Paul Slack

Poverty and policy in Tudor and Stuart England

Paul Slacks book demonstrates the extent to which the poor in England has been formally provided for by the end of the period: the scale of the English welfare apparatus that had been firmly established by 1700 had no parallel in the rest of Europe. This book explains how this unique achievement came about.

The black death past and present. 2. Some historical problems

This paper looks, from a historians point of view, at the black death and the epidemics of plague which succeeded it in Europe from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. It identifies the controversial questions, of medical as well as historical interest, which have been raised by recent work. These include the origins of plague epidemics, the role of rodents and insect vectors in them, and the reasons for their disappearance from western Europe.

From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England

Introduction 1. The Common Weal 2. Godly Cities 3. Absolute Power 4. The Public Good 5. The Parliaments Reformation 6. Bodies Politic 7. Civil Societies Index

Material progress and the challenge of affluence in seventeenth-century England

In the later seventeenth century, material progress was first identified in England as a recent achievement with boundless future promise, and it was welcomed despite fears about the threats that it was perceived to present to national and personal well-being. The article investigates the roots of that confidence, and finds them in political economy and other intellectual developments that shaped interpretations of changing standards of living. The civic and moral ‘challenge of affluence’ was fully recognized but never resolved. Progress was accepted, and had to be defended in war-time, as the route to general happiness, ‘ease’, and plenty.

London and the English economy, 1500-1700

This book brings together the articles on which Fishers reputation was founded. It deals with central features of the English economy, in particular the importance of London, both as a social and economic hub, and the nature of internal and external trade. The essays can rightly be described as classics.

The response to plague in early modern England: public policies and their consequences

We may keep our Shipping to strict Quarantaine, we may form Lines, and cut off all Communication with the Infected, we may barricadoe up our Cities and our Towns, and shut ourselves up in our Houses, Death will come up into our Windows, and enter into our Palaces, and cut off our Children from without, and the young Men from the Streets. William Hendley, Loimologia Sacra , 1721 As it turned out, William Hendley was wrong. Death in the form of plague did not return to England during the 1720s, despite the scares aroused by its savage attack on Marseilles and other parts of southern France. Yet his profound scepticism about the policies adopted to control plague in England was widely shared; and it had been voiced by critical observers ever since those policies began in the sixteenth century. For quarantine had plainly not always protected England from the import of infection from the continent. Neither had strict watches against goods and travellers from London, when there were visitations there, prevented epidemics in provincial towns. The enforced isolation of infected families in their own houses, with their doors nailed up and guards outside them, had similarly failed to stop the movement of plague from household to household in stricken cities. Indeed, many critics had argued, such measures could not be expected to work.

The English Poor Law, 1531-1782.

Introduction 1. Defining strategies 2. Implementing the law 3. The failure of reform 4. The law in context Appendix: statutes relating to the poor Notes Select Bibliography Additional bibliographical note Index.

The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England.

List of tables List of figures Preface Conventions Part I. Perspectives: Disease and society Attitudes and actions Part II. The dimensions of the problem The chronology of epidemics 1485-1665 The local context The urban impact Metropolitan crises Counting the costs Part III. The social response: Public authority and a policy for control Controversy and compromise Towns under stress Police and people The end of plague 1665-1722 Conclusion Abbreviations Notes Index

Rebellion, Popular Protest, and the Social Order in Early Modern England.

Introduction Paul Slack 1. The Pilgrimage of Grace Reconsidered C. S. L. Davies 2. Ketts Rebellion in Context Diarmaid MacCulloch 3. Ketts Rebellion in Context: A Comment Julian Cornwall 4. Ketts Rebellion in Context: A Rejoinder Diarmaid MacCulloch 5. Youth and the English Reformation Susan Brigden 6. Dearth and the Social Order in Early Modern England John Walter and Keith Wrightson 7. The Popular Fear of Catholics during the English Revolution Robin Clifton 8. The Chalk and the Cheese: Contrasts among the English Clubmen David Underdown 9. Mutiny and Discontent in English Provincial Armies 1645-1647 J. S. Morrill 10. English Youth Groups and The Pinder of Wakefield Bernard Capp 11. The London Apprentices as Seventeenth-Century Adolescents Steven R. Smith 12. The Sacheverell Riots: The Crowd and the Church in Early Eighteenth-Century London Geoffrey Holmes 13. Popular Protest in Early Hanoverian London Nicholas Rogers 14. Property, Ideology and Popular Culture in a Gloucestershire Village 1660-1740 David Rollison.

Crisis and Order in English Towns 1500-1700. Essays in Urban History.

1. Introduction, Peter Clark & Paul Slack 2. Ceremony and Citizen: the communal year at Coventry 1450-1550, Charles Phythian-Adams 3. The trade gilds of Tudor York, D.M. Palliser 4. The migrant in Kentish towns 1580-1640, Peter Clark 5. Poverty and politics in Salisbury 1597-1666, Paul Slack 6. Politics in Chester during the Civil Wars and Interegnum 1640-62, A.M. Johnson 7. East London housing in the seventeenth century, M. J. Power 8. A provincial capital in the late seventeenth century: The case of Norwich, Penelope Corfield 9. London merchants and the crisis of the 1690s, D. W. Jones