PART I
STRUCTURES OF COMMUNAL LIFE

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Chapter One
Community of the Vale:
Landscape and Settlement

Definitions of the term "community" can vary according to whether one conceives of a regional landscape or a regional society, "a topographical area on a map . . . or a human organism with a conscious life of its own, a conscious identity or a sense of belonging together."^[1] In the case of the Vale of Nailsworth, both definitions applied coterminously; its topography promoted a pattern of settlement and a type of economy that gave this once remote district a distinctive communal identity. A boundary settlement and protoindustrial village,^[2] located in a wood-pasture region, the Vale provided fertile ground for the growth of Dissent, becoming in the eighteenth to early nineteenth century a prototype of a Dissenting community.^[3]

The Vale, consisting of Nailsworth village and its dispersed hamlets, was situated four miles south of the town of Stroud in the Cotswold region of Gloucestershire. Stroud served as the hub of a region of fifteen rural-industrial parishes well known for the manufacturing of woolen cloth and an association with Nonconformity. By 1830 Nailsworth had become the Stroud region's most important locus of manufacturing and contained some of the largest Nonconformist congregations in the county. With the growth of industry and communications, however, Nailsworth lost its isolated character, as its Congregationalist and Baptist sects transformed themselves into broad-based denominations:^[4] in this combined fashion, the community of the Vale completed its transition to modernity.

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The present chapter establishes some of the sociological and topographical features of this transition. It begins with a description of the boundaries and settlement pattern of the Vale community in the eighteenth to early nineteenth century and includes a geographic distribution of occupations. This distribution, although drawn from a census taken in 1841, sets forth a social structure that already possessed a deep history; a more developmental treatment of social structure follows, which focuses closely on its transitional quality. This more dynamic analysis establishes the extent of erosion of a hierarchical social system from the late eighteenth century and the beginning of the formation of modern social classes, whose antecedents lay nevertheless in earlier eras.

The chapter returns next to a discussion of topography, by demonstrating how the configuration and ecology of the landscape helped shape Nailsworth's settlement pattern. The landscape initially promoted a degree of isolation and a protoindustrial economy; its hills, rock formations, streams, and forests gave form to the Vale's topography and underlay its character as an industrial village and Dissenting community. This discussion is carried forward by showing how Nailsworth became integrated geographically into the life of its hinterland; road, turnpike, canal, and railway construction proved critical to the growth of a regional society, yet the slowness of their development also illustrates the incompleteness of their modernizing effects.

Boundaries and Settlement Pattern

A discussion of communal boundaries in rural England begins inevitably with the parish, the primary unit of ecclesiastical administration, which set the parameters of social organization at least from the early modern period. Following the Webbs, the parish can be defined in simplest terms as "a 'shrift-shire', the sphere of reciprocal duties between a duly commissioned priest and the inhabitants in his charge."^[5] Parishes, consequently, centered on their churches, although the territory they encompassed often varied considerably, as did the size of their respective populations.

Smaller parishes usually possessed nucleated settlements and for this reason were better served by their incumbents. Their churches were located accessibly at the center of the parish, which made

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gaining a foothold difficult for Dissenters.^[6] In larger parishes, settlement patterns tended to be irregular; chapelries might, therefore, be created in their more remote districts in order to give the inhabitants some contact with established religion.^[7] Chapelries did not, however, enjoy the same status as churches; they were not supported from their own tithes, nor always consecrated,^[8] a condition that made them less appealing alternatives to Dissenters' chapels. Still, Anglican authorities did not always create chapelries in outlying parochial districts, leaving them wide open to competition from Dissenters. These same districts, moreover, sometimes spawned boundary settlements.

A boundary settlement developed at the borders of two or more parishes, with its various neighborhoods emerging under competing parochial jurisdictions. The Vale occupied just such a position prior to its creation as a civil parish in 1892. The boundaries of Horsley, Avening, and Minchinhampton crossed Nailsworth village, its surrounding hamlets likewise distributing themselves among these three parishes. Shortwood and Newmarket were in Horsley; Forest Green, Inchbrook, and Winsoredge were in Avening; and Watledge, including Scar Hill, was in Minchinhampton.^[9] Village and hamlets together constituted the community of the Vale, although it was possible to distinguish even smaller valleys lying between them^[10] (see map 1).

Nailsworth's peculiar treatment in land tax returns and extant manor records, as well as its contradictory classification in the early censuses,^[11] reflected the confusion regarding its proper boundaries. The land tax returns describe Nailsworth as a tithing of Avening; as an outlying district on that parish's western border, the assessor allocated it a separate listing of owners and occupiers, indicating a semiautonomous status.^[12] Nailsworth's connection with Avening arose from the annexation of the manor of Nails-worth to the manors of Avening and Minchinhampton in the sixteenth century. The manor of Nailsworth had existed as early as the reign of Henry II and extended from Aston Farm to Winsoredge.^[13] The records of Horsley manor also refer to a tithing of Nailsworth, which ought to have included only that portion of the village already under the jurisdiction of Horsley parish.^[14] Nevertheless, the boundary of this tithing extended into Averting proper, as far as Winsoredge, in what was clearly disputed terri-

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Map 1.
Boundary map of Nailsworth, with inset: Nailsworth in Longtree Hundred. Scale: six inches = one mile. Source: 
Boundary Survey Map, 1892. Inset: The Victoria County History of Gloucestershire, Vol. XI.

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tory: Nathaniel Wilkins, a broadweaver of Horsley, had been granted a ninety-nine year lease in 1692 on "all that one close of pasture ground lying . . . near to a place called Winsorhedge [sic ] within the parish of Horsley [!] aforesaid."^[15]

Such peculiarities were in part the result of the gradual expansion of the Vale's original settlement, which depended on the development of its economy. The growth of the cloth trade and population increase tended to form its dispersed hamlets into a more unified entity, although they never entirely lost their individual autonomy. Naturally, the original settlement antedated the arrival of Dissenters and was considerably influenced by the landscape.

The most fundamental distinction regarding the English rural landscape is that between the Champion regions, or predominantly arable societies, and the forest or wood-pasture regions that emphasized stock rearing.^[16] These economic activities were not mutually exclusive, the distinction between them depending on degrees of specialization. The Cotswold region of Gloucestershire was a wood-pasture society in which sheep rearing was important, although the proportion of land under tillage was higher there than in the Vales of Berkeley and Gloucester, which concentrated on dairying, fruit growing, and market gardening.^[17] Champion regions were associated with nucleated settlements, small parishes, and a low incidence of Dissent. The poorer soils of wood-pasture areas, in contrast, encouraged the growth of industrial by-employments, while hilly terrain created irregular settlements in which Dissent more easily proliferated. How well Nailsworth conformed to the criteria of a wood-pasture society can be seen from its economic geography (see fig. 1).^[18]

The etymology of Nailsworth evokes a very early association with the wool trade. The Anglo-Saxon "Nael" is a derivative of the teutonic "nagel," which is a measure of seven pounds in

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Fig. 1.
Champion and wood-pasture settlements.

weight for wool; the stem, "worth," is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "weorth," meaning market or enclosure.^[19] "Nailsworth," therefore, means "wool market," although this very likely reflected a later characterization. The earliest reference to Nails-worth appears as early as 716 in a charter of King Ethelbald in which "Negelsleag Minor" is mentioned.^[20] The stem "leag" refers to a pasture or wood and seems to indicate that part of a forest was cleared and the land used as sheep pasturage. Thus the region was initially associated with the wool trade chiefly as a supplier of raw material. With the settlement of the village as a market center, "leag" must have been altered to "weorth." This change undoubtedly coincided with the establishment of fulling mills in the area, as the transition was made to a more active engagement in production. Fulling mills were present at Nailsworth during the reign of Henry II,^[21] and by the end of the thirteenth century the Vale and the rest of the Stroud region had emerged as important centers for the manufacture of woolen cloth.^[22]

Early rural manufacturing, from the medieval period, was based on cottage industry. Clothiers from Nailsworth village distributed raw wool to the spinners and the spun threads to the weavers; they collected the woven pieces, had them finished, and then marketed

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the final product. Marketing took place initially at Nailsworth village; later at county fairs held at Stroud, the nearest market town; and, as time progressed further, with agents of the London cloth factors.^[23]

Unburdened by urban guild restrictions, clothiers had at first engaged cottagers on the basis of secondary, industrial by-employment,^[24] a development associated with settlements on wastes, commons, and woodlands. Weavers, clothworkers, laborers, and artisans established settlements by building cottages on wasteland, or in a forest clearing, and fencing off a patch of ground to be tilled as a garden or a small farm. John Chambers of Nailsworth, cordwainer, was formally accused in Horsley's manor court of erecting "a cottage and encroaching eight lug of the waste on Rockness Hill." Samuel Manning, weaver, encroached ten yards of waste and built a cottage at Wash Pond; and Abraham Kitteral, with twenty others, was charged with "tak[ing] away the turf on the waste lands."^[25] More prosperous artisans and laborers occupied lands either in the common arable fields, where these survived from medieval times, or in enclosed patches that they either leased or purchased outright. John Pavey, a clothworker from Avening, bequeathed to his wife Mary "a tyning of arable"; to five grandchildren he bequeathed in trust "all messuages, lands and woods which I bought and purchased of my son-in-law, John Penley"; and to his eldest grandson he bequeathed two acres of wood and woodland ground "which I lately bought and purchased to myself . . . situate at Winsoredge."^[26]

This practice of dual occupations persisted into the 1850s: "The existence of manufactures in the midst of an agricultural district," one observer commented in 1854, "made the inhabitants not as entirely dependent on either calling."^[27] He undoubtedly exaggerated. In the medieval period, spinning and weaving may have been undertaken as activities ancillary to agriculture. By 1841 the reverse was true; a division of labor, created first by protoindustrialization and later intensified by the factory system, made woolworkers dependent on manufacturing, however much they engaged in argicultural by-employment.

The industrial character of the region, as it had matured from the seventeenth century, can be illustrated from the 1841 census. Tables 1 to 3 give the occupational distributions for Nailsworth

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and its neighboring villages; table 4 and figure z interpret them by comparing three zones. Zone I (in fig. 3) represents Nailsworth village and its dispersed hamlets. Zone II is an inner periphery consisting of those districts that border the Vale: Theescombe, in Minchinhampton and Barton End and Rockness in Horsley. Zone III, an outer periphery of sample villages at a distance from the Vale, included Horsley and Avening villages as well as Box, Burleigh, and Littleworth villages in Minchinhampton.

Examining the Vale first, it can be seen that the number of wool-workers, as a proportion of the total workforce, was much higher in Nailsworth's surrounding hamlets than in the village itself. At Nailsworth they accounted for only 9.5 percent of the workforce, while in the surrounding hamlets they accounted for 56.0 percent. Nevertheless, woolworkers constituted the largest occupational group resident at the village. This anomaly may be explained by the fact that Nailsworth had acquired a quasi-urban, cosmopoli-

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Fig. 2.
Selected occupations in Nailsworth and surrounding villages, ca. 1841.

tan status, containing a very high proportion of artisans and retailers and even miscellaneous occupations such as "police officers." As early as 1806 an advertisement for the sale of merchant property described Nailsworth as "a very populous and flourishing village." Another advertisement, for the sale of a millinery shop, had described Nailsworth proper as "genteel and populous," and a third, for the letting of a baker's shop, referred to the property's location as "the preferable part of Nailsworth."^[28] Clearly, the village had acquired the social distinctions characteristic of a small town.

Toward the outer periphery in the directions of Horsley and Avening villages, the proportion of resident woolworkers fell significantly, while that of agricultural laborers rose. The reverse was true of the Minchinhampton villages; their clothworking popula-

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tions proportionately equaled those of the Vale's hamlets, and they contained even fewer agricultural laborers.

The inner periphery consisted of dispersed hamlets situated between more heavily concentrated areas. Theescombe division, in Minchinhampton, lay between Amberley and Nailsworth village just north of the Vale. Rockness district, in Horsley, bordered Avening parish to the east and was virtually part of the Vale's settlement. Barton End district, located to the south of Nails-worth, extended to the outskirts of Horsley village. Table 4 presents the differences between the three zones in their respective proportions of woolworkers and agricultural workers. Figure 2 offers a more schematic summary of the occupational differences between the Vale, Horsley and Avening villages and Box village, which lay at the outskirts of the town of Minchinhampton. Horsley and Avening parishes, exclusive of the Vale community, were clearly more agricultural, and Minchinhampton emerges as almost completely industrialized.^[29]

Apart from the clothworking population, the industrial villages included a variety of artisans, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, and masons, as well as retailers ranging from bakers to publicans and vintners. Middle-class occupations included farmers, clothiers, pinmakers, maltsters, and brewers. The landed gentry, naturally, were situated at the top of the social hierarchy.

"Gentlemen" were not included as an occupational category in the 1841 census but were listed as such in an 1811 manuscript

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census for Horsley parish.^[30] Horsley's resident gentlemen numbered twelve in 1811, representing 2.5 percent of all householders with occupations. They included one "gentlewoman," a Sarah Harvey, the recent widow of John Harvey of Drawley Estate,^[31] and the head of a household of five females. The eclipse of the title "gentleman" reflected the dilution of its meaning under the pressure of upward social mobility. At the other end of the social spectrum, woolworkers came to represent a more homogeneous class as a result of the emergence of the factory system.^[32]

A Transitional Social Structure

Extant wills permit the study of social mobility within the context of class formation. Laborers, clothworkers, artisans, and weavers wrote proportionately fewer wills than did members of the gentry or middle classes. However, the testators among them probably belonged to the elite of their occupations, although the personal estates of several valued less than £20. Still, a sufficient number of wills survive for us to appreciate how definitions of status, changes in the distribution of wealth, and opportunities for upward social mobility were interrelated. Individual cases, combined with statistical analysis, illustrate the fluidity of a transitional social structure.

The presence of a number of large-scale manufacturers among the gentry suggests upward social mobility among the middle class. William Playne, "Esquire," one of the most prominent clothiers of the Stroud region, bequeathed to his heirs in 1850 "all that my Manor of Avening and all freehold messuages and tenements, mills [and] lands. . . ."^[33] Edmund Clutterbuck of Avening, likewise styling himself "Esquire," had also descended from a line of gentlemen-clothiers, and for this reason the estate duty officer added the designation "clothier" to the abstract of his probate.^[34]

Lords of manors were called "Esquire" regardless of their social origins or occupations. However, it was also possible for ordinary members of the middle class to become substantial landowners without acquiring this title. In 1814, Edward Barnfield's personal estate was valued under £10,000; his principal bequest referred to "all messuages, dwelling houses, lands and premises at Watledge . . . lately purchased . . ." that did not include his 100-acre estate

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at Nailsworth.^[35] Peter Playne, although perhaps wealthier than his brother William, designated himself a clothier in his will. He may not have owned manors, but he bequeathed a farm at Frampton Mansell in Sapperton, Gloucester, and the tithe survey of lands, undertaken in 1839, recorded him owning and occupying an estate of over 100 acres in Minchinhampton alone.^[36]

Indeed, seven of ten clothiers' wills proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury made direct references to lands owned or in the testator's possession. The ratio was not as high for those clothiers' wills proved locally in the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Gloucester, as one might have expected:^[37] five out of eighteen, or 27.8 percent, made direct references to land owned or in possession, excluding those wills that referred only to cottages or other buildings. In general, the purchase of land and even manors by manufacturers had become commonplace throughout Gloucester since the beginning of the eighteenth century.^[38] In an earlier period, a family that had created its fortune in trade might abandon this occupation once a landed estate had been acquired. By the early nineteenth century, however, the prejudice against remaining in trade had waned.^[39]

Perhaps the most vivid evidence documenting this change of attitude comes from advertisements placed in the Gloucester Journal by some of the exclusive boarding schools in the area. The St. Chloe School instructed "a limited number of gentlemen" in the classics and French and English Grammer, but also in "merchant's accounts . . . surveying and mapping of land timber," as well as in "geography, navigation and astronomy." The Minchinhampton Park School was equally candid in evaluating the uses of its curriculum when it described itself as a "classical and commercial academy for young gentlemen."^[40] Younger sons of the aristocracy and gentry customarily sought fortunes by marrying heiresses from wealthy merchant families or by acquiring a profession in the law, armed forces, or overseas trade and banking.^[41] Commercial subjects, however, were not always thought appropriate to a gentleman's education; their inclusion in school curricula in the early nineteenth century symbolized the extent to which previous social distinctions had eroded.^[42]

Wills of the lesser "gentry" and of the lower middle classes provide further evidence of mobility. Samuel Jenkins was "formerly of

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Leonard Stanley, baker, late of Stroud, yeoman, but now of Nails-worth in Horsley, gentleman."^[43] His personal estate was valued under £2,000 and was probably the decisive reason for his acquisition of a "title." The principal witness to his will, nonetheless, was a wheelwright, and his executors were two Baptist deacons of humble station: his brother, Charles, a baker, and Isaac Hillier, who at this early date was a pig butcher.

The career of Isaac Hillier perfectly illustrates a pattern of substantial upward social mobility. Having started as a pig butcher, he later became a bacon-curing manufacturer of considerable wealth, with a personal estate valued for probate at £15,000.^[44] His marriage to Maria Playne, the daughter of Elizabeth and Thomas Playne, undoubtedly facilitated his advancement; her father was the illegitimate brother of William Playne, the gentleman-clothier and leading Anglican of the locality.^[45] Nevertheless, Hillier had worked diligently to develop a large-scale enterprise for the many years he remained in business. The sober habits of a Baptist deacon, who served his church in this capacity for more than two decades,^[46] undoubtedly contributed to his worldly success.

Others were more willing to join the Church of England, upon achieving a measure of respectability. In 1788 Nathaniel Dyer had been a carpenter with Nonconformist connections.^[47] In 1794, as an "architect" and prominent Anglican, he designed and built the Anglican chapel at Nailsworth. By his death in 1833, he had acquired "manors, messuages, farmlands, and tithes" and was titled "Esquire"; the court at Canterbury valued his personal estate just under £12,000.^[48] Although his social advancement appears more meteoric than Hillier's, Dyer never discarded his previous attachments. He named John Clark, a Horsley carpenter and nephew, a beneficiary and made bequests to others with even humbler occupations. He awarded £20 annuities for life to Deborah Barn-ford, wife of ——— Wigmore of Minchinhampton, shoemaker; Ann Parslow, wife of Isaac Parslow of Horsley, laborer; and Eunice Evans, his niece and the wife of Thomas Evans of Tresham, Gloucester, wheelwright. Most very likely were close relatives or objects of Dyer's newly acquired paternalism.

Richard Bartlett of Minchinhampton, "gentleman," provides yet another although more curious example. The executor proved

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Bartlett's will at Canterbury, with the court valuing his personal estate under £600.^[49] This estate included a London inn called the "Fortune of War," an odd piece of property from which a gentleman might draw an income, although Bartlett seems to have occupied it until his retirement to Minchinhampton. His brother Edward, also from Minchinhampton, acted as his trustee and was a baker by occupation.

These are the more obvious examples of upward social mobility that can be cited. However, other wills often contained anomalies that qualify the actual status of the testator.^[50] A general point that can be made is that wealth rather than mere occupation or title became increasingly important as a mark of status over the eighteenth to early nineteenth century. Men called themselves "gentlemen" if they succeeded in acquiring even a modest fortune, despite the humbleness of their origins; if they acquired landed estates, they called themselves "Esquires" as well. Some of the more spectacular examples of mobility, moreover, came from among Nonconformists whose sobriety and individualism, fostered by the Calvinist churches of the Vale, brought them worldly success and respectability.

Similar tendencies prevailed among those at the lowest rung of the social scale. Daniel Cook of Shortwood, haymaker, an occupation equivalent to a laborer, held at his death a personal estate worth £1,500; like Isaac Hillier, he served as a deacon of the Shortwood Baptist Church.^[51] The source of Cook's bequests, moreover, epitomized a capitalist spirit, paid as they were from the interest and dividends accruing from capital placed in trust and invested in public funds. Cornelius Bowne of Nailsworth, a Congregationalist laborer, offered a similarly striking example of entrepreneurship; his activities were especially significant because of the network of associates they revealed. Bowne directed his trustees, both deacons of the Forest Green church, to divide his £100 estate:

Amongst such persons as shall . . . hold and be entitled to a share in certain monies now in the public funds which is to fall to these at my death (and for the consideration whereof each and every one of them (sixty in all) [!] now pay me a penny a week under certain articles of agreement duly executed) share and share alike.^[52]

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Bowne evidently served as broker to other laborers, sixty in all, whose sense of mutuality had a decidedly capitalistic bent.

