¹ Though not entirely. See, for example, Coate, M., Cornwall in the great Civil War and Interregnum, 1642–1660 (Oxford, 1940).Google Scholar

² I am concerned here with the development of ‘provincial history’. There is also a quite distinct tradition developing which could be called ‘micro-history’ or ‘pure’ local history, concentrating on particular village communities and concerned with some or all of the following problems and their interactions: demography, occupational structure, formal and informal changes in the distribution of authority, the moral imperatives of religion and supersitition. Wrightson, K. and Levine, D., Poverty and piety in an English village: Terling, 1525–1700 (London, 1980)Google Scholar is a splendid recent example.

³ Those so inspired include Cliffe, J. T., The Yorkshire gentry from the Reformation to the Civil War (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Blackwood, B. G., The Lancashire gentry and the Great Rebellion (Manchester, 1978)Google Scholar; Finch, M. E., Five Northamptonshire families (Northampton, 1956)Google Scholar; Simpson, A., The wealth of the gentry 1540–1660 (Chicago, 1961).Google Scholar

⁴ Smith, A. Hassell, County and court: government and politics in Elizabethan Norfolk, 1558–1603 (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar; Barnes, T. G., Somerset, 1625–1642 (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar; Everitt, A. M., The com munity of Kent and the Great Rebellion (London, 1966)Google Scholar; Morrill, J. S., Cheshire, 1630–1660 (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar; Underdown, D. E., Somerset in the Civil Wars and the Interregnum (Newton Abbot, 1975)Google Scholar; Fletcher, A., A county community at peace and war: Sussex, 1600–1660 (London, 1976).Google Scholar

⁵ See particularly Holmes, C., ‘The county community in Stuart historiography’, Journal of British Studies, LII (1980), 54–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But see also Aylmer, G., ‘Crisis and regrouping in the political elites: England from the 1630s to the 1660s’, in Pocock, J. G. A. (ed.), Three British resolutions (1980), pp. 141–50Google Scholar; Underdown, D. E.. ‘Community and class: theories of local politics in the English Revolution’, in Malament, B. C. (ed.), After the Reformation (Princeton, 1980), pp. 147–66.Google Scholar

⁶ Ashton, R., The English Civil War, 1603–1649 (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Russell, C., Parliaments and English politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morrill, J. S., The revolt of the provinces (London, 1976, rev. edn, 1980).Google Scholar

⁷ See Morrill, J. S., Seventeenth century Britain (Folkestone, 1980), chapter 8.Google Scholar

⁸ For a list of some important ones, see Aylmer, G. E. and Morrill, J. S., The Civil Wars and Interregnum: sources for local historians (London, 1979), appendix 8.Google Scholar

⁹ This is true even if we include the more numerous economic and social studies.

¹⁰ See n. 4.

¹¹ Cf. Howell, R., Newcastle-upon- Tyne in the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1967)Google Scholar; MacCaffrey, W., Exeter, 1540–1640 (Cambridge, Mass. 1958)Google Scholar; Pearl, V., London and the outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1964)Google Scholar; Ashton, R., The city and the court, 1603–1642 (Cambridge, 1979).Google Scholar

¹² Hirst, D., The representative of the people? (Cambridge, 1976).Google Scholar

¹³ P.R.O. SP 20 (committee for sequestrations); SP 22 (committee for plundered ministers); SP 24 (committee of indemnity); and particularly SP 28 (commonwealth exchequer papers).

¹⁴ For a list of appropriate sources, see Aylmer and Morrill, Civil Wars, pp. 31–4.

¹⁵ Matthews, A.G. (ed.), Walker revised; the sufferings of the clergy (London, 1948)Google Scholar; Matthews, A. G. (ed.), Calamy revised (London, 1934).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Parishes for which suitable material survives include (in Norfolk and Norwich Record Office) PD 58/38(5) (St Lawrence), PD 191/23 (St Benedict's), PD 90/69 (St John de Sepulchre), PD 59/54 (St Gregory), PD 12/48, 49 (St Martin at Palace), and PD 26/71, 72 (St Peter Mancroft). There are others.

¹⁷ I am grateful to my research student Mr Patrick Higgins for advice on this point. See Bodl. Lib. MS Eng. hist. d. 279, fo. 30.

