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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2008
The myriad forms of ‘popular culture’ have attracted an increasing amount of attention from historians of early modern and modern England. Students of English social relations are now familiar with several episodes of ‘cultural conflict’ in which there was putative friction between ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ (or ‘patrician’ and ‘plebeian’) notions of acceptable behaviour. As the epigraphs to this article suggest, two particular era of ‘cultural polarisation’ have attracted considerably more attention than any others. On the one hand, historians of the Reformation, and especially of its ‘enforcement’ in late Elizabethan and Jacobean local communities, have identified the suppression of traditional, festive culture as one of the ‘cultural reverberations’ of the spread of protestantism. On the other, Edward Thompson has encouraged students of eighteenth-century England to think in terms of a tension between ‘patrician society’ and ‘plebeian culture’, and of the possibilities that this ‘field of force’ raised for ‘class struggle without class’.
1 Collinson, Patrick, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1988), p. x.Google Scholar
2 Thompson, E.P., Customs in Common (London, 1991), p. 9.Google Scholar
3 See Malcolmson, R.W., Popular Recreations in English Society, 1700–1850 (Cambridge, 1973).Google Scholar The various collections of essays on the history of English popular culture convey the breadth of this highly disparate field. Donajgrodzki, A.P. (ed.), Social Control in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Eileen, and Yeo, Stephen (eds.), Popular Culture and Class Conflict, 1590–1914: Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure (Brighton, 1981)Google Scholar; Waites, Bernard, Bennet, Tony & Martin, Graham (eds.), Popular Culture Past and Present: A Reader (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Storch, R.D. (ed.), Popular Culture and Custom in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1982)Google Scholar; and Reay, Barry (ed.), Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1985).Google Scholar
4 Hill, Christopher, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (Harmondsworth, 1964)Google Scholar; Wrightson, K.E., ‘The Puritan Reformation of Manners, With Special reference to the Counties of Lancashire and Essex, 1640–1660’ (Unpublished Cambridge Ph.D. Dissertation, 1974)Google Scholar; Wrightson, K.E. and Levine, D.C., Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525–1700 (New York, 1979)Google Scholar, chs. 5–7; Collinson, Patrick, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559–1625 (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar, ch.5; Goring, Jeremy, Godly Exercises or the Devil's Dance? Puritanism and Popular Culture in Pre-Civil War England ([Friends of Dr Williams' Library 37th Lecture] London, 1983)Google Scholar; Hunt, William, The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County (Cambridge, Mass., 1983)Google Scholar, chs.5, 6 & 11; Underdown, D.E., Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–60 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar, chs.1–5; Collinson, Birthpangs, chs.4–5.
5 Thompson, E.P., ‘Patrician society, plebeian culture’, Journal of Social History 7:4 (1974), 382–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, , ‘Eighteenth-century English society: class struggle without class’, Social History 3:2 (1978), 133–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar These two essays are conflated and their argument expanded as chapter 2 of Thompson, Customs in Common. Thompson's thesis receives support from Bushaway, Bob, By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England, 1700–1880 (London, 1982)Google Scholar, and in the various contributions to the collections edited by the Yeos and by Storch in n.3 above.
6 On the myriad definitions of culture, see Kroeber, A.L. and Kluckhohn, C., Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (2nd ed., New York, 1963)Google Scholar. Burke, Peter, ‘Popular culture in seventeenth-century London’, in Reay, (ed.), Popular Culture, pp. 31–58, at p. 31.Google Scholar
