Abstract
‘Neighbourhood’ was a key concept in early modern England. Most people lived their entire lives in small communities, where human interaction took place first and foremost among neighbours. When people moved away — as they often did in their youth or later in life — they were only likely to find themselves once more living in local communities, surrounded by new yet structurally similar sets of neighbours and neighbourly relationships. Indeed, neighbourliness was a crucial norm.1 Neighbours were to live in peace and avoid conflict and strife. Clergymen were to extol among their neighbours and parishioners ‘charity in loving walking and neighbourly accompanying one another, with reconciling of differences’.2 In the Elizabethan parish of Swallowfield, Berkshire, neighbours even got together to draw articles which were to guide them in living ‘in good love & lykinge one another’. They promised ‘th[a]t non of us shall disdayne one another, nor seeke to hynder one another nether by woordes nor deedes, But rather to be helpers, assisters & councellors of one another, And all o[u]r doyinges to be good, honest, lovynge and iuste’.3 Neighbours joined by love were thus depicted like a strong bundle of sticks which cannot be broken if bound together fast.4
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
K. Wrightson, ‘The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England’, in P. Griffiths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (eds), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 10–46, on p. 18.
The English Works of George Herbert, ed. G.H. Palmer I (Boston and New York, 1915), p. 316, quoted in J. Bossy, ‘Blood and Baptism: Kinship, Community and Christianity in Western Europe from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries’, in D. Baker (ed.), Sanctity and Secularity: The Church and the World, The Ecclesiastical History Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973), pp. 129–43, on p. 143.
See also K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Belief in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991; first pub. 1971), pp. 182–3.
‘The Swallowfield articles’, 4 and 7, in S. Hindle, ‘Hierarchy and Community in the Elizabethan Parish: The Swallowfield Articles of 1596’, Historical Journal, 42 (1999), 835–51, on p. 849. Swallowfield contained four manors. From 1845, the entire parish was brought under the jurisdiction of the county of Berkshire ibid. pp. 837–8.
I. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 84; Wrightson, ‘Politics of the Parish’, p. 18.
See e.g. Muldrew’s emphasis on ‘the culture of reconciliation’: C. Muldrew, ‘The Culture of Reconciliation: Community and the Settlement of Economic Disputes in Early Modern England’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), 915–42,
and compare e.g. Hindle’s emphasis on polarisation and strife in S. Hindle, ‘A Sense of Place? Becoming and Belonging in the Rural Parish, 1550–1650’, in A. Shepard and P. Withington (eds), Communities in Early Modem England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 96–113;
S. Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, 1550–1640 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 56–8, 94–6. See also references in these works to earlier discussions, and further discussion below.
J. Bossy, ‘Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments’, in E. Leites (ed.), Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 215–34, and references there. As Bossy argues (and also discussed further below), some shift towards the Decalogue was evident in the fifteenth century. This developed greatly with the Reformation. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the importance of the Decalogue was also emphasised in Catholic teaching associated with the Counter Reformation.
See also I. Green, The Christian’s ABC: Catechisms and Catechising in England c. 1530–1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), ch. 10.
The commandments of Leviticus 19 relate to the Decalogue: M. Weinfeld, The Decalogue and the Recitation of ‘Shema’: The Development of the Confession (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2001), pp. 21–5.
Weinfeld, The Decalogue and the Recitation of ‘Shema’ p. 90. In other words, re‘a refers to persons with whom one is — or should be — bound in a relationship of well-wishing and amity. Such relationships are imagined as taking place in time and space, but the word re‘a contains no specification as to the type of space. I include here the by-forms mere‘a and re‘eh and feminine and plural forms. See also E. Jenni and C. Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. 3 (Peabody Mass.: Hendrickson, 1997), pp. 1243–6. The Hebrew transliteration in this chapter follows the modern pronunciation.
See philos and plesion in F.W. Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1957); Greek Lexicon of the Septuagint, compiled by L. Just, E. Eynikel and K. Huspie (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgeselleschaft, 1992–6). I am also particularly grateful to Professor Emmanuel Tov of the Hebrew University for his generous assistance in clarifying this matter.
A. Hudson, ‘Wyclif and the English Language’, in A. Kenny (ed.), Wyclif in His Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 90.
‘Versions, English’, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6: 818. Those include the major translations. For a more detailed computation, see W.J. Chamberlin, Catalogue of English Bible Translations (New York, Westport, Ct. and London: Greenwood Press, 1991).
