Suchergebnisse

Opening -- Sources and questions -- Yorubaland, 1820-1893 -- Colonial Yorubaland, 1893-1960 -- Family and marriage -- Labor, property, and agriculture -- Income-generating activities in the nineteenth century -- New approaches to familiar roles during the colonial period -- Western skills and service careers -- Religion, cultural forms, and associations -- Regents and chiefs, economic organizations, and politics -- Patriarchy, colonialism, and women's agency

This article analyses 30 accounts of income and expenditure left byCollectors for thePoor inElizabethanEngland, before the period known as the old poor law. Collectors were appointed by parishes and incorporated boroughs in accordance with the poor laws of 1552 and 1563, but few of their fragile records survive. The accounts examined here document early use of compulsory rates to provide income, but several features of the distribution of relief differ from patterns common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Adult male recipients outnumbered women in many of the parishes; children were frequently helped directly; and cities and towns assisted a smaller fraction of their total populations than did villages but awarded larger per capita payments. Accounts from the 10 villages and small towns analysed most fully show thatElizabethanCollectors were moving away from the late medieval practice of providing only occasional aid; increasingly they awarded regular payments to a selected subset of the local poor. Comparison with the early seventeenth century suggests that the poor laws of 1598 and 1601 contributed to a transition that was already underway but did not create a new system of relief.

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the problems that hampered the effective functioning of charitable activities for the English poor during the later medieval years and sixteenth century and examines how the Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601 addressed those issues. It considers four types of challenges stemming from individual negligence or greed as well as the systemic legal obstacles that underlay them. The solutions provided by the Elizabethan Poor Laws placed charitable projects on a more solid legal and administrative footing, facilitating their expansion in the following centuries.

This article examines how women became involved in credit dealings and often in legal action as the result of family relationships between 1300 and 1620. It argues that women's own personal standing and that of their family underlay their ability to function successfully in a world of financial credit that was based upon delayed obligations. It shows also that women displayed considerable knowledge of economic and legal systems as they attempted to pursue their rights or those of a relative. These observations force one to question any assumption that women's position within the family was uniformly characterized by deference or reliance upon others.

The leaders of English villages and towns between 1388 and 1598 accepted that deserving poor people, those unable to work to support themselves, warranted private and, if necessary, public assistance. Poverty was objectively mild in the century after the 1349 plague. Economic and demographic developments betweenc. 1465 and 1530 increased the number of poor people. Religious and political changes of the mid-sixteenth century forced individuals and parishes to assume virtually the entire burden of poor relief. Parliamentary legislation empowered local authorities to raise compulsory taxes for support of the poor. In Elizabeth's reign the problems of poverty intensified, forcing nearly all parishes to use taxation at least in bad years.

During the early modern period many English young people spent five to ten years as servants, leaving their parental families in their teens to live with and work for another household until they were financially able to set up their own homes, usually in their mid- or late twenties. Servants were employed in agriculture, crafts, retailing, and domestic work. The place of servants in the large manor of Havering, Essex, 1560-1620, may be examined through a listing of communicants by household unit, parish registers, and other local records. The mean projected household size in the urbanized parish of Romford was 4.2 people, including 0.9 servants. Servants constituted about 20 percent of the total population; around 40 percent of all households included a servant. Havering's servants gained occupational training, accumulated cash and goods, and often formed lasting friendships with their masters and peers.

In this important study, Professor McIntosh argues against the suggestion that social regulation was a distinctive feature of the decades around 1600, resulting from Puritanism. Instead, through an examination of 255 village and small-town communities distributed throughout England, Professor McIntosh demonstrates that concern with wrongdoing mounted gradually between 1370 and 1600. In an attempt to maintain good order and enforce ethical conduct, local leaders prosecuted people who slandered or quarrelled with their neighbours, engaged in sexual misdeeds, operated unruly alehouses, or refused to work. Professor McIntosh also explores who the offenders were as well as the factors that led to misbehaviour and shaped responses to it. More generally, Professor McIntosh sheds light on the transition from medieval to early modern patterns and succeeds here in opening up little-known sources and new research methods

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of illustrations -- List of tables and lists -- Acknowledgements -- List of abbreviations -- Introduction -- The debate over social regulation -- The approach and arguments of this study -- The past and present -- Part I The history of social regulation -- 1 The forms of control -- Mechanisms of social regulation -- The lesser public courts -- 2 Methodological underpinnings -- 3 Social regulation in England's smaller communities -- The Disharmony cluster -- Scolding -- Eavesdropping and nightwalking -- The Disorder cluster -- Sexual misconduct -- Disorderly alehouses -- Badly governed, living suspiciously, or of evil reputation -- The Poverty cluster -- Hedgebreaking -- Vagabonds and idlers -- Receiving subtenants -- A special case: gaming -- 4 Social concern in other contexts -- Legal settings -- Almshouse regulations and Chancery petitions -- Part II Factors that influenced social regulation -- 5 Some political considerations -- National vs. local responses -- Political" activity at the community level -- 6 Social ecology I: "broad response" and "no response" communities -- Method and evidence -- Integration and discussion of the data -- 7 Social ecology II: analysis by type of offences reported -- Method and evidence -- Integration and discussion of the data -- 8 Ideological/religious influences -- The fundamental social concerns -- Fifteenth-century ideas about social wrongdoing -- Conceptions of a Christian society in the sixteenth century -- The social costs of aggressive regulation -- Conclusion: social regulation and the transition from medieval to early modern England -- Appendices -- Appendix 1.1 Urban records used to trace responses to misbehavior, 1370-1599 -- Method -- Urban records used* -- *Notes