7 Burke, Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978)Google Scholar, prologue.
8 For conceptual reservations about the early literature on popular culture, see Roger Chartier, ‘Culture as appropriation: popular cultural uses in early modern France’, in Kaplan, S.L. (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture (Berlin, 1984), pp. 229–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a more specific attack on the view that a ‘substantial gulf existed between the religion of the [early sixteenth-century] clergy and the educated élite on the one hand and that of the people at large on the other’, see Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 2–3.Google Scholar For a critique of the weaknesses of Thompson' bi-polar model, and especially of its neglect of eighteenth-century middle-class participation, see Wahrman, Dror,‘ National society, communal culture: an argument about the recent historiography of eighteenth-century Britain’, Social History 17:1 (1992), 43–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 The critical literature on the ‘cultural polarisation’ thesis is growing apace: see Ingram, M.J., ‘Religion, communities and moral discipline in late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century England: case studies’, in von Greyerz, Kaspar (ed.), Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (London, 1984), pp. 177–93Google Scholar; Smith, R.M., ‘“Modernisation” and the corporate medieval village community in England: some skeptical reflections’, in Baker, A.H.R. and Gregory, D. (eds.), Explorations in Historical Geography (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 140–79Google Scholar; Ingram, M.J., ‘The reform of popular culture? Sex and marriage in early modern England’, in Reay, (ed.), Popular Culture, pp. 129–65Google Scholar; Spufford, Margaret, ‘Puritanism and social control?’, in Fletcher, A.J. and Stevenson, J. (eds.), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 41–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spufford, Margaret, ‘Can we count the “godly” and the “conformable” in the seventeenth century?’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36 (1985), 428–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duffy, Eamon, ‘The godly and the multitude in Stuart England’, The Seventeenth Century I (1986), 31–55Google Scholar; Ingram, M. J., Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar, ch.3; and Collinson, , Birthpangs, p. 153.Google Scholar
10 For criticisms of the term, see Spufford, , ‘Puritanism & social control?’, p. 43Google Scholar, and Herrup, C.B., ‘Crime, law and society: a review article’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 27 (1985), 159–70, at 170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For its rehabilitation, see Cohen, Stanley and Scull, Andrew (eds.), Social Control and the State: Historical and Comparative Essays (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar; and McIntosh, M.K., A Comnunity Transformed: The Manor and Liberty of Havering, 1500–1620 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 2 n. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 See, for example, Thompson, Customs in Common, chs. 1 & 3; Bushaway, By Rite, ch.l; Ingram, M.J., ‘Ridings, rough music and mocking rhymes in early modern England’, in Reay, (ed.), Popular Culture, pp. 166–97Google Scholar; Holmes, Clive, ‘Drainers and fenmen: the problem of popular political consciousness in the seventeenth century’, in Fletcher, and Stevenson, (eds.), Order and Disorder, pp. 166–95Google Scholar; and Bushaway, R.W., ‘Rite, legitimation and community in southern England 1700–1850: the ideology of custom’, in Stapleton, Barry (ed.), Conflict and Community in Southern England: Essays in the Social History of Rural and Urban Labour From Medieval to Modern Times (Gloucester, 1992), pp. 110–34.Google Scholar
12 Thompson, Customs in Common, ch.l is the classic discussion of the relationship of custom and culture. For its application, see the contributions of Wrightson, Keith, Fox, Adam and Wood, Andy to Fox, Adam, Griffiths, Paul and Hindle, Steve (eds.), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, forthcoming 1995).Google Scholar
13 Thompson, , Customs in Common, pp. 6, 7, 14.Google Scholar
14 Hutton, Ronald, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. chs. 3–4.
15 Ibid., pp. 1–2.
16 Kent, J.R., Attitudes of members of the House of Commons to the regulation of “personal conduct” in late Elizabethan and Early Stuart England’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 46 (1973), 44–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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20 Scott, J.C.. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985)Google Scholar; and Scott, J.C., Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990).Google Scholar
21 The phrase was used by an anonymous petitioner to the Chief Justice of Chester. Public Record Office [hereafter PRO] CHES 24/113/3, unfol., ‘Concerning Wakes Used in the County of Chester’, c.1616.
22 Collinson, , Religion of Protestants, pp. 205–7, at p. 206.Google Scholar
23 Hutton, , Rise and Fall of Merry England, p. 59.Google Scholar
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25 Hutton, Rise and Fall of Merry England, Passim.
26 The phrase was used by a prospective participant in the Little Budworth wake. PRO STAC 5/EU/3, m.5 (Deposition of Hugh Starkey of Oulton, gent., April 1597).
27 The classic discussions in the historical literature of the anthropological concept of ‘license in ritual’ are based on the metaphor of the bursting wine barrel, used by fifteenth-century Parisian theologians. See Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and His World (Trans. Iswolsky, Helene, Bloomington, 1984)Google Scholar, ch. 1, esp. pp.74–6; and Burke, Popular Culture, ch.7, esp. pp. 199–204. For a recent summary of the literature on the ‘social function of festivity’, see Bristol, Michael D., Carnival and Theatre: Plebeian Culture and the Structure of Authority in Renaissance England (London. 1985).Google Scholar esp. ch. 2.
