Barry Coward has revised his wide-ranging text which outlines the major social changes that occurred in England in the two hundred years after the Reformation. He examines the religious and intellectual changes resulting from revolutionary pressures and he considers the impact of rapid inflation and population expansion that occurred in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Part One: The Structure of Early Modern English Society.
1. The Social Order in Early Modern England.
2. Geographical Mobility.
3. An Agrarian Society.
4. Contrasting Communities.
5. Family and Kinship.
6. Local Communities and the Nation.
Part Two: Changing Material Conditions
7. Population Fluctuations and Changing Social Fortunes.
8. Poverty and Dearth.
9. Affluence and Prosperity.
Part Three: Changing Ideas
10. Education and Literacy.
11. The Impact of Protestantism.
12. The Scientific Revolution.
Part Four: Documents.
Bibliography.
Index.

Barry Coward is Reader in History at Birkbeck College, University of London.