The purpose of this thesis is to look afresh at James 11's canvassing of the gentry in the winter of 1687-8 on the repeal of the Test Acts and the penal laws. The Tests prevented non-Anglicans in general, but Catholics in particular, from participating fully in public life. The penal laws punished those who did not conform to the Established Church. As a Catholic, James was anxious to ease the lot of his co-religionists and by the third year of his reign he had shown himself willing to extend toleration to Protestant Dissenters. The canvass was part of the campaign to find a Parliament willing to repeal these laws. Historians have viewed the canvass as a failure: certainly it did not bring the results the King hoped for and helped to create a united opposition to the Stuart regime. But on closer inspection the returns reveal a more confused picture. More members of the gentry supported repeal than was originally believed and with these supporters the King was able to begin to fashion alternative local political administrations that might in time have challenged the entrenched political interests in the shires. However, this new power base was still too narrow by the time William of Orange intervened in English politics, mainly because the King, by his ruthless purging of local office-holders, missed the opportunity to win over gentlemen who, given the right encouragement, might have come to support repeal. But it is in the answers to the third question, in which an overwhelming majority of gentlemen endorsed the general concept of religious toleration, that a sea change in attitudes among the political classes is revealed, something the King might have been able to build on if he had had the time or inclination to nurture the 'green shoots' of religious pluralism.

In 1756 the Corporation of London began the removal of the houses that had lined the passage over London Bridge since the twelfth century, houses which had turned the Bridge into a ‘living’ structure and ensured its status as one of London’s great medieval icons. The ‘death’ of the inhabited London Bridge, a key element in the construction of the Capital’s medieval identity, was a highly symbolic moment in the progressive demise of the pre modern metropolis more generally. The aim of this thesis is to elucidate the factors that led to the London Bridge Improvement Act of 1756, the parliamentary legislation obtained by the Corporation to facilitate the removal of the houses. Previous analyses of the Act have placed it within the narrative of the ‘spirit of improvement’. Yet the role of urban governance and finance in the process of improvement has received virtually no detailed analysis. This despite the fact that the historiography of Improvement Acts suggests that the structural characteristics of early modern urban administration, and in particular urban finance, were crucially important factors in terms of the motivation for, and execution of, improvement schemes. This thesis provides a greater understanding of the way in which the Corporation of London managed the Bridge and financed its upkeep. It does so in order to demonstrate how aspects of urban governance - the transition from aldermanic oligarchy to a commoner democracy, the bureaucratic structure for financial management, and the financial necessities of governance - played a crucial role in the advent of the London Bridge Improvement Act. To achieve this, the thesis utilises the records associated with the London Bridge House Estates, the most extant and complete financial and administrative series within the Corporation’s archives. It undertakes for the first time a schematic collection and detailed analysis of financial data, property records and administrative accounts relating to an urban governmental body in the early modern period. In pursuing this argument, and engaging in such an analysis, this research suggests that we should look beyond simply social and cultural factors, and in particular pay closer attention to the often mundane concerns that decisively influenced decision making within urban organisations, when seeking to explain the process of early modern urban development more generally.

This thesis investigates peasant society during the transition from the medieval to the modern period, through a detailed study of a south Midlands village, Great Horwood in north Buckinghamshire, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (with frequent reference to conditions in the fourteenth and late thirteenth centuries). The focus is on the internal stratification of the peasantry, particularly the distribution of land. The main source used is the court rolls of the manor of Great Horwood, and the primary aim is to determine how accurate a picture of a community and its land distribution pattern can be obtained from manorial records. The two principal methods employed to extract information from the court rolls are: first, the creation from the tenancy-related entries in the court rolls of ownership histories for every landholding unit in the manor between 1400 and 1600, and the derivation from them of comprehensive land distribution data, and second, the creation of life histories for every person mentioned in the rolls, comprising all references to that person in the rolls and other sources, and the derivation from them of data relating to residence outside the manor, landholding in more than one manor, subtenancy, landlessness and occupational structure. It is demonstrated that it is possible to extract quantitative landholding and tenancy data from manor court rolls at least as good as that found in a series of manorial surveys or rentals, and that court roll data can be taken further, to investigate aspects of peasant landholding and society not normally revealed by those sources. It is shown that in Great Horwood widespread inter-manorial landholding and subtenancy combined with a substantial landless element within the manor’s population produced a very different and more complex social structure than that disclosed by the pattern of land distribution among the manor’s direct tenants.

