Shaping the state from below: the rise of local petitioning in early modern England

Waddell, Brodie (2024) Shaping the state from below: the rise of local petitioning in early modern England. In: Waddell, Brodie and Peacey, Jason (eds.) The Power of Petitioning in Early Modern Britain. London, UK, pp. 201-228. ISBN 9781800085503.

Abstract

The growing power and remit of the state in early modern England was shaped directly and indirectly by new developments in local petitioning. Over the course of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, county and city magistrates received rapidly growing numbers of petitions about practical matters both from individuals and from communities. The range of people involved as initiators, organisers and subscribers of petitions grew alongside this, including substantial numbers of women and poor men as well as many middling male householders. This chapter examines how local petitioning was increasingly encouraged by the reams of new statutory obligations and entitlements created from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. Especially important was the new the fiscal role of parish and county governments in dealing with various forms of poverty, but the novel licencing regime for cottages and alehouses was also significant in spurring engagement. Moreover, these developments were mirrored in how petitioners framed their requests. While traditional appeals to piety and mercy remained important, there seems to have been a growing tendency to highlight impersonal state obligations though the language of ‘law’ and ‘statute’, rather than foregrounding individual paternalist duties. Overall, this chapter shows a growing proportion of ordinary people using petitions to shape the practice of local governance, especially the redistribution of funds via rating and relief systems. They were asking for the state to fulfil its statutory duties and protect their legal rights, often with great success. The symbiotic relationship between statute law, county government and local petitioning thus helped to deepen and strengthen the structure of the English polity. It enabled and encouraged popular participation in the implementation of new policies, especially the enforcing of new fiscal rights and obligations. As such, it gave ordinary people a vital role in what we might call ‘state building from below’.

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