¹ This version has been slightly expanded for publication. A fuller version of pp. 91–105 was given as the Gregynog Lectures at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 1976.

² The Oxford English Dictionary gives no quotations to indicate the origin of this term. I have not been able to trace it before the 1870s, when it was used by Furley, Robert in A History of the Weald of Kent (3 vols., Ashford, 1871–1874)Google Scholar. It probably derives from the Home Circuit of the assize judges.

³ See, for example, my ‘Kentish Family Portrait’ in Rural Change and Urban Growth, 1500–1800, ed. Chalklin, C. W. and Havinden, M. A. (London, 1974), pp. 193–4Google Scholar.

⁴ First recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary in 1834, when it was evidently not a new expression.

⁵ Everitt, Alan, The Pattern of Rural Dissent: the Nineteenth Century (Leicester University: Dept. of English Local History, Occasional Papers, 2nd Ser., No. 4, 1972)Google Scholar.

⁶ See my forthcoming book on this subject, Continuity and Colonization: English Settlement and the Kentish Evidence (Leicester, 1980)Google Scholar.

⁷ V.C.H., Cambridgeshire, vi, 152, 165.

⁸ As is still evident from the fact that most of the isolated farmsteads and many of the woodland names in the earliest fruit-growing area, around Faversham and Sittingbourne, are recorded in medieval or pre-Conquest documents.

⁹ See my forthcoming article, ‘Place-Names and Pays’ in Nomina iii, 1979Google Scholar.

¹⁰ These views have recently been challenged by Sawyer, P. H. in his ‘Introduction: Early Medieval English Settlement’, Medieval Settlement: Continuity and Change, ed. Sawyer, P. H. (London, 1976), pp. 1–7Google Scholar. For a critique of Professor Sawyer's views, see my forthcoming book referred to in n.6 above, where the relationship of settlement origins and dating to types of countryside is explored in detail. I should not dispute that some forest settlements may be very early; but when topographical as well as documentary evidence is taken into account, it seems indisputable that permanent and continuous colonization (as distinct from summer pasturing) in areas like the Weald began late in the Old English period and was far from complete in the eleventh century. When closely examined, the evidence that Professor Sawyer cites does not in fact conflict with that view.

¹¹ Such settlements usually arose through encroachment on common land, or on parish boundaries, during a period of rapid population growth, particularly c. 1570–1640. See, for example, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, IV, 1500–1640, ed. Thirsk, Joan (London, 1967), pp. 409–12Google Scholar. Keysoe Row developed on the boundary of Keysoe and Bolnhurst; Whitley Row on that of Sundridge and Chevening.

¹² Lydd is recorded in a charter of 774, much earlier than any other marshland settlement. Its Roman remains include an earthwork, a track, and second-century pottery. There is Saxon work in the church. (Wallenberg, J. K., Kentish Place-Names (Uppsala, 1931), p. 55Google Scholar; Copley, G. J., An Archaeology of South-East England: a Study in Continuity (London, 1958), p. 277)Google Scholar.

¹³ Cf. Everitt, Alan, ‘River and Wold: Reflections on the Historical Origin of Regions and Pays’, Journal of Historical Geography, III, i (1977), 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nearly all the parishes in a typical ‘wold’ area, such as the West Cambridgeshire uplands, are recorded in Domesday Book.

¹⁴ Ibid.; Hooke, Delia, ‘Early Cotswold Woodland’, Journal of Historical Geography, IV, iv (1978), 333–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alan Everitt, ‘The Wolds once More,’ ibid, V, i (1979), 67–7.

¹⁵ See, for example, Agrarian History, ed. Thirsk, ch. 1; Thirsk, Joan ‘Industries in the Countryside’, Essays in the Economic and Social History of Tudor and Stuart England, ed. Fisher, F. J. (Cambridge, 1961)Google Scholar; Spufford, Margaret, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ford, W. J., ‘Some Settlement Patterns in the Central Region of the Warwickshire Avon’, Medieval Settlement, ed. Sawyer, , pp. 274–94Google Scholar.

