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Custom and the Social Organisation of Writing in Early Modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Andy Wood
Andy Wood
Affiliation:
School of History, University of East Anglia
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Extract

Social historians of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England have tended to see literacy as a modernising force which eroded oral tradition and overrode local identities. Whereas the increasing literacy of the period has long appeared an important constituent element of Tudor and Stuart England's early modernity, custom has been represented as its mirror image. Attached to cumbersome local identities, borne from the continuing authority of speech, bred within a plebeian culture which was simultaneously pugnacious and conservative, customary law has been taken to define a traditional, backward-looking mind-set which stood at odds to the sharp forces of change cutting into the fabric of early modern English society. 1 Hence, social historians have sometimes perceived the growing elite hostility to custom as a part of a larger attack upon oral culture. In certain accounts, this elite antipathy is presented as a by-product of die standardising impulses of early capitalism. 2 Social historians have presented the increasing role of written documents in the defence of custom as the tainting of an authentic oral tradition, and as further evidence of the growing dom-nation of writing over speech. Crudely stated, orality, and hence custom, is seen as ‘of the people’; while writing was ‘of the elite’. In this respect as in others, social historians have therefore accepted all too readily John Aubrey's nostalgic recollections of late seventeenth century that Before printing, Old Wives tales were ingeniose and since Printing came in fashion, till a little before the Civil warres, the ordinary Sort of people were not taught to reade & now-a-dayes Books are common and most of the poor people understand letters: and the many good Bookes and the variety of Turnes of Affaires, have putt the old Fables out of dores: and the divine art of Printing and Gunpowder have frighted away Robin-good-fellowe and the Fayries.

Type
Oral History, Memory and Written Tradition
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 9 , December 1999 , pp. 257 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1999

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References

1 The most nuanced accounts of the modernising force of literacy are to be found in Thomas, K., ‘The meaning of literacy in early modern England’, in Baumann, G. (ed.), The Written Word: Literacy in Transition (Oxford, 1986), 97–131Google Scholar;and in Wrightson, K. E., English Society, 1580–1680 (London, 1982)Google Scholar, ch. 7. For enduring influences, see, especially, Ong, W.J., ‘Writing is a technology that restructures thought’, in Baumann, (ed.), Written Word, 23–50;Google ScholarGoody, J. and Watt, I., ‘The consequences of literacy’, in Goody, J. (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), 27–68Google Scholar. For a study which sites the domination of literacy alongside the growth of industrial modernity, see Vincent, D., ‘The decline of the oral tradition in popular culture’, in Storch, R. D. (ed.), Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth Century Englad (London, 1982), 20—47.Google ScholarFor an important critique of this view, seeJoyce, P., Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848–1914 (Cambridge, 1991), chs 8, 11–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Rollison, D., The Local Origins of Modem Society: Gloucestershire, 1500–1800 (London, 1992), 12–15, 67–83;Google ScholarJohnson, M., An Archaeology of Capitalism (Oxford, 1996), ch. 5Google Scholar.

3 See, especially, Fox, A., ‘Custom, memory and the authority of writing’, in Griffiths, P., Fox, A. and Hindle, S. (eds), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1996), 89–116.CrossRefGoogle ScholarI managed to persuade myself of this connection too: see Wood, A., ‘Social conflict and change in the mining communities of north-west Derbyshire, c. 1600—1700’, International Review of Social History, 38, 1 (1993), 41—2CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in which I drew far too easy a division between a literate (elite) interest and a popular (oral) culture. The subject is, of course, contradictory. Thompson, Edward could see the importance of written documentation in sustaining custom: Customs in Common (London, 1991), 153, 159. Yet, elsewhere, he continued to present ‘customary consciousness’ as synonymous with ‘oral tradition’: Customs in Common, 179Google Scholar.

4 BL, Landsdowne MS. 231, fo. 140. For the uncritical use of Aubrey in other contexts, see, especially, Underdown, D. E., Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1987), esp. ch. 4Google Scholar.

5 For the historiographical deconstruction of popular culture, see, most recently, Harris, T. (ed.), Popular Culture in England, 1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 1995)Google Scholar.

6 Goody, J., The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge, 1986), 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 The classic study is Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (1979; 2nd edn, 1993)Google Scholar. But, see also, Razi, Z. and Smith, R. (eds), Medieval Society and the Manor Court (Oxford, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Rollison, , Local Origins, 71, 73Google Scholar.

9 The best contemporary introduction to the subject is Calthorpe, C., The Relation between the Lard of a Mannor and the Coppyholder his Tenant (London, 1635)Google Scholar.For a useful discussion, see Kiralfy, A., ‘Custom in medieval English law’, Journal of Legal History, 9, I (1988), 26–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 For the politics of custom, see Wood, A., ‘The place of custom in plebeian political culture: England, 1550–1800’, Social History, 22, I, (1997), 46–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wrightson, K. E., ‘The politics of the parish in early modern England’, in Fox, Griffiths and Hindle, (eds), Experience of Authority, 22–5Google Scholar.

