Brown R. Society and Economy in Modern Britain 1700-1850

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Gender

The most obvious means of differentiating between individuals within society was on the basis of gender.

Women were

discriminated against legally, morally, economically and politically by men. Social attitudes were patriarchal and, if anything,

those attitudes were reinforced between 1700 and 1850. Women were generally exploited—particularly economically and

sexually—and denied the same social and political rights as men. These social attitudes went across the political spectrum—

members of the landed aristocracy and agricultural labourers had a common attitude towards women, if nothing else. Society

clearly differentiated between the worlds of men and women. Status and power lay in the former.

Changes in the economy after 1700 certainly adversely affected the wages of those women who had to work. They were

generally excluded from the ‘new’ technology and increasingly were confined to the ‘sweated’ areas of domestic industry.

Their wages, never equal, were further reduced with the support of both male employers and workers. The attempt by the

Glasgow Spinners Association to negotiate equal rates of pay for men and women was exceptional, though it marked the

recognition of a need for solidarity among the working population if it was to overcome the divisions capital had created between

family and work, home and the factory, male and female. Women workers meant even more competition on the labour

market. Legislation, like the 1842 Mines Act and various Factory Acts, either prohibited them from certain kinds of work or

limited their hours. Most women did not organize into trade unions and their powers of resistance were correspondingly

reduced. Rowbotham convincingly argues that:

Work in the family was clearly separated from work in industry. The new capitalist organisation of labour was forming

not only relations between classes but between the sexes…the old unity between work and home, where action over

consumption was not distinct from action over production, was lost.

There was some resistance to this patriarchal view of society. Daniel Defoe defended the right of women to education in 1697

and throughout the eighteenth century the right of women to education and opposition to marriage as an affair of property

were frequent themes in pamphlets. In 1697 Mary Astell rejected the notion that women should merely be decorative and in

1739 ‘Sophia’ took the attack on male privilege into the economic and financial sphere. But theirs was a minority position

mocked, caricatured and satirized by contemporaries (female as well as male). Not until Mary Wollstonecraft produced her

Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792 was there a thorough critique of patriarchy. She countered the argument that women’s

subordination was inevitable and natural by maintaining that women should be free to decide what was in their best interests,

rather than depending on men. She saw some relationship between the oppression of women and existing property relations

and shared the faith, along with many male radicals, in education as a means of changing human consciousness. Only through

‘reason’ could inequalities be removed. Mary Wollstonecraft’s notion of sexual equality was elitist in character, her ideas on

education were limited to girls and women from her own level in society. She could not conceive of the daughters of the poor

being taught to become rational beings. Neither could she imagine that women must organize themselves. Hers was, in many

respects, a pseudo-feminist position which, while theoretically arguing that women should decide their own interests, she

believed that in practice they must appeal to men to release them from dependence. The line from Mary Wollstonecraft to the

gradual removal of legal disabilities for women is consequently quite clear.

A second strand of resistance to male oppression came through the early socialist movement.

The 1820s saw a

widespread distribution of birth control information to working women. This was attacked by many male radicals, including

William Cobbett, because the idea of limiting population was associated with the Malthusian notion of political economy —

birth control was, for him, a device of the upper classes to put off social reform and an unnatural interference in the sexual

rights of the poor. The case for and against birth control never freed itself from its original connection with Malthusian ideas

and it had little or no effect on the birth rate. Abortion and infanticide remained the only effective alternatives to unwanted

pregnancies, and birth control was not widely employed by the working population until the twentieth century.

Questioning the whole social and sexual position of women was only a strong minority interest in early nineteenth-century

radicalism. Drawing on Mary Wollstonecraft and Utopian socialism it emerged in opposition to middle-class radicalism

which, rooted in evangelicalism, saw sexual inequality as part of the ‘natural order’ and as essential to effective capitalism.

William Thompson, in his Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half,

Men…. (1825), and to a lesser extent Robert Owen argued that the whole basis of a competitive capitalist society kept women

at a disadvantage, an inequality reinforced by crude cultural stereotypes. In a co-operative society, one organized to allow

human beings to develop fully, they maintained, sexual discrimination was unnecessary. By the 1840s the connection between

social revolution and women’s liberation had been clearly established.

Demands for women’s liberation were very much the minority position throughout the period 1700 to 1850. The strength

of the patriarchal position, in which ‘separate spheres’ were clearly established and the position of women was subordinate,

remained central to thinking across the social spectrum. Women’s roles may have gradually altered, but male attitudes and

values changed little if at all. British society was perhaps differentiated more clearly by gender than by any other thing.

