In rural England prior to the Industrial Revolution people generally married when they were not busy with work. Parish registers of marriage therefore form an important and innovative source for the study of economic change in this period. Dr Kussmaul employs marriage dates to identify three main patterns of work and risk (arable, pastoral and rural industrial) and more importantly to show the long-term changes in economic activities across 542 English parishes from the beginning of national marriage registration in 1538. No single historical landscape emerges. Instead A General View of the...

Servants in husbandry were unmarried farm workers hired on annual contracts. The institution of service distinguished them in many ways from their chief competitors, day-labourers. Servants were employed on an annual basis; they formed part of their employers' households; they were generally young and unmarried. Service was extremely common - most rural youths in early modern England became servants to farmers, and they composed as much as half of the full-time hired labour force in agriculture. Professor Kussmaul has marshalled information from sources as diverse as marriage registers,...