Nor was this an isolated case of popular individualism. Clothworkers, laborers, weavers, and artisans made bequests routinely from the profits of investments in cottages and other buildings. Robert Mason, clothworker, owned seven cottages and a shop with a broadloom, all leased to tenants, and that the Consistory Court valued at £200. Thomas Baker, clothworker, bought two houses on mortgage, besides his own residence, leased them to tenants, and bequeathed their rents and profits to his beneficiaries.^[53]

Bankruptcy records reveal similar examples of entrepreneurship. Both elder and younger, Thomas Neales were bankrupt clothiers indebted to two shearmen, each of whom had lent them sizable sums at interest. George Oldland held two promissory notes; the first, dated August 9, 1819, amounted to £50 with interest, and the second, dated September 28, 1825, amounted to £30 with interest. Joseph Vines held a promissory note, dated December 18, 1823, for £150 at 5 percent interest, which he had signed in 1822, four years prior to the debtors' default. The bankruptcy examiner emphasized that these notes were given "for money lent and advanced," which leaves no doubt regarding the creditors' intentions.^[54] Indeed, the two shearmen must have accumulated considerable capital to invest; they had not only made sizable loans but also left them outstanding for several years.

The entrepreneurial spirit of the lower classes did not generally produce the upward social mobility experienced by Nathaniel Dyer or even Isaac Hillier. Usually, it encouraged horizontal social mobility through which artisans, retailers, weavers, and laborers associated with each other on a more equal footing. In a typical example, Thomas Bird, shopkeeper and small clothier, appointed John Webb, clothworker (whom he described as a "friend"), one of the executors of his estate.^[55] Bird clearly found his social milieu among his employees or among those whom he served as customers in his shop, and with whom he very likely collaborated in small ventures. They may even have attended chapel together.^[56]

These patterns of social mobility, however, must be set against a framework of continuity. Although the traditional hierarchy had

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severely eroded in substance, its form appeared to remain intact. In customary society, differences in wealth reflected rather than created rank ascription, although in the long term they reinforced social distinctions. "[S]tatus honor . . . normally stands in sharp opposition to the pretensions of mere property," Max Weber once wrote. "[Yet if] property as such is not always recognized as a status qualification . . . in the long run it is, and with extraordinary regularity."^[57] Although wealth may have served as the hidden foundation of honor, the governing class of the eighteenth century still treated "gentleness" as a virtue bred by birth and upbringing and ranked the lower classes according to the criterion of occupation or function.^[58] In such a society, one might have expected differences in wealth to have followed the gradations of rank. The growth of capitalism from the sixteenth century helped erode this hierarchical system, however, and as industrialism advanced from the late eighteenth century, new standards of defining status developed alongside the old as the personal wealth of individuals increased.^[59]

The inability of the old order fully to assimilate the change revealed itself statistically. The social pyramid can be examined through analysis of wealth distribution across occupations, or status designations such as "gentleman," using valuations of personal wealth recorded in probate records.^[60] Differences in mean personal wealth, when analyzed alongside their respective coefficients of variation, expressed degrees of continuity and social mobility, either horizontal or vertical (see tables 5 and 6).

Table 5 contains a breakdown of mean personal wealth by social groups appearing in rank order.^[61] The solid lines indicate the points at which the differences proved to be significant according to statistical t -tests presented in table 6. As in customary society, the mean wealth of each group generally reflected rank ascription. However, the fact that the differences proved not to be significant in every case suggests that important changes had occurred.

Gentlemen and the middle classes clearly constituted a homogeneous category, as did the yeomanry, retailers, and artisans immediately below them. Weavers, laborers, and clothworkers did the same. This structure clearly affirms the upward social mobility of the middle classes (already revealed by the qualitative

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evidence from wills) and of small retailers and artisans, who approached the yeomanry on a more equal footing. The weavers were an exception; their position had noticeably deteriorated since the eighteenth century, when they ranked fully as artisans. Nevertheless, many more weavers wrote wills than did either cloth-workers or laborers, as table 7 illustrates. As a group they probably suffered less poverty, although their mean personal wealth hardly differed in value; or they may have held a greater apprecia-

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tion for property rights, a residual consequence of their waning artisan status.

Thus, if the shape of a customary hierarchy remained formally intact, according to the distribution of mean personal wealth, it eroded nonetheless as more distinct social classes began to appear. The middle classes and gentry became the high bourgeoisie of later Victorian society; the yeomanry, retailers, and artisans constituted a petit bourgeoisie; and weavers, clothworkers, and laborers formed a proletariat. At the same time, none of these classes remained monolithically encased. Had that been so, the standard deviations would have fallen well below their respective means. In every case, except for weavers and clothworkers, they fell significantly above their means, indicating extreme variability. For weavers and clothworkers, the standard deviations fell just below their means but were high nonetheless. The coefficients of variation express the standard deviations as percentages of their respective means and invite comparisons across occupational and status boundaries. The high percentages, particularly for the first five groups, provide a useful corrective to the mere distribution of means; they show that many individuals from different strata possessed overlapping estate values. This pattern ran counter to the tendencies of their respective means, which accentuated the differences between them, and accounted for the failure of several t -tests, designed to measure such differences. Even where no such

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failure existed, the high coefficients of variation rendered the difference between means largely a formal one.

Thus, the erosion of the hierarchical system had a dual aspect, pointing toward the formation of modern social classes, in a manner affirming Marx's original perception of this process, as well as to a pattern of individual mobility which fundamentally denies it.^[62] The lower middle and working classes, furthermore, shared a petit-bourgeois attitude toward upward social mobility that Nonconformity appears to have reinforced. The Chapel community, as Halèvy had suggested, served as the mediator between a transitional and a modern England by encouraging an ethos of individualism tinctured by the spirit of deference.^[63]

However transitional, the social structure of the Vale community had assumed a distinctive settlement pattern considerably influenced by the landscape. Woodlands invited clearing, and the streams flowing down the hills marked the distribution of weavers', clothworkers', and laborers' cottages. The elevation of the hills, the quality of the soil, and the direction of the streams in turn affected the landscape's configuration.

The Landscape

The Stroud district is located at the midpoint of the Cotswold hills, which occupy the eastern part of Gloucestershire. At their highest point, they reach an elevation of 1,093 feet at Cleeve Hill, and the average height of twelve of the highest peaks is 834 feet above sea level. Elevations near Stroud are lower, ranging from 200 to 600 feet.^[64] Nonetheless, such extremes in elevation occurring within short distances transmitted an aura of remoteness to localities such as Nailsworth, as well as a sensation of social complexity (see map 2).

Approaching the Vale from the southwest, and moving northeasterly, the traveler, while on walking tour, encounters Horsley village on its immediate periphery at an elevation of 500 feet. Continuing in a northeasterly direction, the hamlets of Newmarket, Forest Green, Winsoredge, and Inchbrook emerge, varying in elevation from 300 feet at Newmarket to 400 feet at Forest Green and dropping to zoo feet at Winsoredge and Inchbrook.^[65] Turning

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Map 2.
Elevations of hills at Nailsworth. Source: Ordinance Survey Map, with elevations (1885).

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southeasterly, while moving along the bottom of the valley, the traveler passes Dunkirk and Egypt mills until reaching Nailsworth village. The Nailsworth valley continues in a southeasterly direction as the traveler passes Holcombe and Iron mills, finally reaching Longfords mill. Thereafter, the ascent begins once more, rising to 500 feet at Avening village on the southeasterly periphery of the Vale.

Beginning the ascent from Nailsworth village, however, and moving in a northeasterly direction, the traveler encounters the hamlets of Watledge and Nailsworth Hill, which rise, respectively, to levels of 400 and 500 feet. They constitute the Vale's outer limits as one moves toward the southernmost edge of Minchinhampton Common. Continuing northeasterly along the edge of the Common, the traveler passes Box and Forwood villages before finally arriving at the old wool town of Minchinhampton. The town and the villages that ring the Common (suggesting its importance to their original pattern of settlement) stand at 600 feet above sea level, the highest point in the neighborhood, overlooking the broad valley of the river Severn to the north. From these heights originate the streams and rivulets that fertilize the valleys below.

Each valley of the Stroud district is associated with a comb or "bottom"; and each comb, with a spring or rivulet that emerges from the strata of Lias Clay and Supra-Liassic or Cotswold Sand. The drainage of the area follows the slopes of the hills, and the valleys give a westerly direction to the flow. The Stroud district is drained by the river Frome, which empties into the Severn. At the town of Stroud, the springs flowing down from the north are joined by the Slad and Painswick brooks, and at Dudbridge by those of Ruscombe and Nailsworth, which flow in from the south.^[66] The Nailsworth stream is formed by the junction of two rivulets that rise, respectively, near Avening and at Horsley and contains the drainage of the Vales of Nailsworth and Woodchester^[67] (see map 3).

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Map 3.
The Frome River valley and streams. Source: 1-inch Ordinance Survey 
Map, ca. 1885, Gloucester Records Office Q/RUM 304.

These streams, together with the water-bearing soils that allowed them to flourish, crucially determined the settlement of the Vale. "These villages," William Cobbet remarked in 1830, "lie on the sides of a narrow and deep valley, with a narrow stream of water running down the middle of Jr." Nor could he fail to observe how "this stream turns the wheels of a great many mills and sets of machinery for the making of woolen cloth."^[68]

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Fig. 3.
Section of the hills near Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. Source:
 In the possession of David Playne, Bannut Tree, Avening, 
Stroud, Gloucestershire, Playne Family Papers.

The regularity of the supply of water and the actual power the streams generated were mutally dependent on the quality of the soil and the distances the flow of water needed to travel from hill to vale. The formation of Upper Lias Clay and Supra-Liassic or Cotswold Sand, because of their porous and fraible natures, acted "as . . . spung[es], into which all the water that percolated through the beds [from above] is received and stored."^[69] Notwithstanding variations in the rate of drainage, a reasonably good supply of water was usually obtainable year-round.^[70] The positions of the clays and sands, furthermore, were always marked by the lines of cottages that dotted the slopes of the hills: "Everywhere [the villages and hamlets] are all built near the base of the sands and just above the line where the water is thrown out by the Upper Lias."^[71]

Apart from the clays and sands, which were crucial to the establishment of cloth mills, numerous quarries of both the Inferior and Great Oolites were developed at Scar Hill, near Nailsworth, and around Minchinhampton Common. They provided much of the building material that has added another distinctive feature to the landscape (see fig. 3).

The Fuller's Earth, which normally lies between these two formations, is largely responsible for the fertility of the slopes. In the Vale of Nailsworth, especially, the hills tend to be capped by the Great Oolite; the slopes of Inferior Oolite are thereby covered with slipped Fuller's earth, which "has upon its surface a rich

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soil well adapted for cultivation."^[72] In Horsley, Avening, and Minchinhampton—the parochial hinterland of the Vale—wheat, barley, and oats were the principal crops grown, while peas, beans, and turnips were secondary. Tables 8 and 9 indicate, respectively, the percentages of parish lands under tillage in 1800 and 1840 and the amount of acreage devoted to each type of crop around 1800. The increase in arable land under cultivation at Avening was caused by the shrinkage of the wasteland and at Horsley, very likely, by more intensive husbandry resulting from greater concentration of ownership; the fall in cultivated arable land at Minchinhampton was due to that parish's more complete industrialization.^[73]

Actual crop yields, however, are difficult to ascertain. Of the three parishes, only the tithe survey for Avening gives any indica-

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tion. However, since each parish contained the same type of soil, one can assume that Avening's crop yield was typical of that of its region. If the tithe charge were one-tenth of the yield (as the name of this tax suggests), the total yield could be estimated;^[74] this estimate is depicted in table 10. Wheat was marketed for human consumption and oats for animals, while the very high barley yield reflected the strong demand from the malting and brewing industry.^[75] The low wheat yield and the significantly higher yields for oats and barley affirm that the region, as a wood-pasture society, was better adapted to stock rearing and industrial activities, some of which remained ancillary to agriculture.^[76]

A wood-pasture society, Nailsworth once was covered by dense forests, which were only partially cleared as settlements became established. Local place names such as Shortwood, Harleywood, and Collier's Wood testify to their importance, as occasionally do the field names. A parcel of arable land, occupied by a tenant of Robert Kingscote and consisting of 17 acres, was called "Horsley Wood field" in Horsley's 1841 tithe survey. Clearly, it had once been part of a common arable field, which served as woodland ground in an earlier period. The same could be said of three acres of arable land near Nailsworth called "Woodleaze," which was put up for sale in 1823. At Newmarket in this same year a half acre, sold by auction and "covered with a plantation of thriving timber trees of different kinds," revealed the extent to which the region remained forested even at this late date.^[77]

Field names, moreover, evoked the image of a once quite isolated district. "Hither Robbers Green," "Middle Robbers Green,"

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and "Far Robbers Green" suggest the uses to which a forest region, combined with an uncertain parochial jurisdiction, might have once been put by shrewd evaders of the law,^[78] at least until the advent of a better communications system. "Until then," commented one local historian, "we can see what rough and steep perilous routes [the roads] must have been for the traveller, and not lightly to be followed."^[79]

By 1825 the Vale had become fully integrated into its surrounding region; increased geographic mobility, facilitated by improved communications, rendered Nailsworth a far less isolated locale. The growth of communications, while promoting the regionalization of local society, also contributed to the process of industrialization. Turnpikes, canals, and railway lines constituted a new infrastructure, on the basis of which the woolen industry expanded. Despite the advent of the factory system the woolen industry failed, however, reflecting the slow development and incompleteness of this very infrastructure. As a result, the network of improved communications, although promoting regionalization, altered the landscape only to a limited degree.

Regionalization

Little had been accomplished before 1780 to bring economic unity to the Stroud region, and especially to Nailsworth and its hinterland. The roads connecting the villages and towns of the region were generally old tracks that had hardly experienced improvement. One exception was the Minchinhampton-Tetbury road, which was found in 1667 in a state of disrepair; in 1758, it was one of the first roads to be turnpiked.^[80] Nevertheless, the road, while running north-south through Avening parish, bypassed Nails-worth, leaving this outlying settlement in comparative isolation.

Before 1780, Nailsworth depended on a series of tracks to bring it into contact with places as far as Tetbury, six miles to the southeast, and Dursley, five miles to the southwest. Tetbury was the second most important market town in the Stroud region and like Horsley, Avening, and Minchinhampton, was located in Longtree Hundred. Dursley was located at the center of the lower cloth-manufacturing district of the county, near the Vale of Berkeley.

Regular intercourse with such places was made difficult by the

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fact that the tracks were narrow and not especially durable to support the weight of carriages.^[81] Prior to general road improvement, the transport of cloth in both its raw and finished states was undertaken by packhorses. The boundary map of Nailsworth (map 1, above) provides an overview of the local transport network. It shows the extent to which proximity to newly built roads, and later to the railway, provided convenient service to the neighboring mills. One of the more important roads linking Nailsworth to its surrounding hinterland passed from Woodchester in the northwest through Inchbrook and Forest Green, continuing east through Nailsworth and then southeast to Avening village and eventually to Tetbury. This last stretch came to be known as the Nailsworth-Tetbury road. Nailsworth was also connected to Avening village by an old route that ran along the hillside through Hazelwood, while another track through Balls Green connected it to the town of Minchinhampton. A road from Nailsworth to Dursley passed through Horsley village to the south and thereafter turned southwest toward the lower cloth-manufacturing district.

The first significant improvement occurred in 1780 with the construction of the Bath-Gloucester road, a major thoroughfare that passed through Nailsworth at closer proximity to the mills than the old road from Woodchester; the new road bisected Horsley parish from north to south. At the same time, an additional road was constructed at Nailsworth, connecting the new Bath road to Box village on the outskirts of Minchinhampton, while the old Nailsworth-Tetbury road was turnpiked. The Nailsworth-Dursley road through Horsley was turnpiked in 1800, and in 1822 a new road was constructed along the valley toward Avening, complementing the old hillside track.

Numerous efforts were made in the early nineteenth century to widen existing tracks and to make new additions. In February 1820 the trustees of the Nailsworth, Woodchester, and Dudbridge turnpike roads met for the purpose of "making and maintaining a road from Tiltups Inn, in . . . Horsley, to join the turnpike road from Cirencester to Dudbridge . . . in the parish of Rodborough, and from the bridge at Nailsworth . . . to Minchinhampton Common."^[82] In the same year, an application to widen some of the smaller, ancillary roads in the area was noted:

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from the field called Boulden Sleight to the end of a lane adjoining the road from Horsley to Tetbury, near Tiltups Inn; and from the Market House in Tetbury to the turnpike road on Minchinhampton Common; and from the said road in Hampton field unto the turnpike road from Cirencester to Stroud, near Burnt Ash; and from the said turnpike road to Tayloe's mill pond in Chalford Bottom; and through Hyde to the bottom of Bourn Mill.^[83]

Such undertakings, together with the construction of turnpike roads, facilitated the transport of commodities and the geographic mobility of the population. From 1780, accelerated membership growth of the Shortwood Baptist Church, as we shall see, coincided with the building of the Bath-Gloucester road. The scattered population of the surrounding area found itself better able to travel to Nailsworth, although local residents responded more slowly to the stimulus. In 1794 Nailsworth was still widely viewed as a somewhat isolated district. Not until after 1812 did the local populace become more mobile,^[84] and by 1825 it was found moving routinely between Nailsworth and other villages.^[85]

The regionalization of local society was evident, furthermore, by the manner in which turnpikes and improved local roads were managed. The trustees of the Nailsworth, Woodchester, and Dud-bridge roads made joint decisions that clearly applied to places at some distance from Nailsworth.^[86] The toll gates, over which they also exercised joint control, were likewise scattered throughout the neighborhood;^[87] their jurisdiction, in other words, was extra-parochial.

In order to maintain the roads, the trustees were empowered by the General Turnpike Act of 1780 to call meetings of parish surveyors and to require them to mobilize the resources of their respective communities. Although turnpike trusteeships were not regulated by a manor court (and, in fact, were ad hoc bodies of landowners and clothiers), the form in which their orders appeared had a medieval aspect. In 1809 the trustees of the Nails-worth, Woodchester, and Dudbridge roads required the surveyors to produce

a true and perfect list . . . of the names of all inhabitants and occupiers of lands, tenements and herediments . . . that are liable to do statute work

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or duty; and in such lists to distinguish . . . [those who] keep a team or teams and . . . to what annual reputed value they respectively occupy [land, etc.] and which of them are labourers, and liable to do statute duty as labourers only.^[88]

The order was akin to what a steward of a manor might direct to a Court of Survey; the specific reliance on statute labor, rather than wage labor,^[89] evoked the tradition of the corvée.

The collection of tolls, furthermore, was undertaken by the traditional method of tax farming. Farmers would compete for the privilege at auction; the winners were required to pay a monthly rental from receipts and were permitted to keep the surplus as compensation for their efforts. In 1824 it was reported that five gates in the Nailsworth-Woodchester-Dudbridge area rented for an average sum of £254; and in 1835 it was reported further that the toll revenue of the previous year was £1,320 above the expenses of collecting them,^[90] a sum sufficiently high to attract eager bidders.