206 A SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Race

People could also be differentiated by race. To be ‘successful’ in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries meant being

‘English’, culturally if not by nationality. To become part of the ruling elite necessitated becoming ‘Anglicized’. Adopting the

cultural values and practices of the Establishment politically, socially, linguistically and religiously opened up a cultural gap

between those who ruled and those who were governed. England ruled a largely docile Wales and Scotland though the co-

operation of anglicized regional elites rather than by the direct intervention of the state. Ireland was less stable. Opposition to

this cultural hegemony took the form of nationalistic cultural revivals, often repressed because they took a political stance

opposed to that of the Establishment and the spread of the English state.

Michael Hechter argues that it is possible to examine the relationship between England, the national ‘core’ and its

‘periphery’, the Celtic fringe in terms of two alternative models of core-periphery relationships: a ‘diffusion’ model in which

inter-group contact leads to ethnic homogenization and integration, and an ‘internal colonial’ model in which such contact

may heighten ethnic conflict.

Politically the Celtic fringe was integrated into the English state by the early nineteenth

century. Wales was annexed in 1536 when English land law, English courts and judges and the Church of England were

imposed. The Welsh language was attacked by allowing only English-speaking Welshmen to hold administrative offices in

Wales. Union with Scotland was achieved by ‘negotiation’ in 1707 ending her political sovereignty, though the Scottish legal

system and Presbyterian Church were allowed to continue. Union with Ireland came in 1801. Hechter argues that ‘security’

was the motive for incorporation and that ‘England desired to insure its territorial integrity at all costs, rather than suffer the

threat of invasion by hostile Continental neighbours.’

Whether or not Hechter’s argument is valid, incorporation had important consequences. There was an insistence on English

cultural superiority and a denigration of indigenous native cultures. The 1846 report on the state of Welsh education

exemplifies this notion of cultural inferiority in its stinging indictment of the Welsh language, religion and national character:

Because of their language, the mass of the Welsh people are inferior to the English in every branch of practical

knowledge and skill…. The Welsh language distorts the truth, favours fraud and abets perjury…[it] is a vast drawback

to Wales and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people.

Speaking Gaelic and practising Roman Catholicism by the majority of people in Ireland were similarly attacked. Gaelic, like

Welsh, was not considered conducive to rational discussion. Penal laws, which came to full fruition in 1727, denied Catholics

any political or economic rights and remained in force until Catholic Emancipation in 1829. In Scotland alone the English had

local allies in the process of cultural pacification. There were no comparable allies in either Wales or Ireland.

Anglicization was different in Scotland in two respects. First, the establishment of the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland

allowed for far more cultural autonomy than in Wales and Ireland. Secondly, attempts at anglicization were carried out by

native lowland Scots, already only marginally different from the English, rather than directly by the English government.

Scotland was divided between the Presbyterian, English-speaking Lowland and the Catholic or Episcopalian and Gaelic-

speaking Highlands. Dissent in the Highlands, always a problem, took on the Jacobite political dimension after 1689. Two

Highland risings in 1715 and 1745, and abortive attempts at rebellion in 1708 and 1719 heightened both Lowland and English

fears. Control was exerted in three ways. First, the potential solidarity of the Highlands was weakened by the aggrandizement

of the Campbell clan, which seized smaller clans’ territories. Secondly, a large standing army was maintained in the north

with considerable mobility because of widespread road-building. Thirdly, the cultural identity of the Highlands was attacked.

In 1709 the newly founded Scottish Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge decided that

nothing can be more effectual for reducing these counties to order and making them more useful to the Commonwealth

than teaching them their duty to God, their King and Country and rooting out their Irish language.

After 1745 Highland society was deliberately dismembered. Rebel chiefs lost their land, which was placed under the control

of a committee dominated by Edinburgh lawyers. The kilt and bagpipes were banned and more roads brought further English

influence, Internal peace was essential to Lowlanders if they were to attract English capital to Scotland for investment—

anglicization Can be seen, in this context, as part of the process of economic aggrandizement.

Language for hegemony

Accent was important. English may have been spoken in the Scottish Lowlands but with a distinctively regional flavour.

‘Scottish’ was a synonym for rudeness in England and the leading sectors of Scottish society hastened to educate their

children in English schools. After the 1750s elocutionists visited Edinburgh to give lessons in English pronunciation. Being

seen to be ‘English’ opened up career possibilities which being ‘Scottish’, ‘Welsh’ or ‘Irish’ did not.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN MODERN BRITAIN 1700–1850 207

English cultural hegemony had a firm economic base. It is clear that England exploited its resource base more effectively

than the Celtic fringe. Economic growth was generally more dynamic in England and increasingly Scotland, Wales and

Ireland were subject to comparative disadvantage in production. To call the economies of the Celtic fringe ‘backward’ in 1700

implies a value judgement of questionable validity but it is, I think, fair to argue that the dynamic for economic growth lay in

England. Other economies were viewed as ‘servicing’ the ‘mother country’ rather than having an identity separate and

autonomous. The mercantilist policies used during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were ‘racist’ in the sense that

they exploited Scotland, Wales and Ireland to the advantage of England without any real thought of their effects upon the

indigenous population. This was, in many ways, as ‘colonial’ a policy as those used in English possessions outside the British

Isles.

