Navigation, Trade, and Consumption in Seventeenth Century Oxfordshire

Navigation, Trade, and Consumption in Seventeenth Century Oxfordshire By Joseph O’Connell A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved November 2012 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Retha Warnicke, Chair Richard Burg Kent Wright ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY December 2013 ABSTRACT “Navigation, Trade, and Consumption in Seventeenth Century Oxfordshire” investigates how the inhabitants of Oxfordshire transitioned from an agricultural to a consumer community during the Jacobean and post- Restoration eras. In agrarian England, this reconfigured landscape was most clearly embodied in the struggle over the enclosure of common land. Focusing on the yeoman’s understanding of the fiscal benefits of enclosure and land acquisition, I argue that the growth in grain markets within Oxfordshire led to a newfound prosperity, which was most clearly articulated in the yeoman’s rise as a viable and discernible luxury goods consumer. Accordingly, my project draws attention to the yeoman’s relevance and leadership in this role, which not only observes their elevation and advancement within the English class structure, but it also views the expansion of luxury consumption and the impact of the developing market economy on the English rural household. By juxtaposing probate documents, inventories, pamphlets, and diaries from the market towns of Burford, Chipping Norton, and Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, this study examines the process by which these late sixteenth and early seventeenth century communities began to embrace the consumption of luxury goods, and, most importantly, purely market-based understanding of agrarian life. i Note The year has been taken as beginning on 1 January and a double year is used (ex: 1660/61) in the text where appropriate. In quotations from documents, the original spelling has been retained except for the following modifications. The initial letters of proper names have, where necessary, been altered to capitals; the early modern upper case “F” or ‘ff’ has been rendered as a capital only where modern usage deems necessary. Lastly, punctuation has been inserted in places to assist the reader. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………………………v LIST OF CHARTS………………………………………………………………………………………v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION………………………………………...………………………1 Statement of Purpose…………………………………………………………2 Scope……………………………………………………………….……………...10 2 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW…………………………………………………..60 Henley-on-Thames……………………………………………….………….61 Chipping Norton………………………………………….…..……………….66 Burford……………………………………………………………………………77 3 SIGNIFICANCE OF GRAIN MARKETS…………………...…………….88 River Transportation…………………………………………..…………...93 Navigation and Improvements………………………………………..102 Increase in Trade…………………………………………………………...112 4 THE EVIDENCE OF WEALTH…………………………………………..125 Architecture………………………………………………..……….………...132 Contents of Interior……………………………………………..………...159 5 ASSESSMENT OF LUXURY GOODS……………………..……..……..164 Early Modern Debates………………………………………………..…..166 Evidence of Internal Wealth………………………………………..….174 China………………………………………………………………….…………180 iii Books…………………………………………………………………………....187 Silver and Pewter…………………………………………………………..189 Linen and New Draperies……………………………………………….193 Beds and Bedding………………………………………………….……….202 Wearing Apparel………………………………………………….………...216 6 OWNERSHIP AND DISSEMINATION Furniture………………………………………………………………………225 Pictures, Painting, Portraiture and Wall Coverings……….....251 Tea and Tobacco……………………………………………………………258 Shopping………………………………………………………….……………262 CONCLUSION………………………………………………….……………..267 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………….......277 iv LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Table Page 1. Oxfordshire Population 1676………………………………..………….22 2. Wealth Tables..……………………………………………………….130-131 3. Rooms………………………………………………………...…...….….146-149 4. Luxury Charts………………………………..……………………..…178-179 5. Bedding…………………………………….....................................….206-209 6. Cupboards……………………………………....................................235-236 7. Chests and Drawers…………………………………………………237-238 v The future is dark, the present burdensome; only the past, dead and finished, bears contemplation. Geoffrey Elton Introduction This work is an effort to identify one area of change in seventeenth- century English society—namely the growth in yeoman wealth—brought on by agricultural development. This newfound prosperity gave people—for the first time—disposable income, which ultimately contributed to the emergence of a viable and discernible group: luxury good consumers. The yeomanry (prosperous farmers situated below the nobility and gentry) thrived in the late seventeenth-century due to the international and domestic demand for food. Access to more arable land over the period from 1550 to 1660, coupled with agricultural innovations after 1660, made the yeoman an important supplier of grain to both the domestic and foreign markets. Moreover, this “yeoman wealth” phenomenon gradually eroded some of the traditional ideas of English social hierarchy by creating the possibility of economic and social mobility. Although the yeomen were essentially agriculturalists, their wealth exceeded some of the lesser gentry and their consumption drove the demand for luxury items. Accordingly, a substantial display of material goods can be observed in their homes, wardrobe, and furnishings. 