Personal wealth in Hurstingstone hundred, Huntingdonshire, 1479-1558, a study of continuity in the early Tudor countryside

grantor: University of TorontoThe study examines two historiographical issues: personal wealth in the pre-industrial countryside and medieval-modern continuity. A sample area consisting of the villages and small towns of Hurstingstone hundred, Hunts., is examined using a wide range of sources linked by prosopography. Villagers operated with a clear understanding of their economy, were fully and comfortably immersed in the market and showed considerable ingenuity in using human and material resources--even if contrary to existing legal and political conventions. Yet, the economy was typical of its medieval precursors though modified by historical and geographical contingency. The income accrued exhibited a series of unexpected characteristics: (1) villagers owned an unexpectedly rich array of consumer goods; (2) the social distribution of income was far more egalitarian than suggested by the established focus on land-holding; and (3) settlements revealed considerable functional differentiation in which urban/rural contrasts assumed a secondary rather than a primary role. The rift between medieval and modern history is bridged at the local level through an abundant but unconventional assembly of documents to reveal an economy built upon the autonomous village community of the Middle Ages through continuous adaptation. This direct confrontation of two historiographical periods at their nexus reveals conceptual gaps and fields for further research in both.Ph.D