¹⁸ This is discussed in two theses: A. R. Michell, ‘ The port of Great Yarmouth and the economic and social relationship with its neighbours on both sides of the seas, 1550–1714’, University of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis (1978), pp. 340–1; P. Corfield,’ The social and economic history of Norwich, 1650–1850’, University of London Ph.D. thesis (1975), p. 124 and sources noted there.

¹⁹ Johnson, A. M., ‘Some aspects of the political, constitutional, social and economic history of the city of Chester, c. 1550–1662’, University of Oxford D.Phil, thesis (1971).Google Scholar

²⁰ Morrill, J. S., ‘Parliamentary representation, 1534–1974’ in V.C.H. Cheshire, 11, 127–33.Google Scholar

²¹ I am grateful to Mr Patrick Higgins for advice on these points.

²² Pearl, V., London and the outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (London, 1961).Google Scholar

²³ Heal, F., Of prelates and princes (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O'Day, R., The English clergy: the emergence and consolidation of a profession (Leicester, 1979)Google Scholar; Houlbrooke, R., Church courts and people during the English Reformation (Oxford, 1979), all of which began life as diocesan studies (of Ely, Lichfield and Norwich).Google Scholar

²⁴ I was not convinced because (a) the proportion of ‘unknowns’ shrinks with time as evidence becomes clearer; (b) the term ‘gentleman’ is so much more loosely deployed by the end of the seventeenth century, particularly in such sources as the matriculation registers; (c) excluding the unknowns, the proportion only rises from 22 to 28 per cent, not really a significant leap in a sample of barely 100.

²⁵ See e.g. Clark, P., ‘The ownership of books in England, 1560–1640; the example of some Kentish townsfolk’, in Stone, L. (ed.), Schooling and society (Princeton, 1976).Google Scholar

²⁶ O'Day, The English clergy, passim.

²⁷ Matthews, Walker revised, passim.

²⁸ Cf. Hill, C., The economic problems of the Church (Oxford, 1960) pp. 110ff.Google Scholar I am grateful to Dr R. B. Outhwaite for help with this point.

²⁹ Most notably in ‘English landownership, 1680–1740’, Economic History Review, 1st series, x (1940)Google Scholar; ‘Marriage settlements in the eighteenth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, xxii (1950)Google Scholar; ‘The English land market in the eighteenth century’, in Bromley, J. S. and Kossmann, E. H. (eds.), Britain and the Netherlands (Leiden, 1960)Google Scholar; ‘Landowners and the Civil War’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xviii (1965).Google Scholar

³⁰ The influence of this thesis can be seen in the general works on the period, such as Mingay, G. E., The gentry (London, 1976)Google Scholar, and English landed society in the eighteenth century (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Stone, L., ‘Social mobility in England, 1500–1700‘, Past and Present, no. 33 (1967)Google Scholar, and the articles by Stone, L. and Hill, C. in Pocock, J. G. A. (ed.), Three British revolutions (Princeton, 1980).Google Scholar

³¹ Clay, C., ‘Marriage, inheritance, and the rise of large estates’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xxi (1968)Google Scholar; see also his article ‘The price of freehold land in the later 17th and 18th centuries’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xxvii (1974).Google Scholar

³² Holderness, B. A., ‘The English land market in the 18th century: the case of Lincolnshire’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xxvii (1974)Google Scholar; See also his article ‘Credit in English rural society with special reference to the period 1650–1720’, Agricultural History Review, xxiv (1976).Google Scholar

³³ Beckett, J. V., ‘English landownership in the later 17th and 18th centuries: the debate and the problems’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xxx (1977).Google Scholar

³⁴ Bonfield, L., ‘Marriage settlements and the “Rise of the great estates”’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xxxii (1979)Google Scholar and debate in ibid., xxxiii (1980).

³⁵ Habakkuk, H.J., ‘The rise and fall of English landed families, 1600–1800’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, xxix-xxx (1979–1980).Google Scholar

³⁶ Sir John Habakkuk's articles (n. 29) were mainly based on evidence from Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire.

³⁷ See the parallel case presented by Broad, J., ‘Gentry finances and the Civil War: the case of the Buckinghamshire Verneys’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xxxii (1979).Google Scholar