The Middling Sort in Eighteenth-Century Colchester: Independence, Social Relations and the Community Broker

Abstract

The urban middling sort are increasingly being identified by historians as a group with an identity and interests of their own in eighteenth-century English society. They proliferated and benefited from economic and social change and were a vocal component of out-of-doors political processes. This chapter will outline an hypothesis that links the business and household patterns of the middling sort, in an eighteenth-century provincial town, with a model of social relations and ideas reflecting their participation in the public and political sphere.¹