See ‘neighbour’ in Coverdale’s Proverbs 6:3, ‘neighbour’ and ‘friend’ and ‘friend’ and ‘neighbour’ in the Wycliffite Bible, Geneva Bible, and the Rheims-Douay version, and ‘friend’ only in the Authorized Version. Note also that ‘friend’ was used at the time as a kinship term, and see also N. Tadmor, ‘“Family” and “Friend” in Pamela: A Case Study in the History of the Family in Eighteenth-Century England’, Social History, 14 (1989), 289–306;
N. Tadmor ‘The Concept of the Household-Family in Eighteenth-Century England’, Past and Present, 151 (1996), 110–40;
N. Tadmor, Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England: Household, Kinship, and Patronage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), especially chapter 4 on the language of kinship and chapters 5–7 on friendship, kinship, and social networks.
Estimates are that 80 per cent of the Authorized Version is due to Tyndale: Anchor Bible Dictionary, ‘Versions, English’, 6: 820. See also E.W. Cleaveland, A Study of Tyndale’s Genesis Compared with the Genesis of Coverdale and of the Authorized Version (Hamden Conn: Archon Books, 1912). Tyndale published translations of the New Testament, the Pentateuch, and Jonah, and completed drafts from Joshua to II Chronicles, before he was strangled and burned at the stake.
These unpublished manuscripts were probably used in Matthew’s Bible, see Tyndale’s Old Testament: Being the Pentateuch of 1530, Joshna to II Chronicles of 1537, and Jonah, ed. D. Daniell (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), p. ix.
See, e.g. M. Ingram, ‘Communities and Courts: Law and Disorder in Early Seventeenth-Century Wiltshire’, in J.S. Cockburn (ed.), Crime in England, 1500–1800 (London: Methuen, 1977), pp. 110–34, on p. 134: ‘the existence of a large and growing number of poor imposed a strain on ideals of neighbourliness’
At the same time, old norms of hospitality declined: F. Heal, Hospitality in Early Modem England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
In Elizabethan Buckinghamshire, for example, over 80 per cent of witnesses appearing before the church courts had moved at least once in their lives. In Sussex Weald and Kent 1580–1649 the comparable figures are 77 per cent, and for Suffolk and Norfolk 82 per cent. The population of entire parishes could undergo significant changes: in some places, about half the population could change in the course of a period of 12 years: P. Clark and D. Souden, Migration and Society in Early Modem England (Totowa, NJ, 1988), pp. 22, 28, 124, 229.
Migration was highly noticeable in urban communities: ‘almost certainly the majority of inhabitants in any provincial town had not been born there’: P. Clark, ‘Introduction: English Country Towns 1500–1800’, in P. Clark (ed.), County Towns in Pre-Industrial England (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1981), pp. 1–44, on p. 4.
Towns also suffered from pauper migration. For problems related to migration, see also e.g. P. Slack, ‘Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1598–1668’, Economic History Review, 27 (1974), 360–79;
A.L. Beier, Masterless Men: Vagrants in England 1560–1640 (London: Methuen, 1985). See also Tadmor, Family and Friends, pp. 108–9, 113–14, and notes.
K. Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680 (London and New York: Routledge, 2003; first pub. 1982);
K. Wrightson, Earthly Necessities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
For local studies, see e.g. K. Wrightson and D. Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling 1525–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); first pub. 1979;
D. Levine and K. Wrightson, The Making of an Industrial Society, Whickham 1560–1765 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991);
M. Spufford, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974);
G. Nair, Highley: The Development of a Community 1550–1880 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988).
See Wrightson, English Society, pp. 59–65, 163–7. This is seen especially with regard to litigation. See e.g. Ingram, ‘Communities and Courts’; M. Clanchy, ‘Law and Love in the Middle Ages’, in J. Bossy (ed.), Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 47–67; J. Sharpe, ‘Such Disagreement Betwyx Neighbours: Litigation and Human Relations in Early Modern England’, in ibid., pp. 167–87; Muldrew, ‘The Culture of Reconciliation’. As Hindle argues, however, ideals of neighbourliness were also enforced by public authority and should be seen in the context of power relations: Hindle, The State and Social Change, pp. 94–5.