In general, the turnpikes were not constructed with a view to turning a profit for a group of shareholders. The initial capital may have been raised through subscriptions, but this sum was usually treated as a loan to be repaid at low interest rates, although repayment was rarely accomplished.^[91] Funds for maintaining the roads were dispensed from monthly toll gate rentals and, evidently, from a property tax levied on small owners, who were permitted to commute their statute duty into a monetary payment. Such was the peculiar dialectic by which the quasi-feudal conscription of labor and resources, toll farming, and the reliance on a kind of "rent perpetuelle" for the raising of initial capital aided the modernization of the local and regional road systems.^[92]

The local elite employed more current financing methods to build canals; these ventures were viewed as profit-making enterprises and required investment of larger amounts of capital.^[93] A joint-stock company was formed in the 1770s to build two canals that would link the Severn and Thames rivers at Wallbridge, Stroud, and both to a small inland port at Brimscombe; the linkages were designed to facilitate the transfer of cargoes.^[94] The Stroudwater canal connected Framilode on the Severn to Wall-

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bridge, and the Thames-Severn canal connected Wallbridge to Lechlade on the Thames.^[95] The project, begun in 1775, was completed by 1785.^[96]

Contrary to expectation, the canals did not significantly improve the flow of traffic to London.^[97] They did, however, facilitate commercial contact between the city of Gloucester and inland settlements such as Nailsworth. Improved contact was especially important for the grain trade, as Nailsworth relied on both the Tetbury and Gloucester markets. Messrs. Lewis and Company, owners of the Stroud barge, announced that their vessel "regularly loads every Saturday at Lewis's, warehouse, on the quay, Gloucester, sails from Gloucester to Stroud, Brimscombe, and all intermediate places every Monday and returns on the Friday following, delivering grain and other goods."^[98] One such "intermediate place" was Dudbridge wharf in Rodborough, which served as a delivery terminal for the Rodborough-Woodchester-Nailsworth area. An advertisement for letting a corn mill at Woodchester Park had noted the mill's strategic location just three miles from Dudbridge wharf and twelve miles from Gloucester.^[99]

The canals, however, were intended primarily to benefit the clothiers of the district, most of whom were initial backers of the various schemes to build them.^[100] Nevertheless, those who owned or occupied mills along the river resisted their construction since water drawn from the streams into the canals deprived these mills of their only source of power prior to the advent of the steam engine.^[101] Much later, after the arrival of steam power, clothiers could be found protesting against high transport rates for coal,^[102] charging that the canal company engaged in excess profiteering.^[103] The canal company sought to rebut the charge, and in doing so revealed much about the extent of regional economic growth.

The prevailing popular view was that the company's dividend payments had grown to £30 percent per annum, based on an initial subscription of £100 per share. The company published its annual dividend payments for the 1785-1824 period and pointed out that the initial capital of £100 per share was an underestimation of the true cost to each shareholder. Because of delays in construction, an additional £50 contribution was needed from the shareholders, and because of a ten-year interval between the initial proposal to build the canals and commencement of their opera-

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Fig. 4.
Stroud canal dividend series, 1785-1824.

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tions, the company sustained a further loss of interest arrears amounting to £75. Altogether, then, subscribers invested an initial capital amounting to £225 per share or £45,000 when all 200 shares of the issue are counted. The total dividend payment over the forty-year period totaled £528.10s. per share, which represented a 235 percent increase in capital. The company protested, however, that the average annual dividend amounted to less than £6 percent per annum; indeed, the time series of dividend payments shown in figure 4, indicates a growth rate or 4.7 percent per annum.

Despite the company's lamentations, such a rate of profit was not unreasonable under then prevailing conditions. In the first fifteen years of the canals' operations (1785-1799), the growth rate in dividends was 8.2 percent per annum, well above the 5 percent interest rate for private lending set by the usury laws.^[104] From 1811 to 1824, the trend in the Stroud canal company's dividend payments kept pace with the national movement of canal share prices. The partial correlation coefficient r_xy(t) between the two was a strong 0.65.^[105] This fact, however, could provide little solace since the rates of profit of most canal companies fell well below the expected 10 to 12 percent per annum.^[106] Indeed, the Stroud canals failed to become the major thoroughfare their backers had hoped for. Transport to London proved too slow, sometimes taking up to four months for goods to arrive.^[107] Coal and grain seem to have been the only important items carried to the inland settlements and at irritatingly high costs. Although the canals helped to effect the regionalization of local society, slower regional economic growth, revealed by their rates of profit, meant that the landscape remained untrammeled. Implementation of the railway eventually eclipsed the Stroud canals, but its effect on the regional economy and lanscape was hardly more revolutionary.

Both the slowness and high cost of water transport led many clothiers to advocate construction of the Great Western Railway. The line would run between Gloucester and Swindon via Stroud and would link up to the main Bristol-London trunk. Threats to promote such a scheme were made in 1824 and 1831,^[108] but no serious action was taken until 1834. In that year an important meeting was held at Stroud to consider public endorsement for building the railway; those attending "represented the most con-

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siderable part of the wealth and influence of the neighborhood."^[109] Because of sharpening competition with the North of England in textiles and the promise of further development of the region's resources, especially coal,^[110] the project was given a unanimous vote of confidence. Moreover, the railway provided a significant investment opportunity for individuals. "Looking at it as a matter of investment," one speaker had commented, "if it paid only £6 percent, it might be considered a pretty good speculation. . . . The £100 shares [issued] were now producing £200." Nor was it expected that the burden of raising capital would fall entirely on the shareholders, who were not held bound to their subscriptions until all shares were sold, and the government promised assistance to the extent of half the needed capital at only 4 percent interest.

Despite these liberal terms, and apparent enthusiasm for the project, the railway was not completed until 1845.^[111] Delays were probably caused by the resistance of landowners whose properties lay along the proposed route,^[112] and by competition between promoters of the Bristol-London and Southampton-London lines; the latter would have bypassed the Stroud region entirely.^[113] In addition, there may have been greater skepticism toward the scheme than was apparent at the Stroud meeting. Although several speakers emphasized the importance of the railway for industrial development, one of the principal promoters clearly regarded passenger service as its primary advantage. His attitude, while generally optimistic, may have caused potential investors to doubt the long-term viability of the enterprise.

One indication of such resistance was the failure to consider construction of branch lines from the proposed Gloucester-Swindon trunk to the inland areas. W. H. Hyett, MP (Member of Parliament) for Stroud, confidently maintained that there would be little difficulty establishing such lines in the future. Yet the only branch in the region, from Stonehouse to Nailsworth, was not constructed until 1867,^[114] ostensibly because of the scattered settlement pattern of the district.

This difficulty had been cited as the main obstacle a decade earlier in a debate at the Nailsworth Literary and Mechanics Institute. "Nothing short of an indefinite number of stations," one speaker contended, "would be much if any service to the inhabitants" and

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Map 4.
Stonehouse-Nailsworth Branch Railroad Line, ca. 1863. Source: Gloucester Records Office Q/RUM 304.

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therefore of limited profitability.^[115] Certainly he had exaggerated the problem. When finally built, the section of the line from Stone-house to Rodborough, depicted in map 4, provided full service to mill owners on the south side of Stroudwater canal; and the section from Rodborough, running south to Nailsworth, passed close to the mills along the Nailsworth stream. Yet implementation of the railway did little to arrest Stroud's economic decline. Unlike Birmingham, with which contemporaries often drew contrasts,^[116] the Stroud region never urbanized significantly and therefore retained its rural character.

Summary and Conclusion

This chapter has depicted the interaction between landscape, ecology, settlement pattern, and social structure in and around the Vale of Nailsworth and has offered structural analyses of two aspects of the experience of modernization: class formation and regional integration. Local topography determined that Nails-worth was initially isolated and characterized by a dispersed settlement pattern. Located in a wood-pasture region, Nailsworth was a boundary settlement, not falling squarely within the jurisdiction of any one parish or manor. Nailsworth's ecology determined its industrial and social characteristics as the Vale emerged from the medieval period with an economy based on a system of cottage industry in woolen manufactures. Nailsworth's initial remoteness, dispersed settlement pattern, and socioeconomic configuration combined to make it a center of Nonconformity in the eighteenth to early nineteenth century, while its progressive integration into a wider regional community was reflected in and facilitated by improvements in transport and communications, however ineffective these remained from an economic standpoint.

A district with a hierarchical social structure in the eighteenth century, Nailsworth's transition to the factory system helped bring into being a more horizontally structured, class-based society in the nineteenth century. Analysis of class formation documents a pattern of accelerated upward social mobility among the "middling sort," the corresponding erosion of the traditional status of "gentleman," and a pattern of downward social mobility, or derogation in status, among artisan weavers. This process had

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antecedents in earlier periods, but between 1780 and 1850, wealth had become a more obvious criterion for defining status than in the past, so much so that men with the humblest occupations might call themselves "gentlemen" if the size of their personal estates seemed to warrant the title. This change reflected itself further among the traditional gentry and the wealthier bourgeoisie in the closer intermingling of landed and industrial wealth, as well as by the depreciated role of the classics in commonly accepted standards for educating gentlemen. The experience of downward social mobility among weavers became manifest in the analysis of wealth distribution by the failure of their estates to rise appreciably in value above the mean wealth of clothworkers and laborers, however much they outnumbered the latter as testators.

Evidence from wills also suggested a pattern of horizontal social mobility, by which small retailers, artisans, and ordinary laborers could find common ground in feelings of neighborliness, forged by an entrepreneurial spirit. Clothworkers, laborers, and shearmen could be found purchasing real estate in either land or buildings, pooling resources for investment in the public funds, or acting as creditors even to their employers, and all with the expectation of turning a profit. The most spectacular examples of such initiative came from among Nonconformists and thereby lent credibility to the Weberian relationship of a "Protestant ethic" and a spirit of capitalism, at least as applied to Calvinists. These findings take issue with E. P. Thompson's view of working-class culture in the early industrial period, insofar as working people appear more receptive to capitalist values and less committed to communitarian ones than he has suggested. Yet they support, with some irony, his and Elie Halèvy's contention that evangelicalism mediated the transfer of middle-class values to a working class in formation; the Calvinist ideal of the "calling" seems to have promoted individualism and personal autonomy, more than a collective form of work discipline.

Finally, the growth of a regional transport and communications network brought an end to Nailsworth's historic isolation. Although the locality remained a boundary settlement until 1892, Nailsworth village urbanized moderately and integrated itself into the economy and society of its parochial hinterland. Geographically and socially, as a boundary settlement and industrial village

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embedded in a wood-pasture region, Nailsworth captured the spirit of individuality conducive to the spread of religious dissent. The hinterland of the Vale, in its structures of landownership and authority, likewise provided an appropriate setting for communities of Dissenters and for this reason also warrants close study.

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Chapter Two
Hinterland of the Vale:
Landownership and Tenure

The community of the Vale may have been an outlying district throughout most of the eighteenth century, but its remoteness never fully insulated Dissenters from the purview of the Establishment. The boundary settlement typology, however useful a framework for analysis, exaggerates the degree of antagonism implicit in the mutual relations of Dissenting and Anglican churches.^[1] The two communities coexisted and interacted: Dissenters maintained their autonomy, their sense of separateness from the world, while engaging the Establishment and Anglican laity in normal intercourse. Leading Nonconformists desired collaboration, and by obtaining it their churches complemented rather than undermined the preeminence of the Church of England. The present chapter studies the underlying structure of this relationship by focusing on landownership and tenure. Since land was the material basis of the Establishment's power, the concentration of ownership and forms of land tenure characteristic of the region ought to have affected the spread of Nonconformity.

The chapter first analyzes the changing structures of landowner-ship in the three parishes of Nailsworth's hinterland between 1777 and 1841, with reference to a standard model used widely to explain the settlement patterns of rural Nonconformity.^[2] If relations between Dissenters and the Establishment had been characterized by a fundamental antagonism, as the model holds, a high concentration of landownership would have coincided with a low

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incidence of Dissent. However, a high concentration of ownership coinciding with a high incidence of Nonconformity implies compatibility.

The chapter carries this analysis forward by focusing on the prevailing forms of land tenure. Tenurial conditions, which reinforced the authority of large landowners, theoretically should have deterred Dissenters from settling in their parishes, and the reverse should have been true in areas where tenurial arrangements favored a dispersion of holdings. In Nailsworth's hinterland, leaseholds were structured in such a way that they succeeded in promoting the latter, while not fully challenging the rights of the landlord, especially if he were lord of the manor. The prevailing form of leaseholding combined for the tenant the customary element of security of tenure with an emphasis on greater freedom to alienate the lease, thereby revealing how far property relations had become individualized and making possible the growth of an entrepreneurial spirit, even among the lower classes.

Shifting patterns of landholding, brought about by changes in the agrarian economy, must also have affected the settlement pattern of Nonconformity. For this reason, the third section of this chapter, on agrarian transformation, studies the progress of enclosures of common arable land and wasteland and the pattern of restricted access to common grazing lands; these changes abetted the formation of an industrial working class and stimulated the evangelical revival among its members. Thus changes in landholding patterns, reflected in the shifting concentrations of landownership, the evolution of forms of land tenure, and land utilization, contributed indirectly to the growth of Nonconformity and offered a broad measure of its compatiblity with the Establishment.

Structures of Landownership

Several historians have used a model of parochial typologies, based on the criterion of landownership, to describe the Establishment's relationship to Dissent. Like the boundary settlement and industrial village typologies, this model associates individualism with Dissent and counterposes each, respectively, to deference and established authority. As we shall see, however, relations between Dissenters and the Establishment usually were more

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ambiguous. Still, like the two village typologies, the parochial model provides a convenient framework for analysis; after adjusting for its theoretical deficiencies, a more dynamic, more complex, and less reductionist treatment of the pattern of rural Dissent can be obtained (see table 11).

The model distinguishes four typologies, two of which were associated with a high incidence of Dissent and two with a low incidence. "Open" and "closed" parishes stood at opposite ends of the spectrum. The latter (also called "squires' parishes") were characterized by a high concentration of ownership in which one landlord owned more than half the acreage. In open or "freehold" parishes, ownership was widely distributed among small holders whose properties averaged less than forty acres. Two other categories, located between these extremes, offered slight variations. "Oligarchic" parishes resembled squires' parishes, although their high concentrations of ownership were less centralized. A few principal landowners held more than half the acreage, but none of them predominated individually. "Divided" parishes constituted a greater mixture that more closely approximated freehold parishes; a few large landowners, in this case, found themselves surrounded by a majority of small holders. Dissent ostensibly flourished in divided and freehold parishes where individualism thrived, because of more dispersed landholding, and where social control seemed weaker.

This model is deficient in two important respects. First, it lacks an appropriate time dimension. Typologies established on the basis of a single year's analysis cannot always account for possible changes in the concentration of ownership,^[3] and such changes

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ought to have affected the pattern of Dissent. Second, the model defines "landownership" in too broad a sense, failing to distinguish freehold land from leasehold real estates. Failure to consider the significance of land tenure, especially, neglects a crucial assumption of the model, namely, the correlation between Dissent and individualist attitudes toward property.^[4] Such failure also ignores an important mechanism, in the structure of leaseholding, through which the landlord could exercise his authority. A region characterized by a dispersion of landholding was, indeed, likely to have had a higher incidence of Dissent. Contrary to the model's central assumption, however, such a correlation was not necessarily incompatible with strong landlordship. This ambiguity becomes more apparent when the model, adjusted to account for these deficiencies, is applied to the local setting.

Analyses of the concentration of landownership are based on data derived from several tithe surveys and from a land tax return, which cover the years 1777 to 1841 for Avening, Horsley, and Minchinhampton parishes.^[5] This period witnessed the considerable growth of Nonconformity. If the concentration of landownership had been crucial to explaining its proliferation, one would expect a significant fragmentation of holdings to have occurred at the expense of larger owners. Our findings, however, reveal a different general pattern, although the change each parish experienced assumed a distinctive form (see table 12).

Averting was an oligarchic parish in 1784, since seven owners possessed 69 percent of its occupied acreage.^[6] By 1838 a paradoxical development had occurred; a further increase in the concentration of ownership accompanied a greater fragmentation of holdings among marginal owners. The parish's occupied acreage rose 24 percent over the period, shrinking the wasteland, and large owners increased their share 37.5 percent. At the same time, intermediary and small owners lost a significant amount of acreage,^[7] as each fell in number, while the number of marginal owners rose dramatically, almost halving their mean acreage.^[8] The aggrandizement by large owners clearly took place at the expense of intermediary and small owners, while growth in the numbers of marginal owners and occupiers occurred partly in response to the shrinkage of the waste, however more marginalized they became. Avening did not, therefore, conform to the standard model. Be-

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tween 1784 and 1838, the parish grew more oligarchic in character while simultaneously experiencing the opposite trend. This anomaly suggests that while the diffusion of landownership among marginal holders may have been related to the growth of Nonconformity, the proliferation of Dissent could also have coincided with the strengthening of the Establishment. The two trends, in fact, were not mutually exclusive.

Horsley's structure of landownership changed more dramatically, although in a similar direction (see table 13).^[9] Horsley could be classified as a divided parish in 1784, with seven owners possessing 50 percent of the occupied acreage, but by 1841 it had become a "squire's" parish. The lord of the manor emerged in 1841 as by far the largest landowner, with an estate comprising 2,050 acres or 57 percent of all occupied acreage. Lands belonging to his sole competitor, Edward Wilbraham, the only proprietor in the "large" category listed in table 13, comprised 281 acres or 7.8 percent of all occupied lands. Medium-small, small, and marginal owners all suffered serious losses in both numbers and acreage.^[10] Medium-size owners were the only ones to increase their holdings significantly, although their numbers declined slightly. Thus, the increase in the concentration of ownership was far greater at Horsley than at Avening, while the dispersion of ownership among medium holders remained more limited than the expansion of Avening's marginal sector. The diminished authority of the resident lord of the manor, despite the large holdings of his estate, may have contributed to the spread of Nonconformity, although the lord's active use of the manor court in 1784 had not sought to deter it.^[11] As in Avening's case, a high concentration of ownership, even when accompanied by a resident manor lord, proved to be compatible with a strong tradition of Dissent.

Nor did Minchinhampton conform to the parochial typologies found in the literature (see table 14). Unlike Avening and Horsley, no significant change occurred in the concentration of ownership between 1777 and 1839. Although the number of large owners decreased by two, collectively they retained control of 57 percent of all occupied acreage. The total amount of occupied acreage actually fell as the parish became more heavily industrialized.^[12] Clothworkers undoubtedly abandoned parcels of arable land as they grew more dependent on industrial work;^[13] and population

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loss, combined with greater use of Minchinhampton Common by large landowners, also contributed to the growth of the wasteland.^[14] Under these conditions most classes of landowners suffered some loss. Intermediary owners experienced a very modest advance, while only small owners registered a significant improvement in total acreage owned. Minchinhampton thus remained oligarchic while experiencing a very limited dispersion of ownership among small proprietors. As at Horsley and Avening, a high concentration of landownership at Minchinhampton remained compatible with the advance of Dissent.

The fact that Dissent progressed precisely in those areas where the Establishment remained strong suggests a more ambivalent relationship between the two religious forces than historians have normally conceded. We can explore this ambivalence further by considering the nature of tenurial arrangements. The forms of land tenure found in the region embodied a contradiction; they contained mechanisms of social control, but they also fostered a countervailing tendency necessary for the growth of individualist attitudes.

Land Tenure

The effect of landownership on the incidence of Dissent manifests itself directly in relations between landlords and tenants. The most important landlord in all three parishes was the lord of the manor. The tenures by which tenants held of the lord were the most ancient, although the rigor with which feudal obligations were exacted had softened over the course of time. Many such obligations had disappeared entirely. Some of the more important ones survived and not merely nominally, however, serving as instruments through which the lord could exercise his authority.^[15] At the same time, such tenures as freehold, leasehold, copyhold, and tenancies-at-will underwent a complicated evolution from the medieval period, which led in the direction of greater property rights for the tenantry. Individualism based itself on a refined sense of property right and in turn became associated with Dissent.

In general, small and intermediary landholders, who were not copyholders or tenants-at-will, held leases for lives determinable on 99 years, while large landholders held simple term leases often

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for periods of 500 years or more. The lease for lives determinable on years was a hybrid form of leaseholding, combining elements of lifehold and term leasing.^[16] Lifehold leases were "real interests" in land or freeholds; they provided security of tenure because the indenture recorded the names of heirs.^[17] The household head, in other words, could not alienate the property against their will. Similarly, if he died intestate, his heirs were assured of succession to the estate.^[18] Nevertheless, if held of a lord of the manor, such leases invariably contained customary obligations that modified their freehold status. Although originally superior to copyholds, they descended directly from them; with their accent on security, they represented the most traditional form of leaseholding.^[19] The term lease, in contrast, was a "real chattel" and hence part of the household head's personal estate. He could alienate the property at will, either through sale of the lease or through probate, and was given security of tenure only if the length of the term were considerable.^[20] Term leases held on long tenures were most closely associated with individual property rights and entrepreneurship and can therefore be regarded as the most modern form of lease-holding. The lease for lives-determinable-on-years occupied an intermediary position. The law regarded it as a real chattel, as it would any term lease, while giving "the tenant . . . all the other advantages of a lifehold estate."^[21] This hybrid form of leaseholding synthesized the principles of security and independence associated, respectively, with traditional and modern attitudes toward property and, in this sense, emobodied the most mature conception of the right to own property. However, such leases sometimes contained customary obligations that, as in simple lifehold estates, could restrict a landholder's sense of ownership.

