¹ Wrightson, K. and Levine, D., Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525-1700 (London, 1979)Google Scholar; Wrightson, K., “Two Concepts of Order: Justices, Constables and Jurymen in Seventeenth-Century England,” in An Ungovernable People: The English and Their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Brewer, J. and Styles, J. (London, 1980), pp. 21–46Google Scholar, “Alehouses, Order and Reformation in Rural England, 1590-1660,” in Popular Culture and Class Conflict, 1590-1914: Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure, ed. Yeo, S. and Yeo, E. (Brighton, 1981), pp. 1–27Google Scholar; Hunt, W., The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge, Mass., 1983)Google Scholar. Focusing on the county of Essex and backed up by a detailed case study of the village of Terling by K. Wrightson and D. Levine, these studies show how social and cultural differentiation between well-to-do yeomen and an increasing local poor were interrelated with the Puritan zeal for a “Reformation of Manners.” A similar approach is adopted by Seaver, P., “Community Control in Puritan Politics in Elizabethan Suffolk,” Albion 9 (1977): 297–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kent, J., “The English Village Constable, 1580-1642: The Nature and Dilemmas of the Office,” Journal of British Studies 20 (1981): 26–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lenman, B. and Parker, G., “The State, the Community and the Criminal Law in Early Modern Europe,” in Crime and Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500, ed. Gatrell, V. A. C., Lenman, B., and Parker, G. (London, 1980), pp. 11–84Google Scholar; and Hill, C., Society and Puritanism in Pre-revolutionary England (London, 1964), pp. 507–10Google Scholar.

² Spufford, M., Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centures (Cambridge, 1974), p. 299CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a general view of the “reform of popular culture,” see Burke, P., Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; and Muchembled, R., Culture Populaire et Culture des Élites dans la France Moderne, XV^e-XVIII^e Siècles: Essai (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar.

³ Criticism has focused on the question of whether and how Puritanism, economic polarization, and moral reform were linked. See Spufford, M., “Puritanism and Social Control?” (in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Fletcher, A. and Stevenson, J. [Cambridge, 1985], pp. 41–57)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which disputes the link between social control and religious motives and interprets the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century efforts at moral reform as traditional reactions to economic and social upheaval with late medieval origins; in the same vein, see Ingram, M., “The Reform of Popular Culture? Sex and Marriage in Early Modern England” (in Popular Culture in Seventeeth-Century England, ed. Reay, B. [London, 1985], pp. 129–65)Google Scholar. “Religion, Communities and Moral Discipline in Late Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England: Case Studies” (in Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800, ed. von Greyerz, K. [London, 1984], pp. 177—93)Google Scholar, which questioned the typicality of Terling, and “Ridings, Rough Music and the ‘Reform of Popular Culture’ in Early Modern England” (Past and Present, no. 105 [1984], pp. 79–113)Google Scholar; Kent, J., The English Village Constable, 1580-1642: A Social and Administrative Study (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar.

⁴ Sharpe, J. A., Defamation and Sexual Slander in Early Modern England: The Church Courts at York, Borthwick Papers, no. 58 (York, 1980)Google Scholar; George, R. St., ”‘Heated’ Speech and Literacy in Seventeenth-Century New England,” in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Conference Held by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, June 18 and 19, 1982, ed. Hall, D. D. and Allen, D. G., vol. 63 of Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (Boston, Mass., 1984)Google Scholar; Sharpe describes the legal aspects of suits of defamation and slander and the overlapping responsibilities and jurisdictions of ecclesiastical and common law courts in England. On the related development of stricter attitudes, especially toward drink offenses, and on the related development of a new type of parish priest as well as the alternative Arminian position, see Collinson, P., The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559-1625, 2d ed. (Oxford, 1984), pp. 96–112Google Scholar; Tyacke, N., “Arminianism and English Culture,” in Church and State since the Reformation: Papers Delivered to the Seventh Anglo-Dutch Historical Conference, ed. Duke, A. C. and Tamse, C. M. (The Hague, 1981), pp. 94–117Google Scholar; Clark, P., “The Alehouse and the Alternative Society,” in Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth-Century History Presented to Christopher Hill, ed. Pennington, D. and Thomas, K. (Oxford, 1978), pp. 47–72Google Scholar.

