Nineteenth century Portsmouth experienced greater continuity of development than most industrial towns. Its size, the military and naval presence, and a large working class, were already well-established by the late eighteenth century. State ownership meant that the Yard was not producing for a competitive product market; other than politically-inspired demands for economy, management had little incentive to rationalize production. The civilian trades were more typical of other areas: mainly small-scale clothing production, often employing women and often based upon outwork. Thanks to the large state sector and the consequent underdevelopment of commercial activities, Portsmouth had few extremely wealthy inhabitants, but many in comfortable circumstances. The most wealthy were often women, followed by retailers, commercial men, building employers, brewers, and a few professional men. Despite a widely-held belief that the town was not sharply differentiated, by wealth, cultural activities were greatly affected by class and status. Yard officials were infrequent participants in high-status activities, unless they held existing naval officer rank. Officers and the Southsea elite were the most frequent participants. The Borough continued to be dominated by %Thig-Liberals after the 1830s. In particular, the role of the Carter family was undiminished for some years. Growth of the electorate, fears for the future of the Dockyard, decline of reformist xenthusiasm, and resentment at Whig policies fed an expanding populist Toryism. Always characterized by high participation by retailers, the status of Councillors fell steadily. Rating was the most important issue in local politics. Authority in the Yard was shared, between the Admiralty, local management, and key groups of craftsmen. Most Yard workers saw no need for trade union organization. Friendly benefits were already covered by non-contributory provision from the employer; repre s ent ationh took place through the committee system and petitioning. Only with the onset of serious demarcation disputes did the labour force start to organize. Outside the Yard, the only permanent organizations were among skilled building workers. Workers were more likely to organize as consumers, through cooperatives; local social leaders could be asked to take up Dockyard issues. The concept of social control has limited value. The i834 Poor Law Amendment Act was not fully implemented, and the provision of a workhouse was unwillingly undertaken. Charities were more important in creating or confirming status than in controlling working people. While both poor relief and education were seen as means of social control, working people evaded poor relief through friendly societies or Admiralty provision, and schools met many disciplinary difficulties. The Borough Police demonstrated class bias; only with difficulty were the police themselves brought to accept their role. Most moral reform movements were conspicuous for their failure to secure their ends.

This case-history explores the governing purposes of the Dorset gentry from the early 1790's until the mid 1830's. It is not a conventional political and administrative history. It seeks rather to reveal the gentry's governing purposes through the processes and contexts of their construction of social and political identities. It takes as its starting point the idea of the materiality of language itself The idea that language does not reflect or refer to a pre-existing anterior reality but creates meaning by distinguishing explicitly or implicitly what something is from what it is not. This case-history explores the gentry's construction of the terms of an overarching discourse I have called the 'common rules of social life'. In particular the evolving narrative terms of patriarchal oeconomy, political economy and paternalism. It does so to answer the question: 'By what means and for what purposes did this form of discourse and its narrative traditions become established by the gentry to prevail at this time in the past? ' The answers are found in the ways and the contexts in which the gentry used this discourse. First, how did the gentry exercise their power so that this discourse might come into being. Here the structures and institutions of the Commission of the Peace are significant. In particular the ways in which power was monopolised and used by a small fraction of active magistrates. This fraction was active in the committees of the Commission of the Peace and at quarter and petty sessions. Their power came to be deployed to reform county government and poor relief to impose 'natural' moral market relations on Dorset society. Second, how was the discourse and its constituent elements exercised by the gentry to constitute identities, and how did they determine how people thought and acted? Here the case-history reveals the gentry's construction of identities for Dorset, the parish and the poor. In particular the construction of an identity of Dorset as an arena of natural economic laws and moral endeavour. These identities were taught to rich and poor alike as part of the gentry's purpose to remoralise Dorset society.