Politically, economically, socially, culturally and religiously Scotland, Wales and Ireland were systematically subordinated

to the hegemony of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Control was exerted through centrally appointed

officials and through anglicized regional elites. Their indigenous populations were suspect: politically through support for the

Jacobite cause, later through the republicanism of Jacobinism and the resurgence of nationalism, and religiously through

adherence to Roman Catholicism or Dissent. Language was the symbol of both national identity and colonial oppression.

Attitudes to ‘foreigners’—the Celtic stereotype

English attitudes can best be seen in relation to Irish immigrants.

A trickle in the eighteenth century, Irish immigration

increased after 1820, becoming a flood in the late 1840s. In the 1841 census there were 291,000 Irish-born individuals in

England and Wales, 128,000 in Scotland; by 1851 there were 520,000 and 207,000 respectively. Most of these immigrants

settled in the industrial towns of Lancashire and western Scotland, especially Liverpool and Glasgow. They stood out from

and were suspected by the host population because of their poverty, nationality, race and religion. As Swift and Gilley say:

The Irish Catholic immigrants look like the outcasts of Victorian society, outcast from British capitalism as the poorest

of the poor, from mainstream British politics as separatist nationalists and republicans, from the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ race as

‘Celts’ and as Catholics from the dominant forms of British Protestantism….

The apartness of the Irish, often segregated by poverty, meant that the development of closer personal contacts and wider

economic opportunities in the English Protestant-owned and run economy were denied. Suspicion resulted from the Irish

immigrants being the largest unassimilated section of English society, largely rejected, generally despised and the butt, as in

the Stockport riots of 1852, of xenophobic anti-papist Toryism. The anti-Irish stereotype was far more complex than Punch’s

depiction of the Celt as a gorilla, on the lowest rung of the evolutionary ladder. Both antagonism and attitudes were ambiguous

rather than simple.

Immigrants

There were other groups in British society who were distinguished by their race—immigrants.

A Jewish community had by

1808 consolidated its position largely as a result of European pogroms which drove Jews fleeing persecution to the relative

security of Britain. Whatever their place of origin these immigrants were generally poor and placed an often unwelcome

burden, so established English Jewry co-operated in trying to keep them out. By 1800 there were 15–20,000 Jews in London

and a further 6,000 in provincial towns. A burden when poor, Jews were also condemned for being rich. There was a

widespread anti-semitism in British society which periodically erupted in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. When

Dickens created Fagin he built on a popularly recognizable caricature.

French Huguenots fled to England following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. By 1718 there were 35

Huguenot churches in London alone. Many Huguenots became tutors and, though less well remembered, brought a tradition of

gardening. It was, however, in silk weaving that the Huguenots made a contribution to economic development and their skills

were grafted on to the older traditions of Spitalfields. This contribution was not without its tensions and there was a particular

rivalry between Huguenot and Catholic Irish weavers, leading to riots in 1719 and 1736. Though London was the major

centre of Huguenot settlement, many of the English southern and eastern coastal towns had Huguenot churches by 1700.

Huguenots also played a central role in the expansion of the linen industry in the north of Ireland. Their Protestantism meant

that, like immigrants from the Low Countries, they were more easily integrated into British society than the Jews and in, for

example, Bristol and Ipswich, families of Huguenot descent were among the most successful and prosperous section of the

population by the late eighteenth century.

208 A SOCIAL REVOLUTION

A slave trade

Britain’s involvement in the slave trade from the mid-seventeenth century meant that increasing numbers of blacks—often

enslaved lived in England by 1700.

Though there was a great deal of confusion about the precise legal position, until 1772

black slavery was considered legal in England. By 1750 there was a sizeable black population in London, largely poor,

working as domestics. Most were male and inevitably large numbers had liaisons with or married poor white women. There was

fear and distrust of racial mixing and actual examples of racism are not difficult to find in this period. Attitudes towards

blacks ranged across the whole spectrum from brutal slavery and degradation to friendship and intimacy.

Numbers of blacks in Britain declined in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and this process continued after 1800.

Black slaves became too valuable in the Caribbean to be shipped to England. The campaign against slavery, which succeeded

in 1807, had initially enhanced the value of slaves and then made their trade illegal. As James Walvin points out: ‘the main

and determining force behind black settlement up to the 1830s —the British slave trade and slavery—had exhausted itself’.

