'A Market Town and its Surrounding Villages' is the first proper
treatment that has ever been given not only to a single community but
to a group of communities focused on a market town. Although numerous
studies of local communities have been made, never before has anything
like this group study been achieved.
Cranbrook and its six contiguous parishes in the Weald of Kent
- Benenden, Biddenden, Frittenden, Goudhurst, Hawkhurst and Staplehurst
- are fortunate to have parish registers that are almost complete for
the period in question. This has given Anthony Poole the opportunity to
effect a fascinating reconstruction of the families living in the
parishes in the late 1600s, and, consequently, the pages teem with
local people and families. Dr Poole's groundbreaking survey
concentrates on the 40 years between the Restoration of the monarchy in
1660 and the close of the 17th century, which offers a wealth of
resources including the Hearth Tax returns and the Compton Census; the
study also benefits from remarkably full contemporary Accounts by
Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor, and makes use of an abundance
of wills, inventories and probate accounts.
Over ten chapters the author examines the sources themselves and the
general background to the area and the period, analyses the development
of families from courtship through marriage to death, discovers the
role in society of the administrators, the poor and the very poor of
the parish, and explores mutual support across societies, the borrowing
and lending of money, and the influence of nonconformity. He provides
fresh insight into family formation, preservation and limitation, the
interrelationships between kin and neighbours, the function of parish
welfare and credit systems, and the role of nonconformists in a time
when religion shaped both community and country. At each stage Dr Poole
places each of the Wealden parishes in context with other well-known
studies.
This investigation is unique in being both essentially local
in its focus, yet with an astonishing breadth that takes in national
patterns of social and demographic history. This absorbing book will be
of interest to the current inhabitants of the parishes, whose family
histories may be entwined with the area's history, but also to local
historians around the country, sparking academic debate and discussion
about this fascinating subject.
Contents:
List of Illustrations, Figures, Maps and Tables
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
1. The Sources
- Parish Registers
- Other Primary Sources
2. The Cranbrook Region
- Environmental Effects of Geology and Topography
- The Population of Cranbrook and Adjacent Parishes
- Socio-economic Factors
- The Occupational Balance
- The Balance Between Rich and Poor
- Nonconformity and the Established Church
3. Making the Family
- Kinship: Nuclear and Extended Families
- Choice of Marital Partner
- Age at Marriage
- The First-born
- Pre-marital Pregnancy
4. Growth of the Family
- Family Formation
- The Evidence for Family Planning
- Social Groupings and Family Formation
- Infant and Child Mortality
- Case Studies: A Sample of Families from the Cranbrook Region
5. Preservation of the Family
- The Scope of the Cranbrook Evidence
- Duration of Marriage as a Key Factor
- Numbers of Children per Marriage
- Strategies for Caring for Surviving Family Members
- Remarriage of Windows
- Discouragement from Remarrying
- Kinship, Guardianship and the Duty to Care for the Young
- Guardianship Beyond the Immediate Family
- Education and Apprenticeship
- Provision for Surviving Family Members
6. The 'Chiefer Sort'
- Baronets: Relationship Beyond the County
- Knights and Esquires: Relationships County-wide
- Gentlemen: Relationships Locally and Beyond
- Parish Administrators: Minister and 'Vestrymen'
7. The 'Other Inhabitants'
- Day-to-day Contacts: Services Rendered
- Care of the Sick
- Support of the Very Poor
- Care of Children
- Apprenticeship on the Parish
- Conclusion
8. Support Across Village Societies
- Allegants, Testifiers and Bondsmen
- Executors and Overseers of Wills
- Will Witnesses
- Witnesses to Burial in Woollen
- Appraisers of Probate Inventories
9. Borrowing and Lending Money
- The Wider Context
- Day-to-Day Contacts: Retail Goods
- Borrowing and Lending Money: Mortgages
- Marriages Bonds
- Loans on Bond
- The Professional Lender of Money on Bond
10. The Nonconformist Factor
- Introduction
- Presbyterians, Independents and Congregationalists
- Baptists
- Quakers
- Nonconformists and Exclusivity
Bibliography
Notes
Index of Parishioners Named in the Text
General Index
Reviews:
'This is a worthy book. It ticks all the right boxes of what a socio-economic microstudy should contain.' - Dr Evelyn Lord, The Local Historian, August 2006