Katherine Jones, better known to scholars as Lady Ranelagh, was one of the most eminent, politically influential and intellectually respected women in seventeenth-century England. By the time of her death in 1691, she had the rare honour of having been esteemed by every ruler and his government from Cromwell to William and Mary. She was active in diverse intellectual networks across most of the seventeenth century, including the Great Tew Circle, the Hartlib Circle, and the ‘invisible college’, and was associated with many Fellows of the Royal Society during the first three decades of the Society’s existence. As pious as she was intellectually dexterous, Lady Ranelagh elicited respect and admiration from a group of contemporaries who were remarkably diverse in their political opinions, religious views and social status. Over the past decade, there have been several brief surveys of Lady Ranelagh’s life and works; this, however, is the first doctoral thesis to focus exclusively on her. By drawing on over one hundred of her letters and three receipt books associated with her, together with references to her in the diaries of her contemporaries and extant letters written to her, this study contextualises her medical and scientific writings in contemporary religious and socio-political thought. By manipulating generic conventions and employing a rhetoric of modesty, Lady Ranelagh presented her intellectual contributions in a manner appropriate for a gentlewoman. Her extant manuscripts make Lady Ranelagh a representative case study of how women could participate in the radical medical and scientific advances of seventeenth-century England. This interdisciplinary approach creates an informed conversation between two subjects which rarely interact — history of science and medicine, and early modern women’s literature — to consider the material practice and social networks of a remarkably important, but hereunto almost ‘lost’, woman.

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This thesis explores the relationship between kinship networks and Elizabethan politics. Elizabeth I’s Carey cousins, part of the larger Boleyn kinship network, provide the case study. Serving her through three generations dating from before her ascension to her death, Elizabeth enjoyed the benefits and tribulations of the constant presence of her extended family. Extending Elton’s ‘points of contact’ model to include not only court, privy council and parliament but also military and foreign service, allows analysis of the role of kinship networks in Elizabethan government. The gender inclusive nature of kinship networks demonstrates that women participated more fully in the political landscape than has hitherto been accepted. The Carey presence across the extended model provided stability and served as a bulwark against the factionalism so often assumed to have been a leading characteristic of the Elizabethan court. The Careys entered the family business of politics and government and kept Elizabeth within a family context thereby moderating the image of the solitary female ruler Gloriana. This work is divided into four main sections. After a discussion of the methodological issues and a review of the literature, chapter three analyses the value of kinship networks, the wider royal and non-royal relations and introduces the first generation of Careys including their relationships with Elizabeth before 1558. Chapter four begins with Elizabeth’s accession in 1558, her sense of family and the initial placement of Carey cousins in the new government. Chapters five and six place the family within an extended ‘points of contact’ model. Chapter seven juxtaposes a dynastic chronology, a key methodological approach for analyzing family participation in political events, in this case the arrival of Mary Queen of Scots in England. The thesis ends with the conclusion that the family was the essential political unit of the late Tudor period and that consequently men and women were both active pursuing dynastic ambitions and therefore political ambitions. The Careys, as a prominent dynasty, also benefitted from their consanguineal relationship with the queen herself placing them at the centre of the Elizabethan political scene. Extensive appendices provide reference tables of Elizabethan relatives both royal and non-royal, the Careys specifically, their participation in the various ‘points of contact’ model and a sample chronology. Also included are transcriptions of letters written by women of the Carey family illustrating their use of kinship in shaping the political landscape.

I examine the cultural lives, social relationships and ethnic identities of 16 to 20 year old Sikh females in Nottingham. Using an interview schedule, I interviewed my respondents individually and, in private. I present and analyse my findings within a framework which seeks to identify the major factors which can be said to influence the socio-cultural lives and identities of these 'second generation' Sikhs. These factors are either internal to their community (for example, caste membership) or, are externally imposed (for instance, racial prejudice and discrimination). In my framework, I also employ three theoretical concepts. These are 'situational ethnicity’, 'bi-culturalism' and 'social structural pluralism'. In examining my respondents' cultural norms and values, I ask three major questions. First, do they maintain, modify or abandon the Sikh religion and other (Punjabi) traditions? Second, are they acculturated into British norms and values? Third, do they experience 'culture conflict' and, if so, what strategies do they use to reconcile the divergent socio-cultural systems into which they are socialized? My enquiry into their social relationships entails an examination of the ethnic origins of their female friends and (future) spouses in order to establish whether they are socially encapsulated within their ethnic group at the primary group level of relationships. Finally, I focus on their self-defined identities; their perceptions of racial hostility and their perceptions of cultural differences between Sikhs and non-Sikhs in order to examine the extent to which they maintain a distinctive ethnic identity. Briefly, my findings indicate that although partial acculturation into British norms and values has indeed occurred, most Sikh traditions and a distinctive (Sikh) ethnic identity continue to survive in Nottingham. Furthermore, the continuation of endogamous marriages ensures that my respondents remain socially encapsulated. However, such encapsulation is far less pronounced in their friendship patterns.

