Social relations and everyday life in England, 1500-1640

本项目探讨了在都铎王朝和斯图亚特王朝早期的英格兰，财富和权力的不平等是如何被经历、理解、接受和争论的。它将产生一本名为《信仰、希望和慈善：1500-1640年英国的社会关系》（剑桥大学出版社承包）的书，两篇期刊文章，一次专题讨论会，一次会议和一次非正式讲习班。通过与国家档案馆之友在研讨会上的合作，以及与TNA档案工作者合作，创建新的在线查找辅助工具，从而向更广泛的公众开放TNA材料的新机构，从而实现公众影响。我从一个看似简单的问题出发：尽管经济和社会变化迅速而激烈（人口增长、城市化、深化商业化、社会两极分化、社会冲突），宗教文化（不平衡的、有争议的新教化过程）发生了深刻的变化，有时还发生了恶性的社会冲突（暴乱、叛乱、断断续续的政治危机以及最终的内战），都铎王朝和早期斯图亚特王朝的社会是如何融合在一起的？已经仔细考虑了分期。1500年左右，人口扩张变得明显。与此同时，新的档案材料（特别是TNA材料）开始大量使用。然而，除了对叛乱的研究外，对早期现代英国社会的研究往往以1560年为起点。相比之下，我将探讨1500-1640年的整个范围。这将为未来的工作设定议程，开放大量的档案材料以供审查，并将1560年后的时期置于更清晰的认识之前。在我任期的另一端，内战对人类、物质和政治的影响形成了一个深刻间断的十年，我现在不打算进入这个十年。从长远来看，我打算写一部英国革命的社会史。但这是未来的事情。这本专著的标题取自哥林多前书11-13章：“我作孩子的时候，言语像孩子，意念像孩子。”但我既成了人，就把小孩子的事丢弃了。现在，我们只能透过玻璃看到黑暗；但是面对面。现在我知道一部分；到那时，我就知道，如同人知道我一样。如今常存的有信，有盼望，有爱这三样。其中最大的是爱。因此，我的标题突出了《圣经》是一个非常强大但又经常受到争议的文本。标题有以下解释作用：(a)信仰。显然，这暗示了基督教信仰在都铎王朝和斯图亚特王朝的日常生活和公共关系中的力量。不那么明显的是，它暗示了地方团结的能力——对彼此、对邻居和朋友的信仰——能够抵御可能淹没村庄和城镇的风暴。这些问题包括粮食短缺、权利丧失、传染病、高税收、剥削性领主和圈地。(b)的希望。在一个以持续的不安全感为特征（对穷人来说）的经济体中，未来还有什么希望？在这里，希望被用作一个类别，与之相对立的是深刻的物质不平等和政治权力剥夺，与之相对立的是下层阶级的代理机构。(c)慈善机构。这一极其重要的概念不仅涉及贫困救济。它还提到了慈善的社会意义。在某种程度上，慈善是有作用的：穷人手里拿着帽子，跪在地上乞求支持。但慈善是有关系的：穷人对富裕的邻居有期望——当对慈善的要求受挫时，这些期望可能很快就会转变成更加自信的东西。互惠的概念是这里的核心。这三个词——信仰、希望和慈善——将我们带入劳动人民生活的不可预测性，以及他们塑造周围世界的潜在能力。

This project explores the multiple ways in which inequalities of wealth and power were experienced, understood, accepted and contested in Tudor and early Stuart England. It will result in a book entitled Faith, Hope and Charity: Social Relations in England, 1500-1640 (contracted to Cambridge University Press), two journal articles, a symposium, a conference and an informal workshop. Public impact will be achieved through working with the Friends of the National Archives on the symposium and working with TNA archivists in creating new online finding aids, so opening up to a broader public fresh bodies of TNA material. I proceed from a deceptively simple question: how, despite the rapidity and intensity of economic and social change (population growth, urbanization, deepened commercialization, social polarization, social conflict) profound alteration in religious culture (the uneven, contested process of protestantization) and sometimes vicious social conflicts (riot, rebellion, episodic political crisis and - in the end - civil war) did Tudor and early Stuart society cohere? Periodization has been carefully considered. Around 1500, population expansion becomes noticeable. New bodies of archival material commence in useful runs from the same time (especially TNA material). Yet with the exception of work on rebellions, research on early modern English society tends to take its start-point at 1560. In contrast, I shall explore the whole range of the period 1500-1640. This will set the agenda for future work, opening up a substantial body of archival material to scrutiny as well as situating the post-1560 period against a clearer sense of what came before. At the other end of my period, the human, material and political impact of the civil wars form a decade of profound discontinuity into which, for now, I intend not to enter. In the long-term, I intend write a social history of the English Revolution. But that lies in the future. The title of the monograph draws on 1 Corinthians 11-13: When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now, we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.My title therefore foregrounds the Scriptures as massively powerful yet constantly contested texts. The title does the following interpretive work: (a) Faith. Obviously, this alludes to the power of Christian faith within everyday life and communal relations in Tudor and Stuart England. Less obviously, it alludes to the capacities of local solidarities - faith in one another, in neighbours and friends - to weather the storms that threatened otherwise to overwhelm villages and towns. These included dearth of food, loss of rights, infectious disease, high taxation, exploitative lordship and the enclosure of common lands. (b) Hope. In an economy characterised - for poorer people - by constant insecurity, what hope was there for the future? Hope is here used as a category against which to situate profound material inequality and political disempowerment, and against which to locate lower-class agency. (c) Charity. This critically important concept refers not only to poor relief. It also references the social meanings of charity. Partially, charity was functional: poor folk begged for support on their knees, with their caps in their hands. But charity was relational: poor folk had expectations of their richer neighbours - when demands for charity were frustrated, those expectations could quickly mutate into something far more assertive. The concept of reciprocity is central here. All three words - faith, hope and charity - lead us into the unpredictability of working people's lives and into their potential capacity to shape the world around them.