ABSTRACT
In the course of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the gathering pace of economic change placed English society under considerable strain. To historians blessed with the benefit of hindsight the period may well appear one of gradual transition, albeit scarred by a cluster of serious short-term crises, a necessary prologue to the stabler and more prosperous situation of the later seventeenth century. To contemporaries, however, who lacked such knowledge of what was to come, the situation was far more worrying. If they were only dimly aware of the underlying causes of economic and social change, they were acutely conscious of the more pathological symptoms of the process of change. It was they who struggled with the problems of widespread poverty and vagrancy, they who tried to come to terms with changes which threatened their conceptions of a stable and enduring social order. Little wonder, then, that to some of them it appeared that the very bonds of society were endangered. Governments, all too often helpless to avert crises over which they had no control, watched anxiously for signs of unrest among the common people. Magistrates observed with disquiet the multiplication of thefts within their jurisdictions and the boldness and impunity of offenders. Ministers filled their sermonsespecially those preached at assizes and quarter sessions-with vivid images of disorder, darkness, sickness and corruption. The times seemed out of joint.