¹⁶ The fields of Carlton-cum-Willingham in Cambridgeshire, referred to earlier, provide a good example of the way field-systems tend to become eccentric towards the outer edge of a common-field countryside. Those in the Granta valley to the south-west of Carlton, by contrast, broadly conform to the classic common-field system.

¹⁷ To some extent the sites of deserted medieval villages have been related to different types of terrain; but a more rigorous examination is desirable. In particular the word ‘village’ itself needs to be more carefully defined. In areas of scattered settlement, such as Kent, the idea is often inappropriate, and Deserted Medieval Village status has been claimed for many isolated church sites where in all probability no true village ever existed.

¹⁸ By Clark, Peter in English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution: Religion, Politics, and Society in Kent, 1500–1640 (Hassocks, 1977)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Everitt, Alan, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion, 1640–60 (Leicester, 1966)Google Scholar; Smith, A. Hassell, County and Court (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar; Fletcher, Anthony, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex, 1600–1660 (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Morrill, J. S., Cheshire, 1630–1660: County Government and Society during the English Revolution (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar.

²⁰ The best-known study is Sir Francis Hill's four-volume work on Lincoln. Some of the more recent V.C.H. volumes, such as those covering York and Warwick, are also valuable in this connexion. In another category is Armstrong's, Alan quantitative and sociological study, Stability and Change in an English County Town: a Social Study of York, 1801–51 (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar.

²¹ Cf. Alan Everitt, ‘The Marketing of Agricultural Produce’, Agrarian History, ed. Thirsk; Everitt, Alan, ‘The Primary Towns of England’, The Local Historian, xi, 1975Google Scholar. I owe the phrase ‘cardinal’ markets to Goodacre, J. D., ‘Lutterworth in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’ Leicester Ph.D. thesis, 1977Google Scholar, chapter I.

²² For the sources employed, see Appendix at end of this article.

²³ Shoemakers formed the most numerous occupational group in four of the five towns: in Northampton (1768), fifteen per cent of the population; in Shrewsbury (1796), twelve per cent; in Canterbury (1818), eleven per cent; in Exeter (1803), six per cent. In Maidstone (1802) papermakers formed the largest recorded group (thir-teen per cent), closely followed by the Medway hoymen and watermen (eleven per cent); but the Maidstone poll-book is much less full in its coverage. By 1831, significantly, the Northampton shoemakers had increased nearly five-fold, and accounted for thirty-six per cent of the recorded population.

²⁴ Compare these figures with 283 separate occupations in Bristol (1812); sixty seven in Wellingborough (1777), the largest Northamptonshire town after Northampton itself; thirty in Thrapston, a typical small market-centre; and fourteen in Clipston, a large Northamptonshire village.

²⁵ Everitt, ‘Marketing of Agricultural Produce’; Everitt, Alan, ‘The English Urban Inn, 1560–1760’, Perspectives in English Urban History, ed. Everitt, Alan (London, 1973), pp. 91–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Chartres, J. A., ‘Road Carrying in England in the Seventeenth Century: Myth and Reality’, Econ. H.R., 2nd Ser., xxx (1977)Google Scholar; Everitt, Alan, ‘Country Carriers in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Transport History, New Ser., iii (1976)Google Scholar.

²⁷ Particularly informative is the evidence of probate inventories, wills, and news-paper advertisements.

²⁸ As Cranfield, G. A. has shewn in his fine study, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper, 1700–1760 (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar.

²⁹ They did not occur in the wood-crafts, for example, although some towns acquired I a notable reputation in certain specialized fields: e.g., Wymondham for spoon-making, King's Cliffe for turnery ware, and High Wycombe for chairmaking.

