Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern EnglandServants in husbandry were unmarried farm workers hired on annual contracts. The institution of service distinguished them in many ways from their chief competitors, day-labourers. Servants were employed on an annual basis; they formed part of their employers' households; they were generally young and unmarried. Service was extremely common - most rural youths in early modern England became servants to farmers, and they composed as much as half of the full-time hired labour force in agriculture. Professor Kussmaul has marshalled information from sources as diverse as marriage registers, militia lists, parish censuses, settlement examinations, account books, records of Quarter Sessions, and the autobiographies of servants and masters, in producing this book which explores this important institution and to consider its wide historiographical implications. |
Contents
the problems | 3 |
Incidence and understanding | 11 |
labourers male and female by county 1851 | 20 |
Life and work | 31 |
1 | 37 |
Hiring and mobility | 49 |
1 | 64 |
Entry into and exit from service | 70 |
5 | 106 |
8 | 112 |
Extinction | 120 |
Servants and labourers in early | 135 |
Age and sex | 143 |
Statute Sessions and hiring fairs | 150 |
The Holland Lincolnshire Statute Sessions | 164 |
The 1831 census | 170 |
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Common terms and phrases
adult Agriculture annual assessments become Board Book Book of Fairs called Cambridge census cent common continued contracts cost County decline difference distance early modern east Economic England English Essex estimate Fairs farm servants farm service farmers female Figure force growth hired History household Ibid incidence increase institution labourers later LIII listings living London male marriage married Marshall master Mayett mean Mich Michaelmas mobility moved nineteenth century noted Office Owen parents parish poor population practice Present proportion Quarter Sessions rates Record region relative remained reported returned Riding Rural seasonality Sept servants in husbandry served service in husbandry settlement examinations seventeenth Social Society Source Spalding Statute Studies Table twenty University Press wages Westmorland women workers Young youths