This thesis is centred on prostitution in Nantes and Bristol, two port cities in France and England, between 1750 and 1815. The objectives of this research are fourfold: first, to understand the socio-economic characteristics of prostitution in these two port cities. Secondly, it aims to identify the similarities and the differences between Nantes and Bristol in the treatment of prostitution and in the evolution of mentalités by highlighting the local responses to prostitution. The third objective is to analyse the network of prostitution, in other words the relations prostitutes had with their family, the tenants of public houses, the lodging-keepers and the agents of the law to demonstrate if the women were living in a state of dependency. Finally, the geography of prostitution and its evolution between 1750 and 1815 is studied and put into perspective with the socio-economic context of the different districts to explain the spatial distribution of prostitutes in these two port cities. The methodology used relies on a comparative approach based on a vast corpus of archives, which notably includes judicial archives and newspapers. Qualitative and quantitative research allows the construction of relational databases, which highlight similar patterns of prostitution in both cities. When data is missing and a strict comparison between Nantes and Bristol is made impossible, extrapolations and comparisons with studies on different cities are used to draw subsequent conclusions. As a result, this thesis offers a unique picture of provincial prostitution in eighteenth-century port cities in France and England. It shows that women were using prostitution as a strategy of survival and on a casual basis and, if forced by economic necessities to do so, they kept a certain independence towards the people they met on a daily-basis. This thesis also shows, thanks to the comparative approach, that local events had a great influence on the shift of attitudes towards prostitution. It highlights, through the study of the dialectic national-local discourses, the specificities of local responses to prostitution and the importance of considering change of mentalités as a result of long- and short- term developments. Finally, this study also brings to light the similarities in attitudes towards prostitution which transcended the English and French national framework.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis is concerned with the nature of bastard feudalism and attempts to regulate it during the late medieval and early Tudor period. Bastard feudalism enabled late medieval governments and nobles to obtain the service they required, whether administrative, military or legal. In return for service, a lord granted to his retainers fees and/or his livery. Retaining and distributing livery became associated with public order problems such as maintenance, riots, assaults and intimidation. To prevent such abuses parliament passed several acts which restricted the distribution of livery and, later of fees, to members of a lord’s family, his permanent household servants and his legal counsel. The relationship between the statues and the resultant cases, thus the impact of the legislation on social practice, and by extension the extent and gravity of these abuses have not previously been investigated. This thesis provides a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between law-making and law-enforcing in England during this period by identifying all the cases of illegal livery that can be identified from the contemporary records. Chapter One examines the current literature on bastard feudalism in order to locate the thesis in its wider historiographical context. Chapter Two explains the records of King’s Bench, their strengths and weaknesses, and establishes a strategy for analysing them using modern database technology. It justifies the design of the database employed and suggests further applications beyond the scope of the thesis. Chapter Three discusses the 334 cases identified, establishes the chronological and geographical distribution of the cases and locates them in their wider local and national contexts. Chapter Four examines the statutes and how they evolved in response to differing pressures from the commons, the lords and the crown. Chapter Five examines the legal processes involved in enforcing the statutes, the outcomes of the cases and the effectiveness of law enforcement with regards to illegal livery. Chapter Six provides a prosopographical analysis of those charged with illegal livery, both giving and receiving. The final chapter summarises the main findings of the thesis, the significance of various patterns uncovered, and explains the wider significance of the research for the broader topics of late medieval politics, society, and public order. This thesis is thus a forensic and comprehensive study of a discrete facet of bastard feudalism that contributes to modern understanding of working of late medieval society, crime, public order, politics and the legal system.