A racism generated by slavery—the view that blacks were things, not people—had been pushed aside by the insistence of

the abolitionists on black equality between 1787 and 1838. The abolitionists won the moral argument and in the 1820s and

1830s people of all social classes and from both sexes registered their opposition to slavery. Whether it was this or the less

profitable position of the sugar trade that led to the end of slavery is difficult to ascertain but by 1850 there had been a revival

of widespread public opposition to black humanity. Britain’s economic and political problems in the 1840s led to a revived

form of racism—in fact directed largely at the Irish—which characterized Victorian responses to non-white people for the rest

of the century. Marx was unusual in turning to class rather than race as the key explanatory division between people. The

world was increasingly seen in terms of racial ranks and orders, with white people at the top. Disraeli said in the Commons in

1849 ‘Race implies difference and difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance.’ Racism became

scientifically respectable and was expressive of increasingly vigorous colonialism. The exploitation of the slave trade was

replaced by the exploitation of ‘civilizing’ imperialism. The view expressed in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1866 was, like all

justifications for discrimination, based on accepted and unquestioned stereotypes.

[is] the negro worth all the trouble, anxiety, bloodshed and misery which his wrongs and his rights have produced?…

Did anyone ever hear of a negro mathematician, of a negro engineer, or a negro architect or a negro painter or a negro

political economist…left to himself and without white control and guidance he forgets the lessons he had learnt, and

slides rapidly back to his original barbarism.

CONCLUSIONS

British society between 1700 and 1850 was one in which inequality was the overriding characteristic.

People were unequal

in terms of wealth and access to economic prosperity; legally in terms of political and ‘human’ rights; sexually and racially.

The right to hold political offices and to be educated at a university was restricted in England and Wales to male members of

the Church of England, with Dissenters, Catholics, Jews, atheists and women broadly discriminated against until after 1850.

The right to vote, though extended after 1832, was confined to a minority of the male population until after 1850. The jury

system, the strict independence of the judiciary from executive control and the application of the law to all irrespective of

social status were different from the Continent, but the emphasis on protection for property meant that an even-handed system

could be used to maintain an inegalitarian social system. What was important was status, respect for status and the widespread

belief that individuals could improve their status.

For those with power and wealth and for those without, the realities of life changed little between 1700 and 1850. Attitudes

remained paternalistic, masculine and suspicious of ‘foreigners’, those from the next county or village as much (perhaps more)

than those from abroad. Industrialization did not create social inequalities but, because of the increasing focus of population in

towns and cities, such inequalities became more visible and consequently less acceptable. The emergence of ‘class’

perspectives was largely a response to this, though as several historians have pointed out class can be identified in the pre-

industrial period even if it was ‘latent’ or without ‘class struggle’. Change in social attitudes was gradual, the result of

dialogue between different, ambiguously interpreted social relationships and by 1850 it was by no means inevitable that class

attitudes would replace paternalistic ones. Power numerically was with the former but authority still lay firmly with the latter.

NOTES

1 Robert Southey Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 1829. p. 47.

2 J.H.Dawson New Statistical Account of Scotland, 1845, Vol. VII, p. 332.

3 On methodology see P.Burke Sociology and History, Allen & Unwin, 1980, P.Abrams Historical Sociology, Open Books, 1982 and

C.Lloyd Explanation in Social History, Basil Blackwell, 1986.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN MODERN BRITAIN 1700–1850 209

4 T.B.Bottomore Elites and Society, Penguin, 1966, G.Parry Political Elites, Allen & Unwin, 1969 and P.Stanworth and A.Giddens

(eds) Elites and Power in British Society, Cambridge University Press, 1974 provide theoretical perspectives.

5 R.Porter English Society in the Eighteenth Century, Penguin, 1982, pp. 360–1.

6 E.P.Thompson ‘Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture’, Journal of Social History, 7 (1974). See also P.Corrigan and D.Sayer The Great

Arch—English State Formation as Cultural Revolution, Basil Blackwell, 1985, p. 87–113.

7 H.Perkin The Origins of Modern English Society 1780–1880, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969, p. 24.

8 Rev.David Davies The Case of the Labourers in Husbandry, 1795, p. 28.

9 J.C.D.Clark English Society 1688–1832, Cambridge University Press, 1985 especially pp. 69–93.

10 ibid. p. 82.

11 ibid. p. 87.

12 ibid. p. 89.

13 D.Roberts Paternalism in Early Victorian England, Croom Helm, 1979.

14 ibid. pp. 2–10.

15 J.B.Summner Christian Charity, Its Obligations and Objects, 1847, p. 22.

16 Printed more fully in Workers Educational Association In and Out of the Workhouse, EARO Resource and Technology Centre,

1978, pp. 34–5.

17 Earl of Hardwicke, Chairman of the Caxton and Arrington Union, Cambridgeshire, in Second Annual Report of the Poor Law

Commissioners, Appendix B, pp. 233–5.

