Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland. .

Michael J. Braddick and John Walter, eds. Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. x + 316 pp. $59.95. index. ISBN: 0-521-65163-8.

For the last decade social control has been one of the topics of greatest interest to historians of early modem England. Led by such scholars as Keith Wrightson and James Scoff, they have gone beyond the mere description of class structure and attempted to analyze the relationships between dominant and subordinate groups--the role of hierarchies and the use of power. An example of the desire to write "history from below," these studies focus on the position of the disadvantaged in seventeenth--century society.

The present volume consists often essays. Most of them are by young scholars, although some writers (including John Walter and Martin Ingram) have established reputations. As might be expected, most hold academic positions in England, although some teach elsewhere (Dan Beaver at Penn State, Raymond Gillespie at Maynooth, Ireland). The best-known writer, Peter Lake, straddles the Atlantic, having migrated from England to Princeton some years ago.

The editors have provided a full introduction, explaining the concerns that hold the book together and summarizing the conclusions of the individual contributions. The chapters fall into several categories. First there are two which deal with specific social issues, the problems of illegitimacy and child abuse. Laura Gowing writes movingly about the plight of pregnant women driven from one village to another as their neighbors attempted to avoid the charges of maintaining an illegitimate child born within their parish boundaries, while Ingram shows that charges of sexual abuse involved mainly girls, not boys, and focused on young children between the ages of five and nine. Several chapters explore more general topics. Faramerz Dabhoiwala finds that charges of improper sexual relations were more and more often handled by professional law enforcement officers. Steve Hindle, a rising star in this field, adds to his earlier work on questions of power between unequal social groups, showing that the poor increasin gly viewed outdoor relief as their statutory legal right and became involved in local power politics to assert their claim. One of the editors, John Walter, studies what he calls "public transcripts"--statements of the actual relations between classes, including speeches by the monarchs asserting that the poor were under their special care. The other, Michael Braddick, examines the actions of administrative officers, showing that they were sensitive of their "self-presentation" and aware of the continual restraint exercised by social groups of various sorts. Raymond Gillespie deals with some of the same issues as they appeared in Ireland and analyzes the special problems created by the three-way relationship between the government, the natives, and the English colonists.

The remaining chapters can be regarded as case studies. Dan Beaver looks at the hunt in Stowe as an example of class interests with members of the prominent Temple family regarding their park as part of their "calculus of honor" while local farmers pulled down pales to protest the invasion of their lands. Peter Lake writes about the Puritan preacher Stephen Denison and shows that he was a complex individual, hard to label as either moderate or Puritan. Finally, Justin Champion and his student Lee McNulty collaborate in a study of the writings of Edmund Hickeringill, a late seventeenth-century Anglican rector whose radical challenges to the established authority led him to a number of trials in the church courts. Hickeringill, they show, was a more complex character than earlier accounts recognize; his life illustrates the troubled relationship between theological orthodoxy and ecclesiastical conformity.

These studies are not easy reading. Most deal with concepts rather than narratives. Where there are narrative accounts they concern minor figures and are illustrative of larger issues rather than being important in themselves. Sources are varied but come mainly from local record offices (or, perhaps surprisingly, the

Huntington Library in California) rather than national archives. Like much current historiography, everything verges on being sociology rather than history. The persistent reader will find a few amusing episodes, the most notable describing a boy pissing off a church tower on the heads of men below, and will gain a greater appreciation of seventeenth-century social interactions.