⁵ All quotations from sources are based on the microfilm edition of the Earls Colne material: Records of an English Village: Earls Colne, 1400-1750, ed. Macfarlane, A.et al., 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1980–1981)Google Scholar. The collection is accessible in microfilm at Cambridge University Library. Records of the Quarter Session will be abbreviated as Q/SR, the act books of the court of the archdeacon as AD, and the Earls Colne Manor Court Rolls as EC; the Earls Colne Terrier of 1598, also part of the microfilm edition is quoted as Temp Ace 989. Unless otherwise noted, the original material is in the Essex Record Office (RO), Chelmsford. Henry Abbot, EC Manor Court Rolls 1592, Parish Records, Register (D/DPr) 76; John Reynolds, Q/SR 98/69 1586; John Brown AD, Archdeaconry of Colchester Act Books D/ACA 25 1599; John Badcock AD D/ACA 27 1604; Richard Feme AD A/ACA 32 1610. See also Wrightson, “Two Concepts of Order” (n. 1 above), on “neighborliness”; Beier, A. L., Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560-1660 (London, 1985), p. xxGoogle Scholar, on the social context of punishment.

⁶ Chapman, T., “Crime in Eighteenth Century England: E. P. Thompson and the Conflict Theory of Crime,” Criminal Justice History 1 (1980): 139–56Google Scholar. Although his review deals with another sort of offense, the cruical role of the law makes the term “local conflict theory” useful for an earlier period. Anglin, J. P., “The Court of the Archdeacon of Essex, 1571-1609: An Institutional and Social Study” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1965)Google Scholar, stresses the importance of lay informers and plaintiffs, as opposed to the staff of the court, in presenting local railers and drunkards. Sharpe, J. A. (“The History of Violence in England: Some Observations,” Past and Present, no. 108 [1985], pp. 206–15)Google Scholar and Stone, L. (“A Rejoinder,” Past and Present, no. 108 [1985], pp. 216–24Google Scholar) give an impression of the very different conclusions historians have drawn so far from court evidence relating to the general atmosphere of village society. On Keevil, see M. Ingram, “Religion, Communities and Moral Discipline,” in von Greyerz, ed.

⁷ See Macfarlane et al., eds. On the collection, the village, and methodological issues, see Macfarlane, A., Jardine, C., and Harrison, S., Reconstructing Historical Communities (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar; Aylmer, G. E., “Collective Mentalities in Mid-Seventeenth Century England I: The Puritan Outlook,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 36 (1986): 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Puritan view of drinking and alehouses, see ibid., pp. 15-17.

⁸ EC Manor Court Rolls mention butchers from 1525 (D/DPr 99) to 1646 (D/DPr 79). J. Thirsk, “The Farming Regions of England,” in 1500-1640, ed. J. Thirsk, vol. 4 of The Agrarian History of England and Wales (London, 1967), 1–15Google Scholar.

⁹ Christie, M., “Woollen Industry,” in The Victoria History of the County of Essex, ed. Page, W. (London, 1907), 2:380–403Google Scholar; Pilgrim, J. E., “The Rise of the New Draperies in Essex,” Historical Journal of the University of Birmingham 7 (1959–1960): 36–59Google Scholar; Coleman, D. C., “An Innovation and Its Diffusion: The ‘New Draperies,’” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 22 (1969): 417–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ EC Manor Court Rolls, 1561-1620, D/DPr 73, 74, 75, 76, with presentments against “inmates,” “woodstealing,” and “trespass.” Earls Colne baptisms increased from an average of 20.4 per year (1560–69) to 33.2 per year (1611–40); marriages from 5.0 (1560–69) to 9.4 per year (1589–1600) and 7.9 (1611–40); burials from 15.7 (1560–69) to 30.5 per year (1611–1640). EC parish register D/P 209/1/1,2.

