Editorial : Poverty and mobility in England, 1600–1850

Within these pages you will find a ‘jovial crew’: rogues and vagabonds, the ‘mad’ and insane, gypsies, peddlers, poets, playwrights, pilgrims, rioters, convicts, constables, thieves, beggars, landed gentlemen, magistrates, and historians. When parliamentarians and projectors set out to proscribe mobility and legislate poverty in early modernity, a list of untrustworthy trades and professions not at all unlike this one frequently found its way into print and the statute book. The punishment for crimes of vagrancy could be severe, but thankfully ‘historians’ were not counted among the undeserving and mobile, nor would you find magistrates and landed gentlemen taken up, imprisoned, and whipped for a crime of movement. However, all three groups may well deserve some of John Locke's brand of draconian ‘improvement’; historians in particular have taken little account of the lived experiences of the mobile poor until relatively recently. Once we finally took a hard look at our inherited, literature-driven typologies of ‘rogues’ and ‘beggars’, they disappeared in ‘a storm of dust and lies.’ However, the literary, visualised vagabond still has much to tell us, and interdisciplinary approaches to vagrancy in the past have emerged as the strongest method yet of reconstructing the character, history, and cultural perception of the mobile poor. These are methods which the articles in this collection use to full effect

A remembrance of things (best) forgotten: The 'allegorical past' and the feminist imagination

This is the author's PDF version of an article published in Feminist theology© 2012. The definitive version is available at http://fth.sagepub.com/This article discusses the US TV series Mad Men, which is set in an advertising agency in 1960s New York, in relation to two key elements which seem significant for a consideration of the current state of feminism in church and academy, both of which centre around what it means to remember or (not) to forget

‘Scots and Scabs from North-by-Tweed’:Undesirable Scottish Migrants in Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England

While very prominent in the contemporary world, anxiety about the potentially negative impact that immigrants might have on their host communities has deep historical roots. In a British context, such fears were particularly heightened following the regal union of 1603 when large numbers of Scots began settling in England. This article offers a fresh perspective on these issues by exploring the experiences and reception of poor, deviant or otherwise ‘undesirable’ Scottish migrants to England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Focusing in particular on chapmen, vagrants and criminals, it suggests that, while in general Scots were able to integrate relatively easily into English society, there existed an unwelcome subset surviving by dubious means. Though not usually attracting unduly severe treatment on account of their nationality, these unwelcome migrants had a disproportionate effect on English perceptions of and attitudes towards the broader cohort of Scottish migrants in their midst

When The News Was Sung: Ballads as News Media in Early Modern Europe

News songs differ in crucial ways to the other news media of the early modern period like newsletters, newspapers, or diplomatic correspondence – they differ even from the prose broadsheets and pamphlets that they so closely resemble. As historians of news we need to ask different kinds of questions of these multi-media artifacts. For example, how does the presentation in a performative genre affect the dissemination and reception of information about events? What part do orality and aurality play in how the news was sold and received? Here the activities and social status of street singers play an important role. We must consider the production, format and distribution of these songs in order to understand their impact. We also need to pay attention to the conjunction between text and melody, and the ways in which this affected the presentation of a news event. On a broader scale, what kind of information can ballads provide about specific news events that other documents cannot or will not provide? Can they offer us a new medium by which to interpret historical events? And lastly, how should historians deal with these profoundly emotive texts? The combination of sensationalist language and affecting music meant that songs had the potential to provoke a more powerful response than any other contemporary news source, and this emotional potency can at times be challenging for a modern historian to decipher and explain. This article will attempt to answer some of these questions and suggest some of the skills we as historians need to develop in order to appreciate the full meaning of songs as the most popular of news media in early modern Europe

Merchant Guilds, Taxation and Social Capital

We develop a theory of the emergence of merchant guilds as an efficient mechanism to foster cooperation between merchants and rulers, building on the complementarity between merchant guilds’ ability to enforce monopoly over trade and their social capital. Unlike existing models, we focus on local merchant guilds, rather than alien guilds, accounting for the main observed features of their behavior, internal organization and relationship with rulers. Our model delivers novel predictions about the emergence, variation, functioning, and eventual decline of this highly successful historical form of network. Our theory reconciles previous explanations and the large body of historical evidence on medieval merchant guilds. In doing so, we also shed novel light on the role of the guilds’ social capital, and its importance for taxation, welfare, and the development of towns and their government in medieval Europe

Transportations of space, time and self: the role of reading groups in managing mental distress in the community

Background: The practice of reading and discussing literature in groups is long established, stretching back into classical antiquity. Although benefits of therapeutic reading groups have been highlighted, research into participants’ perceptions of these groups has been limited. Aims: To explore the experiences of those attending therapeutic reading groups, considering the role of both the group, and the literature itself, in participants’ ongoing experiences of distress. Method: Eleven participants were recruited from two reading groups in the South-East of England. One focus group was run, and eight individuals self-selected for individual interviews. The data were analysed together using a thematic analysis drawing on dialogical theories. Results: Participants described the group as an anchor, which enabled them to use fiction to facilitate the discussion of difficult emotional topics, without referring directly to personal experience. Two aspects of this process are explored in detail: the use of narratives as transportation, helping to mitigate the intensity of distress; and using fiction to explore possibilities, alternative selves and lives. Conclusions: For those who are interested and able, reading groups offer a relatively de-stigmatised route to exploring and mediating experiences of distress. Implications in the present UK funding environment are discussed

Construing the child reader: a cognitive stylistic analysis of the opening to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (2009) charts the story of Nobody Owens, a boy who is adopted by supernatural entities in the local graveyard after his family is murdered. This article draws on the notion of the “construed reader,” and combines two cognitive stylistic frameworks to analyse the opening section of the novel. In doing so, the article explores the representation and significance of the family home in relation to what follows in the narrative. The analysis largely draws on Text World Theory (Werth, 1999; Gavins, 2007), but also integrates some aspects of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker, 2008), which allows for a more nuanced discussion of textual features. The article pays particular attention to the way Gaiman frames his narrative and positions his reader to view the fictional events from a distinctive vantage point and subsequently demonstrates that a stylistic analysis of children’s literature can lay bare how such writing is designed with a young readership in mind