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" Landed Society and Allegiance in Shropshire in the First Civil War "
Wanklyn , M. D. G.
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1098051
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TLets529711
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| Main Entry
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Wanklyn , M. D. G.
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| Title & Author
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Landed Society and Allegiance in Shropshire in the First Civil War\ Wanklyn , M. D. G.
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| College
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The University of Manchester
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| Date
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1976
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| student score
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1976
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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The first chapter of this thesis is a comparativestudy of Shropshire and Cheshire in the Early Modern era.It is intended to provide a brief topographical introductionto the area and to emphasise the contrasts between the twocounties produced by differences in their political,social, economic and religious development since theNorman Conquest. There is also a lengthy discussion ofthe nature and extent of the opposition to the Crown duringthe sixteen-thirties.Most of the second chapter is devoted to a critique ofthe commonly-accepted view that for the purposes of analysisseventeenth-century English society can best be regarded asa rigid hierarchy of clearly-defined status-groupsdistinguished from one another by title. Using evidencedrawn mainly from Shropshire and Cheshire sources it isargued that seventeenth-century rural society is best seenas a unity in which differences in status depend on theamount of freehold land owned.In the third chapter the parameters of the study arelaid down and the categories, divisions and definitions tobe employed are discussed in considerable detail. Thissection is followed by a description of the formation, sizeand composition of the warring groups in the two counties.Chapter four is concerned essentially with possibleeconomic determinants of allegiance. In the first sectiona method of discovering the income of landed families usinglay-subsidies is put forward, defended and then used forpurposes of analysis, In both counties the results obtainedsuggest that Royalists tended to be wealthier thanParliamentarians. The second section is an attempt toassess the degree of enterprise shown by landowners in thefields of industry, agriculture and commerce, but in neithercounty does a clear difference emerge between the two sides.There is also an appendix concerned with the nature andimportance of indebtedness amongst landed families.The major part of the fifth chapter is taken up withan examination of the changing patterns of landownership' inShropshire and Cheshire in the period 1540 to 1680. Asubsidiary theme is the investigation of the connectionbetween the buying and selling of land and changes whichoccurred in the political elite of-the county. The finalsection is a discussion of whether any of the groups whichemerged in the early months of the Civil War contained anunusually high proportion of rising or declining familiesor disappointed office-seekers.The purpose of the sixth chapter is to investigate anumber of possible social and religious determinants ofallegiance - age, position in the family, education,ancestry, family connexion, Roman Catliolicism, and devotiontowards the Anglican Church as it was constituted in thesummer of 1642.The final chapter is used for drawing together thevarious conclusions reached in earlier chapters and forin other studies of allegiance in the English Civil Wars.Amongst other things it is suggested that the Parliamentaryofficers and administrators in both counties tended to bedrawn from a lower level of landed society than theRoyalists, and that, those wealthy Parliamentarians who wereof ancient and distinguished stock were often Puritans ordid not enjoy office or title commensurate with theirlandholding.
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The University of Manchester
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