¹¹ Earls Colne Terrier (1598) Temp Ace 989.

¹² Q/SR 130/42 on the sale of wool to Colchester clothiers by Earls Colne women, which caused the embargo of Earls Colne by the clothiers until the damage was repaid. Deposition 130/42a with the report of the Harlakendens, Essex RO (see n. 5 above).

¹³ This was a phenomenon not peculiar to Earls Colne; see Hunt, The Puritan Moment (n. 1 above). However, compared with Terling (Wrightson, and Levine, , Poverty and Piety [n. 1 above], p. 35Google Scholar), Earls Colne had more households in the early sixteenth century depending on wages and rated below two pounds (21 of 76 in Terling, 27.6 percent; but 53 of 108 in Earls Colne, 49.1 percent), and more households listed with only one hearth, most of them discharged by certificates in the hearth tax of 1671 (62 of 122 in Terling, 50.8 percent; 134 of 195 in Earls Colne, 68.7 percent); even more extreme is the Earls Colne distribution in 1675, with 142 of 194 listed households with only one hearth or discharged. The Earls Colne distribution resembles the situation in the cloth towns of Bocking and Braintree; see L. B. Martini Brown, “Estimating the Size and Character of the Population of Bocking and Braintree,” (typescript, Research Library of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, Cambridge, 1979), p. 2. EC Lay Subsidy 1524: London, Public Record Office (PRO), Exchequer (E)179/108/154 (servants were subtracted); EC hearth tax 1671: Quarter Session Records, Returns Hearth Tax (Q/RTh) 5; 1675: PRO, E 179/246/22.

¹⁴ Macfarlane, Jardine, and Harrison, p. 145, on the Harlakendens.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 218; Collinson, , Religion of Protestants (n. 4 above), pp. 96–104Google Scholar, on the traditional and the modern academic type of vicar.

¹⁶ Smith, H., The Ecclesiastical History of Essex under the Long Parliament and Commonwealth (Colchester, 1932), pp. 15, 49Google Scholar, on Hawkesby.

¹⁷ Shepard, Thomas, “A Memoir of His Own Life,” in Chronicles of the First Planters and the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, ed. Young, A. (Boston, 1846), pp. 497–558Google Scholar.

¹⁸ AD D/ACA 47, 49 (1630, 1631, 1634), accusations against John Newton, churchwarden, Thomas Fanning, churchwarden, juror, and constable, and John Betts, juror. John Newton explained his refusal to kneel with his “scrupulous conscience.”

¹⁹ Q/SR 246/24 with signatures of Fanning and Betts. See below on this incident.

²⁰ Shepard, p. 519. Shepard was cited before Laud who blamed Shepard for having turned Earls Colne into a Puritan stronghold. However, Shepard's account of what Laud said might be exaggerated.

²¹ The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616-1683, ed. Macfarlane, A. (Oxford, 1976), pp. 33–50Google Scholar, on the Harlakenden's role in the army of the Eastern Association; see Macfar-lane, Jardine, and Harrison, p. 144, on the account of Samuel Rogers, vicar of a neighboring village, and on Richard Harlakenden, a grandson of the first Harlakenden owner of the Earls Colne manors. Rogers considered him a “saint.” Roger Harlakenden went with Shepard to the Massachusetts colony and became a magistrate there. See Savage, J., A Genealogical Dictionary of New England, Showing Three Generations of Those Who Came Before May, 1692, on the Basis of Farmer's Register, 4 vols. (Boston, 1860), 2:356Google Scholar.

²² Various studies describe villages in the Midlands and the North of England with far less integration in wider markets and a less marked social differentiation, e.g., Hey, D., An English Rural Community: Myddle under the Tudors and Stuarts (Leicester, 1974)Google Scholar; Hoskins, W. G., The Midland Peasant: The Economic and Social History of a Leicestershire Village, 2d ed. (London, 1965)Google Scholar.

