Custom, Improvement and the Landscape in Early Modern BritainRichard W. Hoyle A great deal has been written about the acceleration of English agriculture in the early modern period. In the late middle ages it was hard to see that English agriculture was so very different from that of the continent, but by 1750 levels of agricultural productivity in Britain were well ahead of those general in northern Europe. The country had become much more urban and the proportion of the population engaged in agriculture had fallen. Customary modes of behaviour, whilst often bitterly defended, had largely been swept away. Contemporaries were quite clear that a process of improvement had taken place which had seen agriculture reshaped and made much more productive. Exactly what that process was has remained surprisingly obscure. This volume addresses the fundamental notion of improvement in the development of the British landscape from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Contributors present a variety of cases of how improvement, custom and resistance impacted on the local landscape, which includes manorial estates, enclosures, fens, forests and urban commons. Disputes between tenants and landlords, and between neighbouring landlords, over improvement meant that new economic and social identities were forged in the battle between innovation and tradition. The volume also includes an analysis of the role of women as agricultural improvers and a case study of what can happen when radical improvement failed. The volume will be essential reading for scholars of landscape studies, rural and agrarian history, but will also provide a useful context for anybody studying the historical legacy of mankind's exploitation of the environment and its social, economic, legal and political consequences. |
Contents
Landlords Copyholders and the Struggle to Control | |
The Articulation Transmission and Preservation of Custom in the Forest | |
Custom Conflict and Landscape Change in West Norfolk | |
The Idea of Improvement c 15201700 | |
Communal Agriculture and the Politics | |
Approvement and Improvement in the Lowland Wastes of Early Modern | |
Sir Hamon Le Strange of Hunstanton in Norfolk 15831654 | |
Index | |
The Fens and Drainage After 1663 | |
Mrs Elizabeth Prowse at Wicken | |
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Custom, Improvement and the Landscape in Early Modern Britain Taylor & Francis Group No preview available - 2019 |
Common terms and phrases
acres Agrarian agricultural Anthony Bradshaw approvement arable Bedford Level Corporation Breckland Cambridge cattle Chancery claimed common lands common rights copyhold corn Corporation court Cromwell Cromwell's Crown custom customary Derbyshire disputes drainage drainers draining Duchy Duffield Duffield Frith E. P. Thompson Early Modern England economic eighteenth century Elizabeth enclosed enclosure English entry evidence example Falvey farmers farming Fenland fens fines foldcourse forest freeholders freemen Frith grazing rights hath Heacham heaths History Rev Hunstanton husbandry Ibid improvement inhabitants John Lancashire landlord landowners landscape leased Level London manor manorial lords Marsh memory neighbouring Norfolk North Elmham open fields Oxford parish pasture petition plough Politics profit Prowse R. W. Hoyle records rents Ringstead riots rural Sedgeford seventeenth century sheep Sir Hamon sixteenth century Snettisham social Star Chamber steward Strathspey Taverner Taverner's Thirsk Thomas timber town villages warren waste Wicken William Wood