28 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (1633–34), pp. 275–6.
29 Numerous scholars have drawn attention to the role of wakes in Tudor and Stuart England. See Hill, Society and Puritanism, ch.5; Thomas, K.V., Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1971), pp.74–6Google Scholar; Malcolmson, , Popular Recreations, pp. 16–19, 52–6Google Scholar; Wrightson, K. E., ‘Alehouses, order and reformation in rural England, 1590–1660’, in Yeo, and Yeo, (eds.), Popular Culture and Class Conflict, pp. 1–27Google Scholar, esp. p. 5; Greaves, R.L., Society and Religion in Elizabethan England (Minneapolis, 1981), pp. 465–8, 706–8Google Scholar; Collinson, Religion of Protestants, ch.5; Hunt, , Puritan Moment, pp. 130–5Google Scholar; Collinson, Birthpangs, ch. 5; and Heal, , Hospitality, pp. 358–65Google Scholar. The most detailed discussions of their significance are Barnes, T.G., ‘County politics and a puritan cause celebre: Somerset church ales, 1633’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th series 9 (1959), 103–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, passim; and Bennett, Judith, ‘Conviviality and charity in medieval and early modern England’, Past and Present 134 (1992), 19–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
30 See Hunt, , Puritan Moment, pp. 132–3Google Scholar; and Bushaway, , ‘Rite, legitimation and community’, pp. 124–30.Google Scholar
31 The phrase is Keith Wrightson's. Wrightson, , ‘Puritan Reformation of Manners’, pp. 24–41.Google Scholar
32 Smith, William, The Vale-Royall of England or the County Palatine of Chester lllustrated (King, Daniel ed., London, 1656), p. 20.Google Scholar
33 The following discussion is based upon Hole, Christina, Traditions and Customs of Cheshire (London, 1937)Google Scholar, ch. 6; Stephens, W.B. (ed.), A History of Congleton (Manchester, 1970), pp. 62–3Google Scholar; Davies, (ed.), Macclesfield, pp. 64, 362Google Scholar; Lake, Jeremy, The Great Fire of Nantwich (Nantwich, 1983), p. 35Google Scholar; Hall, James, A History of the Town and Parish of Nantwich (Manchester, 1883), p. 81Google Scholar; and Higgins, G.P., ‘County Government and Society in Cheshire c. 1590–1640’ (University of Liverpool M.A. Thesis, 1973), p. 229.Google Scholar
34 Hutton, Rise and Fall of Merry England, makes no mention of the practice at all.
35 Ibid., p. 118.
36 This was evidently the case at Little Budworth. See section III below.
37 Collinson, , Birthpangs, p. x.Google Scholar
38 For an introduction to the enormous literature of the spread of the Reformation, see Haigh, Christopher, ‘The recent historiography of the English Reformation’, Historical Journal 25 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Haigh, (ed.), The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 19–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For regionally differentiated cultures, see Collinson, Birthpangs, chs. 4 and 5; Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, ch. 4; and Collinson, , Religion of Protestants, p. 206.Google Scholar
39 Collinson, , Religion of Protestants, pp. 199–203.Google Scholar
40 Hinde, William, A Faithful Remonstrance of the Holy Life and Happy Death of John Bruen of Bruen Stapleford in the County of Chester, Esquire (London, 1641), p.92.Google Scholar For a general survey of the themes of the complaint literature, see Hutton, , Rise and Fall of Merry England, pp. 128–34.Google Scholar
41 Burton, Henry, A Divine Tragedie Lately Acted, or a Collection of Sundrie Memorable Examples of Gods Judgments upon Sabbath-breakers (London, 1641), p. 29.Google Scholar
