ABSTRACT
In the third quarter of the twentieth century a number of historians argued for the concept of a ‘county community’, which they saw as dominating the local world and local outlooks in early modern, but especially early Stuart, England. Time and again, work has found that, far from London and at nonelite as well as elite levels, the people of early Stuart England were actively interested in and informed about events at the centre and about the policies being pursued by central government. The great outcry against patentees came in the 1621 parliament, but tension between the government and the localities had been mounting since the 1590s, under the twin pressures of war and inflation. There was no significant change in attitudes towards the poor. Like poverty and the poor, John witchcraft and the activities of supposed witches were present not just in the early Stuart or the early modern period but throughout much of English history.