18 D.Roberts op.cit. p. 8.

19 What follows on patronage draws heavily on J.M.Bourne Patronage and Society in Nineteenth-Century England, Edward Arnold,

1986.

20 ibid. pp. 7–8.

21 H.Perkin op cit. p. 45.

22 J.M.Bourne op. cit. p. 22.

23 Quoted in K.D.Brown The English Labour Movement 1700–1951, Gill & Macmillan, 1982, p. 69.

24 The literature on ‘class’ is immense but the following will be found of particular value. Useful studies with a theoretical slant include

P.Calvert The Concept of Class, Hutchinson, 1983, R.S.Neale Class in English History 1680–1850, Blackwell, 1983, the readings he

edited entitled History and Class: Essential Readings in Theory and Interpretation, Blackwell, 1984 and A.Giddens The Class

Structure of the Advanced Societies, Hutchinson, 1973. R.J.Morris has contributed a valuable bibliographical study Class and Class

Consciousness in the Industrial Revolution, Macmillan, 1980 and also of interest is his ‘Class and Common Interest’, History Today,

May 1983. The ‘language’ of class is best explored in A.Briggs’ seminal paper ‘The Language of Class in Early Nineteenth Century

England’, in A.Briggs and J.Saville (eds) Essays in Labour History, Macmillan, 1960, pp. 43–73 and G. Steadman Jones Languages

of Class, Cambridge University Press, 1983. More detailed studies must start from E.P.Thompson The Making of the English

Working Class, Gollancz, 1963 and go on to H.Perkin, op. cit., J.Foster Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution, Weidenfeld,

1974, I.Prothero Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth Century London, Dawson, 1979 and C.Calhoun The Question of Class

Struggle, Basil Blackwell, 1982. P.N.Furbank Unholy Pleasure: the Idea of Social Class, Oxford University Press, 1984 adds a note

of sardonic caution. J.D.Young The Rousing of the Scottish Working Class, Croom Helm, 1979 surveys the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries.

25 R.Dennis English Industrial Cities of the Nineteenth Century: A Social Geography, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 187–8.

26 ibid. p. 187.

27 E.P.Thompson The Making of the English Working Class, Gollancz, 1963, p. 3.

28 H.Perkin The Origins of Modern English Society 1780–1880, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980, p. 37.

29 ibid. pp. 218–70, for a discussion of the ‘struggle between ideals’.

30 For what follows see A.D.Gilbert Religion and Society in Industrial England, Longman, 1976 and the statistical analysis in R.Currie,

A.D.Gilbert and L.H.Horsey Churches and Churchgoers—Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700, Oxford

University Press, 1977.

31 On the religious census of 1851 see K.S.Inglis Churches and the Working Class in Victorian England, Routledge, 1963 and the

shorter papers by B.I. Coleman ‘Religion in the Victorian City’, History Today, August 1980 and ‘The Church of England in the Mid-

Nineteenth Century: A Social Geography’, The Historical Association, 1980.

32 The literature on women’s history has increased dramatically in the last ten years but S.Rowbotham Hidden from History, Pluto,

1973 and Women, Resistance and Revolution, Penguin, 1972 are still the most useful introductory studies.

33 S.Rowbotham op. cit., 1973, pp. 30–1.

34 Barbara Taylor Eve and the New Jerusalem, Virago, 1983 provides an excellent coverage of resistance through Owenite socialism

and feminism.

35 M.Hechter Internal Colonization: the Celtic Fringe in British National Development 1536–1966, Routledge, 1975.

36 ibid. p. 69.

37 Quoted in ibid, p. 75.

38 For the issue of language in Wales see G.Williams Religion, Language and Nationality in Wales, University of Wales, 1979 and

papers by Raymond Williams and O.Dudley Edwards in J.Osmond The National Question Again— Welsh Political Identity in the

1980s, Gomer, 1985.

210 A SOCIAL REVOLUTION

39 On the Irish see R.Swift and S.Gilley (eds) The Irish in the Victorian City, Croom Helm, 1985 especially the essays by

M.A.G.O.Tuathaigh, R.Samuel and the editors’ introduction. R.Swift and S.Gilley (eds) The Irish in Britain 1815–1939, Manchester

University Press, 1989, contains much of value.

40 ibid. p. 9.

41 For the discussion on immigrants see J.Walvin Passages to Britain, Penguin, 1984.

42 N.File and C.Power British Settlers in Britain 1555–1958, 1981 is the best introduction to a neglected subject.

43 J.Walvin op. cit. p. 37 and for the subsequent quotations pp. 40–1.

44 On the inegalitarian nature of society see H.Kaelbe Industrialisation and Social Inequality in 19th-century Europe, Berg, 1986 and

the more focused W.D. Rubenstein Wealth and Inequality in Britain, Faber, 1986.

