Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England

This book explores servants in husbandry and considers the wider historiographical implications.

Ann Kussmaul (Author)

9780521071598, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 August 2008

248 pages
22.5 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.52 kg

Servants in husbandry were unmarried farm workers hired on annual contracts. The institution of service distinguished them in many ways from their chief competitors, day-labourers. Servants were employed on an annual basis; they formed part of their employers' households; they were generally young and unmarried. Service was extremely common - most rural youths in early modern England became servants to farmers, and they composed as much as half of the full-time hired labour force in agriculture. Professor Kussmaul has marshalled information from sources as diverse as marriage registers, militia lists, parish censuses, settlement examinations, account books, records of Quarter Sessions, and the autobiographies of servants and masters, in producing this book which explores this important institution and to consider its wide historiographical implications.

Part I. Servants and labourers: 1. Servants: the problems
2. Incidence and understanding
Part II. Form and practice: 3. Life and work
4. Hiring and mobility
5. Entry into and exit from service
Part III. Change: 6. Cycles: 1540–1790
7. Extinction.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]