On the Parish? is a study of the experience of poor relief in the rural parishes of early modern England. It explores the relationships of paupers not only to the parish officers who administered the Elizabethan poor laws but also to their kinfolk and neighbours who continued to provide extensive networks of informal support.

This is a study of the social and cultural implications of the growth of governance in England in the century after 1550. It is principally concerned with the role played by the middling sort in social and political regulation, especially through the use of the law. It discusses the evolution of public policy in the context of contemporary understandings, of economic change; and analyses litigation, arbitration, social welfare, criminal justice, moral regulation and parochial analyses administration as manifestations of the increasing role of the state in early modern England.

On the Parish? is a study of the negotiations which took place over the allocation of poor relief in the rural communities of sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth century England. It analyzes the relationships between the enduring systems of informal support through which the laboring poor made attempts to survive for themselves; the expanding range of endowed charity encouraged by the late sixteenth century statutes for charitable uses; and the developing system of parish relief coordinated under the Elizabethan poor laws.
Based on exhaustive research in the archives of the...