Addendum:

Four recent books on Scotland should be noted: T.M.Devine and R.Mitchison (eds) People and Society in Scotland, Vol. I,

1760–1830, John Donald, 1988; W.H.Fraser and R.J.Morris (eds) People and Society in Scotland, Vol. II, 1830–1914, John

Donald, 1990; T.C.Smout A Century of the Scottish People 1830–1950, Collins, 1986; T.C.Smout and S.Wood Scottish

Voices 1745–1960, Collins, 1990.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN MODERN BRITAIN 1700–1850 211

The impact of economic growth— change in the countryside 1700–

1850

Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene;

No fence of ownership crept in between

To hide the prospect from the gazing eye;

Its only bondage was the circling sky….

Enclosure came, and trampled on the grave

Of labour’s rights, and left the poor a slave….

Fence meeting fence in owner’s little bounds

Of field and meadow, large as garden-grounds,

In little parcels little minds to please,

With men and flocks imprisoned, ill at ease….

John Clare, the nineteenth-century Northamptonshire poet made a distinction between rural society before and after enclosure

in terms of a loss of freedom. How valid was his observation? This chapter explores, through a series of case studies, the

impact of economic change on the countryside between 1700 and 1850 and examines the nature of change, its effects and

people’s reactions to it.

INTRODUCTION

Some aspects of change in the countryside have already been examined.

First, the variety of agricultural experience, the

importance of the countryside in ‘proto-industrialization’, the different chronologies of change and the persistence of older

techniques, both between localities and between England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, have been highlighted. Secondly,

despite the rationalization of land usage and the emergence of the large estate, most agricultural production occurred on farms

of under 100 acres and the significance of large-scale farming should not be overestimated. Similarly, the importance of

enclosure after 1750 must be seen in the context of earlier developments and in terms of its regional incidence. Thirdly, the

continued importance of paternalistic social attitudes, particularly their ‘moral imperative’ has been discussed. Finally, the

importance of land, as evidence of both economic and social status, throughout this period has been emphasized. Only in terms

of the economy as a whole did the importance of agriculture diminish; in its own terms, British farming generally became

more productive and more efficient between 1700 and 1850. However, it was unable to feed the burgeoning population after

the 1760s and, increasingly, Britain relied on grain imports. The revolution in agriculture was perhaps more limited, in this

sense, than historians have previously believed.

CHANGE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE—CASE STUDIES

How far did the nature of rural communities and their priorities change between 1700 and 1850? Certain questions arise from

the following discussion of the representativeness or otherwise of Myddle, Cardington, Houghton Regis, Ashwell and Risby.

These communities raise a series of important issues about rural society which can be applied, to a lesser or greater extent, to

other parts of Britain.

Myddle

The History of Myddle, in Shropshire, was written by Richard Gough around 1700.

His study provides a useful base from

which to consider the question of changing priorities. Myddle was a remote community in one of the most thinly populated

parts of England. Just how parochial was Myddle? Though 160 miles from London it was not as cut off from the mainstream

of national life as might be supposed. Richard Gough had visited London in his youth, meeting a fellow parishioner there, and

his frequent mention of London implies that it was common for his neighbours to have been there. People from all sections of

the community went to London and information about events in the broader world filtered through to Myddle in their letters.

People were certainly familiar with their immediate surroundings, centred on the market towns of Shrewsbury, Ellesmere and

Wem. While North Shropshire may have been their ‘county’, there was a sense of belonging not only to this particular place

but to a wider region. Their mental horizons were far from parochial, though events were refracted through the medium of the

parish community.

North Shropshire was a woodland area and people did not live in hamlets or isolated dwellings rather than nucleated

villages. Gough structured his history round the arrangement of the pews in the parish church, the focus of the community. This

formalized the social structure of the parish, with the gentry at the front, yeomen and husbandmen in the middle and the

cottagers at the rear. Gough felt deeply about the proper order of society—a consequence of his legal education, his

Anglicanism and his belief in monarchy—and reflected more general opinion when he wrote: ‘it was held a thing unseemly

and undecent that a company of young boyes, and those persons that paid noe [church-rates], should sitt…above those of the

best of the parish’.

Gough wrote of a society in which duty and obedience were central features and this was reflected in his own unpaid work

on behalf of his parish and county. He served on the Shropshire Grand Jury, which examined indictments at the assizes and

quarter sessions. In Myddle he helped with settlement cases, acted as churchwarden, drew up a glebe terrier for the

archdeacon’s visitation, witnessed wills and appraised probate inventories. He supported the political and religious

settlements of 1660 and 1689 but his Christianity was concerned with charitable works and he was quick to condemn those

who failed to live up to that ideal. He was critical of Robert Wilkinson, bailiff of the manors of Wem and Loppington who

‘tooke more care to gett money among the tenants, than to gaine theire love or preserve his owne credit’.

