Popular sanctions in the rural community 1700-1880 with special reference to folk community practices and responses

Bushaway, Bob (1983) Popular sanctions in the rural community 1700-1880 with special reference to folk community practices and responses. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

This thesis aims to examine popular sanctions in English rural society during the period 1700 to 1880, against the background of social and economic change, and to consider how the framework of customary folk practice was maintained and what forms it took. In particular, it is apparent that custom linked together the components of the local community calendar and reflected, on the one hand, the symbolism of social cohesion in which the rural labourer was able to defend popular rights, and, on the other, provided opportunities for socially disruptive behaviour and established a cultural environment for more orthodox movements of social protest. This customary framework, in part transmitted forward from the later Middle Ages and early modern period, provided an essential context which informed the lives and experiences of both the labouring poor and the rural elite alike. The changing social position of one section of rural society - farmers, landowners, proprietors - affected this framework and conflict over the maintenance of popular customs occurred. Popular customary collective behaviour sought to preserve such rights as gleaning, fuel gathering, access to recreational venues, and non-institutionalised largess collections, by binding them in ceremony and ritual often adapted from older forms or other festivals. New statute laws and legal judgements were used to extinguish such rights and the ceremonies concerned were opposed, destroyed or remodelled to conform with Victorian middle class moral attitudes and values.

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