Abstract
Our understanding of the relationship between state and society in England can all too easily be impoverished by adopting a very narrow conception of what constituted the public sphere. Few would doubt that there has always been an intimate connection between the holding of major offices of state and active participation in English public culture. The symbiosis between public office and public life at the centre of the English polity is too obvious to be laboured. The politics of the court, office-holding, and court life were of a piece. Similarly, the development of the London Season and the establishment of annual parliamentary sessions were not unconnected.1 Also, historians of the early-modern period have demonstrated the ways in which the development of county government, notably the greater sophistication of the Quarter Sessions, rested on the emergence of a distinctive, self-referential, and vibrant ‘county community’.2 What has been less fully appreciated, and largely ignored by historians of the Hanoverian period, is the extent to which the development of the parish as a political unit was predicated on the parallel development of a distinctive parochial political culture.
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Notes
Paul Langford, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 377–90.
For a summary, see J. S. Morrill, The Revolt of the Provinces. Conservatives and Radicals in the English Civil War 1630–1650 (London, 1976), esp. pp. 14–31. See also pp. 15–16 [ch. 1], and 100–2 [ch. 4].
David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells. National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan England (London, 1989), pp. 67–92;
William Plomer (ed.), Kilvert’s Diary. Selections from the Diary of Rev. Francis Kilvert, 1870–1879, new edn, 3 vols (London, 1960), i, pp. 45, 86, 142, 145–6, 271, 289, and passim.
James E. Bradley, Religion, Revolution and English Radicalism. Nonconformity in Eighteenth-Century Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1990), esp. pp. 121–58;
Robert Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order in England 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 44–53, 95–173;
Paul Langford, ‘The English Clergy and the American Revolution’, in Eckhart Hellmuth (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture. England and Germany in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1990), pp. 275–308.
James Hinton, Vindication of the Dissenters of Oxford (Oxford, 1792);
James Hinton, Sermon on the Death of His Late Majesty (Oxford, 1820);
James Woodforde, Diary of a Country Parson 1758–1802, ed. John Beresford (Oxford, 1978), p. 338.
R. Drummond and B. Rawnsley, Sermons Preached in Country Churches (London, 1858), pp. 142–3, 146.
[Thomas Turner], The Diary of Thomas Turner 1754–1765, ed. David Vaisey (Oxford, 1985), p. 93.
[Carl Philipp Moritz], Travels of Carl Philipp Moritz in England in 1782, English trans. 1795 (reprinted London, 1924), p. 138.
William Cobbett, Rural Rides [1830], Penguin edn (Harmondsworth, 1967), p. 270;
John Coker Egerton, Victorian Village. The Diaries of the Reverend John Coker Egerton of Burwash, ed. Roger Wells (Stroud, 1992), p. 70. Egerton was rector of Burwash in the Sussex Weald.
Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford, Penguin edn (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 210.
For fuller discussions, see Barry Reay, The Last Rising of the Agricultural Labourers. Rural Life and Protest in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1990), esp. pp. 37–9; Eastwood, Governing Rural England, pp. 24–42.
Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 40–2;
G. E. Mingay, English Landed Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1964), pp. 239–41.
Richard Jefferies, Hodge and his Masters [1880], new edn, intro. A. M. Richardson (Stroud, 1992), p. 77.
L. S. Pressnell, Country Banking in the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1956);
Audrey M. Taylor, Gilletts. Bankers at Banbury and Oxford (Oxford, 1964).
G. Hueckel, ‘English Farming Profits during the Napoleonic Wars’, Explorations in Economic History, 13 (1976), 331–45;
A. H. John, ‘Farming in Wartime: 1793–1815’, in E. L. Jones and J. D. Chambers (eds), Land, Labour, and Population in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1967).
George R. Boyer, An Economic History of the English Poor Law, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 9–50; 94–9;
K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor. Social Change and Agrarian England 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 104–14; Eastwood, Governing Rural England, pp. 166–87;
and Ian Dyck, William Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture (Cambridge, 1992), p. 72.
Richard Gough, The History of Myddle, ed. David Hay (Harmondsworth, 1981), pp. 77–272.
As pointed out by Edward Norman, Church and Society in England, 1770–1970 (Oxford, 1976), p. 110, church rates could only properly be levied for upkeep of naves and churchyards. This could lead to great difficulties, especially where lay rectors refused to maintain the chancel;
see Sir J. H. Seymour, Plain Statement of Facts, in a Matter in which the Parishioners of Horley are interested (Banbury, 1839).
