Blended or constructed families? Family, neighbourhood, and domestic space in early modern England

Abstract

Scholarship relating to the early modern family in England (c. AD 1500–1700) increasingly stresses the centrality of neighbourhood. Much of this research, however, focuses on the “embedded” nature of the early modern family, which appears as a sphere both within and separate from networks of kin and neighbourhood. Using depositions taken from the Durham Consistory Court, this chapter argues that notions of family and neighbourhood were rarely separated in early modern England, and expands upon the extant argument that privacy was treated with social mistrust. By investigating how different understandings of privacy influenced early modern experiences of family, I show that communities made little distinction between “domestic” and “community” space. Having argued for the intrusion of communal space into the family's domestic space, and vice versa, the chapter then considers how family disputes—especially those involving children—were negotiated in this setting. Using a selection of case studies and comparative anthropology, I argue that familial and communal disputes were considered as “public” affairs, and that the idea of a family or private matter was alien to ordinary early modern families.