³⁰ As in the case of the shoe industry, for example, which despite increasing concentration in Northamptonshire (and to a lesser extent in Norwich, Leicester, Somerset, and Westmorland), still remained widely dispersed in the late nineteenth century. See Mounfield's, P. R. three studies: ‘The Place of Time in Economic Geography’, Geography, lxii (1977), 272 ffGoogle Scholar; ‘Early Technological Innovation in the British Footwear Industry’, Industrial Archaeology Review, ii (1978), 137Google Scholar; ‘The Footwear Industry of the East Midlands (IV): Leicestershire to 1911’, East Midland Geographer, iv, No. 25 (1966), 8–23Google Scholar. See also Hatley, V. A. and Rajczonek, J., Shoemakers in Northamptonshire, 1762–1911: a Statistical Survey, Northampton Historical Series, No. 6, 1971Google Scholar.

³¹ Other ‘entrepreuneurial’ towns, both large and small, included such places as Birmingham and Wolverhampton (metal trades); Sheffield (cutlery, scythe-making, etc.); Olney, Newport Pagnell, Towcester, and Stony Stratford (Bucks lace industry); Honiton and Ottery St Mary (Honiton lace industry); Charlbury (glovemaking); Hinckley and Mansfield (framework-knitting); Kettering and Wellingborough (shoemaking); Redditch (needle-making); Gloucester (pin-making); Luton and Hitchin (straw-plait industry).

³² Hasted, Edward, History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 2nd edn., Canterbury, , xi, 101–2Google Scholar.

³³ Ibid., p. 101. The Hasteds themselves were typical of this social class, and the historian lived for some time in Canterbury. I have traced their history in ‘Kentish Family Portrait’, Rural Change, ed. Chalklin, and Havinden, , pp. 169–99Google Scholar.

³⁴ The phrase ‘our town gentry’ first appears in Northampton shortly after the great fire of 1675 and subsequent rebuilding. Not all such families were landless. John Toke of Canterbury, for example, came of old Kentish landed stock and moved to the county town only after his wife's death in 1770, leaving his family-seat and estates at Godinton to his eldest son. Probably many town-gentry, moreover, like the Hasteds themselves, invested in landed property, though they did not build up an estate as such or reside on their scattered farmlands.

³⁵ Parliamentary poll-books form the most obvious source. In many cases they probably under-record local gentry; but at Shrewsbury in 1796 and Northampton in 1768 the figures they give, of 129 and forty-seven respectively, may be near the mark. Assuming an average household of between four and five, these would suggest a total of about 600 gentlefolk in Shrewsbury and 220 in Northampton. The households of widows and 4 spinsters are not included in these figures; but it should be remembered that some bet of the gentlemen who voted were no doubt unmarried. wai

³⁶ In the first number of The Northampton Mercury (hereafter cited as NM), 2 May 1720: ‘It is surprising to think that this famous, this beautiful, this polite corporation, Hit has not long ago been the object of those many printers who have established printing offices in towns of less note. And certainly it argues their want of thought: for the soul anc of conversation must be absolutely necessary to a body of people that excel therein.’

³⁷ Defoe, Daniel, A Tour through England and Wales, Everyman, edn. (1959), I, pp. 222Google Scholar 115 (first published 1724–6). At Maidstone Defoe attributed this character partly to the numerous gentlemen's houses in the surrounding countryside.

³⁸ The Journeys of Celia Fiennes, ed. Morris, Christopher (London, 1947), p. 227Google Scholar; Defoe, , Tour, II, p. 230Google Scholar. The italics are mine.

³⁹ Borsay, Peter, ‘The English Urban Renaissance: the Development of Provincial Urban Culture, c. 1680–1760’, Social History, v (1977)Google Scholar; Everitt, , ‘English Urban Inn’, in pp. 113–20Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ In Staffordshire the characteristics of a county town were in a sense divided between Stafford, the assize-town, and Lichfield, the ecclesiastical centre. Neither place was altogether comparable with such shire-towns as Leicester or Exeter.

