [OJffice D/P 65/25/1 (Unnamed Charity), 4 (Crowch Charity); D/P 65/3/3 (Memorandum Book), p. 329.

41. The following account is based on J., and Venn, J.A., Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge, 1922), Part I, vol. I, p. 427, vol. IV, p. 173Google Scholar; Urwick, William, Non-conformity in Hertfordshire (London, 1884), pp. 756–8Google Scholar; VCH Hertfordshire IV, pp. 85–8, 117; Journal of the House of Lords, vol. VIII, p. 445 [24 July 1646]; Lambeth Palace Library COMM.12a/10/392–93, (Commonwealth Church Survey, 1650); Fuller, Thomas, The Worthies of England, ed. with an introduction and notes by Freeman, John (London, 1952), pp. 373–4Google Scholar; Clutterbuck, R., A History of Hertfordshire (3 vols., London, 1815–1827), III, p. 208Google Scholar; and Calnan, J.B., ‘County Society and Local Government in the County of Hertford c. 1580–c. 1630, with Special Reference to the Commission of the Peace’ (Unpublished Cambridge University Ph.D. dissertation, 1979), p. 64Google Scholar and appendices la and Ib. The deeds of the Strange Charity lands survive as HRO D/P 65/25/3 (annual sermon, 1625) and D/P 65/25/5 (chapel maintenance, 1642). The arrangement of the communion table in St Peter's Buntingford has been described as unusual in itself: Urwick, , Non-conformity, p. 756Google Scholar, but see Yule, George, ‘James VI and I: Furnishing the churches in his two kingdoms’, in Fletcher, Anthony and Roberts, Peter (eds), Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 182–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the puritan tradition at Peterhouse in the 1570s and ’80s, see Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967), pp. 124–5.Google Scholar

42. Layston with Buntingford Parish Memorandum Book 1607-c. 1750 survives as HRO D/P 65/3/3. The text of Strange‘s address [hereafter, Strange, ‘Address’] is at pp. 326–38. Strange heavily emended the text, reorganising the later paragraphs and reordering his five remedial proposals.

43. Walter, John and Wrightson, Keith, ‘Dearth and the social order in early modern England’, Past and Present 71 (05 1976), 22–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. I am extremely grateful to Patrick Collinson and Arnold Hunt for their advice on this matter. The HRO catalogue of parish papers describes the text as ‘a sermon delivered in 1635’ [sic].

45. Strange, , ‘Address’, p. 326.Google Scholar

46. Strange, , ‘Address’, p. 326.Google Scholar

47. Strange, , ‘Address’, pp. 326–27.Google Scholar

48. Strange, , ‘Address’, p. 328.Google Scholar

49. Strange, , ‘Address’, p. 329.Google Scholar

50. William Bonest of Braughing devised his tenement in Overbury to the churchwardens in 1612 on condition that not more than four widows should dwell there rent free. VCH Hertfordshire III, p. 316.

51. Strange, , ‘Address’, pp. 329–31.Google Scholar

52. Strange, , ‘Address’, p. 331.Google Scholar

53. Strange, , ‘Address’, p. 332.Google Scholar

54. Strange, , ‘Address’, p. 332.Google Scholar

55. Strange, , ‘Address’, p. 337.Google Scholar This section is struck through in the MS.

56. Strange, , ‘Address’, pp. 336–38.Google Scholar

57. Strange, , ‘Address’, pp. 332–33.Google Scholar

58. On the parish state, see Hindle, ‘Power, poor relief and social relations’ and references there cited.

59. Strange, , ‘Address’, p. 334.Google Scholar

60. Strange, , ‘Address’, pp. 334–35.Google Scholar For an instance of a similar policy in Much Hadham in 1646 when an ‘ancinet glover’ being ‘warned out’ of his dwelling was housed by the overseers at ‘a reasonable rent’, see Hertfordshire County Records V, p. 382.

61. Strange, , ‘Address’, pp. 335–6.Google Scholar

62. HRO HAT/SR 10/48 (December 1597).

63. Hertfordshire County Records V, pp. 106, 152 (cottages and inmates, 1628, 1631), 203, 206, 213, 215 (rating dispute 1635–6), 191 (rescue of a distress for the poor rate, 1634).

