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⁴ The best overview of eighteenth-century urbanization is in Corfield, P.J., The Impact of English Towns (London, 1982).Google Scholar

⁵ The fullest treatment of this interpretation of eighteenth century urban development is given by Borsay, P., The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; idem, ‘The English urban renaissance: the development of provincial urban culture 1680–1760’, Social History, 5 (1977), 581–603CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘All the town's a stage: urban ritual and ceremony 1660–1800’, in Clark, P. (ed.), The Transformation of English Provincial Towns 1600–1800 (London, 1984).Google Scholar See also Clark, P. (ed.), Country Towns in Pre-lndustrial England (Leicester, 1981)Google Scholar, especially 18–24 and essays by A. Rosen and S. Mclntyre.

⁶ See Levine, D. and Wrightson, K., The Making of an Industrial Society: Whickham 1560–1765 (Oxford, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁹ Grey, W., Chorographia, or a survey of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1649)Google Scholar; Bourne, H., The History of Newcastle upon Tyne, or the Ancient and Present State of that Town (Newcastle, 1736)Google Scholar; Brand, J., The History and Antiquities of the Town and County of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2 vols (London, 1789)Google Scholar; Baillie, J., An Impartial History of the Town and County of Newcastle upon Tyne and its Vicinity (Newcastle, 1801).Google Scholar Abridgements included Whitehead, W., An Account of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1787)Google Scholar; Hodgson, J., The Picture of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1807). Brand gives a comprehensive list of the manuscript histories in his preface.Google Scholar

¹⁰ It should be noted that numerous manuscript histories of other towns still survive from the seventeenth century and earlier. A useful but by no means comprehensive summary is given by Dyer, A., ‘English town chronicles’, Local Historian, 12 (1977), 285–95.Google Scholar In terms of published histories, Grey was preceded by (apart from Stow) Somner, W., The Antiquities of Canterbury (London, 1640)Google Scholar; Butcher, R., The Surveye and Antiquitye of the Towne of Stamford in the County of Lincoln (London, 1646).Google Scholar

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¹² Douglas, D.C., English Scholars, 1660–1730 (2nd edn, London, 1950)Google Scholar; Evans, J., A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), 1–30.Google Scholar

¹³ Stow had covered the subject of charters in three separate volumes: The Annals of England (London, 1592)Google Scholar; A Summary of English Chronicles (London, 1565)Google Scholar and The Chronicles of England (London, 1580).Google Scholar

¹⁴ There are many studies of the seventeenth-century antiquarians: see for example, Douglas, English Scholars and Mendyk, S.A.E., ‘Speculum Britanniae’: Regional Study, Antiquarianism, and Science in Britain to 1700 (Toronto, 1989).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Howell, R. J., ‘Newcastle and the nation: the seventeenth-century experience’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 5th ser., 8 (1980), 17–35. See also comments of Barry in ‘Provincial town culture’, 209–211.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The best account of this period of scholarship is still to be found in Douglas, English Scholars.

¹⁷ Ibid., 133 and 126.

¹⁸ See, for example, copies held by Tyne and Wear Archives and Gateshead Local Studies Library. This habit was common in other towns too. Barrett, William, author of The History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol (Bristol, 1789), even issued his volume bound with blank pages at the end, specifically for this purpose. Newspapers had not completely displaced the traditions of urban chronicling.Google Scholar

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²² This is paralleled in other histories, for example, B. Mackerell, ‘The history of Norwich both ancient and modern’ (1737), typescript in Norfolk Record Office, Rye MS 78. A substantial part of this was taken up by a history of the Company of St George.

²³ For example, Barry on the continued importance of the parish in the histories of eighteenth-century Bristol, ‘Provincial town culture’, 214.

²⁴ In this context it is important to note the large number of clergymen who compiled local histories, and also the impetus given to antiquarian studies as a whole by the seventeenth-century controversies over the Church. See Douglas, , English Scholars.Google Scholar

²⁵ Bourne, , Newcastle, v.Google Scholar

²⁶ The experience of Newcastle Corporation provides a very real illustration of this danger: ‘The example of the Corporation of Newcastle, who lost town dues of great value, in consequence of information contained in Mr. Brand's History of Newcastle, has been frequently mentioned here, as a warning to other Corporations against suffering any of their papers to be inspected’. Seyer, S., The Charters and Letters Patent granted by the Kings and Queens of England to the Town and City of Bristol (Bristol, 1812), xii.Google Scholar

²⁷ Burton, John, compiler of Monasticon Eboracensium (1758)Google Scholar complained that it cost 5s to 6s a day to copy manuscripts in the British Museum. Davies, R., ‘Yorkshire historians of the eighteenth century’, Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal, 2 (1872), 429.Google Scholar

²⁸ For example, Bishop Nicholson's condemnation of Abel Wantner, a parish clerk, ‘for meddling in things beyond his sphere, when he issued proposals for publishing a history of Gloucester in the 1680s. Nicholson, W., English Historical Library (2nd edn, London, 1714), 13.Google Scholar Francis Drake, his contemporary in York, complained with reference to his occupation as surgeon, ‘It is for this reason, no doubt, and a mean opinion of what any layman can produce on the subject that I have found so little encouragement from the body of clergy in general’. Eboracum, or the History and Antiquities of the City of York (London, 1736), 10.Google Scholar

²⁹ A development which was fuelled by the Gothic Revival. Evans, Society of Antiquaries; Piggott, S., ‘Aspects of seventeenth and eighteenth-century antiquarianism’, in Piggott, Ruins in a Landscape: Essays in Antiquarianism (Edinburgh, 1976), 101–32.Google Scholar

³⁰ These figures are derived from Gross, C., A Bibliography of British Municipal History (London, 1897) and a search of the Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue. For fuller details see Sweet, ‘The writing of urban history’.Google Scholar

³¹ Only 300 copies were ever printed. A proposal advertised in the Newcastle Journal to reissue the history in 1750 never came to fruition.