⁴¹ An interesting insight into this circle is given in the list of 338 subscribers to Hasted, History…of Kent, first edition (1778–99). Both editions were published in Canterbury (by different firms), where there were then several printing and publishing houses, and where an interesting range of antiquarian and topographical works was produced, In addition to Hasted himself, these antiquarian and literary figures included, inter alia: Andrew Ducarel, John Duncombe, William Gostling, John Burnby, Henry Todd, Osmund Beauvoir, and John Monins, all of Canterbury itself; together with William Boys of Walmer, Edward Jacob of Faversham, Egerton Brydges of Denton, William Boteler of Eastry, Bryan Faussett of Heppington, and (at an earlier date, d. 1747) John Lewis of Minster-in-Thanet.

⁴² Gardiner's own musical compositions are now forgotten; but the account of him in the D.N.B. seems unduly scornful. Paganini and Weber were also among his many friends and cultural acquaintances.

⁴³ Dainton, Courtney, The Story of England's Hospitals (London, 1961), pp. 85–8Google Scholar; Impenal Gazetteer, 1870, sub York; N M, 5 December 1743. Other early hospitals included Bristol in 1737 and Liverpool in 1745; but the great majority were in the county towns. Dainton's list is not complete.

⁴⁴ Between 1723 and 1760, for example, more than 100 schools in the Northampton area, many of them newly established, though not all private, advertised in N M (Cranfield, , Provincial Newspaper, pp. 195–6, 215)Google Scholar. The most popular subjects advertised were the three Rs, ‘followed by Latin and Greek, and, significantly, book-keeping and accounts’.

⁴⁵ As minister of the Independent congregation at Northampton, and principal of the Dissenting Academy there from 1729 until his death in 1751, Doddridge was a ma seminal figure in eighteenth-century religious development. I hope to publish elsewhere my work exploring his influence, based partly on the subscribers' lists to his Family Expositor (1739–56) and his voluminous correspondence. DrNuttall's, G. F. work on cer Doddridge is invaluable, particularly Philip Doddridge, 1702–51 (London, 1951)Google Scholar, and Ricfutrd Baxter and Philip Doddridge: a Study in a Tradition (Oxford, 1951)Google Scholar. Characteristically Doddridge was the moving spirit behind the Northampton Infirmary, and one of the founders of the Northampton Philosophical Society.

⁴⁶ In Northampton, which was probably not untypical in this respect, their inventories usually indicate only a modest level of prosperity, never comparable with that of the major innkeepers, drapers, tanners, etc. Very few of them ever became mayors or aldermen. Th e pattern in York seems to have been similar. Berryman, P. A., ‘The Manufacturing Crafts in York, 1740–1784’, Leicester M.A. dissertation, 1978Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ The proportion varied from forty-three per cent at Canterbury to fifty-three per cent at Northampton; but the Canterbury poll-book is less complete in its coverage and no doubt under-represents craftsmen. In the non-county towns studied, the proportion rarely exceeded about a third, except in an important city like Bristol.

⁴⁸ These figures are based on the Militia Lists for Exeter in 1803 and Northampton-shire in 1777. The latter covers all the towns in the county. No reliable figures of servants and labourers can be based on poll-books. Militia lists should not under-record these groups, proportionately speaking; but one gets the impression that they in fact under of record domestic servants.

⁴⁹ It was used on both sides of the Atlantic in 1776: by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, and by Adams, Samuel in a speech reputedly at Philadelphia (Oxford Dietionary of Quotations (1948), pp. 1, 403)Google Scholar. Presumably it was not then a novel expression.

⁵⁰ This is perhaps the one misconception in parts of Sturt's, George great work, The Wheelwright's Shop (Cambridge, 1923)Google Scholar.

⁵¹ The figure of 1,000 is a tentative guess. Thirteen hundred craftsmen are recorded in the Exeter Militia Last. This includes journeymen as well as masters; but masters are under-represented since men over fifty-five were excluded. We know very little of the average size of craftsmen's shops at this time; but such indications as there are suggest that in county towns they were normally small family affairs, with perhaps one or two journeymen and one or two apprentices apiece on average. With an average of one master and two journeymen, a population of perhaps 5–6,000 adult males, of whom half were engaged in crafts (49.7 per cent in the Militia List), would suggest c. 850–1,000 workshops.

⁵² N M, 24 and 31 May 1725.

