These studies explore focal points in the transformation of English society and culture as it occurred in one English region between 1500 and 1800. The transformation began with the rise of industries in the countryside, a phenomenon which gradually restructured English society. The everyday lives of individuals, households, neighbourhoods, communities and classes were transformed. The pace of life was altered, and interconnections multiplied, horizons expanded and orientations changed. Experiences varied from place to place and person to person, the process was uneven, but however we describe it there was a massive aggregate effect which has shaped the everyday forms and expectations of all societies, everywhere in the world. The world is what it is

today because of what happened in the most dynamic parts of the world in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Gloucestershire was one of those parts.