64. HRO D/P 65/3/3, pp. 43–47 (mediation, 1627), 101, 105, 107, 135 (vestry orders, 1617–30).

65. HRO D/P 65/3/3, p. 105; Vox Ruris Reverberating Vox Civitas Complaining This Year 16.36 Without Cause Against the Country Taken From Her Owne Common Report and Written by Notarius Rusticus (London, 1636; STC 18698), p. 6.Google Scholar

66. See above p. 132.

67. Strange, , –Address’, p. 338.Google Scholar

68. Jones, W.R.D., The Tudor Commonwealth, 1529–1559 (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Elton, G.R., ‘Reform and the “commonwealth men” of Edward VI's Reign’, in Elton, , Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, Volume III (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 234–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King, John N., English Reformation Literature (Princeton, 1982)Google Scholar; White, Helen C., Social Criticism in Popular Religious Literature of the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1944)Google Scholar; Sermons of Bishop Latimer, ed. Corrie, G.L. (Cambridge, Parker Society, 1844), pp. 239–81, esp. p. 247Google Scholar; Beier, , ‘Social problems’, p. 77.Google Scholar

69. See, for example, the evidence of hostility to the ‘personal’ preaching styles of Paul Baines (who defended the practice on the grounds that ‘it would not have been so well if he had spoken … in private’) and Richard Fletcher in Collinson, Patrick, ‘Cranbrook and the Fletchers: popular and unpopular religion in the Kentish Weald’, in Collinson, , Godly People: Essays in English Protestantism and Puritanism (London, 1984), pp. 399–428, esp. pp. 409 n.67, 412, 418Google Scholar; and similar episodes in Elizabethan Hawkhurst (Kent) and Hutton Cranswick (East Yorks.) in Collinson, Patrick, ‘Shepherds, sheepdogs, and hirelings: the pastoral ministry in post-reformation England’, in Sheils, W.J. and Wood, D. (eds), The Ministry: Clerical and Lay (Studies in Church History 26, Oxford, 1989), pp. 185–220, at pp. 206–07Google Scholar, and Marshall, Peter, The Face of the Pastoral Ministry in the East Riding, 1525–1595 (University of York Borthwick Paper no. 88, 1995), p. 18.Google Scholar

70. Cf. the brilliant analysis of similarly daring criticisms in Patrick Collinson, ‘Christian socialism in Elizabethan Suffolk: Thomas Carew and his Caveat For Clothiers’, forthcoming in the festschrift for Hassell Smith (1996?). For Nathan's parable attacking David, see II Samuel 12, v. 1–7.

71. Hill, Christopher, ‘William Perkins and the poor’, Past and Present 2 (1952)Google Scholar, reprinted in Hill, , Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in the English Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1956), pp. 215–38, esp. pp. 222–3, 232, 235–6.Google Scholar

72. Cf. Innes, Joanna, ‘Prisons for the poor: English bridewells, 1555–1800’, in Snyder, Francis and Hay, Douglas (eds), Labour, Law and Crime: An Historical Perspective (London, 1987), pp. 42–122Google Scholar; Slack, Poverty and Policy, ch. 7; Underdown, David, Fire From Heaven: The Life of an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1992), chs 3–4.Google Scholar

73. [H]istorica! [M]anuscripts [C]ommission Salisbury (Cecil) MSS XX (1608), pp. 288–9; PRO ASS I 35/66/1, fol.44 (March 1624).

74. See Walter Morrell's ’Manufacture for the Newe draperie into Three Bookes’, Huntington Library MS HM 53654, a proposal to create a weaving college for the poor at Hatfield, discussed in Collinson, Patrick, ‘The Elizabethan exclusion crisis and the Elizabethan polity’, Proceedings of the British Academy 84 (1994), 51–92, at p. 73Google Scholar; and Calnan, , ‘County Government’, pp. 122–4.Google Scholar The controversy repeatedly occupied the attention of the Privy Council: see [A]cts of the [P]rivy [C]ouncil 1615–16, pp. 464–5; APC 1617–18, pp. 43–4; APC 1619–21, p. 132; PRO SP 14/96/46; 14/109/13.

75. PRO PROB 11/215 [PCC 10 Grey], granted probate 23 January 1651.

76. See HMC Various Collections I, pp. 323–4 (Worcestershire Grand Jury Presentment, 29 April 1663); Hindle, ‘Power, poor relief and social relations’; and Hindle, Steve, ‘The problem of pauper marriage in early modern England’ (Unpublished paper)Google Scholar, passim.

77. Strange, , ‘Address’, p. 328.Google Scholar

78. Beier, , ‘Social problems’, p. 61Google Scholar suggests, conversely, that the poorer tenants were the most likely to take inmates in late Elizabethan Warwick, perhaps in itself a measure of their desperation. In 1615 four Hertfordshire individuals charged with erecting illegal cottages under the 1589 act were discharged because of their poverty. HRO HAT S/R 26/217–220; 9/50; 27/151.