M. Bradick, State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), esp. p. 14.
John Clare, The Parish: A Satire, ed. E. Robinson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), p. 63.
For the parish state and John Clare, see D. Eastwood, Government and Community in the English Provinces, 1700–1870 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), p. 47;
S. Hindle, ‘Power, Poor Relief, and Social Relations in Holland Fen’, Historical Journal, 41 (1998), 67–96, on pp. 94–6;
K.D.M. Snell, ‘The Culture of Local Xenophobia’, Social History, 28 (2003), 1–30.
See E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 7, 54; see also references in ibid., p. 56 to Ordynarye of Crysten Men (1502) and Floure of the Commandments (1510). For the figures on catechisms, 1530–1740, see Green, The Christian’s ABC, p. 51, and Appendix 1.
See also I.K. Ben Amos, ‘Good Works and Social Ties: Helping the Migrant Poor in Early Modern England’, in M.C. McClendon, J.P. Ward and M. MacDonald (eds), Protestant Identities: Religion, Society and Self-fashioning in Post Reformation England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 139–40.
For this notion in medieval times, see Clanchy, ‘Law and Love’; Sharpe, ‘Such Disagreement Betwyx Neighbours’, esp. pp. 178–80; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, esp. ch. 3; M. Rubin, Corpus Christi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). See also evidence on the continued importance of the Lord’s Supper in Protestant and indeed Puritan rituals in A. Hunt, ‘The Lord’s Supper in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 161 (1998), 39–83;
C. Haigh, ‘Communion and Community: Exclusion from Communion in Post-Reformation England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 51 (2000), 699–720.
See also A. Bray, The Friend (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), esp. the section ‘Friendship and Traditional Religion’, pp. 84–104.
J. Aubrey, Three Prose Works, ed. J. Buchanan Brown (Fontwell: Centaur Press, 1972), pp. 141–2, quoted and discussed with additional references in A. Hunt, ‘The Lord’s Supper in Early Modern England’, p. 71.
Leake, Four Sermons, quoted by P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 214, and in Hunt, ‘The Lord’s Supper’ p. 71
Wrightson, ‘Two Concepts of Order: Justice, Constables and Jurymen in Seventeenth-Century England’, in J. Brewer and J. Styles (eds), An Ungovernable People: The English and their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Hutchinson, 1980), pp. 25–46, on p. 25.
In the early seventeenth century suites for slander were increasing in all courts. The ecclesiastical courts dealt with sexual slander, however, because it imputed spiritual rather than sexual sin, and the penance and apology imposed as punishment by the ecclesiastical courts were seen as more suitable for dealing with slander and defamation than the financial compensations of the common law: see Sharpe, ‘Such Disagreement Betwyx Neighbours’, p. 179; L. Gowing, ‘Language, Power and the Law’, in J. Kermode and G. Walker (eds), Women, Crime, and the Court (London: UCL Press, 1994), p. 27.
Quoted in S. Hindle, On the Parish? The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England, c. 1550–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ch. 5: ‘Exclusion’. I am grateful to Steve Hindle for directing me to this quotation and letting me use his unpublished text.
See e.g. references in works by Ingram, Sharpe, Archer, and Muldrew mentioned above. See also Wrightson, ‘Two Concepts of Order’. A strong emphasis on notions of neighbourliness and social consensus in early modern attitudes to criminality can be found, for example, in C. Herrup, ‘Law and Morality in Seventeenth-Century England’, Past and Present, 106 (1985), 102–23, and in
C. Herrup, Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). See the analysis of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ approaches to neighbourliness with particular reference to charity and violence: Hindle, The State and Social Change, pp. 56–8. 94–6.
A. Macfarlane, Reconstructing Historical Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977);
R.M. Smith, ‘“Modernisation” and the Corporate Medieval Village Community in England: Some Sceptical Reflections’, in A.R.H. Baker and D. Gregory (eds), Explorations in Historical Geography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 140–79. For some similar issues in the context of the history of kinship and the family, see Tadmor, Family and Friends, e.g. pp. 7–9, 107–8.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2005 Naomi Tadmor
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tadmor, N. (2005). Friends and Neighbours in Early Modern England: Biblical Translations and Social Norms. In: Gowing, L., Hunter, M., Rubin, M. (eds) Love, Friendship and Faith in Europe, 1300–1800. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524330_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524330_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-54276-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-52433-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)