Since manorial lordship persisted quite late in the region, the degree to which individualism spread depended not only on the form of leaseholding but also on the degree of survival of customary obligations as well as on how vigorously they were enforced. By inference, we can use the same standard to determine whether the region proved conducive to the spread of Dissent. It is necessary to consider first the structures of leases held of the lord of the manor and then the extent of nonmanorial leaseholding.

The evidence from Horsley manor indicates that customary obligations survived to a limited extent in leaseholds held of the

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lord of the manor. In ten of the forty-four leases dated from 1666 that are listed among the manor court's records, heriot payments were required on the decease of each tenant. The heriot was perhaps one of the keenest reminders of a tenant's inferior status because it permitted his lord to share in the inheritance of his heirs; in the medieval period, the lord was entitled to the best part of his tenant's estate as well. Of the heriots present in the leases held from Horsley manor, seven were commuted to money payments, while in only one case (that of Cornelius Chambers, wool-comber) was the cash levy especially severe. In a lease contracted in 1707, he and the two living individuals listed in the indenture were required to pay a heriot of £3 at the decease of each individual; the remaining heriots were paid in kind. Joseph Hiller of Horsley, broadweaver, agreed to pay heriots consisting of "one couple of good fat capons," while John Smith of Horsley, yeoman, agreed in 1693 that the "best goods . . . on the death of each tenant" would be paid.^[22]

The practice at Horsley manor of including such provisions in leases seems to have waned from 1666, although the document that describes their particulars may not have been comprehensive. Nowhere, for example, does it mention entry fines, required of the heir to a tenancy, that were surely a standard part of such leases.^[23] Nor does it refer to the obligation to pay suit at the manor court, although other manor records make clear that suit of court was still enforced by the levying of fines through 1814.^[24] Nor does it indicate the extent to which copyholds and tenancies-at-will survived within the manor, despite the announcement of the lord's perambulation of 1816 having mentioned them.^[25] The heriot was the only customary obligation that can positively be said to have survived in leases. The absence of any mention of entry fines and suits of court may have been purposeful; these may have applied only to surviving copyholds. Most heriots had been commuted to money payments, a change that must have lessened their impact on the tenants' propensity to defer. At the same time, three-fourths of the leases listed in the document did not contain heriots and were held for ninety-nine years determinable on the lives of three individuals. In this form, manorial leaseholds had come to embrace individualized property relations.

A similar development transpired at the manor of Minchin-

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hampton-Avening. Unfortunately, no document strictly comparable to Horsley's record of leases survives for this manor. A recent roll for the period 1744-1746 is extant, however, and gives an indication of the extent of the evolution of tenures.^[26] It is more precise than the listing of Horsley's manorial leases since it provides a clear indication of the number of copyholders. However, it is less precise in not always dearly differentiating leaseholds from tenancies-at-will, which must be inferred; nor are the contents of leases described in full detail when specifically referred to. The rental lists 171 tenants, together with the values of their rents. Twelve, or 4.4 percent, held copyhold tenures. Only three are specifically mentioned as holding a lease, although all were clearly doing so as subtenants. Samuel Smith paid a rent of 1s. 3d. on Sarah Hill's lease; John Pinfold paid a rent of 10s "for Nathaniel's lease"; and Mr. Ridler of Edgeworth held a lease, the rent of 1s. 3d. on which was "to be paid by Mrs. Bliss."

More than three leaseholds undoubtedly existed on the manor. The document probably made specific reference to them because of the recent transfer of each tenancy. Ten others can be identified as subtenants, as well as eighty-three who seem to have acquired their holdings by conveyance from the previous tenant. Since tenants-at-will were not likely to have conveyed their holdings, these eighty-three were presumably leaseholders. For the 163 remaining tenants, the document makes no reference to the condition of their holdings other than to specify the values of their rents. They held directly from the lord of the manor, but there is no way to distinguish leaseholders from tenants-at-will among them. The ninety-six leaseholders cited above must therefore be understood as a conservative estimate, although constituting 35 percent of all listed tenants.

Subtenancies and conveyances were forms of commercial activity that reveal an individualist attitude toward property. Leaseholders turned a profit either by subletting or through conveyance, and subtenants or purchasers of a lease may have sought to build up an estate or merely to establish a claim to property. Such estates may therefore have varied considerably in size.

Among the manor's subtenants, William Ratter was charged a rent of 1s. 3d. "for Bath's land"; William Vick, 5s. "for Driver's"; and Joseph Mayo, 2s. 6d. "for Fowler's land." The

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smallest subtenant, judging from the size of his rental, was William Minching "for Avery's" at 6d., while the largest was Samuel Peach "for Driver's land" at £2. 3s. 6d. Samuel Peach must have been a substantial gentleman-clothier; besides his landholdings, he also occupied Brimscomb and Symbry mills at rentals of 1s. 11d. and 8s. 9d., respectively.

The rent roll does not give the occupations of tenants. It is still possible, however, to obtain an idea of their relative status. The mean rental value of subtenants' holdings may be compared to the mean rental value of the holdings of Horsley's lessees, whose occupations appear in appendix A. If Samuel Peach (an obvious exception) were excluded from the analysis, the mean rental values of the two categories would not prove to be significantly different;^[27] these lessees, like those at Horsley manor, were plebeian.

A similar comparison can be made between Horsley's lessees and the eighty-three tenants who seem to have acquired their holdings by conveyance. The latter are distinguished in the rent roll by the phrase "that was" following the name of the original tenant. For example, Jeremiah Aldridge held lands once occupied by the widow Dean and by Joseph Wood. The entry reads as follows: "Jeremiah Aldridge. The widow Dean's that was. 6d."; "Jeremiah Aldridge. Jos. Wood's that was. 1s." Nor does it appear that either the widow Dean or Joseph Wood were deceased tenants whose parcels had been relet by the lord. If reletting had occurred, this fact would have been recorded as follows: "Mr. Blackwell of Chalford for Decd. Webb's that was." Another example, which affirms this conclusion, is that of the case of Mary Avery. In 1744, as the tenant of record, she was charged a rent of 9d. "for a house on Hocker Hill," but a marginal notation, "now Wm. Mundy," indicates that the property must have just been transferred. In 1745 William Mundy appears as the tenant of record, at the same rent, "for a house on Hocker Hill, Mary Avery that was." The document clearly captured the act of transference of the property that, had it involved reletting by the lord, should have resulted in a higher rent. Since it did not, the transfer was probably a conveyance of the lease. These lessees hardly differed in status from the subtenants of the same manor; the holdings of each had virtually the same mean rental value and standard deviation as the other. The status of lessees by conveyance at Minchinhampton-

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Avening likewise differed little from that of the lessees of Horsley manor.^[28]

Considering the general practice of the region, these leaseholds were probably term leases determinable on lives. Only one of the leases referred to seems to have contained customary obligations. Samuel Smith, cited above, was required to pay 5s. in addition to his rent "for a heriot on the death of Mary and Sarah Hill" from whom he had sublet the holding. A term of years, however, is not specified, so that at minimum the tenure must have been a lifehold lease. It is likely that the leaseholds referred to were all real chattels, however, for there is one case, involving a transfer of property, that specifically mentions a freehold. In 1746 a Mr. Essex was charged a rent of 2s. "for the freehold, Mrs. Crooms that was." Mrs. Crooms had evidently held a lifehold lease of the manor that she conveyed to Mr. Essex. Since none of the other conveyances refer to a freehold, it is reasonable to conclude that they were term leases; and given the practice in the region, among the lower classes, at least, they were probably determinable on lives as well.

If customary obligations do not appear to have survived well among lessees, they may nevertheless have been understated in the rent roll. This seems to have been the case among copyholders, who, by the very definition of their tenures, were required to pay heriots. Yet of the twelve copyholders cited, only one, John Vick, was mentioned as being liable for "capons etc." in addition to his rent of 9d. This citation suggests, moreover, that he was liable for other customary obligations besides. Other tenants, who held directly of the lord but whose tenures were not distinguished in the rent roll, were sometimes cited for such obligations. Edward Dee was required to pay "2s. for a relief" (entry fine) in addition to his rent of 6d., and William Clark occupied a house in Forest Green that required "2s. 6d. for a heriot at the death of the tenant in possession."

References to heriots and entry fines may have been random. In the absence of firmer evidence, however, it seems more reasonable to conclude that their appearance had been waning. It is, nevertheless, of interest that one of the few examples of a customary obligation surviving should have been on a house at Forest Green in the heart of the Dissenting community of the Vale. This shows

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that a locality noted for its autonomy and independence nevertheless remained unemancipated from manorial jurisdiction.

The transactions appearing in the records of both manors seem, in the main, to have involved the lower classes. Yet the example of Samuel Peach at Minchinhampton-Avening shows that the middle and upper classes were not unaffected by leasehold practices. Leasehold practices among them, however, differed considerably and usually involved simple term leases. The terms of such leases, moreover, were often extremely long, in some cases approaching perpetuity. As term leases they were personal, not real estates; however, their duration could render this distinction irrelevant as a practical matter. Eric Kerridge has written that very long term leases were anomalous and that during the reign of Henry VIII, at least, they "were granted only with ulterior motives and were disallowed by the common law on the ground that such leases were never without the suspicion of fraud."^[29] Frederick Pollock has accorded them a more legitimate place under the law but suggests that in some sense they were nonetheless fictitious: "Longer terms, as of 200, 500 or even 1,000 years, are conferred upon trustees as part of the machinery of family settlements, and were for sometime commonly used in mortgages. . . . In these cases there is no rent and no real tenancy."^[30]

This was not the case at Horsley and Minchinhampton-Avening. At Horsley, leases for very long terms can be traced back to the reign of Elizabeth. Table 15 indicates the number, the dates, the term of years, and the median rental of those long-term leases listed in the manor's records.^[31]

A wide spectrum of tenants held 1,000-year leaseholds, and a genuine rental was charged on each property. In three cases the rent varied between £1 and £2 for the largest estates; in four cases it varied between 12s. and 13s. for the intermediary estates; and for smaller estates the mean rental was 2s. 4d.^[32] The manor records list occupations only for the 800-year term lessees. John Wood of Horsley, clothier, held a lease dated from 1729 at a rental of 6d. The property was modest, containing a messuage or tenement, a garden, one acre of arable, three acres of pasture, and two acres of wood. Thomas Barnard of Horsley, yeoman, held another lease at a rental of 1s; it was equally modest, consisting of only one messuage in Horsley village. The holding of such leases persisted well

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into the nineteenth century. An advertisement appearing in 1823 for the sale of the lease of three messuages at Horsley noted that "the premises are held for the remainder of a term of 780 years, whereof 683 are unexpired."^[33] Such long-term leases were very common in the region during the nineteenth century, and because they were personal estates, they enhanced the lessee's sense of private ownership. Edward Bliss of Nailsworth, a Baptist deacon and clothier with a personal estate in 1832 of £9,000, directed in his will that a certain bequest of landed property be sold and the proceeds invested in securities. "This bequest," commented the estate duty officer, "proves to be a leasehold estate for the term of 500 years and the value is included in the residuary account."^[34] Bliss had undoubtedly referred to the lease of the property and not to the property itself. However, his will's imprecise language, and the resulting need for clarification by the estate duty office, betrayed a confusion that must have arisen from the very duration of the lease. The testator had obviously come to feel that the property, held for such a long period, was tantamount to a freehold estate. Perhaps for this reason, Henry Stephens, lord of the manor at Horsley, prohibited his heirs (who were not his own issue) from granting leases, while requiring them to reside at the manor house.^[35] Long-term leases could result in the virtual alienation of the property by the lessor and, if practiced on a sufficiently wide scale, could lead to the dissolution of a manor.

Even in the case of long-term lessees, it was, nevertheless, possible for a lord of the manor to require an act of homage. Edmund

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Clutterbuck, the gentleman-clothier of Minchinhampton-Avening, held landed property from the lord of the manor for two terms of 300 and 500 years, respectively. Yet in 1814 he was required to "surrender" the assignments to David Ricardo, the new lord, "to attend the inheritance of the Manor of Minchinhampton."^[36] The formality may have served to remind Clutterbuck of the true ownership of his holdings. In actuality, considering the length of the term of his tenure, it could have done little to discourage his sense of property right.

Not all long-term lessees held of the lord of the manor. Further analyses of the tithe surveys (shown in tables 12 to 14) reveal that considerable leasing occurred both by and from other owners. The amount of tenant-occupied acreage remained high among all classes of landowner for all three parishes, despite any variations over time. Direct information concerning the contents of such leases is not available, but the leases undoubtedly followed the pattern established by much of local manorial leasing, already widespread throughout the region. The lower classes would have held leases for lives-determinable-on-years, but shorn of heriots and other customary obligations; and following manorial practice, the term of years would have run for a considerable period.^[37] The middle and upper classes would have tended to hold simple long-term leases even if the property involved were modest. Both forms of leasehold promoted a sense of property right, and their proliferation thus serves as a partial index of individualism.

Evidence for such individualism abounds in probate records. Some of this material has been cited in the first chapter, to illustrate either patterns of dual occupation or social mobility in and around Nailsworth. Further examples can also be invoked to show that individualized property relations, embodied in local forms of land tenure, provided a backdrop against which testators of very humble status often sought profitable investments in either buildings or land.^[38]

William Kemish, a Horsley laborer with a personal estate in 1812 valued under £100, bequeathed to his heirs four tenements or messuages in the occupation of his own tenants, together with two "laggards of land" adjoining his dwelling, which he had evidently purchased from two different sellers. Thomas Lewis, a Horsley clothworker, with a personal estate in 1825 worth nearly

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£200, bequeathed two dwellings to his heirs, besides the one he occupied at Nailsworth, and a small shop. Joseph Heskins, another Horsley clothworker, with a personal estate in 1818 worth nearly £200, left his heirs four leasehold messuages, three of which were occupied by his own subtenants. In 1764 Phillip Howell, a Horsley shoemaker, bequeathed two cottages besides his own dwelling and a shop occupied by tenants, as well as pasture ground called "Selwin's field" and a close of pasture called "the Hill," with a "haystall of wood thereto." Similarly, in 1757 Thomas Locker, broadweaver, bequeathed two dwelling houses occupied by tenants, a plot known appropriately as "Locker's Leaze," with accompanying pasture ground, as well as a grove of beechwood, likewise called "Locker's grove."

Similar cases can be found among working-class testators from Minchinhampton and Avening. In 1778 Robert Mason, a Minchinhampton clothworker, with a personal estate valued at nearly £250, bequeathed six freehold cottages occupied by his own tenants, one of which possessed three-quarters of an acre of meadow, and a leasehold cottage for the term of the lease, occupied by a subtentant. In 1803 James Bingell, a Minchinhampton wool scribbler, bequeathed his own dwelling with an adjoining enclosure of land "which I lately bought of Mr. Humphry Collins." In 1827 Thomas Baker, a Minchinhampton clothworker with a personal estate valued at £200, bequeathed to his daughter the right to collect rents from "the house now occupied by George Ockford." In 1823 James Sansum, a Watledge clothworker, with a personal estate worth nearly £200, bequeathed three tenements besides his own, each occupied by a tenant. At Avening, Harris Dee, laborer, with a personal estate valued at £100 in 1797, left his heirs a house occupied by Richard Clifford that he "now rents of me adjoining to mine [sic ]." In 1826 Daniel Sansum, a cloth-worker from Forest Green, with a personal estate of nearly £200, bequeathed three messuages, two of which were occupied by his own tenants.

As at Horsley, Minchinhampton and Avening artisans usually possessed more property than did laborers or clothworkers, often in land as well as buildings. In 1763 William Dowdy, a Minchinhampton tailor, bequeathed in trust freehold and leasehold tenements, with lands, both arable and pasture, and includ-

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ing barns, stables, and outhouses, at Bestbury and Box villages. In 1772 Jacob Harrison, a Minchinhampton mason, bequeathed to his heirs "all real and personal estate whatsoever," including two tenant occupied houses and an orchard. In 1779 John Cull, an Avening carpenter and yeoman, left an estate that included two small parcels of land and two tenant occupied messuages; although the value of his personal estate remained unrecorded in his will, its monetary bequests alone amounted to more than £230. In 1774 Thomas Holliday, a Minchinhampton pargeter, bequeathed his heirs "freehold lands to hold forever," two tenant-occupied freehold messuages and two sublet leasehold cottages for the term of the lease.^[39]

Changes in the agrarian economy, operating through the mechanism of enclosures, further articulated the spread of popular individualism and eventually spelled the demise of manorial authority. In the period antecedent to industrial takeoff, enclosures of common arable were spearheaded by small owners and occupiers operating within the framework of customary institutions. Such activities helped to erode these institutions and thereby laid the groundwork for their disappearance in the period of accelerated industrialization. Agrarian enclosure and industrialization were reciprocal processes affecting the social equilibrium of the region and in particular the formation of a proletariat. They provided the backdrop for the growth of evangelicalism and the spread of Dissent and for this reason require closer scrutiny.

Agrarian Transformation

The enclosure movement in English agriculture has occupied a controversial place with respect to the process of class formation in the Industrial Revolution. Marx, followed by a generation of historians, had articulated a catastrophic view: the spate of 3,000 parliamentary enclosures between 1760 and 1815 displaced a mass of small farmers, who were subsequently transformed into industrial proletarians.^[40] Contemporary historiography has largely rejected this connection between agrarian and industrial transformation. Thirsk and Yelling have depicted enclosures as a protracted process extending over centuries and characterized by wide typological and regional variations.^[41] G. E. Mingay has ques-

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tioned whether the position of the small farmer seriously eroded during the late eighteenth century, and J. D. Chambers has argued that the growth of agricultural productivity, resulting from enclosures, was sufficient to absorb the surplus rural population that Marx believed had found its way into industry.^[42] The first, more traditional, view holds greater validity in the region under study, although for different reasons than Marx would have entertained. The persistence of the small landholder was, indeed, compatible with the formation of a proletariat, especially in areas where piecemeal enclosure had engineered changes in the agrarian structure. Piecemeal enclosure, the process of consolidation occurring by attrition over a long period,^[43] was brought about largely by common folk, although not with the intention of subverting customary institutions. Their parcels were modest and initially functioned compatibly within the existing customary framework. Nonetheless, the cumulative effect of piecemeal enclosure subverted customary practice. The erosion of common arable land laid the foundation for shrinkage of the wasteland at Averting and for the aggrandizement of lands by the lord of the manor at Horsley, both of which had catastrophic consequences for small holders and landless, encroaching cottagers.

Shrinkage of the waste at Avening, however, had also resulted from the activities of encroachers themselves and accompanied a great increase in their numbers. Superficially, this increase suggests the persistence of small holders, but the great fragmentation of the size of their holdings, coinciding with the industrial revolution pointed to their proletarianization. At Minchinhampton, as we have seen, a fall in arable land under cultivation and an increase in waste coincided with a decline in occupied acreage among small holders, the result of industrialization. At the same time, the manor preserved the grazing lands of Minchinhampton Common, so long as access could be restricted to the wealthier members of the community. In the hinterland of Nailsworth, demise of the common arable land and wastelands was completed by the 1820s and restricted access to Minchinhampton Common inaugurated during the 1830s. Correspondingly, the manor courts, the traditional custodians of customary practice, either ceased to function or became the agencies of private aggrandizement.

Piecemeal enclosure of common arable land accelerated from

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the late seventeenth century and culminated, in all three parishes, during the early decades of the nineteenth century. References in manorial records, tithe surveys, deeds, and wills, together with an early survey map for Minchinhampton, make it possible to document the process. Manorial records at Horsley make ample reference to common arable fields and the scattered holdings of their occupants during the sixteenth century. In 1570 Edward Rowbottom held of the lord of the manor "three acres of arable land in Telly field, five acres in Wimbley Barrow field and five acres of arable in Binders field and pasture in the Common Fields for 50 sheep."^[44] John Wilkins held "34 acres . . . in Conigre [field] and Common pasture for 150 sheep," to cite two typical examples from the seventeen long-term leases recorded in this period. Reference to a "close" can be found in only three of the lease abstracts; with the exception of one lease, such holdings were in a considerable minority. Walter Keynes possessed a two-acre tenement and a five-acre tenement called, respectively, Barley close and Short-wood close; he occupied "three acres of pasture in the midst of Lethredge, Kellcombes" and "one close in West field containing four acres." The paucity of closes or "tynings," as they were also called, suggests that piecemeal enclosures were first being initiated at this time. It also illustrates the form of the pattern of attrition: small, virtually inconspicuous enclosures in the midst of common fields and clearly not deemed a threat to customary rules.

