'The surviving notebooks of eighteenth century magistrates can be used by historians to investigate the extent to which customary culture was constrained and regulated by law. Wood-gathering may have been essential to the economy of the rural poor, but it remained theft in the eyes of the law. Carl Griffin opens the notebook of William Hunt of West Lavington in Wiltshire and finds that it was a crime that kept the magistrate peculiarly busy'.
Tag: landowners
Sir Richard Berkeley: An Elizabethan Career
'Sir Richard Berkeley, a harasser of smugglers at home and a schemer at court, was arguably one of the most politically astute landowners of the Elizabethan age. Here, Tony Nott profiles the complex political and diplomatic career of the first builder of Stoke House.