Churchwardens' Accounts of Cratfield, 1640-1660: 42 (Suffolk Records Society) - Tapa dura

An especially full and clear view of the community during an important period of wider social, religious and political crisis. AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW Fascinating reading... will be immensely useful not only to local historians, but also to economic and social historians of the seventeenth century. SIAH NEWSLETTER [Nesta Evans]

The rare set of churchwardens' accounts edited here offers a detailed view of life in an East Anglian village during the English civil wars. Their survival is unusual in a time which is considered by many to have experienced a wide-spread breakdown of local government, and they reveal many aspects of early modern life: of particular interest are the costs of war in a village which committed both men and money to Parliament's cause. The introduction recreates the demographic, economic and social structure of early modern Cratfield, and the volume is completed with a number of appendices, including short biographies of those named in the accounts.
LYNN A. BOTELHO is in the Department of History at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.