In the seventeeth century, references to "closes" and "tynings" increased; occasionally such references offer evocative descriptions of the very act of enclosure. In 1707 Cornelius Chambers, wool-comber, held, among several small closes, "two acres of arable land lying in a field called Nupend field lately taken & inclosed with some other lands into a tyning." In 1732 Chambers occupied "Lutsome Tyning lately taken and inclosed out of a field called Wimbley barrow field." A tyning, evidently, could be a larger unit of enclosure than a mere close; its more frequent appearance in the eighteenth century suggests an acceleration of the process of attrition. Nonetheless, most references to acreage in this period would seem to indicate that traditional scattered holdings remained the norm at Horsley, at least until 1770, when the manorial accounts stop. However, the Courts Baron and Leer of the manor continued to operate as late as 1816. As the fourth chapter will demonstrate,

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the steward of the manor maintained annual lists of householders; the jury fined nonattendants who owed suit-of-court, prosecuted encroachers on common wastelands, and regularly inspected leaseholds of the manor to prevent fraud against the lord's interests. And all of these activities were undertaken with the solemn air of feudality that suggests the persistence of strong, traditional lordship. Under these conditions, one can reasonably expect that the rate of piecemeal enclosure did not accelerate appreciably until the collapse of manorial authority following the transfer of lordship to the management of a trustee after 1816.

A similar process of attrition can be documented at Averting and Minchinhampton. Daniel Harvey of Avening, yeoman, had bequeathed in his will a parcel of arable land of about three acres "formerly taken out of a piece of arable."^[45] Thomas Hill of Avening, butcher, and his wife Bridget, in anticipation of the marriage of their son, transferred to two trustees "all those four acres more or less of arable land lying in a newly enclosed tyning formerly taken and inclosed out of one of the common fields of Avening called Northfield."^[46] At Minchinhampton the common fields were also called "North," "South," "East," and "West" fields, although they possessed other more descriptive titles as well. In 1777, Revd. Peach released in fee for £283. 10s. "all those 63 acres of arable lying dispersedly in the common fields of Minchinhampton aforesaid called Longfield and Longstone or Southfield now in the possession of Edward Sheppherd, Esq."^[47] Longfield was also known as Northfield,^[48] although it was referred to as "Upper Field" when Richard Harris of Woodhouse, Minchinhampton, a substantial clothier, conveyed to David Ricardo, the lord of the manor, "all that inclosed piece of arable lying in a common field . . . called Longfield, containing by estimation 35 acres"^[49] (see map 5).

The 1777 tithe survey for Minchinhampton records more than 600 acres under occupation in common fields. These fields persisted as late as 1804, when a valuation survey was undertaken for the parish, although by this date much arable land had been left open to the waste and only zoo acres of common lands remained. Map 5 depicts the southeast section of Minchinhampton in 1804 and shows the location of the surviving scattered strips, as well as the proportion of enclosed pasture to arable land characteristic of

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Map 5.
Field map: southeast section of Minchinhampton, ca. 1804. Pasture, arable, and
 common lands. Source: Gloucester Records Office P217a/VE1/1, Survey and 
Valuation of Minchinhampton Parish Lands, ca. 1804.

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the parish as a whole.^[50] The arable plots, containing these open field strips, were technically part of the common fields but were beginning to resemble enclosures; the strips were either owner-occupied or held as leaseholds. Table 14 shows the distributions of owner-occupied, tenant leaseholds and common field holdings for Minchinhampton in 1777 and 1839.^[51]

By 1777 small and marginal landholders ceased to hold lands in the common fields, while medium and medium-small holders let the great majority of their lands as enclosed holdings. They continued to do so in 1839 with only marginal changes, despite the fall in the parish's total occupied acreage. The greatest change occurred among large and intermediary landholders. In 1777 they held as much as 26 percent of their lands in common fields, and these constituted nearly 18 percent of the parish's total occupied acreage. By 1839, however, common lands ceased to exist. This shift had clearly marked the final progress of piecemeal enclosure of common arable, although surprisingly large holders had lagged behind their smaller brethren.

Common people, such as broadweavers, glaziers, carpenters, small clothiers, and even woolcombers, had initiated the erosion of customary practices in all three parishes. The persistence of manorial control through the eighteenth century had had a restraining effect on the scope of their activities. The cumulative result of piecemeal enclosure was to weaken that same authority, however, particularly as small closes expanded into larger "tynings." As a result, large and intermediary occupiers, in the post-1815 period, were able to effect more systematic assaults on the remainder of common arable and on the wasteland. The erosion of common arable land and wasteland, moreover, legitimated efforts to restrict access to common grazing areas to the more prosperous elements of the community.

Until the 1840s, members of the lower classes, who occupied some land, exercised the right to graze stock on Minchinhampton

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Common. A notice of 1813, which warned against overstocking the Common, had reiterated the customary rule: only residents of the parish occupying land, regardless of the amount of acreage, qualified as Commoners, although none could pasture more beasts than their lands could winter.^[52] These minimal requirements were still being enforced in 1830 when as little as 1.25 to 2.5 acres of land could carry with it "the right to extensive pasturage to Minchinhampton and Rodborough Commons."^[53]

The rules of 1843 regarding the stinting of beasts on the Common had not changed in forty years. According to a new resolution adopted by the Court Leet, however, access to the Common would be restricted to those whose lands were capable of wintering "one cow or two yearlings, or one horse or two asses to every five acres [and] one sheep for every two acres of land occupied in the parish."^[54] The resolution also introduced a small charge of 2d per beast. In 1847 the Court Leer made the qualification even more restrictive: Commoners were now allowed "one beast for every £5 . . . and one sheep for every £2 to which they may be rated for land to the poor."^[55] The Court emphasized that this higher qualification would be based on the ratable value of lands and not the value of their crop yields. It increased the levy per beast to 6d, a rise of zoo percent. The qualifications of 1843 were indeed restrictive, but those of 1847 were considerably harsher. As a result, a noticeable shift in the Common's usage became apparent even within this short interval. The manorial accounts of cattle marked for grazing in 1843 and 1851 permit such a reconstruction. The findings appear in table 16.

A 31 percent fall occurred in the numbers using the Common, although the number of beasts per Commoner rose only slightly from 3.1 to 3.8. Still, a high turnover in personnel had clearly transpired. Only fifteen of the Commoners recorded in 1843 reappeared in the 1851 list, and two of them were among the largest animal owners of that earlier period. Table 16 describes the joint distribution of the different types of animals grazed by each year. Comparison of observed and expected values suggests that large landholders came to dominate the Common.

Despite the fall in the number of Commoners, only the number of bullocks and affers changed significantly, both absolutely and relative to their expected values.^[56] Bullocks increased far beyond

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their 1843 level in both number and expected value, while affers declined. The number of horses and yearlings declined moderately, while the number of cows remained generally low. Small occupiers were more likely to have grazed cows, affers, and horses; affers were draught animals, and horses were used mainly for carting. The small number of cows in both years reaffirms that by 1843 many of the marginal small holders had already been excluded from the Common. The significant fall in the number of affers and the moderate fall in horses suggests that by 1851 the more prosperous small holders had followed them. The moderate decline in yearlings and the startling rise in the number of bullocks indicate a shift in concentration on the latter type of animal; this increase suggests greater production for butchery, a commercial activity in which larger landholders took a special interest. By 1851 large landholders clearly had come to monopolize Minchinhampton Common.

Summary and Conclusion

Three great changes in the agrarian sector of the economy of Nailsworth's hinterland had coalesced during the critical interval from 1780 to 1840. Enclosures of common arable land and waste-land, together with restricted access to Minchinhampton Common, contributed in a combined yet auxiliary fashion to the formation of an industrial proletariat. At the same time, the forms of leaseholding characteristic of the region showed how far property relations had become individualized.

Leases-for-lives, determinable on ninety-nine years, were generally held by members of the lower classes including woolcombers, clothworkers, laborers, and weavers. When completely shorn of manorial restrictions, such as entry fines and heriots, such leases effectively combined the customary element of security of tenure with greater freedom for the tenant to alienate the lease. The element of lifehold leasing, which survived from medieval times, assured the family security of tenure, while the element of term leasing permitted the head of household to treat the tenement as part of his personal estate. Since manorial restrictions contained in such leases had declined considerably by 1800 and were completely absent in nonmanorial leases, the property relations articulated

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by these forms of leasehold permitted the growth of individualism among members of the lower classes; the evidence of subletting and conveyancing on the manors of Horsley and Minchinhampton, no less than the progress of piecemeal enclosures, affirms the existence of such a pattern of behavior, already alluded to in chapter 1. Further analysis of probate records in this chapter has also revealed the widespread nature of popular individualism. The forms of very long term leasing, prevailing among the gentry and high bourgeoisie, reinforced the conclusion that long-term leases, although part of the personal estate of a testator, amounted virtually to a freehold and thereby facilitated the growth of individualism.

The particular form tenurial relations took in this neighborhood thus served to encourage relatively independent attitudes even among the dependent, and this circumstance proved to be crucial for the growth of Nonconformity. Although large landowners dominated the region, in this respect not conforming to the standard model of a district likely to foster Dissent, local Whig landowners showed sympathy toward Nonconformity, partly on the grounds that it offset the weakness of the established church in the region. Evidence from local manorial courts provides additional evidence that Dissenters in this neighborhood were not alienated from established authority in all its forms.^[57] Still, Nailsworth's Dissenters were not completely subordinated to established authority. On the contrary, individualist attitudes toward property, combined with the scattered nature of parochial settlements, established an underlying structure of independence, fostering the autonomy of religious sentiment, and thereby linking Nonconformity to a spirit of individualism.

Evangelical Nonconformity, however, appealed equally to the poor and outcast, for whom the communal atmosphere of Chapel life softened the destructive psychological effects of social change during the eighteenth to early nineteenth century. The next chapter considers the formation at Nailsworth of the two largest Dissenting communities, the Forest Green Congregationalists and the Shortwood Baptists, their developing relations with the Establishment, and the beginnings of their evolution to a more denominational status.

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Chapter Three
Churches and Chapels:
The Pattern of Religion

In northern England and parts of the southwest and midlands, the Evangelical Revival contributed to the growth of Methodism,^[1] but in Gloucestershire it stimulated the reawakening of some of the older Protestant sects.^[2] At Nailsworth, these sects included the Particular Baptists of Shortwood, the Congregationalists of Forest Green and the Nailsworth Meeting of the Society of Friends.

The Society of Friends were the first Dissenters to appear in the locality and were soon followed by the arrival of the Congregationalists. The Shortwood Baptists emerged as a community following a schism among the Congregationalists and after 1800 flourished as Nailsworth's principal Nonconformist church and the largest Baptist community outside London. The Friends eschewed enthusiasm and remained an "introversionist sect" throughout their history, while their Dissenting brethren embraced the Revival and acquired "denominational" characteristics.^[3] The Church of England responded competitively to the challenge of Nonconformist expansion and in the process transformed itself into a denomination as well.^[4]

Since the Quakers represented a unique example of unrepentent sectarianism, their religious order deserves special consideration elsewhere.^[5] Also, since the Shortwood Baptists successfully mediated the pressures of secularization, at least through 1851, their collective experiences since 1800 likewise require separate treatment.^[6] This chapter is concerned with the pattern of early Non-

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conformist sectarianism and how its metamorphosis, under the influence of the Revival, affected relations with the Church of England. As a boundary settlement, and hence with an ostensibly remote Anglican Establishment, Nailsworth conformed, as we have seen, to a community typology widely used to explain the spread of rural Dissent. Yet contrary to this model, Dissenters established from the outset a rapprochement with the local Establishment that far surpassed mere toleration and eventually led to widespread social and political cooperation.^[7]

The Origins of Dissent and the Evangelical Revival

A nonconformist tradition within the parish churches of Horsley and Minchinhampton can be traced back to Henry Stubbs, the Puritan preacher who held the benefice of Horsley from 1665 to 1678. Stubbs had not actually taken Holy Orders, and the poor quality of the parish records during his tenure probably reflected a wish to remain inconspicuous by minimizing the performance of baptisms, marriages, and burials.^[8] Stubbs's survival at Horsley, during a period of anti-Puritan reaction in the Church, can be attributed to the leniency of the local authorities and ultimately to the puritan sympathies of the substantial clothiers of the region.^[9] In 1669 the Privy Council complained to Gloucester's Lord Lieutenant about the conventicles that "of late assemble in greater numbers and more dareing than formerly . . . from they're not being suppressed by the Justices of the Peace."^[10] Among these assemblies they cited the example of an open air meeting at Minchinhampton at which forty auditors listened to an unidentified butcher and another speaker called "Mr. Stubbs."^[11] The Privy Councillors enjoined the local authorities to consult one another "about the speedy suppression of th[is] dangerous tumult" and to use "military power to suppress [it] . . . along with the civil power."^[12] In addition, they required the churchwardens of several parishes to "present the names of all kinds of persons [who] come not to your church as well as lewd and profane persons . . . [whom] you may grant your warrants to."^[13]

Although the local magistrates and churchwardens clearly disobeyed these instructions, Stubbs still felt considerable pressure to

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flee. "He evidently found his position untenable," remarked one local historian, "for . . . he ejected himself and retired to London" in 1678, joining his friend Richard Baxter, the great Presbyterian Divine and proponent of a moderate Calvinist theology.^[14] Stubbs's tenure at Horsley revealed an ambivalence toward dissent on the part of the Anglican gentry that later facilitated the proliferation of Nonconformist churches. As the severity of persecutions under the Clarendon Code waned, and limited toleration was legalized, practical collaboration between Anglicans and Dissenters became more widely accepted, although not all Dissenters adapted to this development with equal speed. The Society of Friends, because of its distinctive discipline, suffered disabilities the longest, while the Congregationalist church at Forest Green effected a reconciliation quite early, with important consequences for its later history.

The Congregationalists occupied an intermediary position between the Quakers and the Baptists in the history of Dissent at Nailsworth. In church organization they moved away from Presbyterianism, which resembled the Quaker order, toward Independency, which the Baptists adopted in imitation of them. Doctrinally, they adhered to a moderate Calvinist theology that the Baptists also eventually imitated. Yet they differed from the Baptists in the practice of infant baptism and in their ambivalence toward the Evangelical Revival, once that great movement gained momentum.

The Forest Green Congregationalists were the first Nailsworth Dissenters to attract a significant following. They erected their meetinghouse in 1668, but prior to this date had held their "conventicle" in Colliers's Wood, near Forest Green, in order to evade persecution. Their founding of a chapel coincided with their abandonment of Presbyterianism in favor of a Congregationalist church order.^[15] In 1687 "persons of repute in Nailsworth and its neighborhood availed themselves of King James's Indulgence and purchased the plot of ground on which the [meeting] house stands."^[16] These "persons of repute," although very likely associated with the Church of England, clearly had Puritan sympathies; perhaps they had been the same ones who saved Henry Stubbs from the central authorities.^[17]

In 1677 Phillip Sheppard, lord of the manor at Minchinhampton, leased the plot of ground that became the site of the chapel

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(situated on a "common or waste called Forest Green") to Richard Barnard, clothworker. Barnard, in turn, sold the lease for £4 to Aaron Osborn, cordwainer and Richard Bird, broadweaver.^[18] The £4, however, was paid by several individuals in whose names the property was then assigned and who, a year later, were mentioned in a conveyance as trustees of the meetinghouse that had been built in the interval. Three clothiers, two dyers, and one maltster were among the seven mentioned,^[19] but it cannot be assumed that all were leading members of the chapel at this time.^[20] By covering the purchase price of the ground and serving as trustees, they appear to have acted as patrons of more humble Dissenters. Why else would they have needed a cordwainer and a broadweaver to act as surrogates for them? Puritan sympathies had probably compelled them to give support, despite their continuing loyalty to the Church of England. Indeed, until the erection of the Anglican chapel at Nailsworth in 1794, the Forest Green Church "[had been] attended by many of the Established Church laity."^[21]

The practice of open communion adopted at Forest Green made possible Anglican attendance at services and the paternalist exercise of trusteeship. In the early eighteenth century, especially, this meant that Anglicans could exercise a social predominance enforced by a novel species uniformity. The waning of Puritan "enthusiasm" permitted Anglicans and Congregationalists to converge in the mutual adoption of a more rational theology, grounded in the moderation or abandonment of Calvinism.^[22] Anglican patronage therefore undercut the dissenting edge of Nonconformity. The social and political consensus this created persisted until the 1740s, when the beginning of the Evangelical Revival disrupted it.

"Enthusiasm" experienced a powerful rebirth with the appearance at Minchinhampton Common in 1743 of George Whitefield, the founder of Calvinistic Methodism. An anti-Methodist riot accompanied his appearance and polarized relations between Anglicans and Dissenters.^[23] In 1747 the middle- and upper-class trustees of the Forest Green Church suddenly curtailed their relations with it, thereby registering the impact of Whitefield's preaching.^[24] Early evangelicalism had made Congregationalism momentarily more plebeian and sectarian. Still, enthusiasm laid the groundwork for whatever future prosperity the Forest Green

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Church would enjoy and offered a basis for the new Anglican-Nonconformist consensus, which emerged in the late eighteenth century.

The extent of the Forest Green Church's prosperity after 1750 is difficult to measure because of the paucity of its records.^[25] We must rely mainly on the narrative of a Chapel history composed in 1849 by one of the church's ministers. From this history, and from the demographic records analyzed later,^[26] the Congregationalists appear to have occupied an intermediary position, in the chronology of their settlement and in their relative strength after 1780, between the Society of Friends and the Shortwood Baptists. The history of the Forest Green Church is of interest primarily because it represented an Independent tradition that proved a comparative failure. Although the Revival affected its members earlier than it did the Baptists, they do not seem to have sustained their enthusiasm with equal ardor. Certainly there were great enthusiasts among them, such as William Biggs, whose conversion experience epitomized the meaning of millenarianism. Biggs had had terrible dreams about sin, and one in particular proved instrumental in his conversion:

He says that he saw in the middle of the night a strange representation in the heavens which appeared directed to him, it awoke him in a awful state of terror and alarm—he felt as though instant destruction awaited him, his sins appeared in their naked deformity—he felt himself as if he were sinking beneath their load; so great was the mental distress on this occassion that the perspiration issued from the pores of his body—he struggled to his knees, and there begged for mercy—he prayed, cried, wrestled—at length he saw . . . a representation of the great Redeemer, shining in the glory of the Godhead, looking toward him with pardon and love bespoken in his very countenance—this his heart instantly seized, and all terminated in gratitude inexpressible—he now dreaded the thought of ever committing another sin.^[27]

Still, the membership's rigid insistence on infant baptism, which led to the resignation of at least one minister,^[28] in the long term detracted from the evangelical emphasis on conversion. What an historian of early Methodism said of John Wesley applies with singular aptness to the entire evangelical movement: "The birthday of a Christian was . . . shifted from his baptism to his conversion, and in that change the partition line of two great systems is

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crossed."^[29] The church's success, however, depended to a considerable degree on the qualities of its ministers, many of whom after 1750 did not always follow an evangelical course. Reverend Jarvis, the pastor from 1753 to 1769, was considered "a man of considerable attainment [who] kept a school of very respectable character,"^[30] which in this period was not likely to predispose him to the "coarseness" then associated with enthusiasm. His appointment seems to have reflected a retreat from enthusiasm by the church and a restabilization of its membership, following the social schism of 1747.

From the 1770s leadership of the church rested in the hands of middle-class individuals such as William Biggs and members of the Thomas family, who were clothiers.^[31] Another pastor, Revd. Frames, who held office from 1788 to 1799, was "a Homerton [Cambridge] student, and rather formal in his mode of preaching";^[32] although the neighborhood regarded him highly, his formidable intellectual style did not attract a large congregation. It was during the ministry of his successor, Revd. Paine (1800-1817), that the church began to tap the resources created by the Revival. Paine was "a preacher with a warm heart and by his ministry large numbers were converted."^[33] Thomas Edkins, who followed him in the ministry, held this position longer than did any other and maintained Paine's evangelical approach.^[34] The schism of 1821, however, which led to the establishment of a second Congregationalist church, severely marred his efforts.

