Social relations in the Kentish Weald : a computer aided historical study

This is an historical ethnography undertaken with the aid of computer methods. It focuses on Biddenden, a rural parish in the Weald of Kent, an area of wood-pasture fanning and of declining rural manufacture during the period of study, 1566-1660. The theme is the reproduction of social relations, in particular those of inequality. The sources employed ranged from the highly structured parish registers to narrative accounts in court records. To deal adequately with this a variety of computing methods involving both existing tools and purpose written programs were used. The computer methods have relevance beyond this specific application, to more conventional ethnographic studies. Death and marriage are examined, focusing on the fragmentation and the creation of relationships. Honour ranking is found in the Weald but, unlike southern Europe, women were evaluated more as wives than as daughters. Affinal relations were import, especially among the elite, but were not closer than those with siblings. The nature of migration to and from Biddenden is also examined and draws attention to themes rarely studied in anthropology.

The parish was controlled by a limited group consisting of wealthier adult men. This elective hegemony was able to use the evaluation of reputation within an ideology of household order to maintain its power. During the years of prosperity they displayed greater competition with one another in the context of limited social mobility. Cloth making allowed greater expansion than the land itself would permit. As decline set in there was a move from partible transmission of land to unequal forms, increased outmigration and greater social differentiation. The wealthier became more secure, while small farmers, who had relied on income from work in cloth making, faced greater uncertainty. The honour of the wealthy was decreasingly challenged by their peers, but middling people became less secure.