What role did the parish play in people's lives in England and Wales between 1700 and the mid-twentieth century? By comparison with globalisation and its dislocating effects, the book stresses how important parochial belonging once was. Professor Snell discusses themes such as settlement law and practice, marriage patterns, cultures of local xenophobia, the continuance of out-door relief in people's own parishes under the new poor law, the many new parishes of the period and their effects upon people's local attachments. The book highlights the continuing vitality of the parish as a unit in people's lives, and the administration associated with it. It employs a variety of historical methods, and makes important contributions to the history of welfare, community identity and belonging. It is highly relevant to the modern themes of globalisation, de-localisation, and the decline of community, helping to set such changes and their consequences into local historical perspective.

In Parish Clergy Wives in Elizabethan England, Anne Thompson shifts the emphasis from the institution of clerical marriage to the people and personalities involved. Women who have hitherto been defined by their supposed obscurity and unsuitability are shown to have anticipated and exhibited the character, virtues, and duties associated with the archetypal clergy wife of later centuries. Through adept use of an extensive and eclectic range of archival material, this book offers insights into the perception and lived experience of ministers’ wives. In challenging accepted views on the social status of clergy wives and their role and reception within the community, new light is thrown on a neglected but crucial aspect of religious, social, and women’s history.

Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism deals with the impact of early capitalism on the strategies of family formation among four sets of English villagers in the period before the wholesale switch-over to factory industry. This era, roughly speaking from 1550 to 1850, has been variously described as ""traditional,"" ""preindustrial,"" and, more recently, ""protoindustrial."" However, the author sees it as a stage in the transition from feudalism to capitalism—a halfway house. The book begins by placing the study in the context of the larger debate concerning nascent capitalism, early rural industrialization, and the growth of population. Separate chapters then discuss the growth and structure of the framework knitting industry in Shepshed and the social implications of this economic change; the patterns of immigration, population turnover, and generational replacement in Shepshed and Bottesford; and industrial involution and domestic organization in 1851. Subsequent chapters deal with the demographic implications of rural industrialization; the relationship between economic opportunity and family formation; and relationships among the expectation of marriage, bridal pregnancy, and illegitimacy.

A traveller through the length and breadth of England is soon aware of cultural differences, some of which are clearly visible in the landscape. The eminent English historian Charles Phythian-Adams has put forth that England, through much of the last millennium, could be divided into regional societies, which broadly coincided with groups of pre-1974 counties. These shire assemblages in turn lay largely within the major river drainage systems of the country. In this unusual study Alan Fox tests for, and establishes, the presence of an informal frontier between two of the proposed societies astride the Leicestershire-Lincolnshire border, which lies on the watershed between the Trent and Witham drainage basins. The evidence presented suggests a strong case for a cultural frontier zone, which is announced by a largely empty landscape astride the border between the contrasting settlement patterns of these neighbouring counties.

This is a study of bastardy and marriage between the 16th and 18th centuries, exploring the topic from a regional perspective. The book asserts that the very concept of national demographic data is shown to be deeply flawed.

Bishops transcripts used for earlier dates and missing years.