²³ Quarter Session records with information on Earls Colne run from the 1560s. See Macfarlane et al., eds. (n. 5 above), “Court Records.” Earls Colne offenders were searched in the files from Q/SR 20/15 to Q/SR 345/132. The Archdeaconry Act Books start in the 1560s for Earls Colne as well. Relevant act books were D/ACA 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 18, 20, 22, 25, 27, 10, 34, 37, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, and 55. Other relevant information can be found in the records of the consistory court, London, Greater London Record Office, Bishop of London Consistory Court DL/C/615, 118,619.

Earls Colne Manor Court Rolls D/DPr 99, 91, 74, 76, 78, 70. D/DPr 99 includes transcriptions of 71, 72, and 73; D/DPr 91 includes transcriptions from 74 and 75. In each case, the microfilm edition already mentioned was used. Macfarlane, Jardine, and Harrison provided my main guide on sources and methods. Anglin (n. 6 above), although not discussing Colchester, provides a description of the complicated procedure before the court of the archdeacon of Essex which is useful with regard to Colchester as well. Since the name of each individual offender appears repeatedly in the act books of the court of the archdeacon of Colchester during the process—due to its complicated procedure— only a total prosopographical analysis of all the names, backed by information from the registers of their parishes, can produce reliable evidence on the number of offenders without inflating this number by counting single offenders more than once.

²⁴ The evidence produced here is part of my “Modernität und Mobilität: Angelsächsische Dorfgesellschaften beiderseits des Atlantiks, 1500–1690” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Bielefeld, 1988)Google Scholar.

²⁵ EC parish register D/P 209/1/1,2. On the archdeacons of Colchester, see LeNeve, J., Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae (London, 1716), p. 197Google Scholar.

²⁶ Columns I–III, panel B, show, for each period, the number of those tried before more than one court, generally for more than one offense. A breakdown of cases tried before the Quarter Sessions and before the court of the archdeacon of Colchester is given in Appendix D, Table D1.

²⁷ Collinson, P., Archbishop Grindal, 1519–1583: The Struggle for a Reformed Church (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1979), p. 115Google Scholar.

²⁸ Pearson, A. F. S., Thomas Cartwright and the Elizabethan Settlement, 1535-1603 (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 18–21Google Scholar; ibid., p. 131, on Wythers; Seaver, P., The Puritan Lectureships: The Politics of Religious Dissent, 1562–1662 (Stanford, Calif., 1970), p. 21Google Scholar. From 1565 to 1570, John Calfhill served as archdeacon of Colchester, but he exerted no influence comparable to Pullen or Wythers.

²⁹ On drink offenses, see Wrightson, “Alehouses, Order and Reformation” (n. 1 above).

³⁰ See below, Sec. VI.

³¹ These cases give the archdeacon's court its preeminence among those courts trying petty offenders.

³² On the parish registers, see n. 10 above. There was an interruption in the registration of baptisms and marriages between 1605 and 1609, but the court records give the marital status as well.

³³ Local accusations against “woodstealing” peaked in 1585, when sixteen persons were accused as “woodstealers.” EC D/DPr 91.

³⁴ Vicar Hawkesby, in Earls Colne from 1611 until his death in 1641, “wept very much … and asked pardon … and vowed a constant conformity hereafter” when questioned by the ecclesiastical authorities in Colchester about his contribution to Earls Colne nonconformity; see Smith (n. 16 above), p. 51, which quotes a report of the questioning. Since some offenders feared penalty, they might have tried to conceal their true reasons for being absent from regular service. On Hawkesby, see A. Macfarlane, “Church Records,” p. 14, in Macfarlane et al, eds. (n. 5 above).

³⁵ See App. tables B1 and C1 for a breakdown of the offenses.

³⁶ The women were presented as “wife of ——“ or sometimes “widow of ——“ so that the indentification of their husbands posed no problem.

