Worth of Witnesses in the English Church Courts, 1550-1728

This project has sought to recover and analyse new data relating to the distribution of wealth and the language of social description in England between c.1550 and c.1750. A database has been compiled of 13,686 responses of witnesses in the church courts to the commonly asked question of what they were worth with their debts paid. Witnesses responses to the question of their worth often included monetary estimates of material worth, alongside details about how they made a living, together with more qualitative forms of evaluation in ethical terms of honesty and industriousness. This data will underpin analysis of the distribution of wealth and poverty by socio/occupational status, age and gender amongst a broad social range of witnesses during a period of profound economic and social change. Particular attention will be given to the nature and pace of economic change; to the relationship between wealth, status and the life-cycle; to the impact of social polarisation deemed characteristic of the periods history; and to the degree to which an incipient labouring class can be discerned. In addition, the terms in which witnesses described their own (and sometimes each others) worth will be explored in order to chart popular concepts of wealth and poverty, perceptions of social difference, and forms of self-esteem that were often far removed from formal classificatory schemes of the early modern social order. Finally, the wider cultural significance of monetary markers of wealth will be probed in order to situate commonly cited values (such as forty shillings and 10) within qualitative as well as quantitative frames of reference. The data also contains extensive information about the literacy status and migration histories of witnesses, and incidental details of their religious observance.