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The Social status of some seventeenth-century rural Dissenters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
I feel I must ask the indulgence of this meeting for offering any contribution. I am primarily a social and economic historian, dealing with village communities in Cambridgeshire. Until very recently, I have been trying to establish the economic framework within which these communities worked – the way, in fact, they made their bread and butter, or rather, lard. But I am now trying to extend my terms of reference to include that part of the villagers’ lives which revolved round the parish church, or, occasionally, the nonconformist chapel. As a first step I have been trying to discover the exact social status of villagers who were active members of nonconfomist groups in the later seventeenth century.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1972
References
page no 203 note 1 Cole, Alan, ‘The Social Origins of the Early Friends’, Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society, XLVIII (London 1957) pp 99–118 Google Scholar and Vann, [R. T.], ‘Quakerism and the Social Structure [in the Interregnum]’, PP, XLIII (1969) pp 71–91 Google Scholar.
page no 203 note 2 The median wealth of the eighteen labourers whose inventories occur amongst those preserved in the Consistory Court of Ely records from the 1660s was £15. That of the twenty-four husbandmen was £30; that of the fifty-five craftsmen was £40, and that of the fifty-eight yeomen was £180.
page no 204 note 1 Spufford, Margaret, ‘People, Land and Literacy in Cambridgeshire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Leicester, 1970, pp 68–74, 107-20, 200-3Google Scholar.
page no 204 note 2 Spufford, Margaret, ‘The Schooling of the Peasantry in Cambridgeshire, 1575-1700’, Agricultural History Review, XVIII (London 1970) pp 130-47Google Scholar.
page no 204 note 3 William Salt Library, Stafford. Soon to be printed in the Staffordshire Historical Collections, ed A. Whiteman,
page no 204 note 4 4.4 per cent in Cambridgeshire; 4.5 per cent, or 1: 22, over the country.
page no 204 note 5 Spufford, Margaret, ‘The Dissenting Churches in Cambridgeshire from 1660 to 1700’, P[roceedings of the] C[ambridge] [Antiquarian] S[ociety], LXI (Cambridge 1968) p 75 Google Scholar.
page no 205 note 1 PRO, E. 179/244/23.
page no 205 note 2 [Lyon, G.] Turner, Originai Records [of Early Nonconformity under Persecution and Indulgence (London/Leipzig 1911)] 1, p 36 Google Scholar, II, p 863.
page no 205 note 3 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Rawlinson D. 1480 fols 123-6.
page no 205 note 4 The median wealth of those who died in southern Cambridgeshire in the decade 1661-70 and can be identified in a Hearth Tax return as occupants of houses with one hearth was £24; that of a man occupying a house with two hearths was £60; that of a man with three hearths was £141, and that of a man with four or more hearths was £360. Compare with the figures in n 2, p 203 above. Spufford, Margaret, ‘The Significance of the Cambridgeshire Hearth Tax’, PCAS, LV (1962) pp 53–64 Google Scholar.
page no 205 note 5 Twelve out of fifty-two householders. I have throughout, in identifying nonconformists, used a combination of the 1674 Hearth Tax, with Turner, Original Records, the Congregational church list of 1675, and, where there were Quakers, the Volume of Sufferings, 1, pp 101-35 the Friends’ Meeting House, London and the Quaker Register for Cambridgeshire, PRO, R. G/6/1219. I have also used as supplementary evidence two episcopal visitations, of 1679 and 1682, which contain many names of parishioners presented for attending conventicles, without, of course, their adherence. Cambridge University Library, Ely Diocesan Records, B 2/6 fols 13-28 v and 39-53 v.
page no 207 note 1 Calamy Revised, ed Mathews, A. G. (Oxford 1934) p 69 Google Scholar.
page no 207 note 2 Cambridgeshire Record Office, R. 59/14/5/9 (f).
page no 207 note 3 See footnote 1, p 208.
page no 208 note 1 Since this paper was written, my attention has kindly been drawn by Mr Dennis Jeeps of Willingham, to a list of presentments of Willingham people in a book of miscellaneous court records in the Ely diocesan records in the Cambridge University Library (E.D.R. D/2/54 fols 39 V-40V). This list made in 1673 gives more dissenters’ names than I have drawn from the other sources listed in n 5, p 205 for Willingham, and adds no less than thirteen more men assessed in the Hearth Tax, some of whom were certainly Congregationalist according to the 1675 list, and most of whom were probably so. I fully expected that a more complete identification of the Willingham dissenters would destroy the contrast between it and the other villages, and show that nonconformist opinions were spread throughout Willingham society, as they were elsewhere. In fact, the contrast was confirmed. Even though two men in the 1673 presentments did live in houses with only one hearth, they were not representative, and the overwhelming majority (88 per cent) of the dissenters identified in the Hearth Tax lived in houses with two and three hearths. The table on p 211 has been adjusted to include these men, and any discrepancy between it and the text is accounted for by this late addition to the article.
page no 210 note 1 Vann, ‘Quakerism and the Social Structure’, p 78.
page no 210 note 2 Ibid, p 91.