79. R.Smith, M., ‘Marriage processes in the English past: some continuities’, in Bonfield, Lloyd, Smith, R.M. and Wrightson, K.E. (eds), The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure (Oxford, 1986), pp. 43–99, at p. 97.Google Scholar

80. McIntosh, M.K., A Community Transformed: The Manor and Liberty of Havering, 1500–1620 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 26.Google Scholar

81. Hassell-Smith, A., ‘Labourers in late sixteenth-century England: a case study from north Norfolk [part I]’, Continuity and Change 4:3 (1989), 367–94, esp. 373–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

82. Thirsk, Joan, ‘Industries in the countryside’, in Fisher, F.J. (ed.), Essays in the Economic and Social History of Tudor and Stuart England in Honour of R.H. Tawney (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 70–88, at p. 72.Google Scholar

83. PRO SP 14/96/39 (‘Difficulties objected against the proiect of new draperye’, February 1618). For the Hertfordshire textile industry, see VCH Hertfordshire IV, pp. 210, 248–51.

84. Cf. Wrightson, Keith and Levine, David, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525–1700 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1995), pp. 69–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levine, David, Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism (New York, 1979), p. 121Google Scholar; and Levine, David, Reproducing Families: The Political Economy of English Population History (Cambridge, 1987), ch. 2.Google Scholar

85. Levine, Family Formation, chs 5–6; de Vries, Jan, ‘The industrial revolution and the industrious revolution’, Journal of Economic History 54:2 (June 1994), 249–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, , ‘Different kind of Speenhamland’, 208.Google Scholar For seasonal unemployment in mining, see Levine, and Wrightson, , Industrial Society, pp. 250–63.Google Scholar

86. For the suggestion that rents might be an issue in attitudes towards labour mobility in the eighteenth century, see Thompson, , Customs in Common, pp. 287–8.Google Scholar

87. Cf. the view that the felt need for co-operative effort in addressing mutual problems is likely to be greatest where ‘all members have a stake in the village economy’. McNicoll, G., ‘Institutional determinants of fertility change’, Population and Development Review 6 (1980), 441–62, at 452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88. Beier, , ‘Social problems’, p. 61.Google Scholar

89. For an analysis of these trends in Hertfordshire 1559–1624, see Lawson, , ‘Property crime and hard times’, pp. 122–26.Google Scholar

90. Hertfordshire County Records V, p. 34.

91. HRO D/P 110/5/1, analysed in Bennet, Martyn (ed.), A Nottinghamshire Village in War and Peace: The Accounts of the Constables of Upton 1640–1666 (Thoroton Society Record Series 39 [for 1990 and 1991], Nottingham, 1995). p. xxvii.Google Scholar

92. Strange, , ‘Address’, p. 326.Google Scholar

93. A point made very forcefully by Houston, R.A., ‘Vagrants and society in early modern England’, Cambridge Anthropology (1980), 18–32, quoting p. 25.Google Scholar

94. Wales, Tim, ‘Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle: some evidence from seventeenth-century Norfolk’, in Smith, (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, pp. 351–404Google Scholar; and Newman-Brown, ‘Poor relief and family situation’.

95. For Cony, see Hindle, ‘Power, poor relief and social relations’; for Marshall, see Webster, Tom, Stephen Marshall and Finchingfield (Studies in Essex History no. 6, 1994)Google Scholar; and for Weld, see Wrightson, Keith and Levine, David, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525–1700 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1995), esp. pp. 137–9, 159–61, 179–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

96. Quoting Smith, Richard M., ‘Fertility, economy and household formation in England over three centuries’, Population and Development Review 7:4 (1981), 595–622 at 618CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and see Smith, Richard M., ‘Transfer incomes, risk and security: the roles of the family and the collectivity in recent theories of fertility change’, in Coleman, David and Schofield, Roger (eds), The State of Population Theory: Forward From Malthus (Oxford, 1986), pp. 188–211, at p. 191.Google Scholar

97. Rickman, , ‘Much Hadham’, pp. 304–12.Google Scholar

98. Beier, , ‘Social problems’, p. 61.Google Scholar

99. Cf. Mandler, Peter, ‘Poverty and charity in the nineteenth-century metropolis: an introduction‘, in Mandler, Peter (ed.), The Uses of Charity: The Poor on Relief in the Nineteenth-Century Metropolis (Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 1“37, at p. 1Google Scholar; Hill, Christopher, ‘The many headed monster in late Tudor and early Stuart political thinking’, in Carter, C.H. (ed.), From the Renaissance to the Reformation: Essays in Honour of Garret Mattingley (New York, 1965)Google Scholar, reprinted in Hill, , Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (rev ed., New Haven, 1991), pp. 181–204.Google Scholar

100. If ‘the extent of risk-sharing across social class boundaries is a good measure of the degree of social integration’ within a community, the implications for the failure of parochial constraint for our understanding of early modern social relations are profound’. Lesthaeghe, , ‘Social control’, p. 532.Google Scholar