The schism had no explicit doctrinal cause and in two respects reflected the impact of secularizing changes. The desire of the wealthier members to shift the church's location to Lower Forest Green was the heart of the dispute. They hoped to attract a wider audience by proximity to Nailsworth, which had grown into a small town, while those who opposed them clung to older traditions. Both class division and urbanization, therefore, engendered difficulties soon to be compounded by trade depression: high rates of outmigration dealt a near death blow to any immediate chances for the recovery of the Congregationalist influence.

Under these conditions, Edkins was unable to hold together the unraveling thread of church membership. Outmigration was a much greater problem at Lower Forest Green (which retained the great majority of Congregationalists) than at Shortwood, and in

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1844 Edkins had to face the virtual collapse of his church. Following his resignation in that year "such was the state of the church that it could scarcely be ascertained who were the acknowledged members."^[35] In 1845 John Burder, minister of the Stroud Congregationalists,^[36] and for many years a leading figure in the political life of the region, helped to reorganize it. By 1851 Congregationalism had recovered sufficiently, but not for very long. "[T]he church seems to have suffered considerably," from the sudden departure of its minister, Revd. Clapham in October 1851;^[37] and Revd. Leifchild, his replacement, was more content to follow his interest in geology than his vocation as minister, reflecting indirectly the negative effect on the church of secularizing trends.

It was not only the quality of the church's ministers that mattered but also continuity in the ministry (see table 17)- Although the Forest Green Church had a few ministers with reasonably long tenures, the general pattern, depicted in table 17, was one of frequent change punctuated by several periods in which the pastorate laid vacant. The Congregationalists began auspiciously, but their membership later fluctuated erratically in proportion to the turnover among their ministers. By contrast, the Shortwood Baptists were small and considerably more doctrinaire at the outset but were led from 1758 by four able ministers, three of whom served for especially long terms, and this continuity contributed greatly to their growth. To appreciate better their later success, it is necessary to set forth the events and conditions surrounding their origins and early history.

The Shortwood Baptist Church was founded in the aftermath of the schism of 1707 that occurred among the Forest Green Congregationalists. The issues were doctrinal and underscored the more conservative character of the schismatics at a time when the Congregationalists were effecting a rapprochement with the Establishment. It was Revd. Giles's "preaching up the Presbyterian Scheme," which touched on the issues of Election and infant baptism, that precipitated the crisis.^[38] William Harding and John Horwood, two broadweavers from Horsley, were troubled by Giles's "Baxterianism," and to obtain doctrinal clarification, they visited the Baptist church at Kings Stanley. There they reaffirmed their high Calvinist principles and their commitment to believers' baptism.^[39] Horwood later succumbed to Giles's persuasiveness,

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but Harding did not, and in an effort to sway him Giles agreed to "preach up" the issues in dispute. Giles did so for fourteen consecutive Sundays, but succeeded only in creating more dissatisfaction; fifty members, after another pilgrimage to the Baptist church at Kings Stanley, decided to withdraw from membership at Forest Green.

This schism fit a national pattern. Richard Baxter, the great Presbyterian divine, had introduced Dissenters to a moderate form of Calvinism in the late seventeenth century. "Moderate Calvinism" involved the retreat from a strict adherence to predestinarian doctrine and, correspondingly, a willingness to embrace the idea of

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universal redemption. Because it appeared dangerously liberal in its implications, the change produced a number of schisms. As "Baxterianism" spread among Presbyterians in the late seventeenth century, dissatisfied members formed Congregationalist churches, and as the Calvinism of these churches gradually moderated, further schisms occurred that led to the formation of Particular Baptist churches.^[40] In the atmosphere of the early eighteenth century, the Shortwood Baptists were to remain a small and isolated sect. Yet, paradoxically, their survival depended from the outset on sympathizers from the Church of England.

After having withdrawn from the Forest Green Church, the band of schismatics decided to meet at William Harding's home, since the distance of three miles to Kings Stanley seemed prohibitive.^[41] They continued to do so until 1716, when they succeeded in founding a meetinghouse. From a copy of the original trust deed, one can judge just how plebeian were these founders. Six others besides William Harding were broadweavers; one was a clothworker and another a mason.^[42] Their patrons, however, came from middle- and upper-class backgrounds and were often resident at some distance. Henry Allen of Froom, Somerset, a dyer, together with a Mr. Ball, "seeing the people's poverty," gave £10 toward establishing a meetinghouse and raised additional contributions from among their relations.^[43] Among the other trustees were Samuel, Henry's brother and a Bristol druggist; Robert Houlton of Trowbridge, Wiltshire, a clothier; John Grant of Trowbridge, a gentleman; and Samuel Sevil of Bisley and Pains-wick, another gentleman.^[44]

The early Baptist church received the kind of support from Sevil that probably saved it from extinction. By the time of the founding of the meeting house, the original band of schismatics had dwindled to thirteen,^[45] and for the next three years, two others besides Sevil carried on the ministry of the church. One contemporary history described Sevil as being "a young gentleman of Painswick who came of from [sic ] the Church of England and was a very zealous preacher."^[46] He died in 1719 and bequeathed £10 to the church to add an extra room to the meetinghouse,^[47] an act that testfied to his success; and following his death no preaching took place for about four or five months.^[48]

Because of its exclusiveness, the Shortwood church did not

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attract a large following for a considerable period. From Sevil's death in 1719 until 1732 only twelve persons joined in fellowship.^[49] Between 1737 and 1752 the church met with greater success, as fifty-four were added to the membership. Yet during the last three years of this period a "perplexed and divided condition" prevailed among the members.^[50] Nor did this atmosphere abate from 1752 to 1757, the period of Samuel Bowen's ministry. Bowen had made the first tentative move toward adopting an evangelical approach, although he lacked the force of personality to make it effective. On his accession, he had insisted that the members "endeavor to make the ordinance of singing more general."^[51] Although the congregation formally agreed to his demand, they "were at one with the Quakers" on this issue and tacitly resisted its implementation. Like the Friends, they valued an austere atmosphere, in keeping with their adherence to high Calvinism. The "unanimity" at Bowen's accession, therefore, "was not lasting, the hopes not realized, the conditions of its acceptance not fulfilled."^[52]

Benjamin Francis's accession to the ministry in 1758, by contrast, marked a great watershed in Shortwood's history. Under his tutelage, the church moderated the High Calvinism of its founders, while informing it with a Methodist-like evangelicalism. Francis imported into the locality from Wales a revivalist approach,^[53] partially inspired by George Whitefield and based doctrinally on moderate Calvinism.^[54] Once Revd. Joshua Thomas of the Leominster Baptist Church had asked him, "When may one conclude that he enjoys God in the performance of Duty?" Francis replied in a manner that testified both to his' evangelical ardor and his belief in Calvinist Free Grace:

When his heart is so filled with sacred joy and overpowered with heavenly light: and when the Holy Spirit witnesseth to his spirit, his Election and Vocation so clearly and irresistibly that he can't forbear breaking out in such language as this, "O, my GOD! My GOD indeed! Now I can't question thy Love: O, I feel it! I feel it!"^[55]

Despite its origins in "Baxterianism," moderate Calvinism was an eclectic doctrine that first Whitefield and then Francis transformed into a radical evangelizing instrument. By reconciling the doctrines of Particular Election and Universal Redemption, mod-

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erate Calvinism made possible the conversion of "sinners." The schismatics of 1707, although artisans,^[56] became Baptists because of their adherence to High Calvinism. In the seventeenth century such people often embraced High Calvinist doctrine since it confirmed their belief that God had chosen the "poor" among His elect. Such a doctrine conferred a sense of nobility that uplifted converts psychologically: "Men fought for God's cause and expected it to prevail because it was God's," Christopher Hill has observed. "The humbler the agents of divine Providence, the more manifest God's favor in their success."^[57] In the late eighteenth century, however, when the Industrial Revolution began to fashion a proletariat, the democratic doctrine of universal redemption started to supplant the doctrine of Election in popular favor. These considerably poorer and more dependent people regarded themselves as sinners in need of healing; their spiritual condition became one of "affliction," mirroring their temporal state.

Francis's enthusiasm thus attracted large congregations, and his preaching to neighboring villages led to the growth of the Baptist interest far beyond Shortwood. His itinerant travels covered a range of ninety miles into Worcester and Wiltshire, and he preached for a week at a time over a period of seventeen years.^[58] In 1774 the congregation drew itself from more than fifteen adjacent parishes, a fact offering testimony to the depth of its commitment, since distances of more than two miles in this period were not easily traversed. "Any friend of evangelical religion," one contemporary recalled,

must have enjoyed the sight of the several companies descending the surrounding hills on the Lord's day, to assemble at Shortwood, where on the rising ground above the meeting house one group after another would appear emerging from the woods; some of them coming from ten miles distant and upwards; nor was it uncommon for persons to unite in worship under that roof whose dwellings were thirty miles apart.^[59]

Between 1758 and 1774, when the second major renovation of the Shortwood church fabric took place, the conversion rate averaged 2.1 percent per annum and annual membership levels rose at a rate of 6.5 percent per annum because of the relative immobility of the local population at this time. By February 1775, Francis had added 193 members to the church roll, and the general congrega-

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tion in that year stood between 500 and 600 communicants, according to one contemporary estimate.^[60] In 1760, 1774, and again in 1787, the meetinghouse required enlargement in order to accommodate the growing number of members and hearers.^[61]

The composition of Francis's audience also began to change. Under his ministry the church drew its leaders primarily from among the middle class, while "the general congregation consist[ed] of clothworking people."^[62] Francis often spoke of "my poor affectionate people at Horsley," a phrase he meant literally. Referring once to their ability to give him a higher salary, he observed; "I have discountenanced them from doing this hitherto; they can make but a dull sound in the harping upon this string while their own circumstances are so extremely indigent."^[63]

Thomas Flint, who succeeded Francis as minister, gave an equally apt description of the congregation, linking its social status to its spiritual condition. In a diary entry, circa 1800, he commented: "Many residing at a considerable distance—poor and afflicted—and requiring a degree of watchful superintendance of which none can judge who are not acquainted with the nature of manufacturing districts."^[64] The accent Flint placed on the words "afflicted" and "watchful superintendance" illustrates the significant shift toward moderate Calvinism that had occurred at Shortwood since 1758. If the doctrine of universal redemption made the salvation of the "afflicted" possible, it also established the groundwork of their spiritual enthusiasm.^[65]

Thomas Flint's tenure, however, had lasted only four years (1799-1803). Having developed a scruple against believers' baptism, he moved to Uley, in the neighboring district, where he presided for eleven years over "a mixed society of Independents and Baptists, the former . . . considerably preponderating both in numbers and influence."^[66] His shift to Congregationalism seems to have accompanied a reversion to High Calvinism. If moderate Calvinism had grown evangelical and found many of its adherents among the poor of the manufacturing districts, High Calvinism in the early nineteenth century, because of its exclusive nature, became associated with wealthier Dissenting congregations. Following his tenure at Uley, Flint settled at Weymouth, where he "preached to a select class of people,"^[67] and his son, Benjamin F. Flint, whom he had strongly influenced, became a prominent

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deacon at a Baptist church in Margate that was "tinctured with High Calvinism."^[68] Flint's failure as an enthusiast clearly accounted for his limited tenure at Shortwood. William Winterbotham (1804-1829) and Thomas Fox Newman (1830-1864), by contrast, maintained the evangelical traditions of Benjamin Francis. Like him, they provided stable, long-term ministries and figured prominently in local society. Winterbotham served a prison term in the 1790s for preaching a politically radical sermon and was widely praised as a "great man."^[69] "Both in politics and religion," Shortwood's chronicler concluded, T. F. Newman "was a man of mark in this neighborhood, and was well known throughout the country as a powerful and attractive preacher."^[70] Consequently, Shortwood drew ever larger numbers of adherents. In 1758 its membership stood at sixty-six, but by the time of the erection of a new chapel in 1839, had risen to over 500 with a congregation of 1,000.^[71] The year 1758 had, indeed, marked the beginning of Shortwood's transition from sect to denomination.

The Revival and the Church of England

The Church of England could not remain indifferent to such developments. On practical grounds it became necessary to meet the challenge of Dissent; on spiritual grounds, too, enthusiasm was finding a place among its communicants and within its ministry. At the Restoration the Establishment met the challenge of Dissent by repression, although at Nailsworth, as we have seen, they did not apply it with great rigor. By the late seventeenth century, this challenge was being met by tolerance and collaboration, but on terms set by the Establishment. By the late eighteenth century tolerance and collaboration had been restored, following the disruption created by the early Revival, but now on terms set by Dissenters.

Sensing the need to partake of the Revival, the Anglican laity raised a subscription in 1794 for the building of a chapel at Nails-worth, which would offer the Dissenting congregations friendly but real competition. The inhabitants of Nailsworth were "chiefly . . . people employed in different branches of cloth manufacture": most of them had large families and were "consequently rendered so poor that it is entirely out of their power (of themselves) to

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raise a sum sufficient for the erecting of a small chapel."^[72] Population increase and accompanying industrialization, combined with an intensification of religious enthusiasm, caused reflective Anglicans to consider the best means of directing popular sentiment into socially acceptable forms.

In a quiescent period, such as the early eighteenth century, a Dissenting chapel that eschewed enthusiasm could be trusted to serve the religious needs of an isolated community, thereby complementing the work of the parish churches. In the period of the Revival, the chapels could not be fully trusted, despite the pretensions to respectability of their leaders. The latent tendency toward tumult always seemed present, and it was therefore preferable that an Anglican "enthusiast" relate directly to popular sentiment in order to provide better guidance.

David Ricardo, the younger, and lord of the manor of Min-chinhampton, writing to Revd. P. Bliss in support of a candidacy for a curacy, summed up this attitude:

You are but too well aware what progress Dissent has made in this neighbourhood, and it is of great importance that we who do love our Church should make great efforts at this moment when so many attempts are being made to overwhelm it.^[73]

For this reason, Ricardo supported the candidacy of Revd. F. Rupel, whom he described as "a most excellent clergyman, a most powerful preacher and a true religious man."^[74] The minister's credentials as an enthusiast were especially important. Ricardo described how, when Rupel first took up the duties of a living elsewhere: "all the Dissenting houses were thronged and the parish church, a very large one, was generally attended by about twenty or thirty persons. I was there a year afterwards, the church was then quite full and I understood the Dissenting ministers were obliged to give it up as they could not provide themselves a maintenance."^[75] These remarks demonstrated a concern for the Church that issued locally and nationally in a concerted church-building program as the Establishment sought to engage Dissenters.^[76] Bishop Bethell, in his charge to the clergy of the Diocese of Gloucester in 1825, voiced the widely held concern of the Establishment that "in many parts of the diocese the attendance on the public worship of the Church is by no means proportionate to the population, even where there appears to be no want of suf-

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ficient accommodation."^[77] Bishop Monk repeated this same concern in 1832. He pointed to the failure of pastoral care resulting from the inadequacy of clerical incomes that had made non-residency and the plural holdings of benefices an unfortunate necessity.^[78] He proposed to increase clerical income in order to discourage pluralism and nonresidency, as well as to expand existing accommodations.

In 1831 and 1835 the Avening minister, as registrar of Oxford University, was nonresident.^[79] In 1838 he was recorded as resident, but in 1839 and the years thereafter he had obtained a license for nonresidency.^[80] In 1847 he was again recorded as resident, but in 1850 and for several years following had once again obtained a nonresidency permit. The incumbent of Horsely was technically nonresident, although he actually lived at Nails-worth.^[81] Minchinhampton was more fortunate in having secured the services of a resident incumbent throughout the entire hundred-year period covered by the diocesan surveys.^[82]

Nevertheless, Minchinhampton found it necessary to undertake the expansion of the church fabric in order to accommodate a larger number of poor. This meant providing a greater number of free sittings as opposed to rented pews. Minchinhampton had undergone a considerable reconstruction in 1841 partly for this purpose, yet the reform had the apparent effect of consolidating ownership of the pews in the hands of the gentry as the number of free sittings expanded. Indeed, individual seats held by many who signed their names with a mark were "engrossed" by such families as the Playnes, Sheppards, and Ricardos,^[83] and the reform of 1841 represented the culmination of this process.

Yet Minchinhampton was a large parish, and some of its outlying districts could be well served by the building of new churches. The Nailsworth Episcopal Chapel had been established for this reason in 1794, although by the 1830s it had failed to achieve this objective. In 1836 Amberly Church was built just north of Nailsworth. Erected and endowed by David Ricardo, the younger, the lord of the manor, the church was "a very elegant structure in the gothic style."^[84] Its consecration was a major event in the neighborhood and testified to the vigor of the Establishment despite the progress of Dissent. The Gloucester Journal reported that the "impressive ceremonial [had] excited great interest," for "there was a

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very numerous assemblage of the manufacturing and labouring population" present. David Ricardo received the Lord Bishop and upward of fifty clergy of the diocese for the consecration services, during which time the church was filled to its capacity of 1,200 persons, and nearly 2,000 were reported to have been outside. The church seated 700 exclusive of the galleries,^[85] which meant that, in addition to providing a considerable number of sittings for the poor, there was ample standing room.

The parish church of Horsley was similarly in need of reconstruction, and in 1837 an "appeal for the rebuilding and enlarging" of its fabric was issued.^[86] The parish contained nearly 4,000 inhabitants, yet "the church seats only about 500 adults, and affords no free sittings." The children of the Sunday school, who numbered upward of 200, "are necessarily placed where they see and hear very imperfectly, and those of another school are unable to attend for want of room."^[87] Indeed, there was "constant demand for sittings, and many who wished to frequent their own parish church cannot possibly be accommodated." The problem, however, was that the church fabric was extremely old and had to be replaced in its entirety, except for the tower. The cost of rebuilding on a scale to accommodate 1,000 persons, with 500 of them as free sittings, was estimated at £2,500. This was ostensibly beyond the capacity of the inhabitants since the population consisted "chiefly of day-laborers and persons employed in the woollen trade and is proverbially poor."^[88] The appeal succeeded, and the foundation stone was laid in May 1838. The new church could accommodate upward of 2,000 persons with more than 500 free sittings.^[89]

The movement to refurbish parish churches spread throughout the Stroud region. The parish of Stroud, only four miles from Nailsworth, had experienced the same crisis of accommodation as had Horsley and Minchinhampton. In 1833 the incumbent, Revd. Powell, anxiously expressed the desire to "carry into effect the wish of many of the inhabitants, respecting building of a new parish church for the accommodation of many who live at a distance of two or three miles from the present parish church."^[90] The Gloucester Journal supported this initiative editorially, "notwithstanding the very respectable dissenting places of worship in the neighborhood."^[91] As a result of the movement to refurbish parish

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churches, the Establishment achieved parity with Dissenters. In the Stroud region, this meant that, on the more fundamental level of popular religious practice, the two reaffirmed a tradition of social and political collaboration between them. The initiatives of men such as David Ricardo, the younger, underscored an important phenomenon: the eclecticism of popular religious feeling that in no way detracted from its intensity. The efforts of the Establishment enabled ordinary men and women to maintain the custom of attending both Church and Chapel. Indeed, ecumenicism, rather than sectarian rivalry, was the fruit of enthusiasm.^[92]

Nor was this eclecticism merely a local or regional aberration. The controversy surrounding the Dissenters's Marriage Bill of 1835, which Sir Robert Peel conceived of as a liberal measure, provides ample evidence for this assertion. The bill compromised the demands of Dissenters, who wished to marry in their own places of worship, with the interests of a conservative Anglican hierarchy, which sought to maintain the Church's legal monopoly in such matters. One friendly critic observed that the requirement of formally declaring one's own nonmembership in the Church of England, as a condition for taking advantage of the bill's provisions, strengthened the propensity to Dissent when the natural tendency was often more ambiguous. The individual "fluctuates in his attendance at religious worship between the meeting house and the parish church."^[93] By requiring such a declaration, the authorities were forcing on him a choice that he normally would not have considered making, "especially where the Dissenting place of worship . . . differs more in discipline than doctrine."^[94]

From this standpoint, the bill was defective in one other respect. It provided only for the contingency where "both parties are to be Dissenters. . . . The rights of conscience," the critic held, "are as sacred in one person as in a thousand; those of a woman as sacred as those of a man."^[95] These remarks suggest that a significant degree of pluralism of religious affiliation existed at the time of marriage and that the phenomenon sprang from the consciences of men and women. As such, the bill proved incompatible with a profound religious sensibility; more importantly, however, criticism of it showed how much ecumenicism had contributed to the secularity of Victorian society.

