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House and household in Restoration Chester1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

N. J. Alldridge
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Extract

Both the house and the household have been subjects of growing interest amongst historians of pre-industrial society, but mostly in isolation from each other. Studies of social structure conventionally treat the household as an entity independent of its physical surroundings. Ten years ago, Peter Laslett bewailed the fact that ‘we know little in general about the effects of buildings on the structure of domestic groups’, and this statement still appears to be valid; while on the other side of the Channel it has been echoed by Jean-Pierre Bardet:

Information on the material environment, undoubtedly important, is diffused to serve the perspectives of a wide variety of studies: the history of architecture, urbanism, geography, sociology etc.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 10 , May 1983 , pp. 39 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this paper was read at the Conference on Pre-Modern Towns in 1981 at the Institute of Historical Research, London. The present version has benefited from comments made then. In addition I am indebted to Dr Michael Power for valuable advice and criticism.

References

2 In Laslett, P. with Wall, R. (eds.), Household and Family in Past Time (1972), 37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Bardet, J.-P., ‘Une Interrogation’, Annales de Démographie Historique (1975), 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 I am grateful to Alan Carter and Robert Smith of the Norwich Survey Team for answering many detailed questions on their procedures and findings.

5 Though the more recent volumes of the London Survey (University of London) come closest to providing great detail on composite areas.

6 See Dyer, A., ‘Urban Housing: a documentary study of four Midland towns 1530–1700’, Post-Medieval Archaeology, XV (1981);Google Scholar Corfield, P. J. and Priestley, U., ‘Rooms and room use in Norwich housing, 1580–1730’, Post-Medieval Archaeology, XVI, (1982).Google Scholar Cf. also Jurgens, M. and Couperie, P., ‘Le logement à Paris aux XVIe et XVIIIe siècles: une source, les inventaires après décès’, Annales E.S.C., 17th year, III (May–June 1962), 488–500.Google Scholar

7 See Meekings, C. A. F. (ed.), The Surrey Hearth Tax, 1664, Surrey Record Society, XVII 41 & 42, (1940), xii;Google Scholar Foster, D., ‘The hearth tax and settlement studies’, in The Local Historian, XI. 7, (1975), 395.Google Scholar

8 E.g., Hoskins, W. G., Industry, Trade andPeople inExeter, 1688–1800 (2nd edn, Exeter, 1968), lllff, 118;Google Scholar Butlin, R. A., ‘The population of Dublin in the late seventeenth century’, Irish Geography, V (1965), 51–66;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Langton, J., ‘Residential patterns in preindustrial cities: some case studies from seventeenth century Britain’, Trans. Institute of British Geographers, lxv (1974), 1–28;Google Scholar Power, M. J., ‘The social geography of Restoration London’, in The Making of the Metropolis, eds. Finlay, R. and Beier, L., forthcoming.Google Scholar

9 See Corfield, and Priestley, , ‘Rooms and room use in Norwich housing’, table 3.Google Scholar

10 Statutes of the Realm, IV, 393.Google Scholar

11 Beazley, F. C. (ed.), ‘Hearth tax returns for Chester’, in Lancashire and Cheshire Miscellanies, Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (hereafter R.S.L.C.) LII 1906), 54 (= PRO, E179 86/146).Google Scholar

12 Cheshire Record Office (hereafter C.R.O.), WS Thomas Benson (inv) 1613; Thomas Fletcher (inv) 1627; Urian Minshall (inv) 1667; Robert Rutter (inv) 1617. Chester City Record Office (hereafter C.C.R.O.), QSF/61 fo 57 (1612).

13 Spufford, H. M., ‘The significance of the Cambridgeshire hearth tax’, Proc. Cambridgeshire Antiquarian Society, LX (1962), 53.Google Scholar

14 Beazley, , op. cit., 23;Google Scholar C.R.O., William, Ws Bate (inv) 1665.Google Scholar

15 Beazley, , op. cit., 11;Google Scholar C.C.R.O., CAS/I fo 37.

16 Groombridge, M. J. (ed.), A Calendar of Chester City Council Minutes, 1603–1642, R.S.L.C., CVI (1956), 56, 164;Google Scholar Cheshire Sheaf, 3rd ser., XIX (1922), 65f;Google Scholar ibid., L. (1955), 8. He had only two servants with him in 1641: C.C.R.O., CAS/I f. 228.