11 PRO, DL4/29/54, deposition of Baldwyn Eaxdall.

12 See, for instance, PRO, DL4/14/36, deposition of Robert Marsham.

13 Fentress, J. and, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992), 9–10Google Scholar.

14 See, for instance, PRO, Ei34/nChasI/Mich45; PRO, 014/105/1661/22; Griffiths, P., ‘Secrecy and authority in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century London’, Historical Journal, 40, 4 (1997), 940–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 PRO, STAC5/S70/24.

16 PRO, DL4/26/37, deposition of Edmund Burden.

17 PRO, E134/3JasI/Mich30, deposition of John Coatman.

18 For a colourful example of the deliberate loss of collective memory, see PRO, DL4/55/47.

19 PRO, E1I34/25Eliz/Trim, deposition of Robert Page.

20 Fox, ‘Custom, memory’; Wood, A., ‘Custom, identity and resistance: English free miners and their law, c. 1550–1800’, in Griffiths, , Fox, and Hindle, (eds), Experience of Authority, 268–73Google Scholar.

21 For example, when Edward Phipers of Haddenham found ‘a writinge in the Bottome of his Chest’, concerning the tithes of Haddenham, he exchanged it with the Earl of Suffolk for the remittance of his debts and two stone of wool to make a gown for his wife: PRO, Ei34/gJasI/Trin2, deposition of Elizabeth Cordell. Keith Thomas has pointed to the growing importance of historical records to landowners: Thomas, K., The Perception of the Past in Early Modem England (London, 1983), 2Google Scholar.

22 For representative examples, see PRO, DL4/38/17, 60/7.

23 For a remarkable case study, see Bagot, A., ‘Mr Gilpin and manorial customs’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, n.s., 62 (1962), 224–45.Google Scholar For depositions given by such antiquarian stewards examples, see PRO, DL4/56/12, 117/8. See also Bettey, j. H., ‘Manorial stewards and the conduct of manorial affairs’, Dorset Natural History and Archaeology Society, 115 (1993), 15–19Google Scholar.

24 See especiallyBrooks, C. W., Pettifoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: the ‘Lower Branch’ of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 For the Peak, see PRO, DL44/1121; PRO, DL4/91/16. For Gillingham Forest, see PRO, E134/3ChasI/East17. For the fens, see Lindley, K., Fenland Riots and the English Revolution (London, 1982), 31Google Scholar.

26 On the fens, see, for instance, Cunningham, W., ‘Common rights at Cottenham and Stretham in Cambridgeshire’, Camden Miscellany, n.s., 12 (1910), 173–289Google Scholar; on Gillingham, see John Rylands Library, Nicholas MS., 65 [Customary book of Gillingham Forest] on the Peak, see Wood, A., The Politics of Social Conflict: the Peak Country, 1520–1770 (Cambridge, 1999), ch. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 On popular ideas about the law, see Sharpe, J. A., ‘The people and the law’, in Reay, B. (ed.), Popular Culture in Seventeenth Century England (London, 1985), 244–70Google Scholar, and, more recendy, idem, ‘The law, law enforcement, state formation and national integration in late medieval and early modern England’, in X. Rousseaux and R. Levy (eds), Le Ṕenal dans tous ses états: justice, états et sociétés en Európe (XIIe–XXe sixécles) (Brussels, 1997), 65–80.

28 I hope to write about the changing relationship between gender and custom elsewhere.

29 Quoting Thompson, E. P., Whigs and Hunters: the Origins of the Black Act (London, 1975), 262Google Scholar.

30 Sheffield Archives, MD3401/1; Bunker, B., All Their Yesterdays: the Story of an Ancient Derbyshire Village on the South-Eastem Foothills of the Pennines (Sheffield, 1973), 78–80Google Scholar. On the Manners' role in disputes over custom in the Peak, see Wood, , Politics of Social Conflict, chs 7–11. The creation of the customary was important enough to lodge in the mind of Arthur Mower, who led the tenants' negotiations. Many years later, the production of the customary was one of the events which he singled out as noteworthy enough to enter into his brief autobiography. See BL, Add MS. 6671, fo. 163Google Scholar;Bunker, , All Their Yesterdays, 85–6Google Scholar.

31 PRO, DL4/17/27.

32 PRO, DL4/5/12.

33 PRO, DL4/20/24, deposition of Thomas Amborough.

34 For an example, see PRO, DL4/30/28, deposition of Thomas Gunthorpe.

35 PRO, DL4/37/51, deposition of John Martin.

36 Holmes, C., ‘Drainers and fenmen: The problem of popular political consciousness in the seventeenth century’, in Fletcher, A. and Stevenson, J. (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modem England (Cambridge, 1985), 191–2Google Scholar.

37 For the ‘Book of Dennis’, see, especially, Hart, C. E., The Free Miners of the Forest of Dean and the Hundred of St. Briavels (Gloucester, 1953)Google Scholar. For a revealing case study of the long preservation of legal records by tenants, see Drury, J. L., ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige and the Weardale chest’, Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, n.s., 5 (1980), 125–37Google Scholar.

38 Sider, G. M., Culture and Class in Anthropology and History: a Newfoundland Illustration (Cambridge, 1986), 93Google Scholar.