And of Richard

Wicherley, a wealthy parishioner, who was never ‘commended either for his charity to the poore, his hospitality to his

neighbours, nor his plentifull housekeeping for his servants.’

Gough stood for a reciprocally ordered society in which ‘place’ was important. The owners of the largest farms provided

leadership in Myddle, as well as employment for farm servants. There were twelve farms between 100 and 650 acres but,

though often described as gentlemen, no individual farmer was powerful enough to fill the role of squire. The experience of

the leading families in Myddle shows that they had only a 50:50 chance of retaining their property over two or three

generations. Historians have generalized about the gentry, and Gough’s account of successive owners of Balderton Hall

shows how misleading this can be.

William Nicholas built the hall but went bankrupt after speculating in the timber trade in

the 1570s and 1580s. Michael Chambre, his successor, frittered his fortune away and ended in prison. Each of the two

Shrewsbury drapers who followed had to sell when their London connections went bankrupt. The hall was then bought, in his

retirement, by the rector of Hodnet. It was then purchased by Matthew Lath, a farmer with humble beginnings but was lost by

his son-in-law Thomas Hall and was bought by Richard Hayward, a neighbouring yeoman, around 1700.

These ‘parish gentry’ were not sharply divided from the rest of society and it was quite common for one family to contain

people of different occupations and social standing. Gough did, however, differentiate between the twelve farms and the 48

‘tenements’, which varied between 10 and 90 acres depending on the quality of the land. About a quarter were freehold and

the rest were held on leases for three lives, the normal Shropshire method of tenure, from the lord of the manor. The

occupants of these family farms, who earned extra income from tailoring, weaving and other crafts, saw themselves as

yeomen and were less vulnerable to poor economic conditions than husbandmen. Both yeomen and husbandmen in Myddle were

economically more secure than their counterparts in corn-growing areas. Farming in Myddle was pastoral and prices were

more stable than on arable farms. It was geared to dairying, the rearing of beef and, particularly in the late seventeenth

century, the ‘Cheshire cheese’ trade. The little land in Myddle devoted to corn was already enclosed by 1700 and over 1,000

acres of former woods were converted into meadows and pasture by the early seventeenth century.

The existence of spacious commons and woodlands in Shropshire led to squatters taking over land. One squatter erected a

cottage in Myddle-wood by 1581 and by 1701 there were fourteen cottages in this area. Some squatters were very poor and

Gough was annoyed that the poverty of families like the Davieses and Beddows led to the higher poor rate than earlier in the

seventeenth century. Others, however, seized the opportunities provided by day-labour, cloth-making and their right to keep

animals on the commons to improve their position. Despite Gough’s criticisms, Shropshire was able to absorb squatters

without the tensions produced by the increase in the poor in the more crowded villages of other parts of England.

The parish described by Richard Gough was socially graduated on the basis of land. The lords of Myddle were remote

figures who played no direct role in the community. Power—economic and social, even if not political—lay with the owners

of the larger farms. Below them lay the yeomen and husbandmen, different in degree rather than kind. Finally, there were the

squatters, a fluid group, who looked upwards for promotion into the ranks of the ‘parish gentry’ and who provided additional

day labour. More specialist services were provided by craftsmen—Gough specifically mentions a carpenter and a shoemaker.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN MODERN BRITAIN 1700–1850 213

Cardington

Cardington, in Bedfordshire, is the second community to be examined.

The survey of the parish compiled by James

Lilbourne, a local schoolmaster, in 1782 and the 1851 census allow historians to assess change over time. The Parish of

Cardington lies on the southern slope of the Ouse valley, an area of good clay and gravel soil, adjacent to Bedford, the county

town, to the north-west.

The 1782 listing (Table 17.1) was determined, not by social hierarchy, but by the grouping of multiple tenement cottages

and may, because of the lack of detail for the higher social levels, have been compiled to ascertain how much public and private

provision was needed for maintaining the parish poor. The detail given in the listing allows an analysis of social structure

according to the occupational status of the household head.

The domestic textile industry is prominent in the list of occupations. Category 3 (a) is entirely female and so is much of 8.

Thomas Batchelor’s General View of the Agriculture of the County of Bedford (1808) described

