Migration in Gloucestershire, 1662-1865 : a geographical evaluation of the documentary evidence related to the administration of the law of settlement and removal

Abstract

The study of migration in the two hundred years before birth-place data was recorded in the 1841 Census, has depended primarily on the analysis of Parish Registers, supplemented by local tax, militia, apprenticeship and ecclesiastical listings. The only other national source, the documents generated by the administration of the Poor Law, from 1662 to 1865, has largely been ignored. This thesis is conceizied with two inter-related themes. Firstly, an evaluation of the Settlement Certificates, Examinations and Removal. Orders generated by the administration of the Poor Law, and secondly, their potential for establishing geographical patterns of migration. The spatial focus for this study is the Gloucestershire woollen cloth parishes which exhibited a strong centripetal pattern of movemeit until the 180's, but this analysis has been set against similar studies frcm other areas. However, an evaluation also requires that the evidence from the Poor Law documents is compared with that from Parish Register's and early Enumerators Books, as the only two contemporary sources providing similar information. This empirical evidence is examined within the framework of a total migration model to emphasise that migration is a sub-system of a wider environment hypotheses, derived from the study of migration processes, are tested to evaluate their applicability in this particular historical context and to illuminate the reality of migration in Gloucestershire at this time.

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