³⁷ EC D/DPr 99.

³⁸ A total of forty were presented for breaking the assize, twelve of whom were men.

³⁹ EC D/DPr 99.

⁴⁰ Ibid. Goodridge was constable in 1540 and 1541.

⁴¹ For example, Adam Polly, rated in the Lay Subsidies of 1563 and 1567 at five pounds and fined several times between 1557 and 1568.

⁴² See App. table C1 for a breakdown of offenders by evidence of property held.

⁴³ For reference, see n. 23 above.

⁴⁴ See n. 9 above.

⁴⁵ Besides those rates already quoted, the following were also used: Lay Subsidy of 1525, PRO, E 179/108/154; Ship Money, Essex RO Transcripts T/42; Hearth Tax of 1662, Q/RTh 1; Hearth Tax of 1666, PRO, E 179/246/20; and Hearth Tax of 1673, Q/RTh8. The following rentals were used for evidence on land ownership: 1549 (D/DPr 99), 1550 (D/DPr59), 1562(D/DU292/6), 1589(D/DPr 110), 1615(D/DPr 111), 1630(D/DPr 112), 1638 (D/DU 292/7). The terrier of 1598, as a fairly comprehensive list of resident households, was used among the rates. The Lay Subsidies of 1563, 1567 (cited in n. 39 above), 1599, 1623, and 1627 (PRO, E 179/111/509, E 179/112/588, and E 179/112/638) were used as another indicator of some substance among the rentals.

⁴⁶ Jurors could be determined from the Manor Court Rolls for each period.

⁴⁷ Even when the female offenders, who were less likely to appear in rates or rentals, are subtracted from the total number of offenders with no evidence of property, the percentages of male offenders with no such evidence are clearly higher than those of the juryman group. See table 10. All percentages are rounded. Although percentages for offenders without evidence of property decrease slightly when women are subtracted, the overall image is unchanged.

⁴⁸ See n. 13 above.

⁴⁹ In the 1675 hearth tax, the 128 discharged households and the fourteen households with only one hearth added to 73.2 percent of all the listed households. Note that this was the proportion only among listed heads of household.

⁵⁰ On the vital role of local constables, see Wrightson, “Two Concepts of Order” (n. 1 above).

⁵¹ This information was gathered out of all the Earls Colne hearth tax lists.

⁵² Status given to constables hint in a similiar direction: the status of “labourer” was not given to any of the Earls Colne constables serving after 1620; to those serving from 1651 to 1680, neither the term “labourer” nor the term “husbandman” was given either in wills or before the courts.

⁵³ P. J. R. King, “Judical Discretion and the Problems of Young Adulthood, 1740–1815” (typescript, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, Cambridge, 1984), points out the special problems courts had with age groups in a later period.

⁵⁴ Offenders, 1591–1650, thirty years and older when accused: Robert Abell ( = Abott), baptized 1566, Archdeacon's Court (AD) 1609 “not frequenting his church”; John Brett, baptized 1562, Consistory Court 1615, “staying excommunicated”; Richard Harlakenden, baptized 1568, AD 1606, “not receiving communion”; Thomas Payne, baptized 1579, AD 1614, “absenting from church”; Robert Polly, baptized 1582, AD 1612, “suffering bells ringing at unreasonable times”; Jane Pecke, née Newman, baptized 1577, married 1596, Quarter Sessions (QS) 1626, “drawing beer without license”; Robert Knight, baptized 1589, QS 1624, “victualling without license”; Richard Rookes, baptized 1600, AD 1630, “not coming to church”; John Smith, baptized 1604, AD 1638, “making hay upon sabbath day”; Benedict Scott, baptized 1575, AD 1636, “brewing on Sunday”; William Warde, baptized 1602, AD 1637, “drinking in the fields.” Neither the offenders nor their crimes show any striking similarity to one another.