A. D. Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England. Church, Chapel and Social Change 1740–1914 (London, 1976), pp. 3–22, 69–121.
Eric J. Evans, The Contentious Tithe. The Tithe Problem and English Agriculture 1750–1850 (London, 1976).
On the tendency of the established church to become fashionable, visibly respectable, and ostentatiously a church of the more affluent, see [Ellen Weeton], Miss Weeton’s Journal of a Governess 1807–1825, ed. J. J. Bagley, 2 vols (New York, 1969), i, pp. 122–3.
John Walsh, ‘Methodism and the Local Community in the Eighteenth Century’, in Vie Ecclésiale. Communauté et Communautés (Paris, 1989), pp. 141–51.
John Skinner, Journal of a Somerset Rector 1803–1834, ed. Howard and Peter Coombs (Oxford, 1984), p. 92.
[Thomas Hayton], The Letters of Thomas Hayton. Vicar of Long Crendon Buckinghamshire 1821–1887, ed. Joyce Donald, Buckinghamshire Record Society, xx (1979), esp. pp. x–xi.
Much the most nuanced local study is James Obelkevich, Religion and Rural Society. South Lindsey 1825–1875 (Oxford, 1976);
but see also Albion M. Urdank, Religion and Society in a Cotswold Vale. Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, 1780–1865 (Berkeley, CA, 1990).
Roger G. Sellman, Devon Village Schools in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1968), pp. 24–6, 44–5.
Kate Tiller (ed.), Church and Chapel in Oxfordshire 1851. The Return of the Census of Religious Worship, Oxfordshire Records Society, vol. 55 (1987);
K. D. M. Snell, Church and Chapel in the North Midlands: Religious Observance in the Nineteenth Century, Department of English Local History, Occasional Papers, 4th ser., no. 3 (Leicester, 1991).
John Walsh, ‘Methodism and the Local Community in the Eighteenth Century’, in Vie Ecclésiale. Communauté et Communautés (Paris, 1989), pp. 141–51;
John Walsh, ‘Methodism and the Mob in the Eighteenth Century’, Studies in Church History, viii (1972), 213–27. See also Snell, Church and Chapel in the North Midlands, p. 52.
John Howard Hinton, Biographical Portraiture of the late James Hinton (Oxford, 1824), pp. 255–63.
See [Mary Smith], Autobiography of Mary Smith (London, 1892), pp. 6–8. Mary Smith grew up at Cropredy in north Oxfordshire in the 1820s.
W. O. Chadwick, Victorian Church, 2 vols (London, 1966), i, pp. 81–9, 148–58;
G. I. T. Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 1832–68, (Oxford, 1977), pp. 45–47, 55–63, 102–7.
Quoted in Chadwick, Victorian Church, i, p. 87; cf. R. Burn, Ecclesiastical Law, 2 vols (London, 1763), i, p. 268ff.
W. C. Risley, Sermon at the Triennial Visitation of the Bishop of Oxford (Banbury, n.d., ?1838), pp. 17–18.
Rev. T. Silver, Memorial to H. M. Government on the Dangers of Intermeddling with the Church Rates (Oxford, 1835), pp. 34–35, 38, 55; idem, Letter to the Duke of Marlborough …on Commutation of Tithes (Oxford, 1842), pp. 33, 46, 68.
J. Jordan, History of Enstone (London, 1857), pp. 386–93.
[Charles Jerram], Memoirs and a Selection of the Letters of the late Rev. Charles Jerram, ed. J. Jerram (London, 1855), pp. 332–5;
W. J. Monk, History of Witney (Witney, 1894), pp. 170, 213–48.
Jerram could afford to be generous: in 1831 the living was worth £1290 per annum: see Diana McClatchey, The Oxfordshire Clergy, 1777–1869 (Oxford, 1960), p. 57.
M. Dickins, History of Hook Norton (Banbury, 1928), p. 151.
Norman, Church and Society in England, p. 216; cf. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, i, p. 147; J. Morley, Gladstone, 2 vol. edn (London, 1905/6), i, p. 795.
Anthony Russell, The Clerical Profession (London, 1980), pp. 39–41, 100–12.
Mary Ransome (ed.), Wiltshire Returns to the Bishop’s Visitation Queries 1783, Wiltshire Records Society, xxvii for 1971;
Arthur Warne, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century Devon (Newton Abbot, 1969).
[George J. Dew], Oxfordshire Country Life in the 1860s: the Early Diaries of George James Dew (1846–1928) of Lower Heyford, ed. Pamela Horn (Abingdon, 1986), pp. 45, 54.
