Welsh Journals

A GENERAL VIEW OF THE RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND, 1538-1840. By Ann Kussmaul. Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp. 216. £ 12.95. At first sight, marriage records might seem a less than promising source for the study of agrarian change over a lengthy time-scale. The fact remains, however, that more English marriage registers survive for more parishes over a longer period than any direct economic indicators, so providing, for the early modern period at least, a valuable quantitative source over time and space. In her subtle, elegant, and above all, ingenious study Dr. Kussmaul has analysed 542 Anglican marriage registers (approaching 5.4 per cent of English parishes) in an attempt to trace patterns of change in agricultural and rural industrial activity for the early modern period until the mid- nineteenth century. Traditionally, however profound and urgent Jack's passion for Jill, its consummation (officially at least) had to await a convenient hiatus in the annual work cycle, so that in arable areas marriages tended to cluster in the autumn post-harvest period while in pastoral districts people were inclined to marry in the spring or early summer months once calving and lambing had been completed. Moreover, while Jill and her women friends may well have worked in a variety of occupations, including straw-plaiting, lace-making and spinning, it was the essential seasonality of relatively highly paid male agricultural work which was the dominant influence on the timing of marriage. In her review of the marriage registers, which is always characterized by a scrupulously careful and critical approach to the source, Kussmaul shows how marriage seasons shifted over time in a manner closely reflecting changing conditions of husbandry. Thus, the conversion of large areas of the Midlands from alternate husbandry in the early seventeenth century to permanent grassland later in that century was paralleled by a swing from autumn to spring marriages. In highlighting the ferment of economic change in the seventeenth century, with the growth of regional specialization, development of rural industry and inter-regional migration, Kussmaul confirms the generally accepted view of the period articulated by a number of other authors. Although inter-regional trade in specialized products doubtless existed previously, no substantial area of the country had been so free of grain production as not to be dominated by the seasonality of its husbandry. In the seventeenth century, however, improvements in road, river, and coastal transport identified by John Chartres among others, together with falls in the price of grain relative to most pastoral products allowed farmers at last to exploit the law of comparative advantage and to rethink their strategies and choices. As aggregate population growth declined and real wages increased, consumption patterns moved away from grain products and the traditional mould of ubiquitous grain production was broken. Concurrently, according to Kussmaul's evidence of marriage seasonality, the predominance of household subsistence and autonomous local markets had begun to wane so that by the beginning of the eighteenth century a well-established pattern of regional specialization was in place and as expertise within these specializations developed, a platform was created for the successful adoption of new techniques in the decades ahead.