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Epilogue

If the Church of England had succeeded in establishing parity with Dissent throughout the Stroud region, it still failed to make significant progress at Nailsworth itself. Indeed, the desire to refurbish the parish churches of Minchinhampton and Horsley and to build new churches in the surrounding region was motivated partly by the realization that the Nailsworth Episcopal Chapel had not attracted a following comparable to that of the more important Dissenters. The chapel had been left unconsecrated and therefore with a diminished status.^[96] In 1851 the Nailsworth Episcopal Chapel attracted 369 worshipers on census Sunday, or 11 percent of the local population.^[97] The Forest Green Congregationalists had divided into two separate congregations, but their combined attendance stood at a respectable 939, or 27 percent of the local population. The Society of Friends was virtually extinct, following a protracted period of membership decline. Only the Shortwood Baptist Church experienced a continuous, linear growth until 1851. In that year its recorded attendance stood at 1,235 on census Sunday, or 36.5 percent of Nailsworth's population.^[98] This capacity made it "one of the most flourishing churches of [the Baptist] denomination in the Kingdom."^[99] Yet Shortwood's prosperity at midcentury masked an underlying change, represented by a trend toward denominationalism, that in the long term spelled disaster for it, as much as for the other evangelical churches of the Vale.^[100]

The growth of Nonconformity before 1851, while stimulated principally by the Evangelical Revival, had owed much to the latitudinarianism of the Establishment. Not only had the Church of England demonstrated willingness to compete peacefully with Dissenters for a religious following; the structure of local politics itself revealed a lay Anglican commitment to the widest tolerance. Liberal paternalism affected the operations of manorial and parochial governments by promoting individualism and thereby laid the foundation of political consensus, which survived the turbulence of the 1830s.

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Chapter Four
Manors, Parishes, and Dissent:
The Structure of Politics

The survival of customary practices partially constrained the popular individualism fostered by the landholding patterns of Nailsworth's hinterland. Although customary obligations to pay heriots, entry fines, and suits-of-court had waned, they had not disappeared entirely, while Courts Baron and Leet, however much attenuated, continued to enforce them. Between 1780 and 1840 these courts either ceased to function or came to share their authority with the parish, the agency of local government that emerged from the sixteenth century. Although their competence had diminished, by operating as late as they did, Courts Baron and Leet perpetuated the legitimacy of traditional lordship. This legitimacy easily transferred itself to leading nonmanorial landholders, as they, too, came to exercise civic authority through the parish and the institution of Justice of the Peace.

How did the persistence of manor courts and the transference of their governing powers affect popular attitudes toward established authority? Chapter z has shown that changing patterns of landholding, despite the class polarization they reveal, suggest an underlying structural compatibility between Nonconformity and the Establishment. Patterns of Nonconformist settlement and growth, depicted in chapter 3, have reinforced this contention by illustrating a cultural compatibility as well. The present chapter carries forward consideration of this same theme by examining

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how the manor and parish mediated social relations throughout Nailsworth's hinterland.

The chapter considers the scope of manorial jurisdiction, as this descended from the medieval period, and discusses how far the operations of the manor court continued to foster deference among its suitors, as well as the extent to which Dissenters came within its purview. Attention is focused next on the parish as a unit of local government, with special consideration of how it supplanted the manor as a center of communal life while perpetuating the elite's exercise of a customary paternalism. A discussion of governmental structure would be incomplete, however, without some consideration of politics; the chapter thus documents the Whiggish political sympathies of the elite and sets forth the structure of electoral politics. Analysis of elections reveals once again the persistence of a deference community yet also illustrates how far the regionalization of Stroudwater society gave scope to more individualized, interest-group politics.

Manorial Jurisdiction

The jurisdiction of the manor court extended over the lands and tenements of which the manor itself was constituted. These consisted of demesne lands that the lord of the manor occupied, as well as "freeholds, farmes and customarie or coppihold tenements."^[1] As previously demonstrated, customary tenements possessed "divers services besides their rents properly belonging thereunto,"^[2] and the manor court existed in large measure in order to enforce their performance.

The manor had been the center of medieval village life, but its boundaries ranged widely, sometimes including only one village or embracing several of them; several manors could have existed even within one vill (township).^[3] The medieval manor of Minchinhampton-Avening included the townships of what later became the parishes of Minchinhampton and Avening. The bankruptcy of Edward Sheppherd, the lord of the manor, had precipitated the estate's division in the early nineteenth century;^[4] in his place, David Ricardo, the elder, assumed the rights of lordship at Minchinhampton, while William Playne did the same at Avening.^[5]

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This division meant that the newly constituted manors would be congruent with their respective parishes. Horsley manor seems always to have been congruent with its parish, however, although minor boundary shifts clearly occurred over the course of time.^[6]

During the Middle Ages especially the lord of the manor assumed, through his Courts Baron and Leet, the constitutional authority of the King's agent. His status depended, more precisely, on the type of court over which he presided. Sometimes manors possessed only customary courts, the business of which remained confined to the enforcement of obligations due the lord. These courts included Courts of Recognition and Survey; the first took place on the accession of a new lord to a manor, while the second protected the lord's interests against fraud by his tenants. Simple customary courts were held more routinely for the purpose of collecting rents and fines. Since these courts were preoccupied solely with the private business of the lord, the law recognized the "manor" only as a Seignory. The Seignory became a manor when in addition the lord obtained the right to preside over a Court Baron.^[7]

The Court Baron exercised jurisdiction over minor civil infractions and established rules for communal agricultural practice. It also possessed the privilege of View of Frankpledge, which required the freeholders of the manor to attend its proceedings; customary tenants were required to pay suit by virtue of their tenures. View of Frankpledge often accompanied the right of the manor to hold a Court Leet, which exercised jurisdiction over criminal offenses such as assault or poaching. Not all manors held the privilege of a Court Leet, however, and criminal cases falling within their jursidictions were referred instead to the Hundred Court, which embraced a larger territorial unit.^[8] The manors of Minchinhampton-Avening and Horsley were located in Longtree Hundred, and each retained the privilege of a Court Leet, while Horsley served additionally as the Hundred Court.^[9] In practice, the proceedings of the customary courts followed those of the Courts Baron and Leet, but in the period under study, the lord conducted the proceedings of all three simultaneously.

Administratively, the manor divided into tithings, and the court elected their "tithingmen" or constables. Minchinhampton-Avening consisted of Minchinhampton, Rodborough, Avening,

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Aston, and Pimbury tithings,^[10] and Horsley of Barton End, Dowend, Nupend, Tichmorend, and Nailsworth tithings.^[11] Avening tithing embraced lower Nailsworth and its hamlets such as Forest Green and Winsoredge, while Nailsworth tithing in Horsley included upper Nailsworth with the hamlets of Shortwood and Newmarket.^[12]

Tithingmen acted as mediators between villagers and the lord, enforcing court orders in their respective jurisdictions and reporting any infractions of customary rules. They drew up lists of offenders and presented them at court and on the day of a Court Baron could be seen leading the residents of their tithings in procession to the courtroom.^[13] The Court Baron, in other words, through the agency of the tithingmen, mobilized villagers in periodic demonstrations of obedience to authority, from which more remote settlements such as Nailsworth were not exempted. Nailsworth may have been somewhat isolated in the medieval and early modern periods^[14] but, as a tithing, was integrated into the administrative structures of both manors and must therefore have maintained contact with their communal activities. Dissenting communites would eventually form at Nailsworth because of its relative isolation, but even in the earliest period of their histories, they enjoyed amicable contact with established authority.^[15]

The mobilization of the inhabitants, on the occasion of a Court Baron, contained a democratic aspect. The court consisted not only of the lord presiding as judge but also of suitors themselves serving as elected jurors. Jurors were selected from among freeholders, regardless of rank, and "the better class of customary tenants."^[16] Juries may have originated in the will of the lord, but they were charged nonetheless with delivering verdicts on the most important issues touching the interests of the entire community, while the lord, too, remained legally subject to their jurisdiction.^[17]

Courts Baron and Leet continued to operate at Horsley and Minchinhampton well into the nineteenth century. At Horsley, lists of "persons giving suits and service [to] the manor" survive for the period 1794-1814. These surveys, compiled annually by the steward of the manor, group suitors by tithing and record next to each name any fines paid for nonattendance. By linking the manorial survey for 1811 to the Horsley parish census listing of that year, we can determine the occupations of suitors. By establishing

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a further linkage with the names contained in the church roll of the Shortwood Baptist Church, we can also measure the extent to which committed Dissenters participated in the communal affairs of the manor.^[18]

Several questions require consideration. Did class differences between suitors have a significant bearing on their attendance at court? Did class differences and attendance at court vary significantly between Baptists and non-Baptists? The answers to these questions reveal the structure of deference with respect to both class and religion. If Dissenters owed suit-of-court, did they attend its proceedings? If they did not attend, did they pay a fine, or did they refuse to make any payment? Answers to these questions shed light on Dissenters' attitudes toward the Establishment at the moment when the Evangelical Revival began to intensify.

It is worth noting first that overall attendance at court remained low, yet significant enough, as figure 5 reveals. In most cases the court levied a fine of 1d. on tenants whom it failed to excuse, although sometimes it fined them 4d. to 6d. A mean of 85 percent of all suitors for the period failed to attend, but either were excused or complied by paying the fine. Virtually all unexcused absentees chose to pay the fine, however, while only a few, who appear sporadically in the records, refused all payment. In 1803 the court listed twenty-one names, or 4.6 percent of the suitors in that year who specifically refused to comply, while 412, or 91.8 percent, chose to do so. The only other protest against payment of the fine came in 1808: John Hyde of Tichmorend "wont pay [sic ]."^[19]

An absentee rate of 85 percent meant that the authority of the manor court had eroded, partly because it had gradually come to share its governing powers with the parish vestry and the Crown's Justices of the Peace, and partly because of a developing spirit of independence among its tenantry. Although the manor continued to exercise a certain amount of public authority, it must have been viewed increasingly as an agent of private aggrandizement. Still, the overwhelming majority of unexcused nonattendants tacitly acknowledged the lord's authority by consistently electing to pay fines. For laborers, clothworkers, and journeyman weavers, 1d was not necessarily a nominal sum, and their willingness to accede must be understood as an act of obeisance.

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Fig. 5.
Series of suitors and nonattenders at the Court Baron, Horsley Manor, 
1794-1814.
Key: Star = All Suitors
Square = Absentees

The following reconstruction of attendance patterns at court is based on a sample of suitors in 1811 whose names could be linked to those appearing in the parochial census for that same year. For the purposes of analysis, their occupations have been grouped into the following categories: (1) gentlemen, yeomen, and clothiers representing the middle and upper classes; (2) retailers and artisans, constituting the lower middle class; and (3) weavers (many undoubtedly journeymen), spinners, shearmen, clothworkers, and laborers, making up the working class. Patterns of attendance by

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class appear in table 18, and those by religious affiliation appear in tables 19 and 20.

After excluding the "excused" from analysis in table 18, the chi-square (x² ) statistic just barely fails the test of significance.^[20] The social class of suitors did not determine attendance patterns, since each class registered a high absentee rate proportional to its

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size in the population. Since refusal to attend at court represented alienation from authority, these results suggest that all classes were alienated to the same degree. Yet most unexcused suitors, as we have seen, paid the fine in lieu of attendance, a display of deference that also became manifest despite religious differences (see table 19).

Baptists may be distinguished from others owing suit-of-court by linking the sample of suitors, derived from the 1811 parish census, to the membership roll of the Shortwood Baptist Church. Of the 215 suitors drawn from the original linkage, forty-one, or 19.1 percent, were members at Shortwood. This was an especially high percentage, since formal church membership among Baptists involved greater commitment than that of mere "hearers." Class differences between Baptists and non-Baptists, however, failed to materialize^[21] (see table 20).

Class differences did not, therefore, alter the near universal willingness to submit to the lord of the manor that the high rate of fine payment suggests. However, the high absentee rate, which resulted in the levying of fines, suggests a degree of alienation from the authority of the manor. This ambivalence resulted from a contradiction, already apparent in the structure of land tenure, between the growth of individualism and the persistence of ties of dependence. The growth of individualism was reflected especially in the progress of piecemeal enclosures and the decline of custom-

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ary manorial practices, while the persistence of dependence became manifest in the slow waning of lordship and the transfer of its authority to parishes and Justices of the Peace. A significant percentage of Baptists, moreover, could be counted among the suitors of the manor court; they displayed the same combination of individualism and deference toward authority as did other suitors, whether Anglican or Dissenter. Their appearance in the court roll indicates, too, that their communities were not as isolated from manorial jurisdiction as commonly supposed; the growth of Dissent, as demonstrated equally in earlier chapters, may be seen to have coexisted with customary structures of authority.

The routine business of the manor court further substantiates this conclusion. Of the thirty-one persons presented before the court in 1802, ten, or 32.3 percent, were members at Short-wood.^[22] The presentments made before the court survive for a limited period (1802, 1807) but are indicative of the nature of its business. Land transactions were no longer recorded, but a great deal of activity, associated with the maintenance of communal agricultural practice, is clearly evident. Such maintenance mainly involved protection of the wasteland from encroachments by squatters, who erected cottages and created small enclosures.^[23] Encroachers, whose occupations are listed in table 21, were artisans, woolworkers, laborers, and lower-middle-class retailers or small clothiers. Their encroachments, however, were prosecuted with doubtful seriousness. Only small fines were levied, and the same offenders often reappeared in subsequent proceedings. In a sense, the lord accepted fines as de facto rent charges for what really amounted to trespassing. One can detect in this practice the tolerance associated with paternalism.

Still, in order to maintain his rights as a landowner, the lord could establish conformity to the letter of the law more insistently. At the Court Baron and Court of Survey for 1802 several tenants with possibly defective tenures were required to make appearances. Stephen Churches, for example, was required to appear, bearing "the original lease . . . granted . . . to Josiah Hutchings of the Parish of Horsley, broadweaver, of the messuage, garden and orchard now occupied by you."^[24] The lease ran for ninety-nine years determinable on the lives of the original tenant, his wife, and

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his son. Stephen Churches was "to prove whether either and which of these lives are now living and if these lives be dead to shew by what title you now hold and occupy the said premises." The notices sent by the steward in 1802 to eight others in the same situation assumed this standard format. Evidently, the original tenants had sublet the properties without obtaining permission from the lord, who necessarily profited from such transactions.

If the Court Baron of 1802 concerned itself principally with prosecuting encroachers, the Court of Survey accompanying it sought to preserve the rights of lordship, of which the proper maintenance of tenancies was one aspect. In his charge to the jury, reproduced as appendix C, the steward of the manor outlined its responsibilities with respect to the lord's rights. Besides inquiring into the state of leaseholds, or making lists of tenants who owed suit-of-court, the jury was "to enquire if advantages have happened to the lord by Escheats or Forfeitures."^[25] Escheat was distinctively feudal in origin; it involved "the possibility of the land falling back into the hands of the lord, as representing the original

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donor, on a failure of the tenant's heirs."^[26] As Frederick Pollock remarked, however, this remained a considerable anachronism in an age when "alienation by will is allowed without limit."^[27] Escheat applied at Horsley in 1802 in cases where a freeholder committed a felony and where "any Bastard having purchased Land within this Manor be dead without lawful Issue of his Body."^[28] Otherwise, the rights of inheritance remained sacrosanct. The survival of Escheat, even in an attenuated form, illustrates what the structure of land tenure and the attendance patterns at court have affirmed: the growth of individualism in the form of tenant property rights coexisted for a time with customary structures of authority.

Formally, Horsley's manor court retained the right to inquire into "any Thing unjustly done or omitted between lord and tenant or between Tenant and Tenant."^[29] Yet the absence of presentments concerned with such matters, other than those that touched the lord's interests directly, hints at the waning of the manor court's competence with the passage of time. It was to diminish further. The records of its proceedings had, indeed, survived into the late nineteenth century, but after 1815 presentments for offenses no longer appear in them. Only tithingmen were presented for election to their offices but in a very perfunctory and formal style.

The manor of Minchinhampton remained active longer because of the survival of Minchinhampton Common as a common grazing area and the need to regulate it. Preservation of the Common was a community concern, at least until the 1830s,^[30] to which the Court Baron gave institutional expression. A Court Baron, for example, was held at the Crown Inn on August 1, 1820 "for the purpose of adopting speedy and effectual measures to prevent the stealing of dung from off Hampton Common."^[31] At the same time, the jury deputed a number of freeholders from each tithing "to inspect the water courses, pools and wells, belonging to the aforesaid Common."^[32] As late as the 1820s, the Manor of Minchinhampton exercised its traditional function by mobilizing the inhabitants in communal action, which reinscribed deferential attitudes. Nevertheless, the manor continued to function only on this restricted basis, since it had come to share its communal responsibilities with parochial government. The parish provided

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an alternative sphere of community, which nevertheless complemented the manor.

Parochial Administration

Parochial institutions evolved over a considerable period. The parish vestry had been established as early as the fourteenth century for the management of ecclesiastical affairs but was a later creation than many parochial offices.^[33] Sidney and Beatrice Webb argued that the parish, as a unit of local obligation imposed by the central authorities, symbolized the triumph of national government over regional diversity.^[34] As they also pointed out, however, this triumph remained incomplete, since local society itself acted as its instrument. Parochial officials, elected at vestry meetings, were rate-paying freeholders required by law to assume the burdens of office. They were strictly subordinate, however, to the Crown's Justices of the Peace, who met at Quarter Sessions to dispense justice Countywide. The Justices belonged to the locally resident gentry and exercised their legal authority on an individual basis as well as within their respective communities.^[35]

The gradual accretion of secular power in the parish vestry and the emergence of Justices of the Peace restricted the traditional prerogatives of manor courts while acting as complementary structures of authority. Minchinhampton's vestry minutes for 1805, for instance, noted that the manor court had appointed a perambulator to inspect Minchinhampton Common. The vestry expressed its approval and then proceeded to assign the new appointee his first task. Similarly, although the tithingman was appointed by the manor, he was supervised by the churchwarden in the latter's capacity as a parochial official.^[36] The vestry meeting brought together the rate-paying inhabitants of the parish to consent to the levying of poor rates and taxes for the repair of roads or the maintenance of the church fabric. It also elected the churchwardens, tithingmen (when not appointed by a Court Baron), the surveyor of highways, and the overseers of the poor, who were responsible for daily administration. Vestry minutes and accounts also recorded a wide variety of expenditures, which show clearly how parochial government supplanted the manor in structuring the reciprocal attitudes of paternalism and deference.

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Such attitudes were revealed especially in the treatment of the poor.^[37] Before the Whig reform of 1834 created new "poor law unions," each parish maintained its own workhouse and dispensed a considerable proportion of monies appropriated for the poor on outdoor relief. At Minchinhampton, circa 1800, 250 persons received relief, of whom seventy, or 28.0 percent, resided in the workhouse.^[38] The inmates included the infirm, children of large families, or the illegitimate whose parents were unable or unwilling to provide for them, the aged and dependent women.^[39] The variety of outdoor relief offered at Minchinhampton can be only conjectured since its vestry minutes failed to offer a detailed accounting. Monies were certainly spent for the apprenticeship of poor children, on which a £3 limit was placed in June 1818, "excepting under peculiar circumstances."^[40] Horsley's vestry minutes give a clearer picture for the period in which they are available, 1802 to 1822. Table 22 gives the frequency distribution by type of expenditure, and figure 6 illustrates the annual fluctuations for the three most important items.^[41]

The periodic division in table 22 follows the division of the minute books themselves. There is no difference in the amount of yarn distributed and hardly any in the number of apprenticeships paid for. A great disparity appears between the two periods, however, with respect to the other four items, which can be explained by the French wars.^[42] Expenditure on clothing was high from 1803 and declined sharply from 1813; rents and cash grants

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Fig. 6.
Series of Items Granted through Outdoor Relief, Horsley Parish, 1802-1822.
Key: Solid Line = Clothes
Small Broken Line = Rent
Large Broken Line = Cash

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peaked between 1805 and 1810, although both declined sharply thereafter. Expenditures on all three items were virtually nonexistent between 1814 and 1816 but made a gradual recovery thereafter, probably because of the postwar stagnation in the cloth trade. Sometimes cash grants were made to enable a family or an individual to migrate, often in compliance with the settlement laws. Generally, however, such grants were not specified for any item and must be assumed to have been supplements to wages.