³² Northumberland County Record Office (hereafter NCRO), ZAN M17/198.

³³ Feather, J., The Provincial Book Trade in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plant, M., The English Book Trade (London, 1974)Google Scholar; Belanger, T., ‘Publishers and writers in eighteenth-century England’, in Rivers, I. (ed.), Readers and their Books in Eighteenth-Century England (Leicester, 1982), 2–25Google Scholar; McKendrick, N., Brewer, J. and Plumb, J.H. (eds), The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialisation of Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1983).Google Scholar

³⁴ NCRO ZAN M17/198, Brand to Saint, 11 January 1788.

³⁵ NCRO ZAN M13/C3, Brand to Saint, 9 March 1787.

³⁶ Analytical Review, 5 (1789), 169.Google Scholar

³⁷ Aston, T.S. and Sykes, J., The Coal Industry in the Eighteenth Century (Manchester, 1929), 194–224Google Scholar; Sweezey, P.M., Monopoly and Competition in the English Coal Trade 1550–1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1938)Google Scholar; Flinn, M.W. and Stoker, D., The History of the British Coal Industry, vol. ii, 1700–1830: The Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1984).Google Scholar

³⁸ See also Monthly Review, new ser., 3 (1789), 387; Gentleman's Magazine, lix, pt. 1 (1789).

³⁹ Tyne and Wear Archives (hereafter TWA), Common Council Minute Books.

⁴⁰ TWA 155/1/11, list of the original subscribers to the Theatre Royal, 1789.

⁴¹ List of subscribers in Baillie, , Impartial History, 334.Google Scholar Unfortunately it is impossible to draw useful comparisons with Bourne's subscription list, as it only includes the names and not the residences of the subscribers, and comparable trade directories and other subscription lists do not survive from this period.

⁴² NCRO ZAN M17/198, Saint to Brand, April 1787.

⁴³ Bourne, , Newcastle, 133.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Ibid., 109.

⁴⁵ For example, the All Saints Charity School: Brand, , Newcastle, i, 274. Bourne gave a list of all the benefactors and their donations.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See, for example, Hutton, W., History of Birmingham (1781)Google Scholar; Toulmin, J., The History of the Town of Taunton (1791)Google Scholar; Dunsford, M., Historical Memoirs of the Town and Parish of Tiverton (1790).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Baillie always referred to him as having a ‘courtly partiality towards those in power’. Impartial History, 171.

⁴⁸ Brand, , Newcastle, ii, 520–2.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Fewster, ‘Keelmen of Tyneside’, examines the different attitudes of the authorities to the rioters. There was a split between those who believed that starvation was used as an excuse, led by the alderman, Matthew Ridley, and others who accepted that there were genuine grounds for their grievances.

⁵⁰ For a full account of the events and politics of this dispute, see Bradley, J., Religion, Revolution, and English Radicalism (Cambridge, 1990), 255–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dickenson, H.T. (ed.), The Political Works of Thomas Spence (Newcastle, 1982), i–xvGoogle Scholar and ‘Radical politics in north east England in the later eighteenth century’, Durham County Local History Society (1979).Google Scholar See also, Knox, T.R., ‘Popular politics and provincial radicalism in Newcastle upon Tyne 1769’, Albion, 11 (1979), 223–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵¹ The freemen numbered around 2,500 at this time.

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⁵⁵ See the comments in the reviews quoted on p. 181 above.

⁵⁶ On developments in nineteenth century urban history see Vickery, A.J., ‘Town histories and Victorian plaudits: some examples from Preston’, Urban History Yearbook (1988), 58–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁷ John Baillie was a Scottish presbyterian who had come to Newcastle in 1765. Habits of conviviality landed him in the debtors' gaol in 1779. Having escaped and fled to Scotland, he returned to Newcastle, and took up various teaching and preaching posts, supplementing his income with authorship.

⁵⁸ Baillie, , Impartial History, v.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Baillie's concern here for the rights of the freeman was part of a more widespread movement. Anxiety over the Corporation's handling of the town's finances was also being expressed. See Clark, J., Address to the Burgesses (Newcastle, 1809)Google Scholar; Report of the Proceedings of the Auditors of the Corporation of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1809)Google Scholar and The Newcastle Remembrance and Freeman's Pocket Reminder (2nd edn, Newcastle, 1817).Google Scholar

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⁶¹ Ibid., 92,350.

⁶² The infirmary was begun in 1751, and was the product of a meeting of an informal literary society where the members competed to draw up the plan most beneficial to the well–being of the community. Improvement really got under way in the 1770s and 1780s. The Assembly Rooms were built in 1776, and the theatre in 1784. A public bath was erected in 1781, a dispensary was established in 1777, and the church of St Nicholas was ‘improved’ in 1783. The first breaches in the ancient fortifications in the interests of trade were being made from the 1760s onwards. The philosophical society was inaugurated in 1775. (Sources: Baillie, Impartial History and Middlebrook, Newcastle upon Tyne.) The trade directory of 1778 shows that there was the full range of luxury services available in Newcastle, and that there were, for example, seven booksellers and stationers, of which three ran circulating libraries, and four printing offices which produced the four local papers.

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⁶⁴ Ibid., 166,215.

⁶⁵ This should not be taken to ignore the fact that horizontal division of class was also becoming more marked in this period.