The object of this study is to examine the economic, religious, political and social aspects of landowning on the Devon and Somerset border, at a time of change and challenge after the Restoration. It considers in particular whether landowners were able to abandon the animosities that had been aroused by the Civil War. The first chapter is an introduction to the region and its landowners, together with a discussion of the sources used. It points out the themes which will be developed in later chapters. This is followed by a study of landowning, showing its progress in the parish of Uffculme in Devon. Chapter 3 takes a look at society at a level below that of the middling gentry, to the trademen and yeomen who were beginning to make their way into the landowning class, and provides some case studies. Chapters 4 and 5 concern the economic aspects of landowning, including agriculture, estate management and the cloth trade and show how with careful husbanding of resources an estate could be made to pay even in difficult times, but how the shift of the London cloth trade to the Exeter ports adversely affected some estates. Nonconformity was closely linked with the cloth trade and the landowner's beliefs and their connection with levels of nonconformity are discussed in chapter 6. Religious attitudes were closely linked to political outlook in the seventeenth-century and political themes are examined in chapter 7. The first section discusses the divided society that had developed at the end of the 1670s and the second contains a description of the MPs, the electorate, the conduct of elections, and the issues involved. Chapter 8 is concerned with prevailing social attitudes to patriarchialism and contract, viewing three groups within the household, that of husbands and wives, parents and children, and master/mistress and servant. The final chapter is a conclusion of how well the ideas with which the study was begun have been supported by the evidence adduced.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:337727 |
| Date | January 1996 |
| Creators | Flower-Smith, Ruth Priscilla |
| Publisher | University of Exeter |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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