Margaret Spufford, ed., _The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520-1725_ (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), xx. 459 pp. No price given.
This fine book is the the product of a group of scholars, all of whom
are either former students of Research Professor Margaret Spufford of the
Roehampton Institute in London or much influenced by her writigns, the best
known of which was _Contrasting Communities_, published in 1974. Professor
Spufford contributes a better than 100 page essay, entitled "The Importance of
Religion in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" in England. Eight others
follow, with a critical conclusion by Patrick Collinson, Regius Professor of
History at the University of Cambridge. Such a richly textured and nuanced
work could only be done in a country where the level of historical interest
and sophistication is high, the scholars involved are known to and respected by
each other, and where there is a press like Cambridge's willing to devote major
resources to its publication. All involved richly deserve thanks and
congratulations.
Frankly revisionist, _The World of Rural Dissenters_ concentrates on some nine
communities located in the Chilterns in Buckhamingshire, refers to others in
Cambridgeshire and Hertforshire, and makes two main points. As Spufford
phrases it, "what we are faced with is a variety of puritan and sectarian
groups, formed of an infinite mix of different social and economic
compositions" (p. 4) and "the dissenters themselves were integrated into their
local communities in a way which we had not previously dreamt" (p. 37).
On the first, the authors demonstrate that religious convictions transcended
economic and social class, centering neither in the lower orders nor on the
upwardly mobile bourgeoisie--obviously not the latter, for the study looks at
rural areas. They probably did not intend to do so, but the stress given to
the fact that sectarian commitments sliced through class lines underscores the
uniqueness of each person's religious experience to answer that one's needs as
preceived by the individual. Since the authors seem unaware of this
implication, they make nothing of it, but it suggests that even a rigorous
examination of available sources--one of the basic strengths of the essays
herein--can not finally explain something as ineffable as why a person was
willing to associate with a dissenting group. In this sense, _The World of
Rural Dissenters_ ironically reminds readers of the limitations that a
scientific approach to the past has.
(Although Professor Collinson recognizes this point--on page 391 he admits,
somewhat reluctantly it seems, that "almost anyone could be a dissenter"--but
he fails to wrestle with the clear implication that the intense individual
reasons behind religious convictions cannot be quantified and totally ex-
plained. Perhaps the gap opened by studies like this collection means that
religious history will gain even more sophistication, one readily embracing
techniques of the scientific approach but seeing people's religious
experiences on their own terms.)
On their second point, the author take careful aim at the notion that
dissenters were outsiders in their communities. Instead Derek Plumb
emphasizes in his study of the Lollards in the Chilterns and Christopher Marsh
in his very creative look at the Familists of Balsham that dissenters included
substantial persons in the community. Indeed, Eric Carlson, in his essay on
churchwardens--one somewhat less connected to the book's theme than the
others--shows that Lollards practically monopolized the office in Steeple
Bumstead. While this oddity might be explained by the tendency of Lollards to
dissemble so as to remain in the established church, but what of those
Familists who were churchwardens in Balsham in the late sixteenth century? It
is clear that English religious life at the parish level was a complicated and
convoluted reality, one not easily controlled from a center, be it Canterbury
or a regional see.
Casting his net somewhat farther afield, to the shires of Bedford, Buckingham,
Cambridge, Hertford, and Huntingdon, Bill Stevenson shows that after the
Restoration Quakers and Baptists in these counties served in a variety of
parish offices, especially as constables. His findings take specific
exception to the assertions of Christopher Hill that dissident Protestants
broke sharply with traditional community life. Still a doubt nags, for the
evidence Steveson adduces concerns a later period than the one when Quaker and
Baptist dissenters first entruded themselves on placid parishes; local disgust
with sectarian tactics, such as disrupting church services and even going naked
through the streets, may have had time, in other words, to die down. More
research is needed to tease out exactly how long harsh first reactions to, say,
Quakers' confrontational tactics lingered.
Subordinate questions spin off these two broader themes like cheap pamphlets
from a peddler of dissident literature in a seventeenth century's crowded
marketplace. Spufford desires to emphasize the broad interest that religious
questions possessed for average people, and she gainsays Keith Thomas and Eamon
Duffy in their view that the lower orders go along without religion. And she
sent Tessa Watt off to peep into the peddler's pack and reveal something of the
wide array of cheap publications he carried; Michael Frearson then stressess
that dissenters in Buckinghamshire were not isolated and provincial but tied
into a national road network. Professor Spufford sums up with the remarkable
Sister Sneesby, a deaf, Baptist widow and day laborer in Over, Cambridgeshire,
who was convinced of Quakerism by READING their writing--whether distributed by
peddlers we never learn.
Collinson has a fine time with some of the implications here. On the fact of
centuries-long carryover of surnames in the Chiltern Hills, discovered by Nesta
Evans and expanded by Peter Spufford to deal with mobility in much of England,
Collinson inquires, "If religious convictions are inherited, . . . can we say
that they remain convictions" (p.391)? Professor Spufford does not respond
directly but gulps to entertain the possibility that one's theology may be
genetically inherited (n. 75, p.23).
This is an excellent book, densely researched, congently presented, yet quite
readable and informative. Any student dealing with the social background of
religion in early modern England will have to come to terms with it. And we
will all know more when they do.
H. Larry Ingle University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
Department of History Chattanooga, Tennessee, 37403
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