⁵³ N M, 5 and 12 April 1756.

⁵⁴ Tuckwell, Thomas was described as a cutler and instrument-maker when made free, 18 September 1671 (Northampton Borough Records, Assembly Book, 1627–1744, p. 222)Google Scholar. His son, Samuel, , seems to have taken over his late father's business in 1725 (N M, 24 05 1725)Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ N M, 1 October 1759.

⁵⁶ N M, 27 September 1756.

⁵⁷ See Northampton Borough Records, Assembly Book, 1627–1744, pp. 390, 528; Gentleman's Magazine, XVII (1747), p. 446Google Scholar; N M, 20 April and 6 July 1752, where Butlin's shop is said to be continued as a scalemaker's and stillier's after his death. A ‘stillier’ was a maker of distilling equipment.

⁵⁸ N M, 1 December 1746, 23 March and 27 April 1747; Gentleman's Magazine, XV (1745), p. 355Google Scholar; V.C.H. Northants., ii, 334–5Google Scholar; Robinson, Eric, ‘The Profession of Civil Engineer in the Eighteenth Century: a Portrait of Thomas Yeoman, F.R.S., 1704 (?)–1781’, Annals of Science, xviii, 4 (1962), 195–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The latter article, on the development of the engineering profession from the ranks of millwrights and instrument-makers in the eighteenth century—Yeoman in fact described himself as a millwright, not an engineer—is of more than local interest. It justly points out that ‘the vitality of market-town society was a sound basis on which to construct a community of scientific interest among engineers and gentlemen’ (p. 215). The Northampton Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, was one of the earliest provincial scientific societies. Other leading members included Doddridge and such prominent local gentry as SirSamwell, Thomas. It met from an early date at Yeoman's house in Gold Street (‘Portrait of Thomas Yeoman’, 202–3)Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ But only relatively simple: a mill, after all, is itself a complicated piece of machinery, so that it is not surprising that millwrights became key-figures in the early mechanization of industry in this country.

⁶⁰ See the summary tables in The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland, [1868], XII, Appendix, p. 5Google Scholar. In seventeen of the thirty counties generally thought of as ‘agricultural’, including all those south of the Thames except Berks and Wilts, the ‘industrial’ population actually outnumbered the ‘agricultural’. It was chiefly in the eastern counties that the ‘industrial’ population was lowest.

⁶¹ Kelly's, Directory of Kent for 1870Google Scholar lists 115 breweries and sixty-five maltings in the county.

⁶² The figures are rounded to the nearest five or ten. Victorian trade directories of this kind were concerned with recording business units, and hence normally list masters only, not employees. In general I have therefore assumed that each individual represents a separate shop, unless two or more men occupy the same premises. Those described as ‘manufacturers’ have generally been excluded, though many ‘manufac-tories’ were probably little more than workshops. All who appear to be retailers only (e.g., ‘curriers and leather-sellers’) have also been excluded, and all engaged in processing and wholesale trades, such as brickmaking and malting. Where crafts are concerned, it is impossible to say how complete the directory is. About 4,600 farmers are listed, which may represent something like two-thirds of the total, since there were then about 7,000 farms in Kent. A few craft-occupations are obviously under-represented, such as sawyers, of whom only two are listed; but these seem to be exceptional. One might hazard the guess that perhaps two-thirds of the master-craftsmen in the county as a whole are recorded. This would give a hypothetical total of some 9,000 masters, and if these employed an average of two men and two apprentices apiece, the craft-occupations would account for roughly half the total ‘industrial’ population of the county (93,000). No doubt large numbers of the remaining half were employed as ‘craftsmen’ of a kind in the dockyard towns.

⁶³ A recent study of the furniture industry in 1800–51 has found no evidence of mass production even at the end of the period. English furniture was still made overwhelmingly in cabinetmakers' workshops, and in the 1851 Census the average shop still employed only five craftsmen, including the master; ninety per cent of all shops, in fact, still employed fewer than ten men. (Times Lit. Supp., 24 March 1978, reviewing E. T. Joy, English Furniture, 1800–1851).