A ban on the practice of usury, taking interest on loans, was evolved in medieval law both canonical and secular. Over the centuries the law was challenged, questioned, refined and modified, but in essence stood firm. Ahile a grievance to the poor, however, usury was a necessity to the businessman who developed a whole range of subterfuges to disguise it. The Reformation did not sweep away canon law, so that Elizabethan divines condemned usury in arguments that echo their medieval predecessors. The man of business did not live up to the ideals of his church or his state, and so universal was the practice of usury that a normative market rate of Interest existed, but because of the official disapproval, it can only be reconstructed imperfectly from fragmentary evidence. To enforce the law, Tudor statutes encouraged informing, and a wave of enthusiasm for bringing usury coses to court in the 156c*s supplies a wealth of material both for the structure and practices of the money market, and for the reconstruction of the interest rate. At the same time the course of trade, traditionally based on Antwerp, suffered a series of disruptions through political events or plague, with consequent fluctuations In the rote of interest, which tended to rise during the 1560's except in tne more secure field of domestic mortgages. For similar reasons the Crown found it increasingly difficult to borrow abroad and turned to its merchant subjects for loans. Case-studies of "usurers" and debtors set against their social background highlight the practices and events of the period, and a providential supply of data for the Isle of Sheppey in Kent allows the comparison of a rural loan market with that of the capital. by 1571 it was no longer feasible to pretend that the pernicious practice of usury could ever be stamped out: Crown and subject used it daily. Informers were abusing their role and blackmailing their victims instead of bringing them to justice and a forfeit to the Crown. Both the Crown and frustrated merchants found lending mutually advantageous and the usury laws a hindrance. Rationalization and control were required, not an ineffectual ban. The parliament of 1571 reviewed the situation, and while conservative opinion could not permit usury, it was conceded that usury up to 10% would not necessarily be prosecuted. In effect this was taken as toleration, and although the clergy still preached disapproval, a necessary business practice had been freed from an anachronistic law.

To mobilize the manpower of Britain for war was a task which no eighteenth century government could hope to perform with more than a modest degree of success. The army was disliked and despised by all classes as a danger to liberty and a repository of scoundrels and outcasts. Service in it, moreover, was known to be both unhealthy and degrading. Corporal punishment was too often the mainstay of discipline. Much of the army's duty lay in unhealthy foreign stations such as the West Indies where the ravages of disease were impressive and notorious. Even at home, where the soldiers lived in jerry-built barracks or temporary quarters, the death rate in the army was twice the national average. It was estimated that very few soldiers lived and survived for as long as twelve years in the service. Britain was at a serious disadvantage compared with the other great powers. Her army stood much lower in popular esteem. Its service was more often outside Europe and correspondingly less pleasant. The standard of living being higher than on the continent, it was less easy to tempt the lower classes to enlist, while effective conscription - now just beginning to emerge as a significant military factor - was not yet a possibility. Britain's population was small, in any case, to discharge the responsibilities of a great power. In an age of growing armies, she might find herself reduced to military impotence. Her great strength in war lay of course in her navy and her finances. These both to some extent contributed to reduce her landward striking power. The navy took a great deal of money and a good many men that might otherwise have gone to the army. The same might be said of the economic activities of the nation. There was a reluctance to take too many men out of employment and so send up wages. There was a passion for economy, a fear of over¬ burdening those national resources on which all else depended, that caused ministers even in wartime to reduce the strength of the land force at every opportunity and to refuse at all times to spend enough money on it to make it an attractive service.

Through analysing critically a broad range of visual, oral and written sources, this PhD thesis is centred upon identifying and exploring the prescriptions and perceptions of manhood and manliness in England during the period c.1580-c.1700. It traces shifts in emphasis of the defining characteristics of manhood across the long-seventeenth century. Moreover, the centrality of both social status and the life cycle to the edicts of manhood are raised and analysed. After an initial examination of both professional and popular understanding of biological distinctions between the two sexes, the importance placed on outward conformity to perceptions of gender difference is highlighted, providing a foundation of early modern understanding of sex differentiation, which is then built upon to realise corporeal differences within the male gender. The thesis goes on to consider the extent to which prescriptions of manhood and manliness were mutable at specific life stages, including boyhood, youth and manhood. This provides a framework for examining the plurality and changing contexts of manhood, allowing for the possibility that there were many and sometimes contradictory prescriptions of male conduct and manliness. Finally, the thesis explores the extent to which social rank impacted on the prescriptions of manhood, thus questioning the extent to which these concepts were constructed in the higher echelons of the social strata and disseminated downwards. The conclusion to this thesis gives some consideration to the extent to which old age marked the decline of manhood. It is argued that during the period manhood was understood to be both a specific point in the life cycle, and also as a social status which excluded the majority of men. As a consequence, competing male identities both contradicted and contested the prescripts of manhood making the distinction between manliness and manhood a crucial one in the history of early modern men.