17 The Chester Poll Tax is PRO, E 179 244/29, unfoliated. In general see Hoskins, W. G., Exeter in the Seventeenth Century. Devon and Cornwall Record Society II (1955) xiv–xviGoogle Scholar;, Trans. Shropshire Archaeological Society, LIX (1971–1972), 104–9.Google Scholar

18 Similar findings were made by Lawton, G. O. (ed.), Northwich Hundred Poll Tax, 1660, and Hearth Tax, 1664, R.S.L.C., CXIX (1979), 20, cf. 8, 10.Google Scholar

19 A Spearman's rank correlation coefficient of 0.515 where 0.564 would be significant at a level of 0.5, and 0.746 at 0.1.

20 Statutes of the Realm, v, 61.Google Scholar

21 A question raised by Anderson, M., ‘Household structure and the Industrial Revolution: mid-nineteenth century Preston in comparative perspective’, in Laslett, and Wall, , Household and Family in Past Time, 218, fn. 9;Google Scholar cf. Ranum, O., Paris in the Age of Absolutism, New York, 1968, 171f.Google Scholar

22 Hoskins, , Exeter in the Seventeenth Century, xvii.Google Scholar

23 ‘The Life of John Bruen of Bruen-Stapleford, who died Anno Christi, 1625’, in Clark, S., The Marrow of Ecclesiastical History Containing the Lives of the Christians of Inferior Ranks (1675), II, 93.Google Scholar

24 The Holy State (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1648), IIIGoogle Scholar, ch. 7, maxim 7, quoted by Mercer, E., ‘Houses of the Gentry’, in Past and Present, V, (1954), 16.Google Scholar

25 See Harris, B. E. (ed.), V.C.H. Cheshire, II, (1979), 46.Google Scholar

26 In 9 per cent of those studied between 1600 and 1680.

27 ‘The Life of John Bruen’, 99.Google Scholar

28 BL, Add. MS. 39,925 f. 21v; Piccope, G. J. (ed.), Lancashire and Cheshire Wills and Inventories from the Ecclesiastical Court, Chester, Chetham Society, O.S. LIV (1861), 1ff.Google Scholar

29 BL, Harl. MS. 2135 f. 43; Department of the Environment, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest: the City of Chester, (1972);Google Scholar Morris, R. H. and Lawton, P. H., (eds.), ‘The Siege of Chester, 1643–1646’ J. Chester Archaeological Society, XXV (1923), 8, 211.Google Scholar

30 See e.g., C.R.O., WS Alice Whitby (will) 1639; C.C.R.O., QSF/61 fos. 89r, 109r, 127 (1613).

31 For all occupations the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was 0.777, where 0.564 would be significant at the level of 0.1. For the upper half of the sample alone, wealth ranks 1–9, the coefficient was 0.867.

32 Garden, M., ‘Quelques remarques sur l'habitat urbain: l'example de Lyon au XVIIIe siècle’, Annales de Démographie Historique (1975), 30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Stone, L., The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800, (1977), 421, cf. 476.Google Scholar

34 Groombridge, (ed.), Chester City Council Minutes, 187.Google Scholar

35 BL, Harl. MS. 2054 f. 44r, v; Harl. MS. 2135 fos. 114–34v; cf. Laslett, P., The World We Have Lost (2nd edn, 1971), 1.Google Scholar

36 C.R.O., WS John Ashton (inv) 1632.

37 Cf. Morris, R. H., Chester in the Plantagenet and Tudor Reigns (1893), 416f, 421f (1575, 1586);Google Scholar Groombridge, (ed.), Chester City Council Minutes, 34 fn. 2 (1607).Google Scholar

38 PRO, E 179 244/29; BL, Harl. MS. 2135 f. 127, 133; Pantin, W. A., ‘Some medieval English town houses’, in Culture andEnvironment: Essays in Honour of Sir Charles Fox, eds. Foster, I. Ll. and Alcock, L. (1963), 460ff.Google Scholar

39 Mandrou, R., Introduction à la France moderne, 1500–1640, 2nd, (Paris, 1974), 52.Google Scholar

40 ‘The Life of John Bruen’, 93.Google Scholar

41 J. H. E. Bennett (ed.), Rolls of the Freemen of the City of Chester, R.S.L.C., 51, 1905; C.C.R.O., M/Ap/BI (1556–1646), and M/Ap/I/I (1604–1684). Cases are known of early or delayed enrolment as a freeman, but they are not common.

42 Groombridge, (ed.), Chester City Council Minutes, 34 fn. 2 (1607).Google Scholar