42 Hinde, , A Faithful Remonstrance, p. 93.Google Scholar
43 Stephens, (ed.), History of Congleton, p. 63.Google Scholar
44 Hinde, , A Faithful Remonstrance, pp. 94, 95, 96.Google Scholar
45 Bristol, , Carnival and Theatre, pp. 26–7.Google Scholar
46 Hunt, , Puritan Moment, p. 132.Google Scholar
47 PRO CHES 21/2, ff.81v, 80, 83; 21/3, ff.75v, 122v. Cheshire Record Office [hereafter CRO] QJF 33/1/24.
48 ‘The state civil and ecclesiastical of the county of Lancaster about the year 1590’, ed. Raines, F.R. in Chetham Miscellany V (Chetham Society, 1st series 96, 1875), pp. 1–48Google Scholar; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic (1591–94), pp. 158–9 (‘Report [?by the Earl of Derby] to the Privy Council on the Condition of Lancashire and Cheshire’ [undated, ?c.1591]); British Library [hereafter BL] Harleian MS 1926, [no.69] ff.80–81v (‘Of the enormities of the Sabbothe, with Means how to Reform the Same; also about Bastards and Vagabonds’ [Orders signed by sixteen Lancashire magistrates], 17 November 1586. On the dating of this latter document, see Parker, Kenneth, The English Sabbath: A Study of Doctrine and Discipline From the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge, 1988), p. 143 n. 14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
49 Acts of the Privy Council [hereafter APC] (1577–78), p. 329 (The Privy Council to the Justices of Peace in the County of Chester [concerning notorious assemblies in Cheshire], 28 September 1578).
50 APC (1591–92), p. 549 (The Privy Council to the Earl of Derby [concerning games prohibited on Sundays], 23 June 1592).
51 CRO DDX 358/1, f. 72v (The Sheriff and Deputy-Lieutenants of Cheshire to the Justices of Peace ‘for the Execution of the Office of Provost-marshal’, 13 August 1599); Chester City Record Office Grosvenor MS 2/31 (‘Orders under Sir Richard Lewkenor's Hand to be Observed’ [by the Justices, undated, ?c.1603]). The similarity of these orders, signed by Sir Richard Lewkenor and Sir Henry Townshend, to the ten orders for constables of January 1603 (CRO QJF n31/4/l), suggests that they were drawn up simultaneously.
52 Duffy, , Stripping of the Altars, pp. 448–523Google Scholar; Hutton, , Rise and Fall of Merry England, pp. 79–95.Google Scholar Both accounts, however, emphasise the reappearance of wakes and ales under Mary.
53 APC (1577–78), p. 329.
54 Hirst, D.M., ‘The Privy Council and the problem of enforcement in the 1620s’, Journal of British Studies 18 (1978), 44–66, at 47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
55 The campaign against profane pastimes began earlier in the city of Chester than in the rural parts of the county: urban and rural government were radically different enterprises. See BL Harleian MSS 1944, ff. 90–90v; 2125, ff. 45v–46; 2133, f.46; Records of Early English Drama, Volume I: Chester, ed. L.M. Clopper (Toronto, 1979), passim; Underdown, , Revel, Riot and Rebellion, pp. 69, 280Google Scholar; and Collinson, , Birthpangs, pp. 54–5, 101, 154.Google Scholar
56 The wider context of the campaign against wakes in Cheshire is the controversy surrounding orders issued at Lancaster in August 1616, over a month after the Cheshire initiative. See Proceedings of the Lancashire Justices of the Peace at the Sheriff's Table During Assizes Week, 1578–1694, ed. B. W. Quintrell (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire [hereafter RSLC] 121, 1981), pp. 41–2, 72–3. On the Declaration of Sports controversy, see Tait, James, ‘The “Declaration of Sports” for Lancashire (1617)’, English Historical Review 32 (1917), 561–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wrightson, , ‘Puritan Reformation of Manners’, p. 41Google Scholar; Haigh, Christopher, ‘Puritan evangelism in the reign of Elizabeth I’, English Historical Review 92 (1977), 37–69, at 54–5Google Scholar; Fletcher, A.J., Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England (New Haven, 1986), pp. 164, 268–70Google Scholar; and Parker, English Sabbath, ch.5.
57 Chamberlain, a protege of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and ‘loving friend’ of William Whateley, puritan vicar of Bunbury, seems to have been something of an activist. See Prest, W.R., The Rise of the Barristers: A Social History of the English Bar (Oxford, 1986), pp. 68–9, 349.Google Scholar
58 PRO CHES 24/113/3, unfol., ‘The Petition of Thomas Bressie, Head Constable of Broxton to Sir Thomas Chamberlain, Chief Justice of the County Palatine of Chester’, 1 June 1616. PRO CBS 24/113/3, unfol., ‘The Humble Petition of the Inhabitants of Middlewich, c.July 1616’. Twenty-three names are subscribed to the Middlewich petition.
59 PRO CHES 24/113/3, unfol., ‘Concerning Wakes Used in the County of Chester’, c.1616. The rhetoric of this document resembles that of the elaborate Cheshire Grand Jury Presentments of the 1620s criticising the magistrates for their failure to enforce various statutes on alehouses, vagrancy, the Houses of Correction, and provision of the grain markets. See Hindle, Steve, ‘Aspects of the Relationship of the State and Local Society in Early Modern England, with Special Reference to Cheshire, c.1590–1630’ (Unpublished Cambridge University Ph.D. Dissertation, 1992)Google Scholar, ch.6.
60 PRO CHES 21/3, ff.367v-69 (Miscellaneous endpapers [Chester, July 1616]), ‘Orders and Directions Concerning the Reformation of Certain Disorders, Misdemeanours and Abuses within this County of Chester set down at the Sessions holden at Chester, 1 July 1616 before Sir Thomas Chamberlayne and Sir Henry Townshend, Justices’.
61 PRO CHES 24/114/4, unfol., ‘Brief Particulars of Articles Given in Charge’, September 1618.
62 PRO CHES 24/114/2, unfol., ‘Certificate of the Justices of Peace of Wirrall Hundred’, Autumn 1617.
63 PRO CHES 24/114/2, unfol., ‘Information of Richard Holland of Little Neston, miller, C.September 1617’. For the shrine at Holywell, see Williams, Glanmor, Recovery, Reorientation and Reformation: Wales, c.1415–1642 (Oxford, 1987), p. 128.Google Scholar
64 PRO CHES 21/3, ff.9v, 12, 19, 22v.
65 BL Royal MS 18 B.VII, ‘A Brief Relation of Such Proceedings and Causes Determined Before Your Majesty's President and Counsell in the Principality and Marches of Wales this last Trinity Term 1617’.
66 PRO CHES 21/1, ff.184v, 185. For Quarter Sessions presentments of illegal games (the participants sometimes playing for ‘nuts and apples’, or for ‘candles and bread’) in the period 1595–1605, see CRO QJF 25/1 /43; 27/1/28; 27/3/5; 27/3/6; 27/3/10; 27/4/12; 31 /2/43.
67 For the Bickerton incident, see PRO CHES 21/2, ff.101(a)v, 103v. For the previous presentments, see PRO CHES 21/1, ff. 4, 23, 27; 21/2, f. 59.
68 PRO CHES 21/2, ff. 25, 51v, 56v.
69 PRO CHES 21/2, ff. 118, 123v, 126; 21/3, ff. 4v, 5, 5v.
70 For the recidivism of Piatt and Peacock, see PRO CHES 21/3, ff. 43v, 48. Peacock had been presented to the church courts in 1614 ‘for speaking against religion and the ministers’. Richardson, R.C., Puritanism in North-west England: A Regional and Administrative Study of the Diocese of Chester to 1642 (Manchester, 1972, p. 170.Google Scholar For the 1618 episodes, see PRO CHES 21/3, ff. 19, 29.
71 The Act of 1 Charles I c.l (1625) ‘for punishing of divers abuses comitted on the Lords Day called Sunday’ forbade ‘certain “unlawful exercises and pastimes” (bear-baiting, bull-baiting, interludes and common plays were specified) on Sundays’. Fletcher, , Reform in the Provinces, p. 267.Google Scholar Animal baiting was not fully prohibited by statute until the 1830s. Thomas, K.V., Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York, 1983), pp. 149, 158.Google Scholar
72 PRO CHES 21/2, ff. 45, 45v, 57, 100, 112.
73 PRO CHES 21/2, ff. 112, 118; 21/3, ff. 19v, 27, 30, 36v.
74 BL Harleian MS 583, ff. 48–52, at f. 51.
75 PRO CHES 21/3, ff. 58–58v, 66.
76 PRO CHES 21/2, ff. 112, 113, 122v; 21/3, ff. 29, 31, 43v, 44v.
77 Winer's office-holding career, culminating in his bond to answer for speaking seditious words, can be traced in CRO QJB 1/4, ff.[]152v, 177, 185v; 1/5, f. 23v.
78 CRO EDV 1/17, f. 33 (Chester, 1611) cited in Richardson, Puritanism, pp. 99–100. The curate was James Hatton, who was himself repeatedly cited (perhaps by Witter?) in the church courts for drunkenness and fornication during this period. See Hindle, ‘The State and Local Society’, ch. 7.i.
79 PRO 21/3, ff. 20v, 23.
80 For the dispute between Brocke and Witter, see PRO CHES 21/3, ff. 27, 35v, 39. In July, 1638 Richard Brocke and his wife were presented for keeping ‘divers pictures and other popish relics’ in their alehouse ’not fully five roods distant from the chancel door of the parish church’. Quarter Sessions Records With Other Records of the Justices of the Peace for the County Palatine of Chester, 1559–1760, eds. J.H.E. Bennet and J.C. Dewhurst (RSLC 94, 1940), p. 93. Watt, Tessa, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), p.178Google Scholar, speculates on the possible origins of Brocke's relics.
81 The impact of puritanism in Tarporley is well attested, both in contemporary sources and the secondary literature. See CRO QJF 71/4/23; QJB 1/6, f. 87 (Chester, January 1643); Ormerod, George, History of Cheshire (Helsby, G. rev. ed., 3 vols., London, 1882), II, 36Google Scholar; Richardson, , Puritanism, pp. 40, 99–100Google Scholar; Morrill, , Cheshire, p. 35Google Scholar; Fletcher, A.J., ‘Factionalism in town and countryside: the significance of Puritanism and Arminianism’, in Baker, Derek (ed.), Studies in Church History, Volume 16: The Church in Town and Countryside (Oxford, 1979), pp. 291–300, at pp. 291–2Google Scholar; and Haigh, Christopher, ‘The Church of England, the catholics and the people’, in Haigh, (ed.), Reign of Elizabeth I, pp. 195–220, at p. 219.Google Scholar
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83 For Sir John Egerton of Egerton and Oulton (1551–1614), knighted in 1599, see Ormerod, , Cheshire, II, 626–7, 629Google Scholar; and Knafla, L.A., Law and Politics in Jacobean England: The Tracts of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 1, esp. pp.25n, 27n. His will was the source of protracted Chancery and Star Chamber litigation. See PRO STAC 8/132/12, 8/23/10, 8/129/6, 8/129/7, 8/133/11, 8/128/11, 8/128/10, and Hindle, ‘The State and Local Society’, ch. 2.
84 PRO STAC 7/2/24, m.5 (Bill of Complaint of John Egerton of Oulton, esq., November 1596). Although Egerton's interrogatories implied that Cheshire Justices had already taken order to suppress wakes, neither the Crown Books nor the Gaol Files of the Chester Great Sessions contain any such order before the three directives of 1599, 1603 and 1616. See section II, above. For the recusancy of John and Alice Starky, and their son Hugh (who Egerton thought to be ‘a wilful and quarrellous young gentleman’, see Ormerod, , Cheshire, II, 190–92, 796Google Scholar; and Wark, K.R., Elizabethan Recusancy in Cheshire (Manchester, Chetham Society Third Series 19, 1971), pp. 91, 95, 165, 177.Google Scholar
85 John Rylands Library University of Manchester Warburton MSS, Box 6, [Volume of] Court Rolls of the Manors of Aston and Budworth 1613–77, unfol., Manorial Order of 14 January 1595. Such a regulation also had the effect of keeping bear-baiting physically circumscribed in a specified communal space. On the significance of communal space for popular recreations in late medieval and early modern England, see Dymond, David, ‘A lost social institution: the camping close’, Rural History 1:2 (1990), 165–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
86 Ormerod, , Cheshire II, 224Google Scholar n.a, notes the ambiguous date, commenting that ‘wakes are usually held in Little Budworth on the Sunday nearest 2 July, or about the vigils of the visitation, two or three days after St Peters Day’ (29 June). There is some controversy over whether the patronal saint of the parish was St Peter. Ormerod believed the church to be dedicated to ‘St Mary and All Saints’, although his editor suggests the two could be reconciled if the dedication were originally to the ‘Blessed Virgin, St Peter and All Saints’. The feast day of St Peter the Apostle was one of the approved holy days of Post Reformation England, and with the feast of St John the Baptist (24 June) was one of the two most popular dates for midsummer fairs and celebrations. See Cressy, David, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London, 1989), pp. 16, 25–7Google Scholar; and Hutton, , Rise and Fall of Merry England, p. 42.Google Scholar
87 The following account is based upon the substantial but fragmented documentation in two Star Chamber actions. PRO STAC 7/2/24; 5/E11/3; 5/E14/6; S/Sl 1/3; 5/S15/34; 5/S21/25; 5/S51/11; 5/S56/10; 5/S77/2.
88 PRO STAC 5/E11/3, m. 8 (Deposition of Hugh Houlbrooke, constable of Little Budworth, April 1597); m. 8 (Deposition of Thomas Billington, constable of Little Budworth, April 1597).
89 For hunting as a symbolic form of protest, see Manning, Roger B., Hunters and Poachers: A Social and Cultural History of Unlawful Hunting in England, 1485–1640 (Oxford, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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95 The phrase is from the Star Chamber Proclamation of 1 July 1596. See Hawarde, J., Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, 1593–1609 (Baildon, W.P. ed., London, 1894), pp. 56–8, at p. 57.Google Scholar For the sumptuary laws and their provisions, see Harte, N.B., ‘State control of dress and social change in pre-industrial England’, in Coleman, D.C. and John, A.H. (eds.), Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-industrial England: Essays Presented to F.J. Fisher (London, 1976), pp. 132–65Google Scholar, esp. p. 138.
96 For the church (especially in its seating plan) as a forum in which the social hierarchy was insisted upon, see Amussen, S.D., An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988), pp. 137–44.Google Scholar
97 There is conflicting evidence as to the extent of the fines. Contemporary reports noted ‘Starkey fined £300 for the three several riots and each other defendant £20, and if they have not the ability to pay then Starkey to pay all’ (Hawarde, . Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, pp. 87–8)Google Scholar. The Exchequer archive suggests that these sums were subsequently mitigated: thirteen of Egerton's opponents were fined various amounts between £5 and £40. Constable Houlbrooke was made liable for £13.06s.8d., but John Starky himself was responsible for the £40 sentenced on his tenants and servants if they could not pay (PRO E 159/414 (Easter 40 Eliz., rotulet 94), fines sentenced 9 March 1598). These were not large fines by Star Chamber standards, but convictions and fines were very unusual in private prosecutions. See Hindle, ‘The State and Local Society’, ch. 2. iv.
98 Smith, , Vale-Royall, p. 20.Google Scholar Smith's optimistic judgment is best read in the context of Underdown, , Revel, Riot and Rebellion, pp. 44–63.Google Scholar
99 There is plentiful evidence of the long-term survival of Cheshire wakes. See, for example, Wright, A.R., British Calendar Customs (Lones, T.E. ed., 3 vols., London, 1936–1940), II, 3–4Google Scholar; Malmgreen, Gail, Silk Town: Industry and Culture in Macclesfield, 1750–1835 (Hull, 1985), pp. 131–6Google Scholar; and Hutton, , Rise and Fall of Merry England, pp. 229–30.Google Scholar
100 Thompson, , Customs in Common, p. 66Google Scholar; and Thompson, , ‘The crime of anonymity’ in Hay, Douglas, Linebaugh, Peter, Rule, John G., Thompson, E.P. and Winslow, Cal, Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1975), pp. 255–308.Google Scholar
101 For William Allen's hurling of cow dung into the Hall of Pleas, see PRO CHES 21/3, f. 228 (Chester, October 1631). For the ritualised mockery and vandalism at the stocking of a Wilmslow bearward, see CRO QJB 1/5, ff. 231v-32 (Knutsford, April 1629); QJF 58/l/37–38v; and Hindle, ‘The State and Local Society’, pp. 527–30.
102 Rollison., DavidThe Local Origins of Modern Society: Gloucestershire. 1500–1800 (London, 1992), p. 202.Google Scholar
103 The phrase is used in a Privy Council Circular of 1609. See CRO QJF 38/4/1 (the Privy Council to the Sheriff and Justices of Peace of [Pall counties], 6 December 1609).
