The Middle Sort of People in Provincial England, 1600-1750

Abstract

This book provides a detailed, comparative study of the social identity of the ‘middle sort of people’ in provincial England. It questions existing historical depictions of a defined ‘middling’ group, united by shared patterns of consumption and display in the century after 1660. Focusing on three separate case studies (East Anglia, Northwest and Southwest England), it identifies how the ‘middling’ described their status, and then examines the bases of their social position in parish life and government, and through their material possessions. Instead of a coherent, unified ‘middle sort of people’, this study finds division between self-proclaimed parish rulers (the ‘chief inhabitants’) and a wider, less readily classifiable body of modestly prosperous householders. The study shows that by the 18th century, many of these ‘chief inhabitants’ were trying to break out of their parish pecking orders not by associating with a wider ‘middle class’, but by modifying ideas of gentility to suit their circumstances (and pockets). Although this research acknowledges the presence of a distinct ‘middling’ stratum in the early modern English provinces, it concludes that the social identity of these people remained fragmented, restricted by parochial society on the one hand, and overshadowed by the prospect of gentility on the other. This study of social experiences within three contrasting regions aims to offer new insights into the composition and scale of the social order of early modern England, and a new interpretation of its much-debated ‘middling sorts’.