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An Ungovernable People: The English and their Law in the 17th and 18th Centuries
The English and Their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
400 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 21, 2012
Though each of the essays (see below) covers a different topic, they are unified by an underlying theme summed up in the introduction by the editors:
“The level of violence or disorder almost invariably corresponded to the lack of responsiveness of those in authority. When first aired, a grievance was more likely to be taken through accepted legal or political channels; it was only when authorities declined to act that hostilities escalated.
There was an expectation, therefore, that those in authority knew that protests about specific grievances were intended to provoke a remedial response, and not to challenge authority per se. Such an assumption was only possible as long as the aggrieved had some faith in authority's willingness to be bound by the law and the ideals it was supposed to embody.” 17
Or more pithily, here are the concluding words of the last essay, "That law, justice and order should prevail could, with very little difficulty, become the watchword of revolt.” 298
All the essays take the stand that the majority of people involved in rebellious activity believed very much in English law--they just saw a failure to abide by it or to enforce it on the part of those in charge. Violence was very much a last resort when all traditional means of complaint had gone unanswered.
1 Two concepts of order: justices, constables and jurymen
in seventeenth-century England 21
Keith Wrightson, University of St Andrews
2 Grain riots and popular attitudes to the law: Maldon
and the crisis of 1629 47
John Walter, University of Essex
3 'A set of ungovernable people': the Kingswood colliers in
the eighteenth century 85
Robert W. Malcolmson, Queen's University, Canada
4 The Wilkites and the law, 1763-74: a study of radical
notions of governance 128
John Brewer, Yale University
5 'Our traitorous money makers': the Yorkshire coiners
and the law, 1760-83 172
John Styles, University of Bath
6 The King's Bench prison in the later eighteenth century:
law, authority and order in a London debtors' prison 250
Joanna Innes, Girton College, Cambridge
“The level of violence or disorder almost invariably corresponded to the lack of responsiveness of those in authority. When first aired, a grievance was more likely to be taken through accepted legal or political channels; it was only when authorities declined to act that hostilities escalated.
There was an expectation, therefore, that those in authority knew that protests about specific grievances were intended to provoke a remedial response, and not to challenge authority per se. Such an assumption was only possible as long as the aggrieved had some faith in authority's willingness to be bound by the law and the ideals it was supposed to embody.” 17
Or more pithily, here are the concluding words of the last essay, "That law, justice and order should prevail could, with very little difficulty, become the watchword of revolt.” 298
All the essays take the stand that the majority of people involved in rebellious activity believed very much in English law--they just saw a failure to abide by it or to enforce it on the part of those in charge. Violence was very much a last resort when all traditional means of complaint had gone unanswered.
1 Two concepts of order: justices, constables and jurymen
in seventeenth-century England 21
Keith Wrightson, University of St Andrews
2 Grain riots and popular attitudes to the law: Maldon
and the crisis of 1629 47
John Walter, University of Essex
3 'A set of ungovernable people': the Kingswood colliers in
the eighteenth century 85
Robert W. Malcolmson, Queen's University, Canada
4 The Wilkites and the law, 1763-74: a study of radical
notions of governance 128
John Brewer, Yale University
5 'Our traitorous money makers': the Yorkshire coiners
and the law, 1760-83 172
John Styles, University of Bath
6 The King's Bench prison in the later eighteenth century:
law, authority and order in a London debtors' prison 250
Joanna Innes, Girton College, Cambridge
January 22, 2014
I read this a long time ago in college. One of my mentors is an editor. It has one essay that was very important to me (Wrightson) when I wrote a dissertation in an overlapping area. It also has one of my favorite all-time academic essays, John Styles' fascinating study of Yorkshire coiners (and a demonstration of the problem with a currency actually based on metallic content and value). Kind of a step-son of the more well known Albion's Fatal Tree edited by Hay, Linebaugh, and Thompson, this collectiion shows what can happen when you marry French Annales style microhistory with Cambridge style "social science" history that entails superb sociological data analysis with a thorough culling of archival material.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews