Peasant Petitions ─ Social Relations and Economic Life on Landed Estates, 1600-1850

This book examines the structures and texture of rural social relationships, using one type of document found in abundance over all the four component parts of Britain and Ireland: petitions from tenants to their landlords. Exploring the authorship, form, and style of more than 2,000 petitions as well as their content, and looking at variations in petitioning as a communication strategy, it uses requests for help to understand the diverse material and social lives of those who worked the land in an era of profound change. Ranging over the many practices of lordship and estate management, the book offers unexpected angles on many aspects of society and economy on estates in north-west England, the Highland margin of Scotland, the north of Ireland, and Wales. Broad in geographical and chronological scope, it integrates, compares, and contrasts the experience of the rural population in different parts of the British Isles. Primarily social and cultural in focus, it also extends understandings of local, regional, and national histories.

Robert Allan Houston is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of St Andrews, UK. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and St Andrews University before spending six years at Cambridge University, UK, as a research student (Peterhouse) and research fellow (Clare College).