Table 17.1 Distribution of occupation in Cardington in 1782

Occupational Category Household heads Others

No. % No. %

1. Gentry:

(a) Esq, Mr, Mrs 8 3.8 1 0.4

(b) Clergy 2 1.0 – –

2. Agriculture:

(a) Farmers 24 11.4 1 0.4

(b) Labourers 91 43.1 4 1.5

3. Manufacture (incl. apprentices):

(a) textiles: makes lace 9 4.3 94 34.9

spins linen 7 3.3 32 11.9

spins jersey 3 1.4 30 11.1

(b) clothing: taylor 1 0.5 3 1.1

seamstress – – 1 0.4

mantua-maker – – 2 0.7

maltmaker 1 0.5 – –

butcher 1 0.5 1 0.4

baker 1 0.5 – –

(d) wood products carpenter 6 2.8 2 0.7

sawyer 1 0.5 – –

(e) leather products: shoemaker 2 1.0 1 0.4

(f) metal products: blacksmith 3 1.4 2 0.7

(g) equipment: wheelwright 2 1.0

4. Building:

(a) bricklayer 3 1.4 – –

5. Distribution and trade:

shopkeeper 5 2.4 – –

innkeeper 2 1.0 – –

hawker 1 0.5 – –

ragman 1 0.5 – –

6. Service:

servant – – 20 7.4

works for – – 2 0.7

7. Pauper 18 8.5 21 7.8

8. Others:

laundress 1 0.5 – –

nurses 1 0.5 – –

214 CHANGE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE 1700–1850

Occupational Category Household heads Others

No. % No. %

housekeeper 1 0.5 – –

*Town Howard 1 0.5 – –

Bailiff 1 0.5 – –

Workhouse governor 1 0.5 1 0.4

Sexton 1 0.5 – –

Parish Clerk 1 0.5 – –

At school – – 49 17.5

Schoolmaster 1 0.5 1 0.4

Midwife – – 1 0.4

9. Unknown 9 4.3

TOTAL 211 100.0 269 100.0

This is a table of occupations, not of persons. Dual occupations have been counted twice on eight occasions.

* The Town Howard was the village hayward responsible for the hedges and the uses of parish common land.

Source: The Inhabitants of Cardington in 1782, ed. D.Baker, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 1973, p. 25.

how lace-making employed three-quarters of the non-domestic servant population, creating a shortage of maidservants. The

range of occupations far exceeds that for Myddle.

Cardington, like Myddle, had a pyramidal social structure. Labourers accounted for 45.7 per cent of households and 49.4

per cent of the population and with craftsmen/tradesmen they made up 68 per cent and 73.7 per cent respectively. While there

was a significant difference at the extremes between gentry and non-gentry in Cardington there were many subtle gradations

in between and the dividing line was by no means clear. The Land Tax assessment of 1783 distinguished between those who

owned land, tenants and, by implication, those who had none at all. Status could be indicated by liability for jury service,

applicable to men with land worth over £10 per annum; being a parish office-holder; appointment as a JP; the possession of

sufficient property to require the making of a will; the appointment as a trustee of a will, particularly if there was no blood

relationship with the maker of the will. Three ‘county gentry’—individuals with status outside the community—lived in

Cardington: John Howard, the prison reformer, Samuel Whitbread, senior and John Nesbitt. Below them was a subtly

graduated parish elite who owned or rented land and whose status was largely limited to Cardington itself. There were twenty

one households which Baker terms as ‘local gentry’ and thirty two households of the ‘parish elite’. The difference between

these two groups is evident in the higher property valuation of the former in the 1783 assessment. John Adams (died 1809)

and Thomas Estwick are examples of members of the local gentry. Adams was assessed at £56 for his Cardington land in

1783 and had been a churchwarden (1778–9, 1779–80, 1780–1), overseer (1778–9) and member of the Vestry (1778–9). Estwick

was assessed at £26 14s. in 1783 and had been Constable (1777–8, 1778–9), overseer (1776–7) and member of the Vestry

(1779–80) and had been on jury service in 1781. William Brown (1744–1823) is a good example of a member of the parish

elite. He was a shoemaker and Parish Clerk, occupying land assessed at £0. 17s. in 1783. His status can be demonstrated in

his witnessing of wills (John Brown’s in 1787) and acting as a trustee (Ann Preston, in the same year).

One hundred and forty-four family heads were labourers, craftsmen or tradesmen. Again the subtleties of the social

hierarchy are evident. Compare for example, Joshua Crockford, a Dissenter, who occupied land in Cardington assessed at £0.

12s. in 1783 and who left an inventory of goods for probate on his death in 1823, and Thomas Willamot (1726–86), a

labourer who had received relief from the poor rates. Finally seventeen family heads were classified as ‘paupers’. There was

an exceptional, and probably untypical, degree of commitment in Cardington to the poor, largely the result of the

philanthropic attitudes of Howard and Whitbread, who in 1787 built four houses for ‘deserving poor’. John Aikin commented

in 1792 that

there are few Counties in England which afford less employment to a numerous poor than that of Bedford; of course

wages are low and much distress would prevail, were it not for the humanity of gentlemen who reside on their estates.

The flexibility that existed in Myddle for absorbing squatters and the poor did not exist in Cardington.

Between 1782 and 1851 the population of the parish increased from around 800 to 1,451. Despite this the socio-

occupational structure remained largely unchanged (Table 17.2).

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN MODERN BRITAIN 1700–1850 215