Bodleian Library, G. A. Oxon 4° 49, Newspaper Cuttings etc., f. 197; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 26 August 1826, 1 September 1832; R.W. Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Society 1700–1850 (Cambridge, 1973);
W. J. Monk, A History of Witney (Witney, 1794);
Alun Howkins, Witsun in Nineteenth Century Oxfordshire (Oxford, 1973);
Sally Alexander, St Giles’s Fair, 1830–1914: Popular Culture and the Industrial Revolution in 19th Century Oxfordshire (Oxford, 1970).
[William Cobbett], The Autobiography of William Cobbett, ed. William Reitzel, new edn (London, 1967), pp. 92–3.
Quoted in Robert W. Malcolmson, ‘Leisure’, in G. E. Mingay (ed.), The Victorian Countryside, 2 vols (London, 1981), ii, p. 606.
The standard study is Peter Clark, The English Alehouse. A Social History 1200–1830 (London, 1983).
David Dean (ed.), St Albans Quarter Sessions Rolls 1784–1820, Hertford Record Society Publications, v (1991), 90.
E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (London, 1991), pp. 467–531.
H. Lupton, A History of Thame and its Hamlets (Thame, 1860); St Albans Quarter Sessions Rolls, pp. 70–1; Public Records Office, HO 42/146, Henry Walford to Lord Sidmouth, 1 September 1815; HO 42/143, James Lockhart to Sidmouth, 10 March 1815; Hansard, 1st ser., xxix, 1227.
Florence and Kenneth Wood, A Lancashire Gentleman. The Letters and Journals of Richard Hodgkinson 1763–1847 (Stroud, 1992), pp. 198–215.
E. P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, reprinted in Thompson, Customs in Common, pp. 158–185. There is now a huge literature on popular protest, amongst which one of the most influential works has been John Bohstedt, Riots and Community Politics in England and Wales 1790–1810 (Cambridge, MA, 1983).
Cool and intelligent reappraisals are offered in Adrian Randall and Andrew Charlesworth (eds), Markets, Market Culture and Popular Protest in Eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland (Liverpool, 1996).
Public Records Office, HO 42/35/366–68, Sir Christopher Willoughby to Thomas Carter, 7 August 1795; Sir F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor, 3 vols (London, 1797), ii, pp. 587, 591.
Roger Wells, Wretched Faces. Famine in Wartime England (Gloucester, 1988), esp. pp. 120–81; idem, Dearth and Distress in Yorkshire, 1793–1802, Borthwick Paper, no. 52 (1977); idem, ‘The Revolt of the South West: a Study in English Popular Protest’, Social History, vi (1977), 713–44;
Alan Booth, ‘Food Riots in the North West of England 1790–1800’, Social History, viii (1983), 295–314.
Douglas Hay, ‘Poaching and the Game Laws on Cannock Chase’, in Hay et al. (eds), Albion’s Fatal Tree. Crime and Society in Eighteenth-century England, Penguin edn (Harmondsworth, 1977), pp. 189–254;
P. B. Munch, Gentlemen and Poachers (London, 1981).
Eric Hopkins, Working Class Self-help in Nineteenth Century England (London, 1995), pp. 9–26;
P. H. J. H. Gosden, The Friendly Societies in England 1815–1875 (Manchester, 1961), pp. 1–70.
Oxfordshire Archives, Ston. 1/ii/b/1, Stonesfield Friendly Society Club Book 1766–1854; Ston. 1/ii/b/2, Stonesfield Friendly Society Club Book 1854 onwards; Ston. 111/i/l, Stonesfield Friendly Society Rules; MSS D. D. Par Stonesfield b.8, Rector’s Book entry for 13 July 1825; David Eastwood, ‘The Benefits of Brotherhood: The First Century of the Stonesfield Friendly Society, 1765–1865’, Oxfordshire Local History, ii (1986), 161–8.
Egerton, Diaries, 58; Rawnsley, Sermons Preached in Country Churches, 200; Simon Cordery, ‘Friendly Societies and the Discourse of Respectability in Britain, 1825–1875’, Journal of British Studies, xxxiv (1995), 35–58.
George Sturt, William Smith, Potter and Farmer, 1790–1858, new edn (Firle, Sussex, 1978), p. 184.