This thesis addresses the governance of Nottinghamshire during the first thirty three years of the reign of Edward III. The time-frame is significant as it seeks to re-dress an imbalance in the study of provincial societies during the later Middle Ages, which hitherto have largely concentrated on the second half of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The most important belief to be addressed is that those who were engaged in the governance of Nottinghamshire were drawn from a considerably wider section of society than is apparent from previous county or regional gentry-based studies. It will also demonstrate the close nature of the relationship between the shire and the crown, which manifested itself in a wide variety of channels of communication. Chapters one and two look at the formal structures of government in Nottinghamshire. The focus for these chapters will be upon the whole of the county, as this reflects the crown's approach to governance. Chapter one will address the offices of local government, and chapter two will look at the pivotal relationship between the locality and the crown, concentrating upon parliamentary representatives and petitions. These chapters will also assess the impact of war and the Black Death upon Nottinghamshire. For subsequent chapters, the geographical focus of the study will be reduced to that of south Nottinghamshire, which will facilitate a more in-depth analysis of law and order in chapter three, and landholding in chapter four. The study will then -conclude with a case-study upon a smaller area within south Nottinghamshire. Throughout, this thesis will address significant historiographical debates. The most important of which relates to the impact upon provincial societies and local government of bastard feudalism, and to the related debates over the vertical and horizontal ties of lordship, and to the existence or otherwise of an 'independent gentry', and of 'county communities'.

This study sets out to establish the link between enclosure and agricultural improvement in a group of parishes in north-west Lindsey, Lincolnshire between the sixteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century. In particular it emphasises the continuity of enclosure history through time, rather than concentrating only on the period of parliamentary enclosure as has often been the case in the past, and on links to agricultural improvement which include land reclamation, draining and warping. It shows that a simple explanation of enclosure in terms of driving up rents and allowing individual farmers to take their own farming decisions, fails to take into account the particular local circumstances of this area. Using a combination of enclosure documents and related material such as glebe terriers, land tax assessments, census materials,the 1801 agricultural returns and estate papers it sets out to show how agricultural improvement transformed both the landscape and the farming techniques in this area. In this process it covers a range of related topics including landownership, population, and the socio-economic structure of the villages of north-west Lindsey. It shows clearly that in this area enclosure is as much as anything associated with land drainage, and with improvements brought about by warping. These processes were interwoven, and separating enclosure out as a single movement underestimates the complexity of the farming arrangements required to ensure the most productive farming in this area.

This thesis explores the interaction of bishops with both the English crown and members of late medieval society more generally by focusing on petitions and the supplicatory strategies adopted by bishops in their endeavours to secure legal remedy. Aside from revealing that bishops were often indistinguishable from lay petitioners in terms of the content of their petitions, with many of their complaints arising from their role as great landlords and tenants-in-chief rather than relating to the exercise of episcopal office, this research has also demonstrated that distinct supplicatory cultures separated the clergy from the laity. Notably, whereas petitions from lay supplicants often incorporated crown-alignment rhetoric into their petitions, thereby mirroring the language of ‘common profit’ found in common petitions, petitions from bishops reflected the supplicatory character of the clerical gravamina and presented requests for the exclusive interest of the church. As such, petitions from bishops, alongside the clerical gravamina, encapsulated a set of values, manifest through the use of language and rhetoric, which sought to assert the institutional independence of the church. Yet, despite being part of a supplicatory culture which sought to defend church autonomy and ecclesiastical jurisdictional integrity, the petitionary system in England sapped the supplicatory strength of the clergy and reduced their ability to defend their autonomy in the face of royal demands.

The thesis explores social transformations in the settlement and economy of Anglo-Saxon England, between c.450 and 1100 AD, by using detailed case studies of rural settlement remains within a sub-region, coastal West Norfolk, to construct a systematic narrative of their development. The archaeological evidence for analysis is mainly composed of portable cultural material from rural settlements, combined with surveyed and excavated evidence of their morphology. Multiple and superimposed forms of evidence such as geophysical survey and fieldwalking survey are employed to analyse the diversity of rural settlements and the material expressions of social and economic change in this period and to challenge existing models. The key findings of this thesis are that surface-find sites discovered by metal detectorists, upon detailed investigation, show themselves to be complex rural settlements engaged in trade and exchange. Importantly, these sites also have the capacity to change over time. The findings of this thesis enables a re-characterisation of early medieval rural social identities as complex, dynamic and ever changing. It is argued that the employment of integrated survey methodologies in other sub-regions of Europe might achieve similar results.