Such expenditures were clearly paternalistic. From 1800, however, gentry paternalism was directed increasingly toward promoting the "independence" of the laboring classes, ostensibly for their social betterment. This interest in working-class independence combined with a self-serving but by no means hypocritical concern regarding the great weight of taxation and the need to maintain social order. A plan for the better regulation of the poor, adopted by the Minchinhampton vestry in 1800, aimed "to lighten the heavy burden of the parochial taxes but also [to] contribute to the health and comfort of those [for] whose benefit the tax is imposed."^[43] Implementation of such a goal required the creation of a special board of directors, consisting of twenty-five gentlemen, who would make regular visits to the workhouse as well as to recipients of outdoor relief and in this manner supervise the work of the overseers of the poor.

The board also considered the feasibility of reducing the number of families receiving outdoor relief by taking some of their children into the workhouse and granting a weekly stipend to the friends or relations of workhouse inmates "for maintaining them in preference to keeping them in the House."^[44] It would cost less to maintain a child in the workhouse than to support an entire family out of doors and to lodge an adult pauper with a household than to keep him at public expense, where the administrative costs of maintenance would have to be included.

Such economies, it was believed, would effect the moral and material betterment of the poor. The head of a household who sent his child to the workhouse could become self-reliant, an issue of great moment to contemporaries;^[45] and the child, removed from a condition of squalor, would benefit from his new environment, particularly if the regime of the workhouse were reformed.^[46] Thus, economy in local government, normally associated with

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Whig reformism, was compatible in the minds of contemporaries with the humaneness of traditional paternalism. Indeed, the proposal to create a gentleman-board of directors aimed at institutionalizing this tradition, however much it foreshadowed a later and much stricter version in the boards of guardians created by the New Poor Law.

Many were convinced, furthermore, that paternalism, by promoting independence of character, would ensure a deferential working class and thereby the stability of the social order; the example of George Hodges, a Horsley laborer, is an especially apt case.^[47] In 1811 Hodges lost all of his possessions in a fire. They were valued at the considerable sum of £100 and included "his cottage, outhouse, pig-stye, furniture, husbandry utensils, clothes and the clothes of his wife and children." He and his family had been industrious, which made their loss especially tragic. As a reward for thriftiness, the local gentry raised a subscription to assist them.

Such voluntarist display was not unusual; the meeting of the parish vestry served often as a community forum for organizing special relief efforts on behalf of the "deserving poor." At Minchinhampton in December 1816, the vestry minutes mention a meeting organized by the parish's "principal inhabitants," the purpose of which was "to take into consideration and adopt measures as may be deemed necessary for the temporary relief of the worthy poor . . . now out of employ by reason of the stagnation of trade."^[48] Those in authority clearly understood that economic conditions and not "immorality" could easily create unemployment. The resolution adopted by the meeting called for "a subscription [to] be immediately entered into for the purpose of employing the manufacturing and laboring poor . . . who through want of employment stand in need of some temporary and immediate relief."

It is especially noteworthy that the initiators of the scheme should have funded this activity through voluntary subscription rather than from the rates. The employment of labor, on a scale required to offset the effect of a trade depression, was, in principle, too great for any government to undertake. Besides, the local gentry were eager to avoid tax increases, which would have fallen on small holders as well. In true paternalist style, they willingly assumed the entire burden themselves and succeeded in raising

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over £60. They were concerned, moreover, to avoid the demoralizing impact of parochial relief. The men to be employed under their scheme were accustomed to receiving regular wages, even if sometimes supplemented by outdoor relief. To have thrown them entirely on the mercy of the parish could only have encouraged habits of dependence.

Thus, the rules governing employment under the scheme were drafted with a particular rigor. The rules were designed not only to ensure the performance of the work undertaken but also to sustain habits of work discipline. "Men who absent themselves from their [road repairing] work in part of any day in the ensuing week in case of wet weather," the subscribers resolved," [then] in such case it is ordered that their pay be reduced

and if the foremen . . . do not attend the whole of each day they are to be paid nothing."^[49] The scheme was conceived partly by the pragmatic need to prevent outbreaks of violence, which mass unemployment might induce. It remained, nonetheless, an act of paternalism, since no contradiction existed, in the subscribers' view, between pragmatic and moral goals. Paternalism aimed at preventing disorder, restraining taxation, and creating a self-reliant working class. Realization of the first two goals could lead to fulfillment of the third.

This synthesis of paternalism, deference, and individualism embodied a liberal outlook. It embraced an ideal of autonomy and mobility within a hierarchical setting, which served as an alternative to the conservative vision of an "organic society."^[50] Whigs, Peelite Tories, and the laboring classes of the region embraced it overwhelmingly. Such broad acceptance, moreover, resulted from cooperative relations between Dissenters and the Establishment and from the social character of lordship. Leading middle-class Dissenters mediated relations between their followers and the authorities, while leaders of the Establishment belonged either to older Whig families, which had maintained a cosmopolitan outlook, or to the more socially mobile elements of the middle class.

Dissent and the Composition of Lordship

Those who amassed fortunes in trade, especially the clothiers of the region, often established landed estates and even acquired the lordship of manors.^[51] The Sheppherd family acquired the manor

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of Minchinhampton-Avening in the seventeenth century after amassing a fortune in the cloth trade. When bankruptcy forced the sale and division of the manor in 1814, David Ricardo, political economist and banker, as we have seen, acquired the lordship of Minchinhampton, while William Playne, gentleman-clothier, acquired the lordship of Avening. The lordship of Horsley manor possessed greater continuity of occupation by one family, although its pedigree possessed no more of an authentically aristocratic origin. The manor of Horsley had descended to the Stephens family of Eastington in the reign of Elizabeth; in 1676 Richard Stephens built the mansion house at Chavenage that remained in the possession of his direct line until 1795. Richard Stephens had settled Chavenage Farm on his wife, Anne, one of the daughters of John Stone, a London haberdasher,^[52] and like the Sheppherds and Ricardos, the Stephens family maintained connections with substantial clothier familes. The tithes of Horsley parish, for instance, had been held in trust from 1686 as a result of the negotiated marriage settlement of Ralph Willet, the younger, and Elizabeth Phillips, the daughter of John Phillips of Minchinhampton, both of whom came from substantial clothier families. One trustee was Thomas Davies of Stroud parish, gentleman, whose only daughter had married John Stephens of Chavenage, and on the basis of this connection Henry Stephens, the lord of the manor in the late eighteenth century, claimed possession of Horsley's tithes.^[53]

The Ducies of Tortworth Court, furthermore, were the largest nonresident landlords at Nailsworth, with a 272-acre estate in Horsley.^[54] The Ducies were the most prominent Whig family in Gloucestershire and were peers of the realm since the Conquest. Tortworth was seven miles from Nailsworth, and at this distance it was unlikely that Lord Ducie would have sustained any regular relations with the community. His influence in the Stroud region, however, was considerable. In 1820 he led the Countywide protest on behalf of Queen Caroline, whose cause had been taken up by the parliamentary Whigs.^[55] The Ducies were prominent during the agitation for parliamentary reform, and in 1832 Henry Moreton, the future Lord Ducie, stood as the Whig candidate for the East Gloucestershire seat in the reformed House of Commons.^[56] In 1846, as Lord Ducie, he led the agitation for repeal of the Corn Laws,^[57] which drew the support of Stroudwater clothiers. The

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Ducies's political activities epitomized the Whig social and political alliance, which enabled the landed aristocracy to retain its traditional leadership during an epoch of rapid change.^[58] By acting as spokesmen for the "popular classes," the Whigs appealed successfully to Anglicans and Dissenters alike.

In what manner did this alliance manifest itself locally? Although Dissenters could not legally hold parochial office, they participated routinely in parochial affairs and often established amicable relations with Anglican landlords. Joseph Browning, a Nailsworth maltster, revealed his Congregationalist credentials by bequeathing £6 to the Forest Green Church, yet was able to bequeath 20s. to Horsley's churchwardens and overseers of the poor.^[59] John Blackwell, a Baptist deacon and clothier, resided at Winsoredge near Nailsworth^[60] and leased 73 percent of his 182-acre Avening estate from Edward Sheppherd, the lord of the manor.^[61] Nor did religious differences prevent him from participating in parochial affairs. The vestry had overvalued his cloth mill at £52 but corrected the error willingly. All agreed that "Mr. Blackwell shall be charged only £45 as Mr. Tombs being present have declared that it is a mistake in the charge."^[62] Dissenters may have objected in principle to the payment of church rates and tithes, but members of the largest Nonconformist churches failed to articulate their grievances sufficiently until the 1830s, when agitation for reform became commonplace.^[63]

The Quakers remained the great exception. They had protested against church rates and tithes throughout the eighteenth century and, by the early nineteenth century, had been exempted informally from paying these taxes. Anthony Fewster, a leading Quaker, was exempted in 1838 from paying tithe charges of £3. 3s. 10d. on lands owned and occupied in Avening. Fewster also leased twenty-seven acres (including the parsonage) from Revd. Samuel Lloyd, the Anglican vicar of Horsley and as an additional mark of tolerance governing the neighborhood was elected in 1836 to represent Horsley on the Board of Guardians of Stroud's Poor Law Union.^[64]

The examples of Blackwell and Fewster were hardly isolated instances. In 1800 James Thomas, deacon of the Forest Green Congregationalist Church, had been one of those gentlemen to propose the new plan for regulating the Minchinhampton poor.

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He appeared again in 1816 as a subscriber to the scheme for setting Minchinhampton's unemployed to work; so did John Blackwell and John Heskins, who, like Blackwell, served as a Short-wood Baptist deacon.^[65] David Ricardo, political economist and lord of the manor, moreover, headed the list of subscribers. The joint appearance of these four men epitomized the Whig social and political alliance. Not only did Anglican and Dissenter share the same assumptions about paternalism, deference, and individualism; Dissenters, by appearing under the auspices of the vestry, demonstrated loyalty to a sphere of local community led by the Establishment.

The Whig social and political alliance became manifest most explicitly during the postwar years when agitation for reform became widespread. The Queen Caroline Affair (ca. 1820), although formally concerned with the King's efforts to dissolve his marriage, gave rise to popular protests that enabled the Whigs to emerge as a genuine political opposition.^[66] The affair reverberated as much in the provinces as in London. At a Countywide meeting held at Gloucester's shire hall, B. W. Guise, Baronet and M.P., excoriated the Government for proceeding against the Queen, denouncing them for the "ill-advised and impolitic measures . . . which had reduced the country to its present situation of difficulty and distress." David Ricardo congratulated Lords Ducie and Sherbourne for their "manly and independent conduct" in defending Caroline and called for a reform of Parliament to effect "a perfect harmony between the people and their representatives."^[67]

Ricardo's ideal of social harmony, as we have seen, already operated informally at the local level, but the Whig-dominated protest gave it further symbolic expression. At the close of the affair, a "demonstration of gladness" held at Stroud sealed the social and political solidarity, forged during the crisis, through the ritualized exploitation of popular emotion.^[68] "A fine Ox intended to regale the poor," the Gloucester Journal reported, "was led through the town, decorated with laurels and ribbands [sic ], bearing appropriate inscriptions; and a large green bag, the symbols of ministerial abasement, was suspended at [its] tail." As a result of pelting by the populace, "its outside soon became a striking emblem of the labours of the disgraceful Milan Commission." This public display clearly discharged much pent-up psychic

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energy. In addition to circuses, however, the demonstration's sponsors also offered "bread" to the poor: "Wednesday was occupied in preparing for the feast intended for the poor on the following day; and on Thursday the Ox and four sheep were distributed, with four hogsheads of strong beer, to the great satisfaction of the poor inhabitants, by whom the day will be long remembered." At a complementary feast held two days later in the George Inn, the gentry celebrated the triumph of their liberal union with such toasts as: "Prosperity to the town & vicinity of Stroud. . . . [To] Religion, Law and Loyalty, which have alike been violated in the persecution of our great Queen."

Liberal opinion soon took up Ricardo's linkage of the Queen Caroline Affair and parliamentary reform,^[69] although reform agitation nationwide did not begin in earnest until 1830. When it did, Stroud emerged as one of its principal centers.^[70] Following passage of the Great Reform Act, and subsequently the creation of the parliamentary borough of Stroud, elections were held to the new House of Commons. Analysis of this election reveals the formal structure of politics at Stroud; its character underscores more definitively the borough's Whiggish complexion and the persistence of a "deference community"^[71] in Nailsworth's hinterland.

The three candidates for Stroud's two parliamentary seats belonged to the same political party.^[72] W. H. Hyett stood above all factions and was unanimously selected M.P. He was a country gentleman without personal or family ties to commercial interests but had been an active parliamentary reformer.^[73] Poulet Scrope was an outsider from Castle Combe, Wiltshire, who came from a commercial family.^[74] His support was concentrated in the town of Stroud and its immediate neighborhood, and he enjoyed the backing of "the greater part of the clothing interests."^[75] David Ricardo, son of the now deceased political economist, was lord of the manor of Minchinhampton. He drew support mainly from his own neighborhood but enjoyed the backing of only "a few manufacturers."^[76] Scrope was the more cosmopolitan figure and clearly received wide support because of his connections with government and the City.^[77] Ricardo, despite the association of his father's great name with banking and the City, cultivated the life of a local squire and made this attribute the cutting edge of his campaign.^[78]

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Scrope and Ricardo fought bitterly and with the kind of theatrics reminiscent of the Queen Caroline Affair. Theater on the hustings, however, sometimes assumed an unsavory quality:

A stupid attempt to ridicule one of the candidates [Ricardo] by dressing up a fellow in the garb and with the beard of a Jew Peddler was treated with the contempt it deserved. But a country-gentleman who personated [sic ] a Wiltshire moon-raker [Scrope] met with very rough reception—his rake was broken in pieces and the moon was eclipsed in a cloud of missiles.^[79]

Evidently, the crowd was far more exercised by the innocuous attempt to ridicule Scrope than by the anti-Semitism of his supporters.

Ricardo emerged victorious in any case, but by a narrow margin due entirely to his local strength. His support at Minchinhampton, Avening, Horsley, and Woodchester outweighed overwhelmingly his failure to carry the town and environs of Stroud, as well as the several industrial parishes of Stroud's hinterland. The election returns,^[80] depicted in table 23, illustrate the persistence of parochialism and deference, traditionally accorded a lord of the manor, despite the growth of regionalism.

Given the extent of regional economic integration, the clothiers' candidate, although a "foreigner," should have stood the best chance of winning. Ricardo's victory was in this sense anachronistic, and perhaps for this reason his tenure as M.P. proved embarrassingly short; he resigned in 1833, allegedly for personal reasons, and was promptly replaced by his former rival, Poulet Scrope.^[81]

Nevertheless, the political differences between the two men were more matters of style than substance. Each combined a vigorous commitment to free-market principles with a utilitarian paternalist sensibility. Ricardo engaged himself in a wide range of local efforts to help the "deserving poor," from parochial sponsorship of emigration during trade depressions to the formation of the Nails-worth Loan Society, which helped the poor acquire property.^[82] Scrope also believed in "property doing its duty" but, unlike Ricardo, focused much of his attention on the development of a "paternal [national] Government."^[83]

As M.P. for Stroud, Scrope sponsored legislation on savings

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banks, government annuities and life insurance, and "friendly" societies, each designed to give the working classes economic security while promoting a spirit of independence among them.^[84] His savings bank bill required government to assume liability for deposits in order to safeguard from bank failures "these (almost sacred) savings of the poor and working classes." His annuity scheme facilitated the purchase of deferred annuities; these seemed "preferable for guarding against old age since [they are] not subject to the vagaries of sickness, accident or trade depression the way payment by instalment is." Scrope complained, too, that friendly societies had received little or no protection from the state, leaving many with defective accounts and open to fraud. He thought, nonetheless, that the fact of their existence "speaks loudly the general prevalence among these classes of the virtues of forethought, of the desire of self-support and of economy with a view to that end." Liberal paternalism aimed at promoting such habits, a fact to which Scrope indirectly attested in correspondence with Edwin Chadwick. "I think you will be quite right," Scrope wrote consolingly, "in claiming for yourself the merit that is due you in so much of all that is good in the P[oor] L[aw] Acts & administrative improvements of the last fourteen years."^[85]

Despite the growth of collectivist public policy, evident in Scrope's legislative initiatives, by the 1830s a critical shift had occurred within the Whig synthesis of paternalism, deference, and individualism. Whig-Radicals began to accord free-market principles greater legitimacy than previously. In 1816 Minchinhampton's paternalists had acted freely against depression induced unemployment and generally treated the poor more generously. By the 1830s, efforts at amelioration had assumed the less direct form of preventive adjustments to market conditions, while concern for the growth of autonomy among the working classes, already evident in 1816, had fully blossomed, a change in emphasis symbolizing the emergence of a liberal-industrial society throughout Stroudwater.

Summary and Conclusion

This chapter has offered an institutional analysis of a theme that has permeated all of part I: the essential compatibility between

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Nonconformity and the Establishment. It has argued that a spirit of cooperation, fostered by Chapel leaders and supported as a matter of principal by lay Anglican lords, rested on a Whiggish belief in tolerance and a social foundation of class collaboration, which the reciprocal habits of paternalism and deference reinforced.

Analysis of the operations of the surviving manor courts revealed how Nailsworth, despite its status as an outlying district, remained incorporated administratively within a wider community. This finding reaffirms conclusions regarding Nailsworth's relative autonomy, previously arrived at through studies of landholding and Nonconformist settlement.^[86] Ties of dependence, furthermore, were shown to have coexisted with a spirit of independence among members of the working class, affirming in this way earlier conclusions regarding the social consequences of tenurial arrangements. Ties of dependence partly assumed the form of surviving customary obligations owed the lord of the manor by his tenants; this chapter has focused on how successfully the lord enforced such obligations, especially the duty to pay suit-of-court.

Since refusal to fulfill this particular obligation represented alienation from customary authority, analysis of attendance patterns would indicate whether such alienation remained more pronounced among the working, middle, or upper classes, and whether religious differences among suitors affected their propensity to absent themselves. A chi-square statistic was employed to test for significant differences in both cases. If the chi-square value had been significant, we might have concluded that one or more of the classes suffered a greater degree of alienation, or that Dissenters were less prone to attend at court. However, the results revealed that no significant variation by social class or religion existed among unexcused absentees, suggesting that all classes, whether Anglican or Nonconformist, were alienated roughly to the same degree. Still, almost all unexcused suitors paid fines levied for absenteeism, behavior that acknowledged the lord's authority and thereby revealed an ambivalence between the mentalités of autonomy and deference.

Since local manorial courts had been in a state of decay, it was necessary to consider further the extent to which parochial institutions had assumed their governing powers. The parish had

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appropriated almost all powers of civil administration, except for the election of constables, whose appointments it continued to share with the Court Baron, and for the supervision of whatever communal agricultural practices remained. The institution of Justice of the Peace, furthermore, superseded the jurisdiction of the Court Leet in prosecuting legal infractions. Nonmanorial landowners operating within the parochial framework appropriated the paternalist tradition of customary lordship. This became manifest in the routine patterns of disbursement of poor-relief funds and in diverse schemes to relieve the poor and unemployed, particularly during periods of economic distress. Through these efforts the parish came to function in a truly corporatist way, as a sphere of local community that fully included Nonconformists.

Whig landlords were thus able to forge a social and political alliance based on religious tolerance and social solidarity. In the Stroud-wide elections to the newly reformed House of Commons, this alliance revealed the extent to which a "deference community" still persisted at Horsley, Avening, and Minchinhampton, yet showed in its aftermath how far modern interest-group politics came to predominate throughout the rest of the Stroud region. The Whig synthesis of individualism, deference, and paternalism made possible the Establishment's collaboration with Nonconformists throughout Stroud and thereby helped mediate the region's emergence as a liberal industrial society. It is the underlying structure of this transformation, in the spheres of population change, manufacturing industry, and class relations, to which we must now turn.

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