weapons, cannon, 486
highwaymen’s, 350
for killing birds, 211
long-bow, 58
of Luddites, 485, 487
Margaret Paston asks for, 140
of mediaeval brigands, 139
mediaeval musters-at-arms, 100
proscribed under Laudian Code, 280
sporting guns, 359
swords, 339
trials by combat, 141–2
used in 1830 riots, 490
Wedgwood pottery, 445
Welbeck Abbey, 504, 557
Wellington College, 673
Welwyn Garden City, 676
Wentworth Woodhouse, 324, 497
Westminster Abbey, prologue
Westminster School, 239, 455, 456, 623
Weymouth, 465, 679
Whitby, 473
Whitehall Palace, 211, 220, 230
wigs, Beauclerk, 335
cost of periwigs, 290
Elizabeth I, 224
Gay on, 340
John Taylor’s servant, 314
nit-infested, 403
professional men, 344
Samuel Mercer buys, 462
variety, 339
wig-snatchers, 339
Wilton House, 323
Winchester, 80, 103, 300, 355
Winchester College, age of pupils, 120
classroom, 117
curriculum, 116
football, 623
riots, 455
sons of peers, 456
warden’s salary, 119
William of Wykeham, 115
windows, cottage, 336
fourteenth-century, 12
French, 326
Hardwick Hall, 194
King’s College, Cambridge, 132
long gallery, 197
plate-glass, 516
sash, 332
shop, 516
Windsor, 80, 164, 326, 581
Windsor Castle, 4, 86, 436, 555, 631
witchcraft and witches, 261–4
Woburn Abbey, 197, 290–91
Wolverhampton, 272, 439
women (see also prostitutes), cave dweller, 305–6
changing attitudes to, 389
contraception, 399
cosmetics, 224–5, 343, 704
dame schools, 449
die in marshlands, 304–5
disguised as minstrel, 95
education, 121–2, 272, 451, 454
etiquette, 614
hair, 339, 340–41, 704
illiteracy, 270, 274
inequality
with men, 704
intelligence in question, 387–8
kissing, 401
legal rights, 389, 704
marriage, 107–8, 309, 382–7
mediaeval dining customs, 12
mediaeval peasants, 27–8
medicine, 155
navvies’ women, 646
patches, 343
pregnant
women in poverty, 256
prisoners, 666, 667
punishment for murder, 389
sex, 401, 402, 405, 633, 701
sixteenth-century lady, 237–8
spinsters, 383
unemployment, 489
vagabonds, 180
wan, 388, 692–3, 708–9
wife-sale, 390
wives, 107 amusements: cockfighting, 368
cricketing, 372
cycling, 659
gambling, 373–4
bunting, 60, 359
magazines, 678
mediaeval, 15
riding astride, 68
sea bathing, 681–2
slaughter of deer, 210
smoking, 699
sport, 625
theatre, 240, 241, 410
tournaments, 85 clothes: after First World War, 704
coatermongers, 528
head-dresses, 340–41
eighteenth-century, 341–2, 345
late Victorian, 549–50
sixteenth-century, 223–4 occupations: actresses, 408, 409
agricultural labourers, 469, 559, 565
ale-sellers and bathing-machine attendants, 682
brewers, 53
brick workers, 589
coalminers, 584–6
dentists, 441–2, 446
domestic servants, 178, 497
guild members, 99
industrial labourers, 468
lay sisters, 45
Members of Parliament, 703–4
nuns, 48–9, 89, 121–2, 187
opportunity to work in factoriea and shops, 513
pedlars, 180
preachers, 388–9
professions, 703
pugilists, 365–6
sword fighters, 365–6
teachers, 451
trade union members, 694
underground mining, 594
wives’ duties, 109, 236–7, 388
working, 703
Woolaton Hall, 195
Worcester, 97, 215, 233, 301
workhouses, 492–3, 513, 705, 706
working class, Chartism, 494
First World War, 691
football, 623–5
health, 691
leisure activities, 621–3
Luddism and development of, 487
Non-Conformiam, 641
railways and demolition of housing, 647
Reform Act (1832), 492
standard of living, 699
theatre, 628, 629
working hours, chain-makers, 589
chimney sweeps, 596
coal mines, 584
eight-hour day, 696
fixed by statute, 234
industrial, 474, 475
nail-making, 589
prisons, 668
reduction in, 599, 698
at Whiteley’s emporium, 520
Working Men’s Associations, 494
World War, First (1914–18), aftermath, 695–8
casualties, 690–91
conscription, 691
drinking, 700–701
physical standard required for recruits, 691
prices and wages, 691
propaganda, 689–90
sexual morality, 701
social reform 693–5
soldiers and civilians, 708
volunteers, 689
women, 692–3
xenophobic riots, 690
World War, Second (1939–45), 707–10
evacuees, 698
writing materials, 618–19
xenophobia, 337, 690
Yarmouth, 299, 535
York, Castle gaol, 144
charity schools, 266
cinemas, 677
Defoe on, 302
girdlers’ guild, 99
mayor, 101, 606
miracle plays, 90, 91, 92