1 In an attempt to measure the impact of trade in rural counties, my research concentrates on, but is not restricted to, analyzing the behavior of the yeomen in the Oxfordshire towns of Burford, Chipping Norton, and Henley-on-Thames. The consumer behavior that surfaced in the aforementioned villages of the Chiltern and Cotswold Hills placed the yeomanry at the nexus of the consumer revolution. Their fortunes were also based on the result of a perfect mix of ingredients: their position in an evolving, fluid social structure, their close proximity to domestic and foreign trade routes, English land organization, the timely introduction of agrarian innovations and river reclamation schemes, and the development of institutions and infrastructure that helped facilitate social emulation and consumer spending. In an effort to understand these trends, it is first necessary to view the social structure and stratification of the early modern era. English society during the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries was preoccupied with social order. Village society was stratified and hierarchy was a fundamental fact of life. 1 Sumptuary laws 2 were promulgated over centuries in an effort to reinforce order and distinguish status. Although the English social hierarchy of rank and status appeared rigid and relatively unchanging, there was a certain amount of upward mobility. Social commentators have identified 1 Keith Writghtson and David Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village, Terling, 1525- 1700 (London: The Academic Press, 1979), 174. 2 Medieval and early modern laws governing dress and the restrictions on the use of certain materials and fabrics to the nobility. 2 ways in which the nobility and gentry expressed their dominant social position: social customs, economic fortune, and the notion of fashion. However, the fixed hierarchy was soon to be made more fluid by the growth of the “middling sort”—a social category routinely used to describe the tradesmen, manufacturers and yeomen who occupied the middle status of wealth and power in the later seventeenth century, and found the possession of wealth (due to changing fortunes in agriculture) as the key to social mobility. Historian P. Borsay argues that by the early eighteenth century, this prosperous middling sort may have been increasingly visible as a distinct social group in provincial centers such as Bristol and Norwich, East Anglia, growing manufacturing hubs and port cities such as Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham, and possibly in the larger county and resort towns, notably York and Bath. 3 Thus, the growing wealth of the middling sort, as historians Neil McKendrick and John Brewer claim, gave birth to a consumer society. 4 Yet, the most important question remains: is there evidence that the yeomanry belonged to this new “social group” of consumers and were they now obsessed with conspicuous luxury and overt displays of wealth in the decades preceding the Industrial Revolution? This question is essential to understanding English consumerism, particularly in rural areas, since the question of emerging rural consumerism 3 P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, c.1660-1760 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 9. 4 Consumption and the World of Goods, John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds. (London: Routledge, 1993), 2. 3 has been only partially answered by historians. Yeomen inhabited an important place in the social and economic history of England; however, their impact on the growth of consumerism in the seventeenth century has seldom been studied. The traditional focus of early modern historians has been to analyze the disintegration of cultural and religious traditions while using the effects of the Reformation and the Civil War as a convenient backdrop. As Linda Levy Peck claims in her work on luxury good consumption, “The story of seventeenth-century England is often told as a tale of the unique triumph of Protestantism, parliamentary sovereignty, and law over absolute monarchy and Counter-Reformation Catholicism through civil war and glorious revolution.” 5 This is particularly true of the area under study, since the

Load more