The Politics of Social Conflict: The Peak Country, 1520–1770

by Andy Wood

• ISBN13: 9780521561143
• ISBN10: 0521561140
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-09-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book provides an alternative approach to the history of social conflict, popular politics and plebeian culture in the early modern period. Based on a close study of the Peak Country of Derbyshire c. 1520-1770, it has implications for understandings of class identity, popular culture, riot, custom and social relations. A detailed reconstruction of economic and social change within the region is followed by an in-depth examination of the changing cultural meanings of custom, gender, locality, skill, literacy, orality and magic. The local history of social conflict sheds light upon the nature of political engagement and the origins of early capitalism. Important insights are offered into early modern social and gender identities, civil war allegiances, the appeal of radical ideas and the making of the English working class. Above all, the book challenges the claim that early modern England was a hierarchical, 'pre-class' society.

Table of Contents

List of figures	x
List of tables	x
List of maps	xi
Preface	xiii
List of abbreviations	xvi
Introduction `Terms we did not understand': landscape, place and perceptions	1	(9)
Social relations and popular culture in early modern England	10	(31)
Class and social history	10	(8)
Rethinking class in early modern England	18	(8)
Local cultures and popular cultures	26	(15)
Part I The structures of inequality
Economy and society in the Peak Country, c. 1520--1570	41	(16)
Technology and industry	41	(4)
Land, wealth and community	45	(8)
Landscape and population	53	(4)
Industrialization and social change, c. 1570--1660	57	(32)
Population change and technological innovation	57	(9)
Enclosure and common right	66	(6)
The mining industry and its workforce	72	(17)
The Peak Country as an industrial region, c. 1660--1770	89	(24)
The economics of regional identity	89	(9)
The priorities of capital	98	(4)
Poverty and labour	102	(11)
Social conflict and early capitalism	113	(14)
The Peak Country and the Industrial Revolution	113	(3)
Custom and economic change	116	(11)
Part II The conditions of community
`The memory of the people': custom, law and popular culture	127	(36)
Custom, law and popular culture in early modern England	127	(10)
`Time out of memorie of man': mining custom in the early sixteenth century	137	(6)
`A kind of levelling custom': the opponents of free mining	143	(7)
The uses of literacy: speech, writing and custom	150	(13)
The politics of custom	163	(16)
Law, order and the sense of the past	163	(6)
Gender, place and the construction of social identity	169	(10)
Community, identity and culture	179	(24)
Gender, work and identity	179	(9)
Community and local culture	188	(7)
The supernatural and the underworld	195	(8)
Part III The politics of social conflict
`Pyllage uppon the poore mynorz': sources of social conflict, 1500--1600	203	(15)
Late medieval quiescence	203	(6)
The `troublesome people' of the Tudor High Peak	209	(9)
`All is hurly burly here': local histories of social conflict, 1600--1640	218	(31)
The confrontation over free mining in the Wapentake of Wirksworth	219	(4)
The politics of a parish and the King's Attorney-General	223	(8)
The `illegal combinations' of the High Peak	231	(7)
Riot, litigation and free mining rights in the High Peak	238	(11)
The Peak in context: riot and popular politics in early Stuart England	249	(18)
Redefining popular politics	249	(5)
Gender and the social basis of plebeian politics	254	(7)
Traditions of resistance	261	(6)
`Prerogative hath many proctors': the English Revolution and the plebeian politics of the Peak, 1640--1660	267	(28)
War and allegiance	267	(10)
The Levellers, the miners and the eighth Earl of Rutland	277	(9)
The transformation and defeat of the miners' political project	286	(9)
The experience of defeat? The defence of custom, 1660--1770	295	(21)
Changing interests, changing alliances	296	(7)
Resistance, protest and survival	303	(13)
The making of the English working class in the Derbyshire Peak Country	316	(10)
Bibliography	326	(20)
Index	346