No institution had as many functions in early modern society as the household. It was, of course, the birthplace and nursery for each new generation. It competed with the school, the church, and the alehouse as a site of learning, worshipping, and socialising. And it served as a metaphor for a variety of other social relationships, political hierarchies, religious beliefs, and ecclesiastical systems. Hence, given its central place in the social and cultural landscape, it would be impossible to overlook the influence of the household on English economic life. In both practice and theory, the later Stuart economy depended on this crucial institution.

At a practical level, a huge proportion of the nation's production happened in the home – a versatile space which regularly doubled as a farmhouse, workshop or retail store. Until the rise of the factory, the ‘household-family’ was the primary economic unit, with members of the nuclear family working alongside ‘fictive kin’ such as journeymen, apprentices, domestic servants, and servants-in-husbandry. In fact, domestic employment probably reached its peak sometime in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, a time when a large proportion – probably a majority – of the hired labour force consisted of resident servants and apprentices. Moreover, the household provided an ideal environment for the growth of ‘proto-industry’ – both as a primary source of income and as a by-employment. Finally, it must be remembered that these domestic units not only produced most of England's goods and wealth in this period but also provided the chief site for decisions and negotiations concerning the allocation of scarce resources among husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and workers, and various other cohabitants.