pageants, 89
population, 98, 233
poverty and destitution, 697
prosperity, 284
racing, 369
recusancy, 189
slum clearance, 676
Sydney Smith on, 311
theatre, 419
Author’s Note
I had originally intended to call this book Scenes of English Life. This title would have indicated the limits of its scope. It cannot pretend to be a work of original scholarship or even of synthesis. It is intended for the general reader. References to sources are given in the text but these are provided to give the reader the opportunity of turning to those works of scholars and experts on which I have relied – as well as to the literature which I have quoted – and as a means of acknowledging the debt which writers such as myself owe to the professional historian. I can at least claim that the book is the result of a lifetime’s reading and of thirty years of writing on historical subjects. Not all the reading for this book has been done by myself. And I am most grateful to the many friends who have read books for me and have taken extracts from them. I would like especially to thank Liz McLeod, Dawn Marriott, J. T.
Cooper, Godfrey Whitelock, Guy Hibbert and Thérèse Pollen. I am also most grateful to Janet Law, Alison Riley, Tessa Street, Nonie Rae and Margaret Lewendon; to my wife for having compiled the comprehensive index; to the staffs of the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the London Library and the Institute of Historical Research, to Richard Johnson, Deputy Editorial Director of Grafton Books, and Anne Charvet, Senior Editor; to my agent, Bruce Hunter; to Thomas C. Wallace of W. W. Norton & Co; and to Marianne Taylor and Katherine Everett who have helped me choose the illustrations.
Professor A. Goodwin and Donald Pennington, sometime Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, have been kind enough to read the manuscript and have given me much useful advice for the book’s improvement.
C.H.
A Note on Money
Sums have been given throughout in pre-decimal currency in which there were twelve pence (12d) to a shilling (1s) and twenty shillings to a pound (£1). When conversion took place shillings were abolished and there were henceforth to be one hundred pence (100p) to a pound. Because of the fluctuating rate of inflation and other reasons it is not really practicable to give modern real-worth equivalents of old monetary units. As a very rough guide it may be taken that in 1600–1610 prices were four to five times as high as they had been in 1500 and throughout the later Middle Ages. In 1700–1710 they were 5½ to 6½ times as high as in 1500. Wages rose much more slowly. Multiplying eighteenth-century sums by at least sixty will also give some rough guide. An income then of £300 ($420) a year might be said to have been worth at least £18,000 ($25,600) in 1986.
About the Author
Christopher Hibbert is a leading popular historian, author of many highly acclaimed books including The Destruction of Lord Raglan, which won the Heinemann Award for Literature in 1962; The Court at Windsor; London: The Biography of a City; The Dragon Wakes: China and the West 1793–1911; The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici; The Great Mutiny, and biographies of Charles Dickens, Dr Johnson and George IV. Sir John Plumb described him as ‘a writer of the highest ability’, and the New Statesman as ‘a pearl of biographers’.
Christopher Hibbert lives in Henley, Oxfordshire.
Copyright
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Published in Paladin Books 1988
First published in Great Britain by
Grafton Books 1987
Copyright © Christopher Hibbert 1987
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Ebook Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN 9780007438303
Extracts from Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales translated by Neville Coghill (Penguin Classics, 1951, revised edition 1958, 1960, 1975, 1977), copyright 1951 by Neville Coghill, copyright © the Estate of Neville Coghill, 1958, 1960, 1975, 1977. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
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