Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700-1820This is a paperback edition of one of the most important and original contributions to English rural history published in the past generation. Winner of the Whitfield Prize of the Royal Historical Society in 1994, Commoners challenges the view that England had no peasantry or that it had disappeared before industrialization: rather it shows that common right and petty landholding shaped social relations in English villages, and that their loss at enclosure sharpened social antagonisms and imprinted on popular culture a pervasive sense of loss. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 92
Page 2
... eighteenth century it may help to start in the present . After years of thinking about commoners I went to see Laxton in Nottinghamshire last year . I had not gone before because I did not expect much : I knew most of the fields were no ...
... eighteenth century it may help to start in the present . After years of thinking about commoners I went to see Laxton in Nottinghamshire last year . I had not gone before because I did not expect much : I knew most of the fields were no ...
Page 5
... eighteenth century . They shared the same mephitic air : the air ( and the airs ) that repelled investigators and improvers . They shared the same amphibian economy . They lived off grazing in summer , fishing and fowling in winter ...
... eighteenth century . They shared the same mephitic air : the air ( and the airs ) that repelled investigators and improvers . They shared the same amphibian economy . They lived off grazing in summer , fishing and fowling in winter ...
Page 6
... eighteenth century is persuasive . It is so not least for the reason I began with : imagining how commoners lived off the 6 John Clare , ' The Mores ' , in John Barrell and John Bull , eds . , The Penguin Book of English Pastoral Verse ...
... eighteenth century is persuasive . It is so not least for the reason I began with : imagining how commoners lived off the 6 John Clare , ' The Mores ' , in John Barrell and John Bull , eds . , The Penguin Book of English Pastoral Verse ...
Page 7
... eighteenth century it was difficult . Enclosers and critics of commons did not always believe their eyes . They noted the value of common lands but concluded that commoners were poor : ' We don't find them ' , Pen- nington wrote of ...
... eighteenth century it was difficult . Enclosers and critics of commons did not always believe their eyes . They noted the value of common lands but concluded that commoners were poor : ' We don't find them ' , Pen- nington wrote of ...
Page 8
... eighteenth century . In the lowland Midlands in particular , convertible husbandry , the adoption of fodder crops sown on the fallows , and the redivision of the common fields produced a flexibility in agricultural practice which led to ...
... eighteenth century . In the lowland Midlands in particular , convertible husbandry , the adoption of fodder crops sown on the fallows , and the redivision of the common fields produced a flexibility in agricultural practice which led to ...
Contents
The question of value | 15 |
SURVIVAL | 53 |
Who had common right? | 55 |
Threats before enclosure | 81 |
Ordering the commons | 110 |
Enforcing the orders | 134 |
The uses of waste | 158 |
DECLINE | 185 |
Resisting enclosure | 259 |
CONCLUSION | 295 |
Making freeman of the slave | 297 |
Using the Land Tax | 331 |
Acreage equivalents | 342 |
Correcting and editing the Land Tax | 344 |
Landholding estimates | 345 |
Bibliography | 346 |
Other editions - View all
Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700-1820 J. M. Neeson No preview available - 1993 |
Common terms and phrases
acreage equivalent agistment Annals of Agriculture arable argued Board of Agriculture Buckinghamshire Burton Latimer cattle cent Chapter common land common pasture common right common waste common-field cottage commoners cottage rights counter-petition County court critics of commons decline disappearance economy eighteenth century enclosing parishes Enclosure Awards enclosure Bills England fallow farms fences fieldsmen forest fuel furze grazing H(BL Helpston holdings horses Jls House John Clare jury labourers Land Tax returns landholders landless commoners landlords landowners less Lord manors Maxey Midland moners Moreton Pinkney Northampton Northampton Mercury Northamptonshire Northants open parishes open-field overstocking owner-occupiers Oxfordshire Parliament Parliamentary Enclosure peasant petition poor population Raunds rented Ringstead rural sheep Shutlanger small farmers small occupiers small owners smallholders stints Stoke Bruerne survival Sutton Bassett tenants Thirsk Thomas Thomas à Becket trespass value of common View wage Warwicks Warwickshire West Haddon Weston by Welland Whitfield Whittlebury Wilbarston wood
Popular passages
Page 5 - These paths are stopt — the rude philistines thrall Is laid upon them and destroyed them all Each little tyrant with his little sign Shows where man claims earth glows no more divine On paths to freedom and to childhood dear A board sticks up to notice 'no road here...
Page 6 - no road here' And on the tree with ivy overhung The hated sign by vulgar taste is hung* As tho' the very birds should learn to know When they go there they must no further go...