F. M. Eden, Observations on Friendly Societies, for the Maintenance of the Industrious Classes, during Sickness, Infirmity, Old Age and other Exigencies (London, 1801);
T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population [1803 edn], 2 vols, ed. T. H. Hollingsworth (London, 1973), ii, p. 243; Report from the Select Committee on the Laws Respecting Friendly Societies, P.P., 1825, iv (522), 330;
B. E. Supple, ‘Legislation and Virtue: an Essay in Working Class Self-help in the Early-nineteenth Century, in N. McKendrick (ed.), Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought and Society (London, 1974), pp. 211–54;
J. M. Baernreither, English Associations of Working Men (London, 1889), 5; Arch, Ploughtail to Parliament, p. 34.
The classic account remains S. and B. Webb, The Parish and the County (London, 1906), esp. pp. 9–103, 146–276. The principal defect in the Webbs’ treatment was their deep-seated hostility towards what they regarded as the corruption and structural inefficiencies of the vestry system.
Bryan Keith-Lucas, The Unreformed Local Government System (London, 1980), pp. 75–107, offers a somewhat more sympathetic overview.
W. E. Tate, The Parish Chest, 3rd edn (Cambridge, 1969) remains useful, but lacks analytical subtlety. The arguments sketched briefly here are explored more fully in Eastwood, Governing Rural England, pp. 24–42, 166–87;
and David Eastwood, ‘The Republic in the English Village: Parish and Poor at Bampton, 1780–1834’, Journal of Local and Regional Studies, xii (1992), 18–28.
See William Wing, Changes in Farming and the Rural Economy during the Fifty-five Years, 1826–1880 (Oxford, 1880), p. 7; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 19 December 1818.
Jordan, History of Enstone, p. 200; P. H. Ditchfield, The Parish Clerk (London, 1907).
As at Finmere in Oxfordshire: see Oxfordshire Archives, MSS D. D. Par Finmere e.1, Vestry Minutes 1815–27; J. C. Bloomfield, History of Finmere (Buckingham, 1887), pp. 26–7, 54–68.
R. Burn, The Justice of the Peace and the Parish Officer, 28th edn, 6 vols (London, 1837), vi, pp. 131–7.
J. M. Davenport, Oxfordshire Annals (Oxford, 1869);
Mark Neuman, The Speenhamland County. Poverty and the Poor Laws in Berkshire 1782–1834 (New York, 1982), pp. 80–1 and passim; Eastwood, Governing Rural England, p. 38.
22 Geo. III c. 83; see also S. and B. Webb, English Poor Law History: Part 1. The Old Poor Law (London, 1927), pp. 170–2, 272–6;
Geoffrey W. Oxley, Poor Relief in England and Wales 1601–1834 (Newton Abbot, 1974), pp. 82–7;
Anne Digby, Pauper Palaces (London, 1978), pp. 34–47.
Felix Driver, Power and Pauperism. The Workhouse System 1834–1884 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 42–7. A further 125 incorporations were created under local acts between 1647 and 1833.
Report of the Select Committee on the Poor Laws, Parliamentary Papers, 1817, vi (462). See also J. R. Poynter, Society and Pauperism. English Ideas on Poor Relief, 1795–1834 (London, 1969), pp. 244–6, 285–9;
and David Eastwood, ‘Rethinking the Debates on the Poor Law in Early Nineteenth-century England’, Utilitas, vi (1994), pp. 97–116.
John Prest, Liberty and Locality. Parliament, Permissive Legislation, and Ratepayers’ Democracies in the Mid-nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1990), pp. 10–11.
Labour rates were common throughout rural England from the 1820s: see Report from the Select Committee on Relief to the Able-bodied, P.P., 1828, iv (494), pp. 144–6; E. Hampson, Poverty in Cambridgeshire, 1597–1834 (Cambridge, 1934), p. 202 et seq. Labour rates were legalized in 1831 by 2 & 3 William IV c. 96 but roundly condemned in an early report of the Poor Law Commission: see Report of the Royal Commissioners on the Labour Rate, P.P., 1833, xxxii (619); Eastwood, Governing Rural England, pp. 155–60.
John Clare, The Parish. A Satire, ed. Eric Robinson (Harmondsworth, 1985), p. 63, line 1289. The poem was written between 1823 and 1827.
J. Hewitt, Guide for Constables and Peace Officers (London, 1779), pp. 16–17; Newman, The Speenhamland County, pp. 110–43.
Kate Watson, ‘Liberty, Loyalty, and Locality: the Discourse on Loyalism in Britain, 1790–1815’, Ph.D. thesis, Open University (1995); Eastwood, Governing Rural England, pp. 230–3.
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Eastwood, D. (1997). Public Life in Rural England. In: Government and Community in the English Provinces, 1700–1870. British Studies Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25673-0_2
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