TROUBLE WITH GYPSIES IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

AbstractThis article explores the social, legal, and administrative response in Tudor and early Stuart England to people known in law as ‘Egyptians’ or ‘counterfeit Egyptians’ but commonly called ‘Gypsies’. It argues that such people differed from ordinary poor vagrants in their heritage, their language, and such activities as horse dealing and fortune-telling. Elizabethan and Jacobean publications placed Gypsies on the fringes of fecklessness, criminality, and the picaresque, and established a stereotype of deceit and imposture that has not yet disappeared. Acts of Parliament in 1531, 1554, and 1563 criminalized ‘Egyptians’, forbidding their entry, ordering their expulsion, and eventually making them liable to the death penalty. Enforcement, however, was haphazard, and repression co-existed uneasily with growing registers of tolerance. This is a neglected topic in early modern social history, with links to international and interdisciplinary Romani studies as well as work on itinerancy, ethnicity, and marginality.

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Going Local: The Social History of Stuart and Hanoverian England - Crime in Seventeenth-Century England: A County Study. By J. A. Sharpe. London: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. vii + 289. $49.50. - Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England. By Ann Kussmaul. London: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Pp. xii + 229. $32.50. - Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900. By K. D. M. Snell. London: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp. 472. $49.50.

Journal of British Studies ◽

10.1086/385835 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 273-281

Author(s):

Norma Landau

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Social Change ◽

Early Modern ◽

Social History ◽

Early Modern England ◽

Cambridge University ◽

The Social ◽

History Of

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Domestic Homicide in early modern England

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x00008013 ◽

1981 ◽

Vol 24 (1) ◽

pp. 29-48 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

J. A. Sharpe

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Social History ◽

Family Life ◽

Early Modern England ◽

Sexual Practices ◽

Economic Role ◽

The Past ◽

The Social ◽

The Family

One of the most striking features of recent writing on early modern social history has been the emergence of the family as a subject of central concern. As befits an historical area being subjected to new scrutiny, much of this concern has expressed itself in the form of specialized, and often narrowly-focused articles or essays.1 To these have been added a number of more general works intended to examine the broader developments in and implications of family life in the past.2 Several themes within family history have already received considerable attention: the structure of the family, for example, a topic already rendered familiar by earlier work on historical demography; the concomitant topic of sexual practices and attitudes; and the economic role of the family, especially in its capacity as a unit of production. These are, of course, important matters, and the research carried out on them has revealed much of interest and consequence to the social historian; this should not, however, obscure the existence of a number of other significant dimensions of family life in the past which await thorough investigation.

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Introduction

Learning Languages in Early Modern England ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198837909.003.0006 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 1-13

Author(s):

John Gallagher

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Language Learning ◽

Social History ◽

Language Learners ◽

Early Modern England ◽

Urban Life ◽

English Speakers ◽

English History ◽

The Social ◽

History Of

The introduction argues for the importance of language-learning and multilingualism in the history of early modern England. English-speakers who ventured beyond Dover could not rely on English and had to become language-learners, while even at home English urban life was often multilingual. It brings together early modern concepts of linguistic ability with approaches from sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and the social history of language in order to show how we can think about linguistic competence in a historical perspective. It demonstrates the importance of ‘questions of language’ to the social, cultural, religious, and political histories of early modern England, and to the question of England’s place in a rapidly expanding world. After an overview of the book’s structure, aims, and parameters, it closes by asking how taking a polyglot perspective might shift our understandings of early modern English history.

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