⁵⁵ Henry Abbot, baptized 1564, EC 1592-AD 1611, 8s. Ship Money. Edward Potter, baptized 1585, EC 1609-AD 1622, 8s. Ship Money. Sam Game, Jr., baptized 1603, AD 1623-AD 1630, 1s. 6d. Ship Money. Thomas Prior, AD 1591-AD 1594, 2s. Ship Money.

⁵⁶ Earls Colne Manor Court Rolls, 1542, 1543, 1544, 1554, 1561, D/DPr 99.

⁵⁷ EC Court Rolls D/DPr 91 1586.

⁵⁸ AD D/ACA 22. How effectively this concern changed individual behavior is, however, open to debate. Take the case of Maria Graunte, who was presented before the archdeacon's court in 1592, 1594, 1600, 1601, 1606, and 1609 (D/ACA 20, 22, 25, 27) for fornication with various men, one of them Thomas Allen, without any effect on her behavior during these seventeen years. Her son, Thomas “Graunt also Allen,” was baptized in 1600 (D/P 209/1/1). Maria Graunte was, however, presented for incontinency with Thomas Allen until 1620 (D/ACA 43). The case of the Graunte/Allen family is perhaps an example of a bastard-prone group in the village: the children of Thomas Allen, Jr., with Lydia Payne, baptized in 1622, 1624, and 1627, were registered as illegitimate offspring of Lydia Payne, since the father, Thomas Allen, Jr., never married the mother of his children (D/P 209/1/2), following the example of his father with Maria Graunte. However, village society somehow recognized their relation as legitimate, and one of their children, Robert, baptized 1627, appeared in the hearth tax of 1675 as “Robert Payne also Allen.”

⁵⁹ See Sec. VI below.

⁶⁰ Macfarlane, Jardine, and Harrison (n. 7 above), p. 145.

⁶¹ Q/SR 246/24 (1624).

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ The local officers signing the petition were: Henry Abbot, 7s. Ship Money, juror 1636–55, constable 1628 and 1633; John Betts, Lay Subsidy 1629 20s., juror 1628–32, AD 1631/34 D/ACA 47/48 for refusing to kneel; Richard Kempe, 1s. Ship Money, sidesman; Daniel Lea, 1s. Ship Money, juror 1616–39; Thomas Smith, 4s. Ship Money, juror 1601–36, constable, 1604 and 1624. Of those presented only John Hudson was mentioned in another source as well; he was presented for an assault two years later (Q/SR 254/4).

⁶⁴ AD D/ACA 50.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ Ibid. Allen was baptized 1617, D/P 209/1/2.

⁶⁷ Allen was the author of The Glory of Christ's Light (London, 1669)Google Scholar; see Macfarlane, , ed., Josselin (n. 21 above), p. 675Google Scholar. Spufford, M., Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth Century England (London, 1981), p. 184Google Scholar, on chapbooks and Quakers.

⁶⁸ Q/S Depositions 5 Bundles (BA) 2/43, 1641.

⁶⁹ Macfarlane, Jardine, and Harrison, p. 145, on the local feud in the aftermath of the Harlakenden takeover.

⁷⁰ PRO, Assizes ASSI 35/95/1 1652, on the quarrel between the Harlakendens and the Abbots. See Smith (n. 16 above), p. 222, on Abbot's imprisonment in 1657.

⁷¹ Macfarlane, , ed. Josselin (n. 21 above), app., p. 684Google Scholar, on Garrard.

⁷² Ibid., June, 1661, p. 481.

⁷³ Ibid., app., p. 675.

⁷⁴ Collinson, , Archbishop Grindal (n. 27 above), p. 115Google Scholar. Smith (Ecclesiastical History, intro., [n. 16 above]) considers Earls Colne to be the most important place in the hundred of Lexden. According to the number of households listed in the hearth taxes, it ranks among the dozen largest Cambridgeshire parishes with more than 110 listed house-holds; see Spufford, M., Contrasting Communities (n. 2 above), p. 312Google Scholar.